Your content should strategically target the big picture, which is, to get visitors who are looking to buy…not looking to look.

An early mistake I’ve made with my affiliate sites was to start adding articles to them with no rhyme or reason. The topics of these articles all had to do with the product at hand, but they were random and all over the place, from talking about the history of the product, to “how to use” tutorials, how the product works on the inside, and other things. What it did was bring a whole bunch of non-converting, garbage traffic to the site.

Let’s say you’re selling bowling balls, and you’ve snagged bowlingballs.net (wishful thinking). You’ve got a site up that’s shilling 5 major brands, and you decide to start taking that old advice about adding good, helpful content. You start writing articles about bowling techniques, alleys, how the balls are crafted, etc. – basically, things related to the product at hand. Now, you’re ranking for stuff that isn’t acquisition-based or actionable. You know, things that people search for just so that they can read information and not buy anything.

So, instead of continuing your work to rank for “discount bowling balls,” you’re now ranking for “bowling techniques,” “how bowling balls are made” and other worthless things. Some will say “yeah, but, you’re getting traffic from people who are interested in this niche.” True, but is “bowling techniques” an actionable thing that customers search for while holding on to their credit card? No. Is this product an impulse buy? Once again, no.

As you can see, it all comes down to what you’re selling and what the audience’s behavior is. Small ticket items sell best on article sites because they’re impulse buys. However, you can put your heart and soul into an article-rich site about refrigerators and never sell a single one, because you had been mistakenly attracting the “already own a refrigerator, but want to read more about them” crowd.

Instead of writing articles about techniques or the industry in general, you should be writing articles about “how to buy,” “how to choose,” or “compare prices for…” topics. Ease a customer’s fears about shipping costs of buying a heavy product online. Or, make them feel reassured about buying something online that most people would normally want to touch and hold in a brick-and-mortar store. Those are smart articles.

For the love of God, stop writing beautiful, content-rich, elaborate articles and putting them on eZine Articles. eZine makes enough money from all of those other chumps putting their time and effort into great articles for the sake of a crappy backlink going to their site. I’d rather put that article itself directly ON my site, and get the search engine traffic from it, rather than hoping eZine will be a portal funneling visitors to my site.

The next time you struggle over the notion of adding articles to your affiliate site, consider how actionable they are, and how they contribute to the main keyword you’re trying to target. Perhaps you might want to spice up your product descriptions themselves, rather than sitting down and writing an article from scratch. Whatever you do, don’t write randomly, or your affiliate site will be getting a lot of worthless traffic for long-tail keywords being searched by people who have no intention of buying anything!

Monitor your Google Analytics account. If you see your site ranking for garbage terms, go back into the article that’s triggering them and remove the keywords from that page’s content. Then, gear it more toward actionable terms, ping it, and continue working hard at your on-site SEO strategy.

Seriously, this is a joke...right?

The Obvious Issues

1. Sex sells: yeah, we get it. Hot chicks = clicks. But what’s the reasoning behind getting some generic stock image of a model which pans back and forth? It’s completely un-related to the internet game. It’s stupid on so many levels. This stock photo would have been better for an advertisement for women’s underwear. Or, mail-order Russian brides.
2. God-awful sales talk: to say “everyone’s talking about” it is extraordinarily lame. I’m not talking about it…are you? I don’t even know what the hell it is. Even if everyone was talking about something, I don’t care, and neither does anyone else. Given the awful advertising, I’m highly doubting 11 million people play this game.
3. I don’t know what the hell it is:  It has a logo in the same fashion of the World of Warcraft logo, so I’m guessing it’s a role playing game. However, they don’t mention this. They don’t captivate this subculture whatsoever. I’m not sure if this is some kind of R-rated sex game, or what.
4. Engrish: “It’s obvious why they are: It makes you feel like King!” What is this supposed to mean? Who proofread this? Who thought this made sense? I don’t care if English isn’t your native language. Find someone who can tell you how stupid you’re about to make yourself look before you get the chance. It was too late for this guy. “Makes you feel like king?” What is this, 3rd grade? Even if it were written properly: “It makes you feel like a king,” even that makes no sense whatsoever. Take a tip from Samuel (work warning for language).

For the sole sake of this article, I had to visit this site. I spared them the three pennies, and typed in “Evony game” in Google, and got to its home page. I must say, it has a cool splash screen. They seem to have invested money in some great graphic design, but they can’t write a sentence of ad copy to save their own mother.

Once again, there are more flat out BAD issues with this screen. Beyond the eye-rolling attempt to shove more breasts in your face, there’s some of the worst bullet points I’ve ever seen right on the splash page: “Free to play forever!” – really? Forever? I think there would have been a better and more sensible way to re-phrase that, specifically by removing the nonsensical word “forever.”

False Claims, Dead Credibility

To claim that it’s the “world’s best web game” is absurd and breaks the cardinal rule of marketing: if you say your product is the best, that means you’re an awful salesperson and don’t know that the customer has to make that distinction – not you. Besides, I’m pretty sure that reigning champion of online gaming, Zynga, would really embarrass you in that regard.

I also laugh at their “global community of MILLIONS.” Wow, millions? Care to back that up with some hard data? It’s just super lame. Also, note that Farmville – proclaimed as the world’s biggest social game at present, has 11 million subscribers…the same number that this game claims to have. What a coincidence! (yes, that’s sarcasm).

What Is It?

The most obvious of all is that I still don’t know what the hell this is. I can draw a conclusion: a maiden + a guy in armor with a sword = some kind of role playing game.  Why can’t they say what it is, though? Why is anyone going to register until they find out this one simple, vital thing? It’s completely ineffective. Nothing says “…comprehensive turn-based role playing game” or “multi-player strategy game” or anything of that nature. You have to click through to another section in order to get this information. It should simply be there.

Sorry if I’m coming off as bitter. I started my career off in graphic design, desktop publishing and advertising. All I ever did was approve ads that went in magazines. I still never cease to be amazed at bad ad copy…especially in the post-production and advertising phases. This LLC deserves recognition for materializing a classic case study on awful internet advertising campaigns.

There’s no better way to do this but to break down the morons and methods I hate the most.

Scenario #1: The Overly Personal Marketer

You’ve seen the “Dear Friend” tactic. It’s one of two things: either someone who thinks this “personal touch” puts you at ease and makes you think “this guy is great! I can totally trust what he’s about to say,” or, the person is from some article-writing mill in a 3rd world country, typing out emails as they’re also creating fake dating profiles and scamming middle-aged bald men into sending a Western Union for a mail-order bride. When someone calls me “friend,” I immediately think they’re going to offer to transfer me $10 million from some north African bank account. If you’re going to get personal, be real. Nobody trusts you, and everyone pretty much knows what an affiliate link is. Thanks for the bit.ly link, but I’ll pass.

Secondly, and I don’t mean to be offensive, but…if you can’t speak or write English on an advanced and professional level, I’m not going to trust you. If you can’t distinguish between “you’re” and “your,” put an unnecessary “s” at the end of words like “stuff” to make it become “stuffs,” or do anything that’s downright atrocious and unattractive, others will seriously judge your ability to be a business person. They’re going to think that you’re attempting to appeal to the work-from-home American public by pushing Clickbank links to e-books, or something. It’s like walking down the street and having some foreigner ask “hey baddy…you want watch?” while holding a coat open.

That’s why you never make commissions – you don’t sound credible, and you didn’t take the time to proofread or check your grammar. If you know your English grammar isn’t so hot, why not target audiences in your native language, instead? There sure will be a hell of a lot less competition.

Scenario #2: The Squeeze Page of Infinity

This fad really needs to die and go to hell. You’ve seen the all too familiar “sales squeeze page.” It’s long…like, really, really long, filled with different variations of text sizes, from red and bold H1 down to plain old 11px. There are lots of “But Wait!”s, lots of “Today Only!”s, countdown timers that reset the next morning, “fade in” registration boxes, and tons of other wacky bullshit. If you actually have the nerve to scroll down about two miles, you’ll get to the false testimonials at the bottom of the page that talk about how wonderful and great this software/product is, and how many hundreds of dollars per month it has made everyday people like you and me (usually the quintessential “stay at home moms,” “just got back from Iraq” soldiers and old people who probably don’t know where the power button is on the computer, but somehow got to Google page 1 SERPs for major keyword terms).

Do squeeze pages work? Yes – if you do them right. If you have serious eCred for making a helpful, kick-ass app or plugin (like Mr. Agarwal who made Ninja Affiliate), they work…and you know the testimonials are 100% real. He even sends out an offer for a free gift here and there if you write him one. However, if you copy the same old formula that’s been used to oblivion (use Clickbank‘s vendors as your example: they are, after all, the internet capital of affiliate scams), then you can expect a bounce rate of epic proportions and a lot of disappointment. Make your squeeze page be completely transparent.

Nobody gives a crap about “persuasion talk,” they got plenty of that when they went to the car dealership. They want to see facts. Bullet points of what’s included. Screenshots, a video, and a demo. The price. That’s it.

Scenario #3: Forum Marketing Gone Wrong

The next-to-worst thing to a vBulletin spam bot are these morons who take the age old advice of “promote your sites on relevant blogs!!!1″ while doing so in the most laughable and ridiculous manner. In one post, they’ll be bitching about why they have been on Google AdSense for 6 months and haven’t made $3 yet, and elsewhere on the forum, they’ve just posted about how they “…make $500/month on AdSense…here’s how!” If you’re going to lie, at least be a good liar (not like anyone’s going to be checking up on your other posts, given how wonderful the first one probably was).

If you’re marketing on a forum, why not immerse yourself into the community for a little while? Participate, ask questions, and then sneak in a little promotion here and there. Don’t even say “find the best prices on…” Simply suggest the link. If someone wants to buy or click something – they will. Your overbearing suggestion and persuasion tactics will not increase those chances whatsoever — unless you are seen as an authority figure on the forum. If anything, you’ll dissuade others from clicking your links, for the simple fact that everyone starts their relationship with you by having their defensive barrier up.

The big picture here is to market your stuff with good taste. Spitting at people won’t make them pay more attention to you (well, maybe it will), but it will make them hate you. Marketing is psychology. Why not be a conversationalist instead of a pest? Get into someone’s head, see what makes them tick, and relate to them.

Offer suggestions toward external links, don’t put a cheap neon sign above them – it never works. Ever.