Which other industry gives you this much Freedom?

$800 a day with Yahoo Answers

05. Feb 2007 | 55 Comments

Have you embraced the money making power of Yahoo Answers yet? If you’re reading this then you probably haven’t.

Firstly, let me tell you that yesterday I made $800 from answering questions on Yahoo Answers. Not bad eh?

Lets look at why Yahoo Answers is an Affiliate Marketers dream & it’s for one reason only:

People are asking questions because they want your Advice.

So what if someone is asking “What’s the best mortgage for me?” then you’re pointing them to a Mortgage Company via your referral link? ;)

Yesterday I experimented with what works on Yahoo Answers.

  1. Mortgages
  2. Personal Loans
  3. Credit Cards
  4. How To Ebooks
  5. Ringtones

Azoogleads perform quite well along with Clickbank. Good thing about Clickback is that you have a referral link you can drop for just about any type of question.

i.e. What’s the best music site to download from?

Then drop a nice link from one of those Music Download offers. Easy.

I’ve found that in order to convert you need to give a good concise answer to the question. You can’t just jump in & drop your referral link. Give a good answer, gain the trust of the Questioner & you’ll have yourself a conversion.

Even if you don’t want to drop affiliate links you can also “Cite Resources” & drop the links to relevant sections on your own sites. Thus getting some link equity in the process & appearing “less spammy.”

So check it out, it’s an absolute GOLDMINE if you do it right.

You heard it here first.

I’ve not experienced anyone reporting any of my links for spam or anything like that. The key is to appear as genuine as possible, I also try to answer questions in different categories so the same people don’t see me dropping links all the time.

One thing to note about Yahoo’s Guidelines:

NO COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY: You may not post URLs for the purpose of directing commercial activity to a non-Yahoo! site.

So you use this technique at your own risk :)

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55 Comments on "$800 a day with Yahoo Answers"

paul 05. Feb 2007, 12:45 pm

That is a great idea. It will be very interesting to see how this will evolve as more people jump on it.

xfiver 05. Feb 2007, 1:10 pm

Geez, why didn’t I come up with that. Now I have to rush before anybody else gets in! Btw, do you cloack your aff links? Cloaking it with e.g. tinyurl may look suspicious.

Stuart 05. Feb 2007, 1:55 pm

I don’t even bother.

Mark L. 05. Feb 2007, 2:14 pm

That actually goes against the Community Guidlines for Yahoo! Answers.

“NO COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY: You may not post URLs for the purpose of directing commercial activity to a non-Yahoo! site.” You may not post content “for commercial or advertising purposes, including classified ads.”

Regards,
Mark

Stuart 05. Feb 2007, 2:57 pm

Didn’t Myspace’s terms & conditions have something similar to that in them? Didn’t stop people from milking it for all it’s worth.

Paowiee 05. Feb 2007, 3:07 pm

Any reply to mark’s comment?

Stuart 05. Feb 2007, 3:23 pm

I’ve updated the post to include the Community Guidelines. You use this technique at your own risk.

Nenad 05. Feb 2007, 4:34 pm

I really like this idea… You could also extend it to other discussion sites as well… I will have to dig into this one seriously now.

Andy 05. Feb 2007, 8:19 pm

Great idea - worthy of some serious consideration and work I reckon - may well become another facet of the bum marketing methodology.

reckon there is a lot of mileage in this but you are going to have to be true in your answers otherwise it could start back firing in your face

Mike 06. Feb 2007, 1:52 am

I am doing Y! Answers for 3-4 months now with medium success. I lost many accounts due to “spamming” no matter how I cloaked or how much sense my posts made. The most aggressive section is “work from home”. With those keywords there seems to be a small group which is watching like an eagle and reports every post which has ANY links to outside sources. The competition is also way to high and people obviously spamming with their aff. links for some weird programs. Of course it didn’t stop me to open new accounts and start again.

I now left the “work from home” field and started to concentrate on other niches and I found that not only do I get much much less spam notifications from Y! but also being chosen very often for the best answer.

I haven’t made nowhere near $800 in 1-2 months even but it might be due to niches which don’t pay out much. I know it works and that it can work but you need to do research before you start and you need to write your posts wisely at times.

Thanks Stuart for your post, was an interesting and motivating read!

Cheers
Mike

Ben Cruikshank 06. Feb 2007, 7:51 am

Another mind-bogglingly elegant system Stuart. Keep up the good work!

Tudor Mateescu 06. Feb 2007, 11:39 pm

Nice one!

Luke 07. Feb 2007, 7:05 am

May I also suggest a not so well known cloaking site?

http://www.w57.net :)

Joel 07. Feb 2007, 4:14 pm

How do you post links in Yahoo Answers? It looks like you can only post plain text. Is there any reason you don’t use commission junction because it looks like they have a lot more products to choose from.

someonw 09. Feb 2007, 8:01 am

Not brilliant to post about hot places to spam dude.

Stuart 09. Feb 2007, 8:44 pm

Who said anything about spamming. Spamming is doing things in MASS. I mentioned in my post that if you give a good concise answer then drop a link you’re being relevant.

I’d hardly call that spamming. But then again I guess putting a picture on Mybloglog is spamming these days.

Joseph 11. Feb 2007, 3:02 am

No, it is not spam, however, it is very unprofessional and irresponsible to promote/advocate something that breaks a site’s usage policies. Are you not aware of proper netiquette?

If you cannot respect a website’s policies, DO NOT use that site! It’s that simple. It’s a shame that people abuse these things just because they can make a quick buck on something.

You watch, now that the cat is out of the bag and so many people are posting their own links for personal gain Yahoo! Answers the service will change for the worse. Now people won’t know if they’re getting a real, truthful answer or one from a salesman trying to push his/her own agenda.

Disgusting.

Geiger 13. Feb 2007, 4:18 am

Can you give us an example of a good response with an affiliate link?

Geiger 13. Feb 2007, 4:20 am

SPAM means “unsolicited”. If they are asking a question I don’t see how it is unsolicited. If your answer gets chosen as the right one, no matter which links you put in there, there is NO spam.

Geiger 13. Feb 2007, 1:40 pm

It’s easier to speak the truth than it is to make-up a lie. People see through scams. You are just crying foul because you can’t do it well.

Don’t worry, I can’t do it well either.

Kiley 14. Feb 2007, 7:20 am

Stop being a party-pooper.

glenn 14. Feb 2007, 1:40 pm

Yes I was wondering the same thing, what kind of CTR you are getting and how many answers would you post a day?

Stuart 14. Feb 2007, 2:50 pm

Search for:

site:answers.yahoo.com Clickbank.net

In google & this will bring up 85,000+ answers that have Clickbank affiliate links in them. Use these to get your ideas for your own marketing.

Come on guys, You can’t expect me to do all the work for you. Then we’d all end up promoting the same offers & saturating each others markets, right?

Jenn 18. Feb 2007, 7:54 am

Stuart or anyone else here:

Do you have any stats on whether this technique converts differently depending on whether you use a male, female, or generic avatar on Yahoo Answers? I’d imagine it’s somewhat niche-dependent.

I haven’t seen much difference yet, but I don’t have enough data to draw a statistically valid conclusion.

DylanLoh.com 18. Mar 2007, 4:00 pm

What about directing traffic to an Adsense site?

menguzar 19. Mar 2007, 7:52 pm

I’m having a little trouble with this. I made a couple of trials and some of my answers were chosen “best answer” by the asker with side notes like “It was really what I needed” etc.

The links were definite affiliate links. 4 out of 6 chosen best answers were about music downloads so in order for them to be able to say that “it really worked”, they have to become members (pay something, make me money).

But I don’t see any sales from those on Clickbank. Do you think people just choose an answer at random and say “hey it’s great thanks!” or could there be a problem in Clickbank’s tracking system?

Michel Zieleman 13. May 2007, 10:25 pm

Hi Stuart,

Interesting thread you wrote, though it’s already a while ago! You still doing Yahoo Answers succesfully?
I am wondering if you automate your Yahoo Answers process? Or posting answers by you is done manually?
Thanks!

Mike

Sly 19. May 2007, 2:08 pm

Hey Stuart,

I signed up for Clickbank, but everything is confusing me. Can you email me back on how to get started right away? I don’t know what to do (affiliates or marketplace or w/e). Thanks.

chad williamson 04. Jun 2007, 5:07 am

I dont know how to make this work. I answer questions and get points, but how do I get the money.

Peter 08. Nov 2007, 12:06 pm

Very much a out the box idea, I think a lot of AM’ers are jumping into ideas like this although the whole idea isn’t any thing new. The only thing I struggled with when “testing” was I can’t really find any top questions with aff links I could use.

roguespammer 04. Jan 2008, 6:00 pm

Here is a post I made about exploiting Yahoo Answers, and making money with yahoo answers.

George 07. Feb 2008, 2:25 pm

You fool !! why didnt you just keep this idea to yourself. Why didnt you just think why no one had posted it before? Its becuase they were aware of the consequences. Now thanks to dumbasses like you,Yahoo has disabled links in answers. Now you have ruined the wonderful time people like me were having with yahoo answers. thanks a lot.

Stuart 07. Feb 2008, 3:01 pm

Yeah this post is a year old. Get over it.

john 15. Mar 2008, 7:47 am

I don’t get why this keeps getting spread. It is clearly dishonest and against the terms of service to do this. Refer them to your blog and let the reader decide if they want to click your link or your ad. A direct commercial link is dishonest because you said you wouldn’t do it when you signed up.

Disgusted!!! 23. Apr 2008, 11:16 am

Joseph, you are disgusting with your own agenda.

of cource, people won’t click on a link unless the answer is knowledgable and makes sense. the link might even help people in addition to the topic, since it pertain to the topic.

Not Disgusted!!! 01. Jun 2008, 6:46 pm

Making money and being ethical sometimes run in opposite directions. Bill Gates anyone???

In the words of Suge Knight, “You gotta do what you gotta do to get paid!”

Forex Autopilot 10. Jun 2008, 6:39 pm

I had tried this method 6 months ago. Somebody reported my links were commercial and then all my answers were removed from Yahoo answers. I was not banned, but that was the warning I received. Henceforth, I did not try posting links in Yahoo answers. For a small gain, I do not want my domains to be banned by Yahoo.

Steve 01. Jul 2008, 5:08 am

I did try this about a month ago. Boy was I late on jumping on this wagon. I heard about from a friend and, yeah I was warned as well.
Great Blog by the way.

cara bina website 11. Jul 2008, 1:59 am

Do this method still work? If we just refer to site then it should no problem right?

cornea503 12. Jul 2008, 3:34 am

I know this is a year old but I think people taking these tips a bit to literally. Folks need to realize that these techniques stop working long before they are posted anywhere. Do you think that he is going to give away this idea if it were still working?? Of course not….Take if for what it’s worth, an example of creativity and outside the box thinking which is why i visit this site. If you ever want to make money you need to come up with these ideas BEFORE anyone else does. If you are reading about it, well it’s just WAY too late. That being said, thanks for sharing these examples in creative thinking. I think they are worth just as much as the technique.

Ranked Hard 17. Jul 2008, 9:03 am

Getting traffic from Yahoo answers still works.

Anil Kumar Raju 17. Jul 2008, 9:33 am

I have A question here,Is dropping clicknbank affiliate link in yahoo answers is safe ,some are telling that landing page necessary to promote.Promoting in Craiglist and yahoo answers is comes under spam?voilting toss? pls give relevent answer

Gerard Espinas 30. Jul 2008, 8:42 pm

Recently I just started to participate in Yahoo Answer and I noticed it is directing traffic to my blog. But I hesitant to put my affiliate links to my answers even though can generate passive income.

SolReka 26. Aug 2008, 11:35 am

I’ve just signed up to yahoo answers.

Is it okay to post answers, write questions and then occasionally leave a link to your website or blog article?

Maybe link to your blog once every five posts in yahoo answers. The link would be relevant to the question posted or answer given?

I do not want to get banned

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