"Piggybacking" for Affiliate Success

Hi guys,

Following on from my last blog post about Web 2.0 secrets, today I'm going to show you another one of my favorite ways of increasing your affiliate marketing income. I like to call this strategy "piggybacking" - basically, it involves helping yourself to the hard-earned traffic of other webmasters and affiliate marketers. This might sound malicious and wrong, but this method is mutually beneficial for everyone involved.

This isn't going to be a long blog post. Instead, let's get right to the point and examine the "what" "how", and "why" of affiliate piggybacking.

What is Piggybacking?

To understand the concept of piggybacking, think of any popular niche (such as weight loss, dating, learn guitar etc) There are potentially tens of thousands of competing websites in popular niches. In all honesty, most of the lucrative keywords have probably been taken by now. With so much competition you know there is money to be made, but it's just not that simple to find your way into the front pages of Google.

In this difficult environment, finding an adequate stream of traffic can be highly frustrating. You might not yet have the skills or resources to look into PPC. You may not have the time or resources to build up enough links to have any hope of outranking your older, more experienced competition.

That's where piggybacking comes in. You see one thing that all sites have in common is a need for content. Some websites, such as forums or Web 2.0 sites, rely on user-generated content to maintain their rankings and authority. However, the vast majority of webmasters have to either write or outsource the content for their own sites. This is a time-consuming process, and once websites hit the front page of Google many webmasters simply lose the drive to add more content.

The piggybacking process is simple:

Webmasters want fresh content for their site. You provide them with that fresh content. In exchange, you get a call-to-action to your own site.

Is Piggybacking Just a Flashy Term for Guest Blogging?

No! With guest blogging the main intention is to get more backlinks to your website. With piggybacking, the goal is to get traffic from high-ranking sites (and then convert it into your sales funnel or opt-in list). Piggybacking is super-effective in competitive niches where it could take a very long time to ever hope to rank for profitable keywords.

How Do You Piggyback?

1. Search for profitable or "hot" keywords in your niche
2. See which sites appear on the front page of Google
3. Contact the owners of these sites
4. Offer free content in exchange for a "call to action" (CTA) link
5. Keep offering more content to other site owners
6. Watch your traffic build

The process for contacting webmasters off whom you wish to piggyback is not really any different to applying for guest posting. However, instead of telling the webmaster that you want an anchor text backlink, you instead want to request a simple CTA like "click here for more free guitar lessons".

Here is a sample email you could use for cold-calling webmasters:

Hi (webmaster name),

My name is (your name) and I am the site owner of (your site). I'm writing to see if you are interested in quality, free content for your website. I can provide you with a totally unique, 500 word article on (your niche topic/keyword here). In exchange all I request a small call to action at the bottom of the article - this will link back to my own site.

Fresh content will help to boost your site traffic, increase your search engine rankings, and keep your visitors happy.

Find attached an example of my writing.

You can contact me on:

(Your email)
(Your skype)

Warm regards,
(Your name)

This is a friendly, non-threatening way of contacting webmasters and getting your content submitted. 

Can I Only Use Articles?

One of the biggest mistakes people make when piggybacking is thinking that it is only related to articles. In fact, you can submit all sorts of other content, which may have a greater chance of being accepted.

Here are some other types of content you could offer:

• Tutorial videos
• Infographics
• Quality images
• eBooks
• Mini-reports

Make sure that whatever you offer is unique, informative, entertaining, and of the highest quality possible. Also, you need to remember to update your cold-calling email if you plan on using anything other than articles.

Piggybacking Tips

Now that you know the basics of piggybacking, here are some other tips and tricks you can try to increase the effectiveness of this method:

• Experiment with offering different types of content. Videos and infographics are often more popular than articles (and encourage better click through rates)
• If a webmasters asks, be honest and tell them that your CTA is going to link through to an opt-in page or presell page. People appreciate honesty much more than you would realize.
• Focus on sites with high search engine visibility. You are after traffic, rather than links with this method.
• Make sure that you direct any referred traffic to your opt-in page. This means that you can convert this traffic to sales with a solid opt-in funnel.
• Always deliver top-notch content - that way webmasters will keep coming back for more

If you're finding it difficult to break the free traffic barrier in your niche (especially if it's a competitive one) then try piggybacking today. Set yourself a simple goal of getting 5 "piggybacks" from 5 different sites. You should notice a healthy increase in traffic.

Remember that this method can also be used in less competitive niches. The basic premise is to find the top sites in your niche, and then get a boost from their success.

The piggybacking method works great in conjunction with the new and improved AffiloBlueprint course. Check it out for yourself here, and learn how to build profitable affiliate websites.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments on this blog post. Sign in and leave a comment below.