RedHedd.com: Automated Affiliate Marketing

By Bud on September 2, 2008 Comments (4)

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Steve Warrington describes how he "automated" his search engine based affiliate marketing business. This "automation" boiled down to maximizing the value of his content creators' work in a well defined system to gain search visibility.

Filed under: Ann Arbor, MI | Network Businesses | RedHedd.com | Steve Warrington

 Steve Warrington operates a web content business that he monetizes through affiliate marketing. As described in our last segment, Steve initially stumbled into this business trying to publish an ebook on mortgage finance and realizing he could make much more money giving the content away for free and placing ads next to it. In this segment, Steve describes how he has systematized these business practices as he has opened new content areas:

  • He now discovers new content, assesses the opportunity it presents, and creates content.
  • Once a content area shows promising results, Steve hires outside people to manage the sites and post content. His main sources for additional personnel include:
  • Steve focuses his content creation efforts toward the "long tail" of organic search:
    • Organic search refers to the part of search results that are not influenced by advertising, in other words, the search results that are not labeled as sponsored links. Although it takes considerable time investment to do well in organic search results, you do not have to pay per click as you do with sponsored links.
    • The long tail refers to low volume search terms where there is not a lot of competition. On the order of 60 to 70% of searches occur using these terms. It is much easier to appear high in search engine results for long-tail search terms, although more of these terms are required to generated adequate visits.

Steve refers to this process as "automating" his work. What he is really doing is taking advantage of his contributors inputs into a well defined system designed to work in the search engine ecosystem.

4 Comments

Karina Vaks on November 13, 2008 9:58 PM
The business philosophy that Mr. Warrington uses to operate his business is a very good idea. I am not very knowledgeable in this area and found it to be very informative. I think he is on to something with his business idea and how it works. His idea is to start a website and builds the content of it until it begins to make money. At that point he outsources the work to maintain the webpage. As the content builds, web searches pull up his sites more and more and as a result the website makes more money. It is a great idea that I have thought about, but I do not know enough to invest the money needed to do this. If I learn more about it I may try a website or two and see how it goes. He does have a good idea to focus on terms that are not searched for as often, and build from the ground up. I think that is the best business model and one that follows the business plan method proposed in the textbook, without making it seem obvious.
James Godre on November 17, 2008 2:13 PM
I find Steve's story very interesting since he set out with an entrepreneurial idea of selling an e book and allowed the idea to transform into the creation of web sites that host ads. The thing that makes this story so different from others is that the medium he was trying to use to sell his e book ended up becoming his business rather than the e book. Steve was trying to use his knowledge of mortgage financing to generate income, when in fact he ended up generating income from something he had not known anything about. Rather than selling the e book, he decided to give the content away free of charge and host ads on his web page to generate income per click. I think that is great that he was able to gain enough knowledge about the web to develop multiple web sites. Steve stated that he now has ten web sites generating income. He is able to maintain these sites because they operate like a "machine". His components behind the machine approach were very compelling. He hired people to manage the sites, used automated links, hired people to write the content, and has the help of search engines. I feel the idea of using an organic search is really working for him in the sense that it is not advertised and it allows his sites to build a little more each day. Steve explained that the sites build a little more each day in terms of age, content, and number of links. This also plays a role in his idea of coming from behind as his web sites become a larger contender in the web industry. I feel Steve has a good strategy since each of his sites is almost self sufficient, he is able to focus his attention in other area which Im sure has allowed him to build up to the ten sites he has now.
Mike D on March 29, 2009 3:49 PM
I like Steve's story, it seems rather unconventional, and a little different than most other things I have seen on this site. Steve talked about how he is kind of the underdog story; he doesn't really go after any of the big accounts, or anything that is a large market search because he doesn't stand a chance against the bigger players in the market. I like that he goes after smaller search's and looks into growing those sectors of the business. By doing this day-by-day he grows his name and his business, so eventually he will be able to compete with the big players. Steve seems to understand how to make something successful then pass it off to someone who may know a little more about that particular sect of the industry. I think that if Steve keeps at what he is doing, he will be able to reach his goal of growing 50 percent.
Jack Robertson on November 22, 2009 11:20 PM
This seems to be the way to make money on the web these days. By hosting a website and placing advertising on a proven highly visited site is a money-maker! Affiliate marketing for Steve, although dormant at this point, was a good discovery in 2005. With all of the websites out there today, who will support another social networking website and pay for the content? That’s right, the sponsors. It looks as though Steve is featuring AllFreeGifts.net as a main sponsor of his site. There is a banner ad on top and at the bottom of RedHedd.com that has a live link. It looks as though Steve keeps his site clean and features only one main sponsor at a time. This is a good way to get a premium for the space, but limits income. My advice would be to bring in multiple advertisers at once. Sure, it clutters things up a bit, but a lot of the other main stream sites are doing the same thing. The size of the ads can be greatly reduced when other sponsors come along as well. Currently, the large banners are gaudy, contrasting and too flashy to blend well with the actual page. The banner ads look as if they do not belong there. Another suggestion that I have would be to tone it down a bit with ad design. The site itself looks nice and like it has a purpose without the ad banners. Jack Robertson

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