This year was my first serious attempt at affiliate marketing. In January, I told myself that I would spend 2007 and test. That was my goal. Not to retire, not to succeed, not to make thousands of dollars, but to test and understand strategies. I know individuals like Darren from ProBlogger and Jeremy from Shoemoney will often get asked “what’s the secret”, and they’re answers are always the same – ‘test ideas’, ‘work hard’ and ‘just do it’. I can’t imagine how annoying that must be to say on a daily basis, but the words are extremely wise.

Taking these into account, I wanted to test what works for me and what doesn’t. I wanted to have at least three different directions for revenue. Not three different web sites, but three different strategies. The three initial strategies are as follows:

1. Commission Junction (store fronts)
2. Paid subscription banners
3. Google AdSense

I actually have a forth, which is landing pages and offers, but I’ve only dabbled with this. I’m hoping to spend the next couple of month on this topic. My plan was to go into 2008 with a foundation and build off of that.

As a programming affiliate marketer, you should look at how to tackle these strategies and test them with low cost at the end of the day. How I keep my costs low, is by first owning a dedicated server. Hosting charges don’t increase with each ‘test’ site. You can do this with a shared hosting plan that allows for unlimited domains. The only cost here would be domain purchase and the original hosting setup. This is critical!

Next, is paid traffic. Since all of my sites are basically new, I don’t want to wait for two years before I get some good search engine juice, or spend the countless up front hours of promoting my sites through blog comment submission, directory submissions, etc. I focus my time on Yahoo Search Marketing. I don’t bother with Google AdWords for now, since that would bleed me dry. YSM definitely sends good traffic that converts at .10/click. This falls into the other area of testing, which is split testing ads and generating ad campaigns. With the data of my own ads, I can see what niches convert, what keywords are good, etc. Once I have a ‘golden’ ad, I’ll create a Google AdWords ad to see if I can get some good traffic to the site. I see what sites perform well, and then begin my grass roots SEO campaigns on those particular sites. Basically, survival of the fittest Good sites that perform well, will get extra attention from me.

I also spent this year working on ‘community’ sites. These are sites where the public help generate content, discussion about certain items or topics. These are the places that might be good for subscription banners by companies that want to advertise on a very related site to their product or service. These take a lot of work, and have to develop over years to get a good following, but just like in stocks, I like to play a combination of long term as well as short term plays. Community sites are long-term investments that can seriously pay off.

Anyway, just wanted provide some food for thought. The key is to test, and test in a way that doesn’t cost you anything. All of my ‘tests’ are paid off by my earnings, so I’m never out of pocket. I dump all profit back into the pot for additional tests and PPC work. 2008 should be an interesting year.