Making Money From Big Brother

Guest Post: I don’t normally have guest posts but after reading Six Ways to Make More Money by Wasting Less Time by David Walker and nodding my head throughout I was happy to take David up on his suggestion of writing something for this blog.

Making Money From Big Brother

Rachel Rice became the unlikely winner of the ninth series of Big Brother on Friday night after surviving 93 days cooped up in the house and seeing off 20 other contestants.

Mindless drivel? Absolutely. Not interested in the slightest? Well, as an affiliate marketer you should be because it is very easy to cash in on Big Brother and indeed other reality television shows.

By creating simple blogs about the contestants on these shows you can pull in thousands of unique visitors every day for free and make money from affiliate marketing, all for relatively little work.

There, I thought that would grab your attention.

Which Contestants to Blog About

Big Brother contestants have an extremely short shelf-life and often fall off the radar as soon as they leave the house. This is especially true of the male contestants and is it any wonder they form “relationships” with the female’s on the show to prolong their time in the spotlight upon their exit?

With this in mind and to maximise your earnings from the effort you put into maintaining the blogs, it is recommended you create blogs for just the younger “sexy” female contestants. They tend to do photoshoots for the lads mags and go on to release DVDs, calendars, or even attempt a pop career; products which can all be promoted as an affiliate later down the line.

However, first of all you need to create your blog and establish it at the top of the search engines. Here is a step-by-step guide on how you can make easy affiliate profits from Big Brother.

1. Register an Appropriate Domain Name

Since you will be creating a blog for a single contestant, it is imperative you register a domain name which includes both their first name and surname.

This is because you should view their name as a “new” keyword and there will be very little competition in Google. The night Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace was introduced to the show two years ago, there were only three competing web pages for the keyword “Aisleyne” - today there are almost half a million!

Including both names in the domain will help a lot in terms of search engine optimisation but you should also include something like “fan” or “unofficial” after their name so you do not run into any legal problems in the future.

2. Set Up the Blog

From a SEO and time perspective, Wordpress is the easiest method to set up a professional looking blog which can be optimised for the search engines easily. Plus, Google loves blogs which are created with Wordpress.

Find an appropriate theme from one of the many free Wordpress theme directories online, upload it and you are ready to start blogging!

3. Adding Content

While you want to keep the website updated regularly, to attract new visitors and links from forums, other blogs etc, you don’t want to spend too much time maintaining your blog, especially if you have more than one.

Therefore, the easiest way to update the blog with new content is to trawl Youtube for new video clips featuring the contestant in question. There are several hardcore Big Brother fans who systematically upload video clips within hours of the highlights and eviction shows ending so you will not be short of blog material!

You should also accompany each video clip with a short editorial or opinion piece to add in keywords and optimise each blog post further for the search engines.

4. Making Money

Your new blog will rank within a matter of days for the contestant’s name and while it is easy to draw thousands of unique visitors to your blog every day, making money from that traffic is a little more tricky.

By far the easiest way to make money from the traffic is Google Adsense and at the height of my own success with Big Brother, I was making around £1,000 per month across about five blogs.

Last year I experimented with several affiliate programmes and made a few hundred dollars per month from Adult Friend Finder. However, I didn’t make a single affiliate sale for the adult videos featuring either Imogen Thomas or Lea Walker when I blogged about them both two years ago. Needless to say, Adsense was swiftly reintroduced on both counts.

Two areas which are worthwhile pursuing are official DVDs and calendars featuring the contestants. Four years on DVDs featuring Sam Heuston and a joint-effort from Shell and Vanessa are still selling well on Amazon while Chanelle Hayes from last year’s show is releasing a second calendar for 2009, proving some Big Brother contestants are capable of providing a long-term income for affiliate marketers.

Conclusion

Creating simple, search engine optimises blogs about Big Brother contestants are an easy way to make some money during the show’s run and also for the longer term if the contestant’s are successful enough.

In my opinion, it is an ideal way for a budding affiliate marketer to cut their teeth in the industry because these blogs are guaranteed to attract a lot of traffic and make some money. You are unlikely to get rich by blogging about Big Brother, but there is the potential to make a decent passive income. Who knows, if a contestant becomes successful enough after the show ends, you my be able to sell your content-filled, Google ranking website for a sizeable amount!

David Walker is the director of Affiliate Dragon, a company which provides marketing services and a place where you can find a web business for sale.