How to Use Google Analytics to Make Affiliate Income Faster

The hardest thing for most Internet marketers is focus. They’ll try one scheme, then decide it’s not working. Or they think they need 50 websites in order to make enough money, so they burn out trying to keep them all going. The truth is you only need a few pages of really solid content to make a full-time income. And if you focus on building those few pages, instead of flitting back and forth between strategies, tools and advertisers, you’ll do much better.

So how do you know what to focus on? I’m assuming you’re an affiliate marketer writing reviews for products, and you already have a website up and running. (If not, go grab some GoDaddy promo codes and set one up.) Once you have a site up with Analytics installed, you can use your Google Analytics account to help you reach your goals.

The plan is this: pick two or three review pages and focus on getting them (and only them) to make $100 a day. Once you reach that goal, then (and only then) can you move on to another page.

1) What pages get the most traffic right now?

If you have data that suggests certain pages are getting all the traffic, do a little analysis. Are they money pages or other superfluous pages? Your money pages are your reviews. You want your best converting and most trafficked review pages to be in the top five spots. If they’re not, send traffic to them until they are.

2) Which pages are getting the highest click-throughs and conversions?

Check your bounce rate and entrance/exit source data to see which pages are doing the best right now. You can either choose those to focus on, or you can choose the ones with the biggest payout on commissions. Either way, choose.

3) What are your best keywords?

Now that you have two or three pages to focus on, where is your traffic coming from? If it’s coming from Google, then you need to find out your top keywords that are sending the traffic. Spend some time building backlinks using those top keywords. That will help boost your rankings and drive more traffic.

If your traffic is coming from another source like Facebook or YouTube, double your efforts to get traffic from those sources. The whole idea is to take what’s working and focus on making it work even better.

4) How’s your conversion?

Now that you have the traffic side of the equation working, you need to think about conversion. What’s happening to all that traffic? Are they bouncing back to Google? Are they surfing around your site? Or are they clicking through to the merchant and buying the product? Use your Google Analytics data for “time on page” to see if people are really reading your review. Is it detailed? Is it trustworthy? Or is it just a quick rehash of an Amazon review you read?

If your time on page data is below a minute or two, you need to do some work on your copy. Remember, you’re trying to help someone with a real problem. So give real, honest advice. Your reviews should be around 1000 words in order to get in all the information someone would need to make a purchasing decision.

Your Google Analytics data is a gold mine of information, if you look beyond the daily traffic stats. Dig deeper and find out exactly where the traffic is coming from, how long it’s staying, and where it’s going. Then focus on just two or three pages (even when it gets tedious) and you’ll reach your goals much much faster.

4 thoughts on “How to Use Google Analytics to Make Affiliate Income Faster”

  1. I would love to make money on the web. But the handicapped and peoplewuth no knowledge of terms like backlinks and other information do not stand a chance. Is there a company who will really do the work?After all the more peole that sign up with a legitimae company they too make money.

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  2. I Love Google Analytics!! They give you so much useful information, plus the keywords used can help you decide what your next topic is going to be about 🙂

    Great post!
    Linda

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  3. hi there traffic seekers
    well to me this whole thing is quite confusing, now the question is: how can thousants of internet marketers like
    you and me have there blogs or articles rank on Google, Yahoo, msn and others in the 10 top listed at the same time?? no matter how your traffic gizmo is doing ?? Chances are you’ll end up way back , as hard as i work out my keywords trying to get the best combination as possible there are limited spaces and thats the whole problem. Unless someone proof me wrong i think i would have to find better ways.

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  4. Mick, just one word: competition. It’s not a game of chance, and if you treat it as such then, indeed, chances are you’ll end up way back. But in reality it’s all about who has more knowledge and resources of SEO. The rules are simple (yet not easy) – he who gets more high quality backlinks wins.

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