Mini SearchFeed Affiliate Quick Start Tutorial

By: Kathy | Posted: 30th April 2006

Mini SearchFeed Affiliate Quick Start Tutorial
by Kathy Burns-Millyard

This is designed to be a small, beginners tutorial to help new
affiliates learn how to best integrate SearchFeed results, and use the
tools provided.

For those who have not heard of SearchFeed, it is simply a very nice
pay per click search engine that you can partner with as an affiliate.
As their affiliate partner, you can integrate their search engine
results into your website pages. With those results integrated into
your pages, your website visitors may click one of the links. And when
they do, you make money. Just from the click.

SearchFeed pays 35%-50% of the listings bid amount. If I'm not
mistaken, they like to see at least 1000 clicks per day as
qualification for being paid the highest 50% affiliate commission.
Everyone starts at the 35% level, and you grow from there at
SearchFeed's discretion.

Now you can also sign up affiliates under you, and earn a small
percentage of their click through amounts too. Additionally, you can
sign up advertisers with SearchFeed, and you'll earn a percentage of
thier initial deposit amount. I wont cover these two scenarios at the
moment. For now we'll concentrate on utilizing the tools to their
fullest extent as a direct affiliate.

A couple of other notes before we dig into the details...

First, SearchFeed requires your website - or network of sites - to
attract at least 80% U.S. based traffic. Affiliates can be located
almost anywhere in the world, however their sites must draw U.S. based
traffic. Certain non U.S. based site visitors will actually not even
see the SearchFeed results.

To my knowledge, SearchFeed does not require a minimum amount of site
traffic in order to qualify as an affiliate with them. This is one of
the big advantages of partnering with them, because some search engine
partners require large amounts of traffic, i.e. 30,000 + visitors each
month.

They do not approve new affiliates automatically though. Instead,
they'll review your site first - usually within just a few days - and
send an email accepting or declining.

The third, and possibly most important thing to know is that you
cannot just display Search Feed results at whim, or randomly on your
site. You have to let your site visitors click a specific keyword or
phrase, then you're allowed to show them search results for that
specific keyword phrase.

For example, I have a home based business topic website. The domain
name is homeofficefiles.com. Even though that site is specifically
about home based business, I cannot display home based business search
result listings on my home page. Because the visitor did not
specifically click on that search phrase. Instead, I must display a
link to the home based business resources. Once they've clicked on
that link... then the search engine results can be displayed in full.

I see this mistake made often, and unfortunately people are risking
having all of their earnings revoked because of it. One of the most
common ways I see this mistake made is with an "enter" button or link.
Clicking that button or link will display the main search engine
listings related to the site - not specificially results for the word
"enter". Another common way is as mentioned above: people will show
the search results for their chosen keyword phrase right on the home
page. Both of these methods are against the SearchFeed terms of
service and can, as I mentioned, get your earnings revoked completely.
Plus you'll probably end up getting the account cancelled too.

Now, once you've signed up for SearchFeed and received confirmation of
acceptance, you'll be able to log into the affiliate tools area.
Inside here, there are many ready-made things for you to use
immediately. The easiest of course, are basic banners or text links.
These don't show your users search results though, so I don't waste my
time with them much.

The real power - and money - is in the search results themselves.

So once you're logged in, click the "Integration" link on the
navigation menu. On that screen, you'll 7 options. Some of these are
fairly advanced and need programming knowledge in order to be used.
Some are extremely simple.

One of the first things I'd advise you to create is the dynamic feed.
This is a standard javascript feed, that allows you to quickly and
easily develop keyword specific listings for given pages on your site.
Just click the "dynamic feed creator" to get started.

The next page gives you a few options. And the best advice I can give
you with anything new is to play with it. Try changing things and see
what happens. This helps you learn alot.

In any case, the most important piece of this section is the box
labeled "Search Term". This is where you'll enter your keyword, or
keyword phrase. You can put any search term or phrase you want here,
and there's no need for quotes or other punctuation.

So if you were creating a results list for the phrase "home based
business". You would simply type those three words into that box,
without any quotes around them.

The number of listings box is also helpful. It seems to default to 5,
but you can change that to whatever number you'd like. I prefer 10,
15, or 20 depending on the page I'll put these on. Note that some
phrases and keywords don't have 20 listings to display, and others may
have 100+ listings to display. It all depends on the particular word
or phrase you're using.

Once you've entered those values, click the "Preview" button. This
allows you to see how the search engine results will look when they're
on your website pages. And this is where the playing around with other
settings comes in. If you want your search results on a light blue
background for instance, you'd need to change the setting in the "Box
background" field. If you don't want them to have a border, you'd put
a 0 in the border width section.

Once you have things looking the way you want them, then you'll simply
cut and paste the code into your web page. Now, if you're not familiar
with editing HTML pages, this could seem a little daunting. And
there's no way I can hand-hold you through this part with just a
simple tutorial.

If you use web page design/building software, there should be a
function somewhere in that program that allows you to input custom, or
extra, HTML code. Where that function is depends on the software of
course, and this is another area where you'll just have to experiment.
The best advice I can give you with something like this is: Don't be
afraid to mess something up. Making mistakes is a great way to learn
new things, and to tell you the truth, it's how I originally learned
to use computers and software.

Now, once you have the new code pasted into your web page, upload that
to your server and visit the page. If all went well, you should be
able to see the SearchFeed results on your page.

The next two easiest tools to use are the Search Engine Generator, and
the Category Chaser. When setting up either of these, you must set up
the Search Engine Generator first. Without it, the category chaser
won't work.

The search engine generator actually just creates a file for you named
SearchResults.html. You can see an example of this file by clicking here.

When creating this page, there are a lot of options... this is what
makes it a bit confusing for new users. Setting it up though, is
honestly just a matter of walking through a 5-step wizard process.
You're welcome to adjust any or all of the various settings just to
see what changes that makes. If you want to just get the page created
fast, without fooling with anything, then leave all the settings at
default and continue clicking through on the "Next" button.

There are a couple of places you'll need to enter information though.
Like on the second page, you'll need to enter the URL of your website.
So be sure to look at each page before moving on to the next.

At the end, you should have the option to download the
SearchResults.html page, or copy the code by hand.

Once you're done there, click the Integration menu option to get back
to the tools section. If you're ready to create the category chaser,
click on that one next.

Now, the category chaser simply create a directory style menu of links
for you. The power here is that you can customize categories and
sub-categories, so the search terms match the topic of your website.
Once this is made and live on your site, anytime someone clicks a
category or sub-category link, the search results will show on the
SearchResults.html page you just finished creating.

The category chaser is another wizard-style walkthrough setup, and it
will ask you to make a few minor decisions about what you want
displayed. If you're not comfortable figuring that all out yet, try
walking through and leaving everything default that's already set.
Enter anything custom if it asks, use the preview buttons liberally.
Again, this process will take time but it really pays off in how much
you'll learn about using the system.

Once you've created your category list, you'll simply copy and paste
the code into your website pages like you did with the dynamic feed
creator.

So, that's the basics of getting set up with SearchFeed, and
integrating some of their tools into your website. I know this
tutorial is not as detailed as it could be, but it should help most
new users quite nicely.

Questions, comments and feedback are as always, more than welcome.
Please use the comment system below at any time :)
- Kathy

May 28, 2004 - © 2004, Kathy Burns-Millyard. All Rights Reserved.

Quick Links:
- Search Feed Affiliate Program:
http://www.searchfeed.com/rd/AffiliateInfo.jsp?p=11188&trackID=B6074113365
- Search Feed PPC Advertising Program:
http://www.searchfeed.com/rd/AdvertiserInfo.jsp?p=11188&trackID=B6074113365

- Permanent Article URL:
http://www.gurugazette.com/archives/2004/05/28/mini-searchfeed-affiliate-quick-s
tart-tutorial/

--- About the Author ---
Kathy is a long-time published author and Editor of The Guru Gazette
Niche Marketing Blog - http://www.gurugazette.com - She's currently on
a quest to build a large niche marketing website empire. Visit The
Guru Gazette and Read along with each site she builds in The Niche
Notebook, plus pick up some great niche topic RSS feeds in The Niche
Syndicate Area.


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Tags: traffic, money, search engine results, extent, advertisers, pay per click, pay per click search, pay per click search engine, initial deposit, discretion, website visitors, affiliate commission, scenarios, affiliate partner