The Dark Side of Affiliate Marketing: Cashing in on the 2nd Tier

Everything has a Dark Side. SEO, PPC & Domaining are just a handful of things that can be used “the wrong way” to make money, or is it the right way? Now, when I say the Dark Side I don’t mean things that are illegal. Most of the time you’re merely bending the rules or manipulating something that a rule doesn’t exist for yet (Arbitrage anyone?).

The aim of this series of posts is to delve into some of the lesser known or dubious techniques that Affiliates use to make money. To kick things off I’m going to talk about 2nd Tier recruiting & some sneaky ways to do it.

What is Second Tier Recruiting

Think of it as Multi Level Marketing, whenever you’re a member of an Affiliate Program there’s usually extra incentive to recruit members underneath you. Rewards range from a percentage cut of Profits to one time payments.

There’s a few types of 1 time payments, those that pay instantly (stupid imo) & those that also pay when the person you refer makes their first sale/conversion.

Everyday Implementation

Most webmasters will put minimal effort into promoting Second Tier programs. Perhaps a few banners here & there, or a few affiliate guides that encourage the user to sign up. The main problem with this is, 99/100 of these people that you refer will ever make any money with the program. Therefore you get Zero.

Taking it to the Next Level

There’s quite a few different ways to you can really start to think outside the box when it comes to recruiting Second Tier members. I find that it’s worth concentrating on one network at a time, build up a solid Second Level then move on. This will take sweat & tears, are you prepared to work for it?

Domains

Domains can be one of the easiest ways to take advantage of Second Tier referrals. Especially with typos. However you need to be careful to see if the company has a registered Trademark on the name. In America you can check your trademarks here. Creating a dedicated funnel page to direct affiliates through to the end program can be a great way to entice people & also get them to sign up to your newsletter. However I would strongly advise against using typos for competitive reasons. For example creating a typo of Coke & redirecting it to Pepsi.

Trademark Bidding

Some Affiliate Programs let you get away with it others don’t. There’s also ways around the ones that don’t, which I’ll touch upon in the Blackhat PPC section. A perfect example of someone using this technique is with Widgetbucks (this one is quite lucrative since you get $25 per signup).

This technique also works well if a domain has incurred any Google Penalties & doesn’t rank for its own name anymore. The above technique is extremely powerful at bringing in 2nd tier affiliates, so use it wisely.

Mentoring

Some affiliate programs (especially the ones that have Forums) are great for mentoring new starts & helping them make money. Have a look at More Niche (heaps of cash to be made from these guys). Now look at the leaderboard.

The Affiliate DoINeedOne? makes a large chunk of his Affiliate Commission each month by actively mentoring his Affiliates & teaching them how to make money. Since More Niche has products that pay $175 commission at a time & they also pay you for affiliates that your affiliates refer, he can net 5% on the second tier ($8.75) then 3% on the third tier ($5.25) & then 2% on the fourth tier ($3.5) per sale.

It pays to look for an Affiliate Program that allows you to effectively communicate with your Second Tier Affiliates for this technique to really work. It also takes a lot of time & effort. But once you’re up & running you can sit back & reap the rewards of all that hard work.

Imitation

This technique is down right underhanded but works like you wouldn’t believe. Set up a gmail account & simply “pretend” to be one of the Affiliate Managers from the Program with an offer for bloggers within the niche to “trial” the program. Most networks don’t condone Spam so be careful.

Make sure to:

• Highlight the Benefits
• Explain why they should use the program
• Highlight how much extra money they could be making

I get about 4-5 of these types of email a week, so it’s easy to see what everyone else is doing & add your own little twist on it. You also don’t need to pretend to be one of the Affiliate Managers, you can simply recommend the program to other bloggers in the same way.

You can also tie this in with my previous mentoring method by offering mentoring sessions to help the Webmasters make money from that particular program. The possibilities are endless!

To make this technique work even better, register a domain that is similar to the website that you’re promoting. For example say you were promoting Earners Blog, then register http://www.earnersblogaffiliates.com/ & set that to redirect through your affiliate ID. This is what a lot of the big boys do & it works much better than showing an Affiliate or even Cloaked Affiliate ID.

Learning Courses

Building upon the Mentoring technique, you can completely automate the whole process with something like Aweber. Simply create a website dedicated to a particular program then offer a 7 day course on making money.

Write 7 emails that slowly unravel how it’s all done (you don’t need my help on this, it’s not that hard) & set Aweber to distribute them over the next 7-14 days. Slowly tease them with information, I’d recommend signing up to a few lists to see how some of the bigger players do this, I subscribe to EVERYTHING I can, I always want to see what the opposition are doing. The beauty of a technique like this is that not only will you reap the rewards if they start making sales, but you can also presell them heaps of other products like:

• Web Hosting (Hostican offers $70 per sale)
• List Management (Aweber offers 20% recurring Commissions)
• Keyword Research (Wordze offers 30% recurring Commissions)

You get the idea. So not only could you be making serious bank on the 2nd Tier commissions, but you could also be netting monthly recurring commissions for all the other products that your Affiliates are using to help them succeed. A win win situation really.

You also have the advantage of being able to communicate with your list. This means that if you branch into other networks you can leverage off them.

There’s literally hundreds more ways to do this, you can snipe affiliates with the first few techniques, or you can really try to provide value & build a rapport with them. One will net you short term rewards, the other will give you long term rewards. It’s your call, use the information wisely