Doesn't it appear to be the perfect scenario? You establish a website, incorporate some affiliate marketing niches, and begin generating the passive income you've always desired.
Numerous bloggers are making a sizable affiliate marketing earn through this method. For instance, Sandeep Mallya at 99signals.com generates $12K monthly in affiliate revenue. Together with him, we explore how he expanded his 99signals affiliate marketing efforts, the most effective SEO tool for any affiliate marketer, tools he would recommend to budding bloggers, and much more.
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00:00:05
Saikat Pyne: Hi, I'm Sekar marketer, creative and media nerd. Welcome to
00:00:10
Saikat Pyne: the you incorporated podcast On this show, I catch up
00:00:15
Saikat Pyne: with some of the most bad ass founders, business leaders
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Saikat Pyne: and content creators in the whole wide world. Whether you're
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Saikat Pyne: a marketer, creative or a budding founder, if you want
00:00:27
Saikat Pyne: to build your brand your voice your way, you are
00:00:31
Saikat Pyne: in the right place.
00:00:32
Saikat Pyne: Join me on the you incorporated podcast and start building
00:00:36
Saikat Pyne: your empire. Here we go.
00:00:49
Saikat Pyne: Please join me. In welcoming Sandeep Malia, an entrepreneur, blogger
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Saikat Pyne: and investor from Bangalore,
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Saikat Pyne: Sandi founded his own digital marketing agency in 2015 to
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Saikat Pyne: help early stage startups leverage S E o, social media
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Saikat Pyne: and content marketing to grow their traffic and generate qualified leads.
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Saikat Pyne: In 2016, he launched 99 signals as a side project
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Saikat Pyne: to document all the strategies, tools and tactics he was
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Saikat Pyne: using to grow his bootstrapped agencies.
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Saikat Pyne: Fast forward to today, 99 signals has grown significantly and
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Saikat Pyne: generates over $12 in side income each month. Sandip is
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Saikat Pyne: also the host of the marketing mantra podcast, where he
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Saikat Pyne: shares actionable online marketing strategies. He has learned through the
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Saikat Pyne: years of running a successful blog that generates a steady
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Saikat Pyne: stream of passive income for him.
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Saikat Pyne: He was also gracious enough to invite me on the show.
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Saikat Pyne: I'll include the link in the show notes. Welcome
00:01:52
Sandeep Mallya: to Sun. Thanks for having me and super excited to
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Sandeep Mallya: be here.
00:01:57
Sandeep Mallya: Could you give me
00:01:58
Saikat Pyne: a basic idea of why you decided to have a blog?
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Saikat Pyne: What led you to really think that something like 99
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Saikat Pyne: signals has got to
00:02:06
Sandeep Mallya: exist just to give you a bit of a background?
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Sandeep Mallya: I started my agency in 2015 and and I was
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Sandeep Mallya: working with a lot of clients. A lot of early
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Sandeep Mallya: stage startups like you described in your introduction, and and
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Sandeep Mallya: we are a part of an evolving industry S e
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Sandeep Mallya: o social media marketing. There are new platforms coming up,
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Sandeep Mallya: new Google algorithms getting updated.
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Sandeep Mallya: And I just wanted to document my learnings, and the
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Sandeep Mallya: best way to do that would be to have a blog,
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Sandeep Mallya: and I wanted to create a blog in parallel where
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Sandeep Mallya: I was writing about everything that I was learning right.
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Sandeep Mallya: I had no intention of monetizing it.
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Sandeep Mallya: I just wanted to share my experience with other entrepreneurs
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Sandeep Mallya: who were running bootstrap agencies or bootstrap companies. And I
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Sandeep Mallya: thought I could donate with them and I had no intention.
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Sandeep Mallya: Like I said of joining any affiliate programmes or monetizing
00:02:55
Sandeep Mallya: my blog, all I was doing I was I was
00:02:58
Sandeep Mallya: running a few ads and since here and there, but
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Sandeep Mallya: that's about it. So
00:03:01
Sandeep Mallya: one of the things that I wanted to write about
00:03:04
Sandeep Mallya: was the preferred S e o tool that I was
00:03:06
Sandeep Mallya: using at the time. And being an agency owner, I
00:03:09
Sandeep Mallya: was dabbling with different S E o tools, and when
00:03:11
Sandeep Mallya: I first started my agency, I was using a tool
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Sandeep Mallya: called I don't know if you've heard of it. Back
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Sandeep Mallya: then it was like one of the leading S E
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Sandeep Mallya: o tools. It's still one of the leading S E
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Sandeep Mallya: O tools, but back then it was like the market.
00:03:22
Sandeep Mallya: It was like the market leader back then. So
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Sandeep Mallya: for a year I was using mas, and I was
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Sandeep Mallya: really not happy with it because I felt that paying
00:03:30
Sandeep Mallya: $99 a month for a premium software, I wanted to
00:03:33
Sandeep Mallya: get more features, and that's when I switched over to
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Sandeep Mallya: a tool called Sam and I started using it, my
00:03:38
Sandeep Mallya: team started using it, and I was really delighted with it.
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Sandeep Mallya: Until then, I didn't know the kind of insights that
00:03:44
Sandeep Mallya: you could gain from using an S e o Tool.
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Sandeep Mallya: And MAZ had really let me down
00:03:49
Sandeep Mallya: in that particular aspect. So I just wanted to talk
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Sandeep Mallya: about my experience at the time, I did a simple
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Sandeep Mallya: Google search. I did Sam Rush versus Moz, and there
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Sandeep Mallya: was a media article that was ranking on top. So
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Sandeep Mallya: I realised that not a lot of people, uh, had
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Sandeep Mallya: written about this. So I decided to go ahead and
00:04:06
Sandeep Mallya: write a post basically talking about why I switched from
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Sandeep Mallya: Mars to Sam Brush and what are the benefits of
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Sandeep Mallya: using this tool.
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Sandeep Mallya: And within a few days, this article started ranking on top, right?
00:04:18
Sandeep Mallya: And luckily, Sara got in touch with me. Sara got
00:04:21
Sandeep Mallya: in touch with me, and they said that they have
00:04:23
Sandeep Mallya: an affiliate programme and for me affiliate marketing. Uh, until
00:04:27
Sandeep Mallya: that moment had always been something that I thought I
00:04:30
Sandeep Mallya: would never dabble in for me, I always thought either
00:04:33
Sandeep Mallya: there are a lot of affiliate marketing scams or it's
00:04:37
Sandeep Mallya: basically promoting Amazon products, right? And I thought I could
00:04:40
Sandeep Mallya: never do that.
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Sandeep Mallya: And Sara just said, OK, so you have this article
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Sandeep Mallya: which is ranking on top. All you need to do
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Sandeep Mallya: is insert a few affiliate links here and there and
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Sandeep Mallya: see how it goes. And that's exactly what I did.
00:04:53
Sandeep Mallya: And within a few weeks, I realised that there were
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Sandeep Mallya: signups coming to Samra through this article, and that's when
00:04:58
Sandeep Mallya: I that was at, like, the watershed moment, right? I thought, Oh,
00:05:02
Sandeep Mallya: this is something that I can do And I can
00:05:04
Sandeep Mallya: monetize my blog this way,
00:05:06
Sandeep Mallya: and that was the start of it, right? Sara was
00:05:08
Sandeep Mallya: one of the first programmes I joined. They also encouraged
00:05:11
Sandeep Mallya: me by awarding that specific article the best article of
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Sandeep Mallya: the month. Back then, they used to have these affiliate
00:05:17
Sandeep Mallya: competitions where each article that was written about their product,
00:05:21
Sandeep Mallya: they used to be they used to rank them, and
00:05:23
Sandeep Mallya: the top article used to get a certificate or get
00:05:25
Sandeep Mallya: a cash prize at the end.
00:05:26
Sandeep Mallya: So that really encouraged me to write more about Sam Rush.
00:05:30
Sandeep Mallya: And uh, that's how it all began. And Sam Brush
00:05:33
Sandeep Mallya: was one of the first products I started promoting on
00:05:36
Sandeep Mallya: my blog, I started mastering the features and I was
00:05:40
Sandeep Mallya: thinking of it from a user perspective, right? I was
00:05:43
Sandeep Mallya: thinking of it from how an agency owner or how
00:05:46
Sandeep Mallya: a blogger can best utilise Sam Brush. And I wanted
00:05:49
Sandeep Mallya: to be like the perfect guide for them,
00:05:51
Sandeep Mallya: and I wanted to help them get the most out
00:05:53
Sandeep Mallya: of this tool. So all the articles that I wrote
00:05:56
Sandeep Mallya: about Samra from that year onwards focused on that.
00:06:00
Sandeep Mallya: And that's how it all began. And that's that was
00:06:03
Sandeep Mallya: my first stint with affiliate marketing. I joined multiple affiliate
00:06:07
Sandeep Mallya: programmes after that and the rest. Right now I'm earning
00:06:11
Sandeep Mallya: $12 almost a little more than $12 a month, and
00:06:15
Sandeep Mallya: it keeps increasing month on month.
00:06:18
Saikat Pyne: Would you remember what went into writing that first
00:06:23
Sandeep Mallya: article? Yeah, that's such a good question, because I keep
00:06:26
Sandeep Mallya: revisiting the same formula, right? And, um,
00:06:32
Sandeep Mallya: and like I said, I just gave a simple Google search,
00:06:34
Sandeep Mallya: and I found that there was a medium article that
00:06:36
Sandeep Mallya: was ranking on top. There were no other blogs that
00:06:38
Sandeep Mallya: had written this comparison article, so I didn't even need
00:06:41
Sandeep Mallya: a tool to find out whether people were using such keywords,
00:06:45
Sandeep Mallya: and there was a decent search volume. Since I was
00:06:47
Sandeep Mallya: a Sam Rush user, I could find that there were
00:06:50
Sandeep Mallya: searches for Sam Rush versus Moss and I had no
00:06:53
Sandeep Mallya: intention of monetizing that particular article at that stage. I
00:06:58
Sandeep Mallya: didn't even know what affiliate marketing was.
00:07:00
Sandeep Mallya: I just wanted to share my experience right, and I
00:07:02
Sandeep Mallya: wanted to write in a very natural, organic way, something
00:07:05
Sandeep Mallya: that could really resonate with the readers who were also
00:07:07
Sandeep Mallya: contemplating between whether to go for Mars or Sara. So
00:07:11
Sandeep Mallya: I thought, from that perspective,
00:07:13
Sandeep Mallya: and this is a simple thing that your listeners can
00:07:16
Sandeep Mallya: also do. You don't need a do. I'm an advocate
00:07:18
Sandeep Mallya: of you using the right tools and content marketing tools
00:07:21
Sandeep Mallya: when you're just starting out. All you need to do
00:07:23
Sandeep Mallya: is just give a Google search that if you want
00:07:27
Sandeep Mallya: me to write about the best affiliate programme the best
00:07:30
Sandeep Mallya: affiliate programmes for marketers, then
00:07:33
Sandeep Mallya: all you need to do is just give a search
00:07:35
Sandeep Mallya: for the same search phrase on Google and you can
00:07:38
Sandeep Mallya: see the related searches that people give. But most importantly,
00:07:42
Sandeep Mallya: you can see the articles that are ranking on top
00:07:44
Sandeep Mallya: and when you visit the first three articles and you'll
00:07:47
Sandeep Mallya: see the kind of content that is ranking for those
00:07:49
Sandeep Mallya: specific keywords. If you think that you can create something
00:07:53
Sandeep Mallya: better than what's currently ranking,
00:07:55
Sandeep Mallya: then you should go ahead and create that content. And
00:07:57
Sandeep Mallya: in marketing lexicon, it's called 10 X Content, though I
00:08:00
Sandeep Mallya: feel it's an exaggerated. Sometimes you just need to create
00:08:03
Sandeep Mallya: two X content or three X content or basically create
00:08:05
Sandeep Mallya: a piece of content that's really unique, right? Something that
00:08:09
Sandeep Mallya: the existing articles that are ranking for those specific keywords
00:08:12
Sandeep Mallya: don't have at the moment.
00:08:14
Sandeep Mallya: So that's something that you can do. If you're just
00:08:16
Sandeep Mallya: starting out, you may not even invest in any tool.
00:08:19
Sandeep Mallya: You can use the free Google keyword planner that will
00:08:22
Sandeep Mallya: let you know what search phrases are popular. Or sometimes
00:08:25
Sandeep Mallya: you can just do a Google search and you'll see
00:08:27
Sandeep Mallya: what people are searching for. At the bottom, there is
00:08:29
Sandeep Mallya: a snippet that shows you what people
00:08:31
Sandeep Mallya: are searching for in the topic that you just searched on,
00:08:34
Sandeep Mallya: so that will give you an indication of what you
00:08:37
Sandeep Mallya: can create and how you can go about creating it.
00:08:40
Sandeep Mallya: I call this the Goldilocks rule of content that ranks.
00:08:43
Sandeep Mallya: James came up with this concept right of Goldilocks rule,
00:08:47
Sandeep Mallya: and basically you can optimise anything if you if it's
00:08:52
Sandeep Mallya: not too challenging at the same time. It's not too easy.
00:08:55
Sandeep Mallya: So if you find a topic where
00:08:59
Sandeep Mallya: you think you can create content that is better, that's
00:09:02
Sandeep Mallya: not too hard for you to outrank. Then you should
00:09:04
Sandeep Mallya: just go ahead and create it once you
00:09:06
Saikat Pyne: realise, Oh, there is some money to be made here.
00:09:10
Saikat Pyne: What were your next moves?
00:09:13
Sandeep Mallya: Yeah, so I started going really in depth into each
00:09:17
Sandeep Mallya: product that I was promoting. Starting from Sarus, I joined
00:09:21
Sandeep Mallya: a few other affiliate programmes. Just yesterday we were talking
00:09:24
Sandeep Mallya: about Convert Kit,
00:09:25
Sandeep Mallya: and back then Convert Kit had just started and the
00:09:28
Sandeep Mallya: founder of Convert Kit got in touch with me. And
00:09:31
Sandeep Mallya: he said, Why don't you write a similar article about
00:09:34
Sandeep Mallya: Convert Kit? I can just do a review of convert kit.
00:09:36
Sandeep Mallya: You need not even do a comparison post. So I
00:09:38
Sandeep Mallya: went ahead and did that,
00:09:40
Sandeep Mallya: and I also started doing more comparison posts. So I
00:09:43
Sandeep Mallya: realised that a H. F s was another tool that
00:09:45
Sandeep Mallya: was competing very strongly with Sarus. So I started doing.
00:09:49
Sandeep Mallya: I wrote a comparison article for that. I also started
00:09:52
Sandeep Mallya: targeting commercial intent keywords. Now these are keywords where
00:09:59
Sandeep Mallya: I started targeting commercial intent keywords. Now this. These are
00:10:02
Sandeep Mallya: keywords where there is an intent from the user to
00:10:05
Sandeep Mallya: buy a product. They are like one or two steps
00:10:07
Sandeep Mallya: away from buying a product like essentially, let's say, talking
00:10:10
Sandeep Mallya: about convert kit. You know,
00:10:12
Sandeep Mallya: if someone gives a search for convert kit versus mail chim,
00:10:14
Sandeep Mallya: that means they are deciding whether to go with convert
00:10:18
Sandeep Mallya: Kit or Mailchimp. So these are commercial intent keywords where
00:10:22
Sandeep Mallya: the user is just one step away from making a
00:10:24
Sandeep Mallya: purchase and commercial intent. Keywords are really popular affiliate keywords
00:10:28
Sandeep Mallya: that you can use in your content, right and I
00:10:30
Sandeep Mallya: started creating content around these keywords,
00:10:33
Sandeep Mallya: and for each product that I was promoting, I really
00:10:36
Sandeep Mallya: mastered the features. I became a personal user of these tools,
00:10:40
Sandeep Mallya: and whatever I was writing was pretty genuine and pretty authentic,
00:10:44
Sandeep Mallya: something that could really resonate with my audience. And that's
00:10:47
Sandeep Mallya: how I scaled it up. And this is my advice
00:10:50
Sandeep Mallya: to all new affiliate marketers out there when you're just
00:10:52
Sandeep Mallya: one of the biggest mistakes that we do is we
00:10:55
Sandeep Mallya: join too many things at the same time. And if
00:10:58
Sandeep Mallya: you're not a user yourself
00:11:00
Sandeep Mallya: of the product that you're promoting, your readers are very savvy.
00:11:03
Sandeep Mallya: They're going to call the bluff right away. And if
00:11:05
Sandeep Mallya: you're being inauthentic in your recommendation in your content, then
00:11:09
Sandeep Mallya: you're not going to have a lot of convergence. So
00:11:12
Sandeep Mallya: it's very important for you to master the product that
00:11:14
Sandeep Mallya: you're promoting. It's very important for you to become
00:11:17
Sandeep Mallya: a brand advocate and talk about the benefits rather than
00:11:20
Sandeep Mallya: just features, because features are something that you can find, uh,
00:11:23
Sandeep Mallya: on the product page itself of the tool that you're promoting.
00:11:26
Sandeep Mallya: But you talk about benefits and you really do in
00:11:30
Sandeep Mallya: depth audience research, right. And when you do that, when
00:11:33
Sandeep Mallya: you dig into your analytics, you see the demographics of
00:11:36
Sandeep Mallya: your audience. That's when you get deep insights into your
00:11:39
Sandeep Mallya: audience and
00:11:41
Sandeep Mallya: your content basically needs to with your audience. And this
00:11:43
Sandeep Mallya: is where search intent is also very important and we
00:11:46
Sandeep Mallya: always spoke about commercial intent, keywords, and those are the
00:11:49
Sandeep Mallya: keywords that I was targeting for affiliate marketing.
00:11:52
Sandeep Mallya: But at the same time I was growing my blog.
00:11:54
Sandeep Mallya: I didn't want my blog just to contain affiliate articles, right?
00:11:58
Sandeep Mallya: And I wanted to grow my authority because S e O.
00:12:01
Sandeep Mallya: Was one aspect where I was providing the service at
00:12:03
Sandeep Mallya: my agency. And I was also writing about it on
00:12:06
Sandeep Mallya: my blog. I just wanted my article. I just wanted
00:12:09
Sandeep Mallya: my blog to be
00:12:11
Sandeep Mallya: a top source for all s EU articles and also
00:12:14
Sandeep Mallya: for entrepreneurship. I also have a lot of entrepreneurship articles
00:12:18
Sandeep Mallya: on my blog, and I wanted to target these keywords.
00:12:22
Sandeep Mallya: And I wanted 99 signals to be a place where
00:12:25
Sandeep Mallya: people can come to learn S e o and find
00:12:27
Sandeep Mallya: resources for
00:12:28
Saikat Pyne: sometimes some products that you might sign up for might
00:12:31
Saikat Pyne: not be the best in the business. How do you
00:12:33
Saikat Pyne: resolve it, then?
00:12:35
Sandeep Mallya: Yeah, I'll share my own personal experience. So I became
00:12:39
Sandeep Mallya: a little cocky after I found success with Sam Rush.
00:12:43
Sandeep Mallya: And I thought, If I can do this with Sam Rush,
00:12:45
Sandeep Mallya: I can do it with every other affiliate marketing product
00:12:48
Sandeep Mallya: out there. Every other product that had an affiliate marketing
00:12:50
Sandeep Mallya: programme simultaneously, I was running a wellness blog because back
00:12:52
Sandeep Mallya: then I was really into meditation, yoga, mindfulness and
00:12:57
Sandeep Mallya: I had a blog. I still have that blog, though
00:12:59
Sandeep Mallya: I it's not actively managed by me. It's been a
00:13:02
Sandeep Mallya: couple of years since I I published new content, but
00:13:05
Sandeep Mallya: it still gets a decent amount of search traffic. But
00:13:07
Sandeep Mallya: at the time it was getting more traffic than 99
00:13:09
Sandeep Mallya: signals because health and wellness is a space where you
00:13:12
Sandeep Mallya: can get a lot of traffic more than much more
00:13:14
Sandeep Mallya: than marketing. So when I found success with Sem Rush,
00:13:17
Sandeep Mallya: I also joined a handful of affiliate programmes
00:13:21
Sandeep Mallya: in the health segment and I started promoting these health supplements.
00:13:24
Sandeep Mallya: I started pro promoting these meditation apps that had affiliate
00:13:27
Sandeep Mallya: programmes also weight loss diet plans. But I had not
00:13:31
Sandeep Mallya: personally used any of these products, right and I started
00:13:35
Sandeep Mallya: running Google ads, Facebook ads, Twitter ads and I started
00:13:38
Sandeep Mallya: doing all kinds of paid promotions. But in the end,
00:13:41
Sandeep Mallya: I had zero convergence because
00:13:43
Sandeep Mallya: it was so inauthentic. And like I said, your readers
00:13:47
Sandeep Mallya: are very savvy when you have not tried a product,
00:13:49
Sandeep Mallya: they know that you haven't tried it, though you may
00:13:51
Sandeep Mallya: write top quality content, but when it's not genuine, people
00:13:54
Sandeep Mallya: can really gauge that while reading your article.
00:13:57
Sandeep Mallya: And I soon realised my mistake. And that's the mistake
00:14:00
Sandeep Mallya: that I didn't repeat with the 99 signals. Once again,
00:14:03
Sandeep Mallya: when I joined all these affiliate programmes at 99 signals,
00:14:06
Sandeep Mallya: all these marketing tools were that were having affiliate programmes.
00:14:09
Sandeep Mallya: I made sure that I was a user of the
00:14:12
Sandeep Mallya: product before I even started promoting it. And that's what
00:14:15
Sandeep Mallya: you find on my blog right now. Any review that
00:14:18
Sandeep Mallya: you find there any comparison post any how to guide
00:14:21
Sandeep Mallya: that you find there. It's because I'm a user of
00:14:24
Sandeep Mallya: the product and
00:14:25
Sandeep Mallya: all the screenshots are updated. They are relevant to relevant
00:14:29
Sandeep Mallya: from a user perspective,
00:14:31
Sandeep Mallya: and it's because I'm a user. I'm confident in the
00:14:33
Sandeep Mallya: product that I'm promoting, and when I talk about a product,
00:14:37
Sandeep Mallya: I don't just talk about the benefits of using the product.
00:14:40
Sandeep Mallya: I also talk about certain loopholes or certain features that
00:14:42
Sandeep Mallya: they're currently lacking just to give you an example. When
00:14:44
Sandeep Mallya: I started using Sem brush, the back link analysis feature
00:14:47
Sandeep Mallya: was the weakest right and I made it a point
00:14:50
Sandeep Mallya: to highlight that in all the articles that I was
00:14:53
Sandeep Mallya: writing about Sam Brush and Steps was like the back
00:14:56
Sandeep Mallya: link analysis tool, and that's that was the heavy weight
00:14:58
Sandeep Mallya: in that particular aspect. And
00:15:01
Sandeep Mallya: every time I was publishing something about Sam Brush, I
00:15:03
Sandeep Mallya: made sure that this particular lack of feature or this
00:15:07
Sandeep Mallya: particular aspect was highlighted.
00:15:09
Sandeep Mallya: And, uh,
00:15:11
Sandeep Mallya: over time that particular feature improved in se brush. And
00:15:14
Sandeep Mallya: when that improved, when it came to a stage where
00:15:17
Sandeep Mallya: it was like, if not better, than H reps, it
00:15:19
Sandeep Mallya: was offering the same amount of features for users. I
00:15:22
Sandeep Mallya: stopped highlighting that I updated my articles and made sure
00:15:26
Sandeep Mallya: that that portion of the article was removed because it
00:15:30
Sandeep Mallya: it is a much more improved product now.
00:15:33
Sandeep Mallya: But any product that I write on, I made sure
00:15:36
Sandeep Mallya: that I don't just highlight the trends. I highlight the
00:15:38
Sandeep Mallya: weaknesses as well. It's all about building trust with your audience, right,
00:15:42
Sandeep Mallya: and with affiliate marketing, you realise that you're not selling,
00:15:45
Sandeep Mallya: you're helping, right, and your audience basically comes to you
00:15:50
Sandeep Mallya: as as
00:15:52
Sandeep Mallya: they look up to you as a guide and if
00:15:54
Sandeep Mallya: you are
00:15:55
Sandeep Mallya: sharing information that's not genuine, then it's not going to
00:15:59
Sandeep Mallya: help you in any way. You're not going to get
00:16:01
Sandeep Mallya: any convergence. So that's what has helped me ever since
00:16:05
Sandeep Mallya: I started dabbling in affiliate marketing.
00:16:08
Saikat Pyne: Nice. Now we're speaking about C O so much What
00:16:12
Saikat Pyne: is the S e o tool of choice for you?
00:16:15
Saikat Pyne: For
00:16:18
Sandeep Mallya: So yeah, we've already spoken a lot about Sam Rush.
00:16:20
Sandeep Mallya: So sarus is probably the best C o tool out there.
00:16:23
Sandeep Mallya: The kind of keyboard research features that you get, the
00:16:26
Sandeep Mallya: kind of technical S E O features the battling analysis features.
00:16:29
Sandeep Mallya: It's really unparalleled. There are a lot of S E
00:16:32
Sandeep Mallya: O tools on the market, but
00:16:34
Sandeep Mallya: Sam Rush is really the number one when it comes
00:16:37
Sandeep Mallya: to S e o research and analysis. But I also
00:16:40
Sandeep Mallya: like another tool which is a content marketing tool, which
00:16:43
Sandeep Mallya: is Baum. Baum will let you know which are the
00:16:46
Sandeep Mallya: most popular articles for a specific topic. And they don't
00:16:50
Sandeep Mallya: just show you the social interactions that are happening for
00:16:53
Sandeep Mallya: these articles. You'll also get to see what back links
00:16:56
Sandeep Mallya: they have.
00:16:57
Sandeep Mallya: And if there is a specific article which is getting
00:17:00
Sandeep Mallya: a lot of shares on Facebook Twitter. But at the
00:17:03
Sandeep Mallya: same time, not having a lot of back links. That
00:17:05
Sandeep Mallya: means that article may not be performing really well on
00:17:08
Sandeep Mallya: Google
00:17:09
Sandeep Mallya: because social shares are just a minor ranking. So Bus
00:17:12
Sandeep Mallya: sumo is another tool that I use. And then there
00:17:15
Sandeep Mallya: is growth bar, which is again a very useful s
00:17:18
Sandeep Mallya: u extension to have They've gone beyond s u extension. Now,
00:17:21
Sandeep Mallya: they also have these a I content tools. But the
00:17:25
Sandeep Mallya: extension really helps you get all these s U M
00:17:27
Sandeep Mallya: matrix at your fingertips. So it's really, really good research
00:17:31
Sandeep Mallya: tool to have when you're creating content. So these are
00:17:34
Sandeep Mallya: the three s e o tools that I would recommend
00:17:37
Sandeep Mallya: to everyone out there.
00:17:38
Sandeep Mallya: But if some of your listeners who are just starting out,
00:17:41
Sandeep Mallya: who just wanted to who just want to start a
00:17:43
Sandeep Mallya: side hustle and they can't invest in a tool right now,
00:17:46
Sandeep Mallya: then I would suggest following the template that I shared
00:17:50
Sandeep Mallya: in the beginning, right? You can just give a Google
00:17:52
Sandeep Mallya: search and you can see what articles are currently ranking
00:17:55
Sandeep Mallya: on top, and you just have to create content that
00:17:59
Sandeep Mallya: is better than the ones that are ranking currently on
00:18:01
Sandeep Mallya: Google for that specific topic through that
00:18:04
Saikat Pyne: Sande,
00:18:05
Saikat Pyne: how has the affiliate marketing landscape changed since you launched
00:18:10
Saikat Pyne: a 99 sequences in 2016?
00:18:12
Sandeep Mallya: Yeah, because s e o has been my main traction channel.
00:18:16
Sandeep Mallya: S e o hit itself has evolved a lot. And
00:18:18
Sandeep Mallya: just these past few months, we had so many algorithm updates, right?
00:18:22
Sandeep Mallya: And the past few updates really affected affiliate marketing a lot.
00:18:26
Sandeep Mallya: So if you had thin content, if you had low
00:18:28
Sandeep Mallya: quality content around affiliate marketing around affiliate promotions, then that's
00:18:32
Sandeep Mallya: been totally de and indexed by Google. So
00:18:35
Sandeep Mallya: all these reviews that you see online all these affiliate
00:18:38
Sandeep Mallya: marketing reviews, these comparison posts are how to guide if
00:18:41
Sandeep Mallya: you don't have long form content. If you don't have
00:18:43
Sandeep Mallya: high quality content, then that's not going to. That's not
00:18:46
Sandeep Mallya: going to rank on Google. What's really become important now
00:18:49
Sandeep Mallya: is really zeroing in on the search intent of the keywords.
00:18:53
Sandeep Mallya: It's very important for you to understand the search intent
00:18:56
Sandeep Mallya: and once you've understood that search intent, you have to
00:18:58
Sandeep Mallya: create content around that and I always spoke about commercial
00:19:02
Sandeep Mallya: intent keywords right, But the main
00:19:05
Sandeep Mallya: 90% of the content in marketing is created around information
00:19:10
Sandeep Mallya: intent keywords just to give you an example. Hubspot is
00:19:13
Sandeep Mallya: a very popular inbound marketing tool, and if you plug
00:19:16
Sandeep Mallya: this particular domain into sarus, you'll find that 88% of
00:19:21
Sandeep Mallya: their back links go to information pages.
00:19:24
Sandeep Mallya: They also have a lot of commercial pages. They have
00:19:26
Sandeep Mallya: a lot of product pages. Uh, as you would know,
00:19:28
Sandeep Mallya: they also have a lot of eBooks that they promote.
00:19:31
Sandeep Mallya: But 88% of the back links go to information pages,
00:19:35
Sandeep Mallya: which are basically blog posts, and that really talks about
00:19:38
Sandeep Mallya: how important it is for a business to have a blog.
00:19:42
Sandeep Mallya: And that's what I do at my agency as well.
00:19:44
Sandeep Mallya: Many early stage startups that I deal with, they don't
00:19:47
Sandeep Mallya: believe in blogging. They don't believe in content marketing,
00:19:51
Sandeep Mallya: and it's really up to me to convince them to
00:19:53
Sandeep Mallya: have a blog. And once they have a blog, they
00:19:56
Sandeep Mallya: should make sure that they have high quality content there,
00:19:59
Sandeep Mallya: and the blog itself is going to generate a lot
00:20:02
Sandeep Mallya: of traffic for them going forward. And that itself is
00:20:06
Sandeep Mallya: a content marketing asset and any popular website that you
00:20:10
Sandeep Mallya: take any niche just plug in the particular domain into
00:20:14
Sandeep Mallya: Samra or any other S C O tool that you use.
00:20:17
Sandeep Mallya: In most cases, you'll find that more than 85% of
00:20:20
Sandeep Mallya: their back links come from information, blog posts or information
00:20:24
Sandeep Mallya: in 10 keywords and
00:20:26
Sandeep Mallya: all the back links. Most of these back links point
00:20:29
Sandeep Mallya: to their blog posts. That's I would say search intent
00:20:32
Sandeep Mallya: has become super important. Also, Google has another concept called
00:20:36
Sandeep Mallya: E A T, which stands for expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.
00:20:40
Sandeep Mallya: So I would really guide listeners to download something called
00:20:44
Sandeep Mallya: quality Data guidelines. QR G. It's a free PDF from Google.
00:20:48
Sandeep Mallya: It's like a 1 67 page document that really helps
00:20:52
Sandeep Mallya: you understand how Google works
00:20:54
Sandeep Mallya: and the two keywords. The two words two phrases that
00:20:57
Sandeep Mallya: are repeated often are read and search intent, and it
00:21:01
Sandeep Mallya: really shows you what Google is valuing at this point
00:21:04
Sandeep Mallya: of time. And so that's that. That's the landscape that
00:21:08
Sandeep Mallya: has changed since S E. O. Is the main traction
00:21:10
Sandeep Mallya: channel that I You need to keep updating your content
00:21:12
Sandeep Mallya: on a regular basis because Google values freshness and relevance
00:21:16
Sandeep Mallya: a lot, and let's say you
00:21:19
Sandeep Mallya: again taking the example of, Let's say, Convert Kit and
00:21:23
Sandeep Mallya: I Let's say I published an article in 2017, right,
00:21:26
Sandeep Mallya: and that article was ranking on top for all the
00:21:29
Sandeep Mallya: relevant convert kit keywords, let's say convert Kit Review as
00:21:32
Sandeep Mallya: a keyword phrase.
00:21:34
Sandeep Mallya: And if a user lands on that specific article and
00:21:37
Sandeep Mallya: finds that the date is 2017, let's say October 2017,
00:21:42
Sandeep Mallya: he or she will know That article has not been
00:21:44
Sandeep Mallya: updated for quite some time. And
00:21:47
Sandeep Mallya: either you're not going to get any conversion on your articles,
00:21:50
Sandeep Mallya: and also you will. You will. Your rankings will drop
00:21:53
Sandeep Mallya: eventually if you don't update those articles often. So that's
00:21:57
Sandeep Mallya: very important in affiliate marketing, because the products that you're promoting,
00:22:01
Sandeep Mallya: they themselves evolve. They add new features. The user interface changes.
00:22:05
Sandeep Mallya: So it's very important for you to update the screenshots,
00:22:08
Sandeep Mallya: uh, very important for you to periodically update them. Just
00:22:11
Sandeep Mallya: do a content audit every three months for all your
00:22:14
Sandeep Mallya: affiliate posts and make sure that you're providing updated information.
00:22:18
Sandeep Mallya: And it's not just good from a Google ranking perspective.
00:22:22
Sandeep Mallya: It's also good from a user perspective because anyone landing
00:22:25
Sandeep Mallya: in a landing on that specific article when they find
00:22:29
Sandeep Mallya: fresh information about the tool when they see that the
00:22:31
Sandeep Mallya: screenshots have been updated.
00:22:33
Sandeep Mallya: That's when they know that this user has not been
00:22:36
Sandeep Mallya: a user of the product in the past but is
00:22:39
Sandeep Mallya: a current user.
00:22:41
Sandeep Mallya: So yeah, hope that answers the question.
00:22:44
Saikat Pyne: Absolutely. If I were to be an aspiring blogger, what
00:22:50
Saikat Pyne: are the couple of tools that you recommend I have
00:22:55
Saikat Pyne: in my arsenal? If I would want to start monetizing
00:22:58
Saikat Pyne: my blog at some point in time
00:23:02
Sandeep Mallya: Um, yeah, I think we have briefly discussed this rush
00:23:05
Sandeep Mallya: is definitely a tool that you should have in your toolkit.
00:23:09
Sandeep Mallya: Sumo is another tool that I would recommend and you
00:23:12
Sandeep Mallya: can also go to APP Sumo. So Apps Apps, Sumo
00:23:15
Sandeep Mallya: has apps is a deal website for a products. And
00:23:19
Sandeep Mallya: you have Yeah, you have new products popping up every
00:23:23
Sandeep Mallya: now and then. So if you think Sara or Baumer
00:23:25
Sandeep Mallya: is out of your budget, you can find similar tools
00:23:28
Sandeep Mallya: on apps. Sumo.
00:23:30
Sandeep Mallya: Another site you can visit is product hunt. We got
00:23:32
Sandeep Mallya: another
00:23:33
Sandeep Mallya: excellent website to find new SAS tools, and, uh, you
00:23:37
Sandeep Mallya: can just sort by the top rated tools there because
00:23:40
Sandeep Mallya: you have a voting system, just like Reddit and all
00:23:43
Sandeep Mallya: the top rated tools in your category will be ranking
00:23:46
Sandeep Mallya: on top, so you can try those products as well.
00:23:49
Sandeep Mallya: And sometimes you may stumble upon a very interesting product
00:23:52
Sandeep Mallya: that will make your life easy. And finally, growth Bar
00:23:54
Sandeep Mallya: Growth Bar is another excellent tool to have. I'm not
00:23:56
Sandeep Mallya: too big on a I content. Uh,
00:23:59
Sandeep Mallya: I don't believe too much in A I content, though
00:24:01
Sandeep Mallya: they are saying it's coming very close to replicating human content,
00:24:04
Sandeep Mallya: but it can be a good research tool to have.
00:24:07
Sandeep Mallya: Right It can be. It can help you basically with
00:24:10
Sandeep Mallya: your writer's blog. It can give you these content. It
00:24:12
Sandeep Mallya: can give you these copyrighting prompts,
00:24:15
Sandeep Mallya: so you can probably use an A I content tool
00:24:17
Sandeep Mallya: from that particular aspect and apps sumo. Right now, since
00:24:20
Sandeep Mallya: you're saying you're a fan of apps Sumo apps Suu
00:24:23
Sandeep Mallya: has a lot of a I content tools, and I
00:24:25
Sandeep Mallya: just read on Twitter today that a I content tools
00:24:29
Sandeep Mallya: are popping up every day, so that's like the hot
00:24:31
Sandeep Mallya: category to be in. But I'm not a huge believer
00:24:34
Sandeep Mallya: in a I content. I don't think that the kind
00:24:36
Sandeep Mallya: of nuances that you get with a content written by
00:24:39
Sandeep Mallya: a real person can be replicated by an A I
00:24:42
Sandeep Mallya: content tool.
00:24:45
Saikat Pyne: And on that insightful note, it's a wrap. Thank you
00:24:50
Saikat Pyne: so much for being on the podcast, and we really
00:24:52
Sandeep Mallya: appreciate it. Thanks for having me. So I hope I
00:24:55
Sandeep Mallya: was able to share insights about S U and definite
00:24:57
Sandeep Mallya: marketing with the audience. They can find me on 99
00:25:00
Sandeep Mallya: signals dot com if you want to learn s u
00:25:02
Sandeep Mallya: content marketing. And if you want to find resources on entrepreneurship,
00:25:06
Sandeep Mallya: you can also subscribe to my
00:25:08
Sandeep Mallya: podcast marketing mantra where we recently had a as a guest.
00:25:13
Sandeep Mallya: And it was one of the best episodes that I
00:25:14
Sandeep Mallya: had really interesting conversation. And I got to learn a
00:25:17
Sandeep Mallya: lot of things from and how he's building you incorporated,
00:25:21
Saikat Pyne: Guys. All the links are going to be in the show.
00:25:24
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00:25:30
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00:25:33
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00:25:41
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