Using Current Events to Make Money

So most conventional ways of doing affiliate marketing are either PPC or organic. Pay for an ad in a search engine (or content network), get clicks, go to the merchant, that whole thing. But as displayed with my Facebook article, there are other ways to make a decent coin with affiliate marketing. This small tip will hopefully open up some more doors in your minds. If you can start thinking outside the box, you’ll have an advantage over the majority. We already know that the top level affiliates (small number) makes most of the industry money – it’s time you become one of them.

You can bank in on current events, either via Adsense or affiliate offers. I’ll just describe with an example, because that’s the easy way for me to explain, and easiest way for you to understand. Back maybe a month ago or so, the huge VOIP company Sunrocket went bankrupt. They just closed the doors out of the blue on all it’s users, leaving them screwed. The first thing that came into mind was “how can I profit from this?”. I thought search volume in the next weeks would be high for this news, people searching for news. So I thought of what people would be searching for. I ended up registering the domain names SunrocketBankrupt.com and SunrocketGoesBankrupt.com. I made a really simple SEOish webpage with title and header tags about Sunrocket and VOIP. Then I just wrote a very small paragraph just explaining that Sunrocket went bankrupt and closed the doors on people. Above and below the paragraph I placed a few large Adsense blocks. That was the extent of what I did right there, it took about 10 minutes to do. After a couple days, I started getting decent traffic and Adsense clicks. Then I thought, well most of these people probably used Sunrocket and were screwed, so maybe an affiliate offer for an alternate VOIP company would work. I did end up getting a few leads (which are big $100+ leads) before I had problems with my server and the site ended up going down. I haven’t put it back up because it’s just kind of been in the back of my mind and I didn’t really think to.

I didn’t even attempt to SEO those domains for good organic rankings, I probably just got traffic by people searching “sunrocket bankrupt” in their browser bar and it redirecting to the .com or something.

Keeping up with the times and buying good keyword domains can end up bringing in some extra cash for you. If I hadn’t been so busy lately, I probably would of thought to register SenatorLarryCraigIsGay.com or domains like that and just spam them with Adsense.


23 Comments

  1. Warren
    September 25, 2007

    There’s nothing wrong with being profit-oriented, but I really don’t want to wake up every morning and look myself in the mirror and say to myself, “I spam people”.

  2. September 25, 2007

    How is that spamming?

  3. September 25, 2007

    I love it when people make random negative comments and don’t link to their own blog. Its not spamming, your simply taking advantage of a surge in search traffic for relatively uncompetitive terms. If anything, in the first example your helping people pick another, not bankrupt, company.

  4. Raj
    September 25, 2007

    Warren your a Retard

  5. September 25, 2007

    hey nova,

    with tired eyes it’s tough to read the white on black here. Liked the article though.

    Question: what do you think of this big 500 dollar PPC package that came out today? I’m sick of people that are obviously making money just selling shovels pushing this down my throat.

    rideswitch

    PS. regular or goofy?

  6. September 25, 2007

    goofy, well i’ve never been snowboarding but I assume I would do it the same as skateboarding lol.
    good article I need to start thinking that way I guess, read up on cnn>tech & business sections and see how I can exploit the system…. I love it!!!

  7. Warren
    September 26, 2007

    To quote yourself: “…and just spam them with Adsense.”.

  8. September 26, 2007

    I wasn’t using “spam” that literally, and it’s “spamming” the page, not the user. I do nothing to force the page upon them.

  9. Warren
    September 26, 2007

    The problem is, you are actively registering a domain page that you intend to do nothing with except slap on some ads. Sure, you’re right, you’re not forcing the user to come to your page, so once they end up there, you’re looking to make a quick profit — the value, in this sense, being that you served up some relevant ads. But these are things they would have found some other way, and more quickly, without coming to your page first.

    So while you’re not directly spamming them (i.e. they don’t have to sift through their email inbox and deal with an unsolicited advertisement), they still have to sift through the search results to find useful information, of which your page is not a desired page for them to click through to as there is nothing of content value to them there.

    If you were to advocate something like using current events to drive interest to a site, or to expand your site to encompass current interests and gain a surge of visitors that have a longer term beneficial effect, that would be more useful. As it stands, you’re advocating get-rich quick techniques but solely acting as a middle-man with no product — but no one really needs or wants that kind of middle man.

  10. September 26, 2007

    They are being served relevant ads like you stated. A lot of times ads are the fastest way to get to things. When I go shopping online for something, I click the sponsored results because advertisers put them there for a reason. Also, in my example above I also promoted VOIP offers, which users would need if they were dropped from Sunrocket.

    “As it stands, you’re advocating get-rich quick techniques but solely acting as a middle-man with no product — but no one really needs or wants that kind of middle man.”

    You just described an affiliate network. But they exist and work well, and the affiliates may have to go through some extra BS (lower payouts and tracking issues), but in the end it works out and they get what they want – money.

  11. Warren
    September 27, 2007

    You’re right. You are an affiliate marketer in the truest sense — your job is to make other people money and take a commission, essentially acting as an freelance advertising campaigner rewarded based on performance. You will obviously make more money by exploiting systems such as Facebook or Google, but it’s also apparent that these systems are fighting a battle against you so that their systems cannot be abused. In your Facebook example, Facebook tried to cap spending at $50 to get the system started in an attempt to offer a fair scaling of their service until enough advertisers were using it. They didn’t want you to go ahead an abuse the system by signing up X hundred accounts, so you made a quick buck and that door is now closed to you. Over time, more and more doors will close, and since your efforts are focusing on the quick gain for someone else’s product, down the line you won’t have your own product or service worth talking about.

    But you’ll have money, right?

  12. September 27, 2007

    I’m not advocating making those tactics and techniques the basis for your business model, not in any sense. That stuff is all accessory to what I do (most of my stuff is usually created preparing for the future – to cope with the evolving nature of quality score).

  13. September 27, 2007

    I found you through stumble. Great article. I am a 9 to 5’er and want to change that. I love your idea. I have an adsense account and adsense blocks on site, but they don’t work – my problem.

    I will keep in touch.

    Mike

  14. September 28, 2007

    Awesome idea dude, keep this sort of stuff coming :D

  15. November 5, 2007

    pretty good idea.

    in your facebook Pwned article, what did the link go to?
    a page that redirect to the scholarship sign-up sheet?
    or to a page where the user had to click on a link to go to
    the sign-up sheet?

    thanks for the info.
    i subscribed to ur feed.

  16. November 6, 2007

    Warren, you should probably be off reading some other blog. You’d be hard pressed to find someone that agrees with you and are repeat visitors here – wonder why?

  17. Bob
    November 29, 2007

    Warren sounds like someone from google!! They might as well say “we don’t like affiliates”, we want all the clicks our selves. Have you read their new guidelines on adwords, one reads something like : “we dont like price comparison sites”… They can control the market now their are no real competitors.

  18. January 4, 2008

    Bob, your right there is no real competition with adwords/sense right now but there are a couple of promising companies. Bidvertiser is one of them, i haven’t had a problem with them yet. It all takes for a majority of people moving to other networks for them to get worried. It’s coming. Just read the blog headlines, all kinds of people are getting canceled and those people will just go somewhere else.

  19. February 9, 2008

    Just saw this. Great way to make money. About the Sunrocket thing, I caught that too…and got $50 per sale sending people to Viatalk. Made like $1250.

    Hit another one recently but the commissions are only $2.50 per sale on a $26 product but I sent the merchant like $2000+ in sales in like 2 weeks. Doesn’t work out to much for me though but I’m cool with it. Just another extra $300/month so yeah current events are definitely cool if you can catch onto them quickly enough.

  20. February 12, 2008

    Shit Warren, I wouldn’t want to wake up every morning and look at you either.

  21. May 29, 2008

    Just gave me an idea actually that may work out. Thanks a bunch Paul

  22. September 1, 2008

    This is really a big boy game.

    The surge of traffic that comes with these events (especially world wide events) can be mind blowing, very cheap and highly profitable.

    Thanks for your post Uber.

    Roby

  23. October 1, 2010

    Im not sure man I think the internet is so big that alot of people really contribute to the overall profit of the industry.

    Till then,

    Jean

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