DFHU Quick Tip: Teaching Your Affiliates Through Keyword Bounty Hunting

We all know that google bombs have been dead for years now, but maybe you can still ‘own’ a bunch of the SERPs for a collection of keywords?

Here is the scoop.

Seeing as you are decent at SEO you are most certainly already providing your affiliate list with newsletters which give actionable steps on how to rank. Right? Yes. Ok great.

Now that you have an informed list, you might wish to provide them with incentive and a collection of keywords, which are not too hard, but are of some value. This can be an “auto-generated” list or a manual list. An example of an auto-generated list would be something like “$YOUR-NICHE $NAME-OF-CITY.”

Where you select for city such that city_population > 250k or city_mean_temprature < 30 or student_population > 30k etc….

Ok, given this list of “medium tail” keywords, you can come up with some non-zero value as to what they are worth for you to rank for.

With a list and a value for the keywords, you can offer your affiliate list a “bounty” for ranking first place in $search_engine_of_choice or $front_page_on_search_engine_of_choice.

The calculation would go something like.

$conversion_rate*$estimate_num_sales_per_month*$return_on_sale + $average_lifetime_value_of_customer < award_given_for_ranking.

You could guess use PPC to help with estimations.

In short you are offering, "If you rank for one of these terms for a month, I will give you X dollars as a bounty over your normal commission, no questions asked. You can rank for as many terms as you wish and I will give you are reward for each."

In summary, estimate how much a part of SERP real estate is worth to you after commissions and offer a reward for owning it to your list for slightly less than the amount it will make you after normal commisons. Your affiliates will be happy, because they have ranked and are making MORE money and you will be happy because you payed a decent price for the SERP real estate.

You could also try awarding for "keyword difficulty" in a tiered fashion.

More posts for affiliates coming soon.