Experienced affiliate marketers who rely on organic search know that they have to build Christmas sites in the summer. That way the spiders have plenty of time to visit their site, SEO can be tweaked, and getting indexed is a done deal.

But even if you’ve missed out on building a winter holiday site this year, here are a few ways you can still cash in on the annual shopping feeding frenzy.

Idea #1 – Try PPC
For this to work, you need a subscription to Wordtracker (don’t even bother with Overture’s free tool), some creativity, the willingness to invest some money, and a little bit of luck. Even though PPC competition is fierce during the holidays, using Wordtracker can help you target opportunities outside of Google’s Adwords.

Believe it or not, good keyword opportunities can still be found in Yahoo! Search Marketing, LookSmart, and other PPC engines, but only if you’re willing to dig and think outside the box. Instead of focusing on the obvious — like keyphrases with “gift” in them — do some deep research into generic terms with qualifying phrases.

For example, we recently found some interesting opportunities while looking for “funny gifts for senior citizens” and “fun gifts for seniors.” “Senior,” “gift,” and “fun” are all pretty generic, but combining them and using Wordtracker’s Thesaurus generated plenty of terms for potentially profitable campaigns.

Idea #2 – Use EBay
You may not be able to promote affiliate products on EBay, but why not use it to grab some holiday traffic. Offer inexpensive loss leaders, viral reports, Christmas screensavers… anything that you can brand or that will drive traffic to your site.

Idea #3 – Paid Inclusion
This can get your web site indexed FAST, often in less than a week. Just remember that paying to get into a search engine doesn’t guarantee a higher rank. You’ll still need to optimize, and possibly add some PPC to drive quality traffic. To give this a try, investigate Positiontech.com and InfoSpider.com, two of the most popular and speedy services.

Idea #4 – Add Content!
If you’ve already got a site with some decent traffic, can you find a way to spin some holiday content onto your most popular pages? Or can you figure out a way to “Christmas-ize” your site by adding 3-5 targeted pages offering gift ideas? If spiders regularly visit your site, those pages will get indexed fast.

Idea #5 – Don’t Forget Your Opt-In List
Now’s the time to offer creative upsells and cross-sells to your mailing list. Brainstorm some lowcost “Christmas bonuses,” discounts, free gifts, or personalized holiday messages. Send your subscribers to a special pages that also include content like gift-wrapping ideas, holiday poems and quotes, and royalty free holiday clip art.

Idea #6 – Offer A Shopping Service
How about this for an instant consulting business? Start an “online shopping service.” You’ll need to target people who are so busy they don’t even have time to search for merchandise online, let alone fight crowds at the mall. Your service will be locating unusual, hard to find, or specialized items, possibly offering comparisons of several products or merchants, and sending your recommendations to your clients… for a fee, of course.

First, do some creative brainstorming about the products you know best, particularly hard goods. Since you won’t actually be making purchases, you’ll need to decide what the hot niches are, as well as HOW you’ll actually find people interested in your service.

Second, look for niche markets of harried people you can target. PPC, joint ventures, or forum marketing will probably be your best bets, but don’t rule out offline marketing.
For example, if you live in a busy high rise, you might be able to bring in several thousand dollars over the holidays simply by distributing business cards to your neighbors. Or if you’re in a small town, $100 worth of flyers might keep you busy all season.

Finally, decide on a pricing model. You might charge a flat, per search fee, in which you locate a particular type of item online and send a report about availability, prices, shipping, etc. Or, you could offer an upscale, exclusive, and yes, expensive service in which you provide detailed product information, comparison charts, and URLs. In this case, you’d charge by the hour or a flat fee “for the season.”

Whichever model you choose, make sure you set up a detailed web site which outlines the terms and conditions of your service, as well as a PayPal button or other credit card acceptance mechanism. And don’t forget to sell all the BENEFITS of this service — the time, hassle, and money your clients are bound to save!