If you’re looking for black hat affiliate marketing secrets, you’re probably down a rabbit hole which you need to escape. I was there too once; looking for the “quick ways to profit” from affiliate marketing.
Having done a quick search for this keyword on Google I found a number of dubious spammy looking results. The top result (below) was from a banned user who took the article they posted from Ezinearticles.com. This says two things about them: 1 they didn’t write the article themselves, 2 they were banned from the forum! It speaks volumes to both prospective customers of their affiliate products and to Google. If you want to succeed with affiliate marketing, this is entirely the wrong attitude to have. Quick and easy – doesn’t win the affiliate marketing race!
Black Hat Affiliate Marketing Secrets
“Black hat” refers to techniques which are frowned upon by Google. They are things like pop-ups, auto-posting articles, article spinning tools and the like. In my humble opinion they aren’t the way to go as an affiliate. If you want to be successful as an affiliate, it takes work. Yep, sorry to break it to you but that’s the truth.
Google has got very clever. 20 years ago you could throw up a website and be ranking on the very top of Google for it. But times have changed. Spammy 1 page websites no longer get a look in when it comes to getting traffic from Google.
You can still use keyword domains though, which can help you get some traction. But you’ll also need to create some content on it which gives some value. Building a niche website around a keyword domain doesn’t always work. At least it’s not as easy to rank on Google as it once was using this technique. It’s far better to build an authority site over time which actually gives value.
Black Hat Affiliate Marketing Secrets
There’s a few reasons not to go the “black hat” route and most of all it’s from a value standpoint. If you don’t offer value to your visitors (and potential customers), they’re unlikely to take any further action with you: become a lead, subscribe to your channel or purchase a product.
Think about the people you follow online. Who have you subscribed to? Do they offer value or do they spam you every day with affiliate links? Think about the sites which put you off. For me, and I may be a little hypocritical here, it’s those which have too many pop ups. I do use pop ups on my site, but it’s not technically a black hat technique to use pop ups. They can work, even if they effect your score with Google; so you have to balance out your strategies according to order of priority.
Affiliate Marketing – Taking Your Time
When I went into affiliate marketing I rushed. I was desperate to make money because I was broke. But think about reading a blog post from someone who is in this state of mind. Or watching a video made by someone who is absolutely desperate to make money. What does they body language say to you? Or what does their writing style say to you. Probably that this person is desperate to sell me something.
You’ve probably had a similar experience from being badgered in a store while browsing? I tend to lose the desire to buy in such circumstances and maybe you’re the same?
Well as you may have guessed it took a long time before I realised I was barking up the wrong tree.
Rushing to find the latest black hat affiliate marketing secret was my biggest mistake and I jumped from one course to another, without ever gaining any traction. I made a number of mistakes in affiliate marketing and wasted a lot of time.
Black Hat Affiliate Marketing Secrets – What I Tried
I found a number of black hat strategies over the years. Things like article spinning software and pop-ups which claim you’ve won something, when really you haven’t, for example! I never used the “spinners” although I knew some people that did. It boils down to where you get your information from and who you choose to believe! Everything for an affiliate comes from their education.
But there’s some value in some strategies which I do use, although they’re technically not black hat.
One of the first things I tried for several months is keyword domain names. With a keyword domain name, you purchase a domain which contains your “seed” keyword. This used to work wonders several years ago and I first learned it from a course I took online. Now, it’s much harder to rank a website based on only the domain name keyword, but it still stands as a ranking factor. So providing you also add some massive value in your blog posts, I think it stands up as a “white hat” technique which works.
Stick To The Plan
One of the biggest obstacles for affiliate marketers is finding a suitable direction which you can pursue, knowing that over the long term it will ultimately set you free financially.
For me this has been the biggest battle. Jumping from one “shiny object” to another can become exhausting. If you found this article searching for “Black hat affiliate marketing secrets”, maybe that’s where you are too.
Once you’re on a path which is working, it’s great. You can keep doing what you’ve proved to yourself has worked. You don’t have to trust, (or not trust) anyone else anymore when this happens.
But to get to this point for me took years. I struggled with finding direction as an affiliate after years of blogging, building niche websites, trying “get rich quick” schemes, running ads, over and over, failure after failure. Much of the time could have been put to better use if I had had the right education from the start.
Create Value – Deliver Useful Products
Creating value means something different to everyone. When I started out as a newbie affiliate, I just wanted the money. I just wanted to know how to get the money. There were lots of courses promising this too, and I bought them. So you could just promote one of these courses that promises something they can’t deliver! Get the money!
But this seldom works for the long term because there’s not much value in it. To give value and help people truly, means letting go of your own needs for a while and serving others.
A shift needs to take place if you’re going to be successful online. You need to shift away from getting to giving. And while giving to others you can also earn money if you do it in the right way.
When this shift happened for me, everything changed very quickly.
Use “White Hat” Not “Black Hat” Techniques
Be a good guy! Affiliate marketing gets a bad rap because of things like “black hat affiliate marketing secrets”. Learning to do affiliate marketing properly takes time and effort. But spending time on the fast “loopholes to make money online” quickly without putting any effort in is likely to end in disappointment.
There are things you can do to hasten your success online. But trying to get round Google and without doing the work won’t work! Google is too clever now so don’t try! Instead, give them what they want; a better experience for the end user. This means delivering value and writing/creating content which is focused for the person reading, not the Google bot which ranks you content.
