Amazon is doing the unthinkable over in the UK right now. Remember PPC going away in the US a few months ago? Well now they’re doing it in the UK and it does not bode well for US Affiliates (This Means You)!

In an article at SearchEngineLand they’ve quoted the UK Amazon letter ending PPC for Affiliates. And an additional paragraph has been added. Here it is:

In addition, as of February 1, 2010 we will no longer pay referral fees on purchases made by customers who are referred to www.amazon.co.uk or www.javari.co.uk via Free Search Results. Free Search Results are links containing an Associate’s tag displayed in a search engine’s free, natural, or organic search results in response to a search query which send customers directly to an Amazon site without the customer first being sent to an Associate’s site and the customer clicking on a link to arrive at the Amazon site.

So, you’ve built out sites with quality content, even localized in many cases, did some decent SEO, have your newsletter going out, etc. Things are pretty nice now that your site is on the first page of Google, Yahoo, etc. And the link to a specific product on your site that sets your tracking and takes a customer to Amazon happens to show up on that search term. You’d think that was good. You’d think that your hard work and smart execution of your plan would bring you a commission.

You’d think that since your efforts brought Amazon that sale you’d get paid for it. But no.. Not if it’s after Feb1 in the UK. And don’t think it won’t start happenning here as well. I’m not a huge predictor of specific things but this is starting to fall into a disturbing trend. PPC is being penalized by Amazon (among others). Google is slapping affiliate links in PPC as well. Ebay is now judging your sites for “quality”. And now Amazon UK is penalizing your organic search results (if it’s an affiliate link). And as everyone knows… link cloaking isn’t exactly an accepted practice among a majority of networks and merchants.

I have a good idea that this will become a hot topic at Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas this weekend. And for good cause. I do believe that everyone is going to be scrambling to figure out how to preserve their earned affiliate commissions that are the result of a natural search. The other thing I know is that whoever cracks the code and figures out where all these moves lead is going to be a huge superaffiliate in 2011.

As usual I’ve been looking at SEO while coding up some programatic goodies for AffSpot.  And the world is about to get very interesting indeed.  For example, the bruhaha over Google Realtime Results and Security.

In a USA Today Article Rae Hoffman expounds (quite accurately) that giving Twitter results in realtime could be a big security issue.    As well as a liability issue for Google.  These things not withstanding there is also a built in “Google Penalty” if your not on Twitter.  You see, twitter is feeding data directly to Google for realtime results.  Which is a good thing if your on Twitter…  And a bad thing if your not.  Here’s why.

If you do a search for “AffSpot” on Google we naturally hold the #1 position…  And if you give the page a few seconds out latest “tweets” show up as well.  Now, that’s a good thing.  AffSpot is a brand and we always want to be #1 for our own name.  And showing some of our “tweets” works to our advantage.

But let’s say your primary Affiliate Marketing site is focused on Classic Portraits..  And you hold #1 on Google for the phrase.  But one of your competitors is active on Twitter, has a number of followers, and “tweets” on a regular basis.  Now search for Classic Portraits and you’ll still show #1…  Until the realtime result shows up (which can take a few seconds)….  And your competitor has now pushed you down the page with a listing of their tweets!

And if that’s not enough to get you to Twittering…  Take a look at what Dell is doing..  6 million in sales from it decided to put an effort into selling via Twitter (ARTICLE HERE).  If you do the math that’s $100,000.00+ per Twitter account.  So even a little effort into Twitter can be a big boost for your affiliate marketing efforts.

Two morals to this story…  If your not active in the Social Web you should be…  Your SERPS could end up depending on it.  And the second moral of this story is that it’s important to establish not only your own personal accounts for your own personal use…  But accounts for your brands/sites as well.  And you need to keep up with them (hint, read our blog entries here, we talk about automation alot).

Yesterday we did some math and figured out the economics of building a network of localized niche minisites:

25 minisites x $3.00/day avg net = $75/day x 30 = $2250.00/month

We assumed it would cost $500/month in expenses which means we either raise our sales expectations/site, raise the number of minisites, or take the cost out of our existing projection.

Now we need to figure out what we’re going to do with 25 minisites!  What kinds of niches to target, which localities, which offers, etc.  And although not difficult, it can get involved.  Let’s break it down…

The order in which you do your research will change the answers you receive!  If you pick 25 locales to focus on then research niches your going to get different answers than if you research niches first and then apply your list of niches to locales.  And in real life, it doesn’t make that much difference.  As long as you know this ahead of time you could even do both and see where the answers are the same and assume that those choices would be the best (and you wouldn’t be wrong).

So, we’re going to do this completely backwards.  Just to let you know that as long as your doing all three (niches, locales, offers) it will work out in the end for you.

I like to know what I’m doing  so I’m going to look at the offers first.  This way I can see who’s “pushing” their offers, what’s new (and potentially hot), and if there are good offers that trigger my creative juices.  Because, you can’t monitize without offers!

Go take a look at the AffSpot NewsRoom…  PAGE HERE

Now, What does this give us?  Information on programs and offers from a large number of networks all in one place.  If you start seeing a pattern for table linens, healthcare packages, exercise equipment, lighting fixtures, etc. then you can dig deeper into each of the offers, pick a few that look good, and do a little bit of keyword research to see if you have a niche that makes sense for a minisite.  One trend I’ve been noticing lately are eyeglasses and contact lens offers.  That may be a good niche you can localize on.

Now, we’re going to look at eyeglasses and contact lenses as a niche to attack with localized minisites.  Cool, one down two to go (research wise).  We’ve looked at a few offers, etc. and now it’s time to get local!  I’ll let you google this out..  But I’ve found that choosing the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th largest cities in each US State for local targeting is much less competitive, and give you more opportunities when going local.  Let’s look at Kansas.

Go to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool And do a search for Kansas Glasses, Wichita Glasses, Topeka Glasses and see what you get.  Pay attention now.  Take a look at the keywords and the demand on them.  By now you’ve figured out that the keyword tool comes up with little to nothing for Wichita glasses.  And if you do a regular Google search you get very few results as well.  Same for Topeka, Overland Park is a little busier, etc.  This means there’s not going to be very much online competition!  PERFECT!

So, eyewear/glasses/contact lenses localized seems to be good.  We’ve looked at Kansas.  Take a look at a couple other States too..  Illinois, Kentucky, Oregon, etc.  I think you’ll see very similar results.  Not a lot of competition on a local level.

Now you need to do this all over again, with a copy/paste into a spreadsheet or even writing things down in a notebook.  But you need to go back now and pick cities and states with little competition for your niche but have high populations.  You can even do a little simple division of offers/hundred thousand population with the highest number being more potential for sales (and choose on your newly invented “power number”).

So now you know how many sites will be in your minisite network (25), You know a niche to go for (eyecare/eyeglasses/contact lenses), you’ve found some offers using the AffSpot NewsRoom and researched those.  And you have researched various local markets with simple Google tools.

Next we’re going to take a look at where we are, what tasks we need to accomplish, and lay out the building blocks we’ll need technically to start building out our minisite network.

Okay, okay..  I hear you.  “Don’t get all economist Phd on us”.  And I promise I won’t get too far into the weeds.  But you know that you only have so much time and that you need to predict where your time will be best spent.  You also know that these choices (good or bad) will affect your sales and income in the 4th Quarter.  How about if you could apply actual trends in consumer spending on your sites?  Taking into account actual customer spending and focus your immediate efforts on the affiliate programs that are most likely to generate higher sales and profits.

In other words, put your bang where the bucks are.

And now you can.  I havn’t seen any broad public tools for this until recently (in fact, yesterday).  Google Domestic Trends.  And the data shown is quite interesting.  Google has taken retail sales in a wide variety of categories (clothing, cars, furniture) and has matched it with search volume in those areas.  For example…  From Jan 09 through April 09 retail clothing sales bottomed out not out of line of the previous three years.  Even more interesting is that even though we’re in rough times retail clothing sales are significantly higher for this period than in 2005 and 2006!

Retail Clothing Sales compared to Google Search Queries

Now let’s apply this to your sites, and keywords.  Let’s say you specialize in furniture and home furnishings.  If you take a look at Google Domestic Trends for Furniture you’ll see that retail furniture sales/searches have been rebounding since June of this year.  And that August was fairly flat in sales.

Now, if I ran affiliate sites for retail clothing, and furniture where do you think I’d concentrate on for the 4th Quarter of 2009?  That’s right…  Furniture.  It’s on the biggest rise.  Sales didn’t drop in August, they were flat.  That matches previous years close enough to anticipate that even more furniture and home furnishings will sell in the busy Christmas season as gifts (well, maybe not leather couches, but you know what I mean).  I may also concentrate on any retail clothing since the pattern of retail activity is pretty good (albeit not like the past couple years, but better than 2005 2006).

If I also had automotive accessories, car finance, etc. I’d take a look at those areas as well.  Cash for Clunkers shows greatly in Google Domestic Trends…  And I’d make appropriate judgements there as well.

Which means I know where I’m spending my time right now.  I know what’s hot, what’s not, and I have a much better handle on where I can put the “Bang where the Bucks Are” for the busiest season of the year.  Do you know where your Bang is?  You tell me..  Click that “Discussion” link and let’s do this all together, shall we?