Ask Me Anything Examples of sites that hide their affiliate gig well

[showmethemoney]

What would you say are sites that hide their affiliate business model very well. That come across like innocent impartial sites but are actually designed purely for affiliate marketing?

I'm looking for design ideas which make the website look like an indepependant review site. I find that when the website looks way too much like an affiliate site, it affects the linkbuilding ability because guests posts get rejected, if you try and promote the site on forums - mods delete the link because it looks too much like a fake site for affiliate products.

 

[Graybeard]

How do you SEO a highway of billboards?
Sounds like a very insincere plan. SEO Stealth Affiliate Links.
You used to be able to do that years ago with SEO, times have changed.

 

[showmethemoney]

it's not a highway of billboards, it's a review sites, mostly articles, and links out to service providers.

I tipped too much over to the obvious ad site by putting coupon codes on it. The coupon code was meant to get buyers back onto my site when they're researching so they use my link after grabbing the coupon. But it has backfired a bit.

 

[showmethemoney]

what makes you think it doesn't work? I'm #1 for "[item] reviews", but I'm doing seo to get "best [item]", which has 3x more traffic. why do you say it doesn't work any more? I'm clearly getting traffic.

I did seo 10 years ago too. Yeah things were dirt cheap and easy to rank back then. throw up a site throw $200 of backlinks into it and voila job done.

Now things take time and more money, but still rankable. There are still websites doing SEO in affiliate marketing, the following sites are affiliate marketing sites but in a huge scale, they all make commision on each referral:

[nerdwallet insurance quote site - cant post links yet]
[compare.com insurance quote site - cant post links yet]

 

[Graybeard]

that worked like 15 years ago. I own a site called couponsworth.com SSL is bad again did that years ago made a little money. I dont know why I keep renewing that domain LOL
renewed (@_@)

 

[bruce bates]

make the website look like an indepependant review site

Don't make it "look" like anything. If you want it to be an independent review site, make it an independent review site. Review things you get paid for as well as things you don't get paid for. Be honest in your reviews whether you are getting paid commissions or not.

You could go the extra mile and only link to the main domain and on click send the user to your affiliate links.

 

[T J Tutor]

if you try and promote the site on forums - mods delete the link because it looks too much like a fake site for affiliate products.

That is not the correct reason. Mods delete links because these days forums are a lot more sensitive and cautious about who can promote to their members and and what can be promoted to their members. You don't go into forums to promote that way anymore. As previously stated, that's a very old practice.

As also previously mentioned, you have to be extremely sincere with reviews, they must be genuine, and they must be backed up with fact!

Review sites are a dime a dozen, highly competitive. Highly competitive is good because it means there is an audience available. However, if all you are doing is trying to make something look genuine, instead of being genuine, the visitors to your site will know!

 

[Graybeard]

The FTC’s Endorsement Guides: What People Are Asking
If you are in the jurisdiction of the US FTC read this