I had a chance this week to talk with a representative from Share A Sale. The rep is in charge of helping publishers and affiliates like me achieve better results.

I was excited about the conversation because this rep would know what was working and what was not working. He had the knowledge about which publishers make the most sales and how they are doing it.

Unfortunately, I ended the conversation with less enthusiasm than I had going in.

I figured he would tell me that most of the top publishers were pay per click pros. He agreed there are some of these, but he said most of the successful publishers were SEO pros who were making blogs on WordPress for very specific keywords.

He said the key was to make a blog with the domain, title, and 1st headline laser focused on a specific long tail keyword.

As an example, you might get Harley-Davidson-Checks.com and promote Harley Davidson personal checks. He said some people would just do one initial blog post with the sales copy and affiliate links and other peoiple would do multiple blog posts about the topic depending on what it was.

It is frustrating that the world of affiliate marketing is still stuck in the game of chasing long tail keywords through the search engines.

I know it can be lucrative if you can get a top ranking, but it isn't a solid foundation for building a loing-term sustainable business. It is a get lucky, one and done business model. First, you neeed to get lucky to get a high ranking and then you need ot hope the customer makes a purchase because you most likely will never interact with that customer ever again.

I played the PPC game and had some success until Google changed their standards. I told myself then that I would try to build quality sites with quality content that people will link to and bookmark. I don't really have an interest in playing the SEO game hoping to get lucky with no long-term investment being made unless somehow my page remains at the top of the rankings for a long time.

After the call, I thought that maybe I should invest my time into making ten keyword focused domains and blogs to see how it goes. However, after thinking about it some more, I know that I am in this business for the long haul. I'm not looking to get lucky from a Google ranking. I'm trying to build branded sites with good domain names that will grow into long lasting successs stories no matter what the search engines do.

It is a tough game to play no mater what strategy we take. We might as well try for the best long-term approach if we are going to put in the effort.