How to Make It Work

Summary of Affiliate Marketing Business, Posted on 9/18/2009:

Here are the steps:

1.  Choose a niche that has affiliate potential (lots of ways to monetize, lots of available affiliate programs).

insurance, finance, health, relationships, electronics, services

Get ideas by browsing the CPAs– Commission Junction, Hydra, AzoogleAds; and ClickBank
Also Google “[niche] affiliate programs”
You can also browse Amazon, eBay categories; bookstore/magazine racks

Take notes of potential niches to pursue.

2. Evaluate potential of each niche by turning to keyword research.

Find sub-niche keyphrases that:

#1 have between 500-1,000 searches per month
#2 have less than 6,000 competing web pages for the phrase match

3.  Once you have selected one, register a domain name with it.

4.  Start a blog site with this domain name.

5.  Build traffic to it using:

a.  On site SEO – keyword integration in copy and links
b.  Getting inbound links:
1) content syndication
2) article marketing, blog posting, forum posting
3) backlinks from other sites

6.  Once you get good traffic stats, monetize it w/ affiliate links.

7.  Incorporate an Opt In form + Autoresponder.  Populate the AR with messages that have good content and links to other affiliate offers.  Give away things.

RINSE AND REPEAT.

Shoot for one blog website per week.

This is an interesting market research technique, credited to the Wealthy Affiliate crew, that I saved in my Journal.  Basically, you use an online thesaurus to find variations of a keyphrase; for example, if your root keyword is “make money” enter “money” into the thesaurus and use the results to generate more possibilities (make cash, make greenback, make dough, etc.).  You then enter these variations into Yahoo Answers and related sites, and see what the market is saying.  Then, you can get a feel for the common phraseology and use this info to sell to this market.  For example, you can find an affiliate product to sell, and set up a PPC campaign to drive traffic to it using the hot button terms you discovered from your research; or you can set up a website optimized for the hot button keywords and monetize with related products.  I would add to this, search Twitter feeds, blogs and forums for these terms:

November 24, 2008 – 2:09 pm

Last post we showed you how to leverage “how to” websites to perform audience research and to uncover new niches. Today we are going to take this one step further and show you how to advance these research skills by leveraging something that is common to all of us.

The THESAURUS!

http://thesaurus.reference.com/

In part one, we took the example of using “unemployment” to find information as to what problems people are looking to resolve in relation to the search term “unemployment”.

As you and I both know, there are many different terms out there that have the same meaning as the root word, employment.

In this situation, we are going to use a different example however, showing you the exact process.

Let’s take a phrase, say “more money”. Using the thesaurus, we can find a bunch of terms that mean the exact same thing.

We plugged “money” into the thesaurus. Here was the result:

http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/money

Now you add:

more + money_synonym

…to create your list of phrases (that you will then use with the 3 “how” sites).

Here is what we came up with:

“more money”

“more cash”

“more dollars”

“more loot”

“more green back”

“more coin”

“more bucks”

“more wage”

“more wealth”

“more riches”

“more salary”

“more dough”

“more pesos”

Now we follow the same process as before, using our generated list of “same meaning” search terms. Plug a few of these into the sites below and you will get a much more diverse set of results.

http://answers.yahoo.com
http://wikihow.com
http://ehow.com

Again, here is the process for researching:

(1) Type in a keyword related to the industry you are searching

(2) Create a list of all the questions people are asking within that topic

(3) Probe to find the hot button (people search for a how, but behind all of this there is a “why” …why does this person want to lose weight

(4) Formulate a campaign from your findings

Now instead of just one keyword, you have 13 search terms to type in that are all similar and will give you much greater insight into an industry and the problems that people are looking to resolve.

Q & A Sites + Thesaurus = POWERFUL NICHE RESEARCH

More to come from my internet marketing notebook…

This note was made on June 2, 2008, from an Eben Pagan webinar on how to identify a good niche to market to, and what to consider when choosing or creating your niche product:

People with deep subject matter expertise invariably do not know how to market their expertise.  The more knowledgable they are, the less likely they are to engage in “extreme” marketing.

The key to success in Info marketing is knowing how to “package” the information; i.e., what to name it, and what marketing angle to use to promote it.

You don’t have to be the expert as long as you know how to extract info from the expert(s), distill them, package them, and market the whole thing.  Could involve phone interviews that are taped.

MEGA NICHES:

1.  Health and Wellness
2.  Money and Finance (includes business)
3.  Relationships

The 3-Question Test for selecting a good niche:

1.  Is my prospective customer experiencing:  (1) pain and urgency; (2) irrational passion?
-targeting these people is easier because you’ll have to do much less persuasion; they’re hot to go.

2.  Is he proactively searching for solutions to said problem?
-Use PPC to do market testing:  set up a campaign, add keywords, test ad titles, and see how many impressions you get per keyword

3.  Does he have few or no “perceived” options?
-search online; see if there are products that meet the market’s needs that are easily accessible and understandable/effective.

Ask people these questions:  (1) What worries you?  Keeps you up at night?  (2) What’s your biggest frustration?

You must do surveys.  Survey Monkey $50/month.

tagcloud.com- type in URL of a forum and it will analyze the tags/keywords– those are the HOT topics being discussed.
freeline.crowdvine.com

Voodoo Marketing Principles:

#1:  Translate the value of the information so people will pay you more for it.  Make sure your words are “visual” and hit home– short, impactful, emotional, real.

#2:  Give your product a good NAME that will give it a higher perceived value.  Could be a catchy name, or one that sounds exotic.

The more places you have incoming links to your site, the more stable your business– banners, text link ads, joint ventures, social media.  Changes in the Google algorithm will have less effect.

Here’s another post from my internet marketing journal, dated 5/8/2009.  These notes were taken from a StomperNet webinar:
——————————————

1.  Start with what’s hot.  Find affiliate program that matches the subject, then market.  Technorati.com/tag — tags popular for the day.  See what people are tagging; mention on your blog/site.

delicious/tag/(topic)  — related tags.

2.  Interest vs. pursuit:  type in search for keyword in DIGG, find storylines– that’s what people are interested in– take the tiltes of these stories; add them to blog posts, email subjects lines.

3.  Use keywords in your link tags  — website, blogs

4.  Google News.  News stories on a subject; use Google Alerts for that topic; write about it– articles, blog posts, etc.

5.  Body text need to match link tags– mean what you say!

6. Blog– put it “on your site”.  Go to rentacoder.com– $25.

7. Use rel= no follow to prevent loss of PR

8.  Write a blog post, hubpage, squidoo, or othe content sharing site that contains a link to an affiliate site using your affililiate ID in the link.  Commission Junction, ClickBank.  (_product_) Affilate- google search.

9.  Avoid linkfarms.

10.  Get pinged.  ping-o-matic.  Type in your blog, post, RSS url,

11.  Know if your keywords CONVERT (make money) before putting time into it.  Run ad campaigns using the keywords, use Google conversion tracker.

12.  Get bookmarked.  Go to delicious, bookmark your posts.

13.  Google Webmaster tools– use it!  Look for warnings on your site.  Stale cache problem (nothing changing on your SERP description).

14.  DIGG effect.  Digg works even if only one person Diggs you!  Don’t worry about making first page on DIGG.

15.  Don’t compete w/ the big guys.  Understand your market.  Longer tail keywords of the big market– means searcher in buying mode.  Nichewatch.com– where is all the competition ranking.

16.  Keyword research tool– some keywords are better in anchor text, some for content, some in H1 tags, etc.

17.  Use PR sites.  PRWeb.  Passes anchor text links.   Put anchor text in first 40 words– sploggers use …

18.  Shorten your title tags.

19.  Use Google AdWords to test ads, keywords, see how much traffic, how much click costs.  Use this approach in your meta tags.– description tag, abstract.  Make them condensed– not too long.

20.  Just go do this stuff!

MORE:

1.  Find high-viewed Google videos on a partcular topic that could be related to yours.  Copy and paste that video’s tags in Notepad; use the same tags on your promo YouTube video, and you’ll be listed as a “Related Video” and ride on some of the traffic generated by the big video.

2.  If you have less than 1,000 friends on MySpace, post a video on your bulletin board and set to autoplay when page loads.  When your friends open their page, it will count as a YouTube view and will drive your video ranking higher.

Internet marketing changes like the wind.  You can let the wind blow you around in all kinds of directions, like a fallen leaf during Autumn, or, you can harness the wind to take you in one direction, like an experienced kite boarder (cool analogy, huh?).

If you’ve been engaging in IM over the years, you are probably used to the hype and constant bombardment of internet marketing products from all the people whose list you signed up for.  It gets mind numbing sometimes.

Listen, I’m here to help inject some sanity.  You can say I’m a hardened IM– I’ve reached a point where I can ignore the hype of some re-hashed worthless launch, but can also recognized something with true utility.

Anyways, I am going to be posting a series of my IM Journal entries.  Yes, I use my Outlook Journal to write down my thoughts before I forget them, and to add clarity and direction to my efforts.  Hope you can learn from these.  You can think of them as the filtered, concentrated knowledge from pages and pages of IM info.  Here’s the first one.

—————————-

Date:  4/29/2008

The path to internet marketing success has two basic pillars:

• Keyword research
• Affiliate program research:  Amazon, eBay, etc.
• CPA research
• Website construction
• Blog construction
• AdSense set up
• E-Book creation
• Video Product creation
• Audio/ podcast Product creation
• Webinar creation

Major B Functions:

E-Book publishing for Amazon Kindle store
- Internet Riches for the Little Guy?
-Blogging

Ok, that’s the first entry in my IM journal.  I recommend you start one, too, because you will come across some “a-ha” moments that you’ll need to write down (don’t trust yourself to remember it, because you will be distracted by the next big IM launch and all those promo emails.  So…. get to work!

Pay per view, or Cost Per View (CPV) is an alternative paid traffic technique than its cousin Pay Per Click (PPC).    You basically sign up with a CPV agency online as an advertiser (note:  when you drive traffic as an affiliate marketer in any capacity other than CPV, you are known as a Publisher; the merchants whose products you are trying to sell are the Advertisers).

Ok, so how does CPV work?  This is basically Adware we’re talking about.  Don’t confuse Adware with Spyware.  In Adware, the person purposefully downloads and installs the Adware on his computer in exchange for something, such as free video games, free screensavers, free smileys, premium content, and so on.  The catch is, that in order to access their free services they agree to let the Adware application serve advertisements (pop ups, pop unders) on their computer while they are browsing the internet.   A CPV Affiliate is a person who has his own Adware, and advertises it on the internet.  The CPV agency then serves ads through its affiliates’ Adware application.

And how does the CPV agency know what ads to serve to a particular internet browser (user) who has the Adware installed?  Well, the ads can be triggered by keywords that the user searches for in any search engine, or they can be triggered by a website URL that the user is visiting.

You as the CPV advertiser, set up a campaign that is either a keyword based or URL based campaign.  Let’s say you set up a keyword CPV campaign.  Here are the steps:

(First sign up for a CPV agency like Direct CPV and Media Traffic.  You will first have to fund your account using a credit card, usually $100 minimum.)

1.  Find a good affiliate offer (any CPA agency like Commission Junction, Clickbooth, Pepperjam, Shareasale; or any ClickBank product, or anything else).

2.  Compile a bunch of keywords related to your chosen offer.  Use Google’s keyword tool to quickly come up with some good keywords.

3.  Enter the keywords in your account.

4.  Set up your minimum and maximum PPV bids (CPV is much lower than PPC, as low as $.01 a click), and maximum spend per day.  Many CPV agencies will allow you to see where your bid falls and what rank you will be for each keyword you are bidding on so that you can increase/decrease it appropriately.  Generally, the top four bids for a keyword will have their ads rotated, with the highest bidder obviously getting the most views.

5.  You’ll need to have a landing page URL (the ad that will pop up when one of your keywords triggers it on someone’s computer), so make one and insert the affiliate link (you can also direct link to the affiliate offer, as long as it meets the guidelines).

6.  Save your campaign, and keep track of your stats.

I’ve been running campaigns on Direct CPV (an exercise equipment, iPad offer, stop smoking, and debt relief) for a couple of weeks, and I have to say the results have been disappointing.  Yes, a lot of the clicks are only $.01 but you get what you pay for.  My belief is that the CPV traffic is only as good as the Adware applications that it serves through.  Remember, these people who have the Adware installed may have a severe case of ad blindness as their main intent is to access the free services.  I’ve gotten thousands of impressions, with no clicks on my ad.  I am going to try another CPV agency and see how it goes there.

Don’t let this discourage you; there are some people making money on the cheap traffic available through CPV.  Try a couple of campaigns in different niches; play with the bid amounts, keywords and URLs; try different CPV agencies and see if you hit some luck.

I’m a firm believer that the most difficult thing about internet marketing is not the technical stuff like website creation, or the tedious stuff like article writing.  The single thing that trips up most aspiring internet marketing entrepreneurs and causes them to throw in the towel is the inability to focus on one thing at a time.   I know, because I still suffer from it, but have come a long way in curing this affliction.

People, stop the insanity!  Stop buying ebook after ebook; course after course; jumping from one to another and GETTING NOWHERE.  NO, that new, over-hyped, gotta-have-it-at-all-cost product is NOT the system that is finally going to make you rich.  You are chasing yet another quick little fish while the other fish you had an opportunity to eat are getting away, and as a result you are still STARVING (not making any money).

People who tend to be more analytical, more impulsive, or lazy (want to get rich quick with little effort) are the ones who suffer from this affliction the most.   If you find yourself frustrated after months or even years of tinkering in internet marketing because you only made enough money to buy a nice shirt, time to rehabilitate yourself.

Here’s the GOLDEN RULE to internet marketing success:

You are much more likely to have success working on just one internet marketing campaign at a time, and engaging in no more than three (3) different internet marketing vehicles.

What I mean here is  once you start on a particular campaign, FINISH it before you start on the next one.  In this context, “finish” means to the point where you are making steady income from the campaign.

Limit yourself to no more than three (3)  internet marketing vehicles.  This is huge.  A vehicle, or ”specialty” takes a lot of time to master, especially with the constantly changing nature of the internet.  Examples of internet marketing strategies:

• PPC-ClickBank
• PPC-CPA Offers
• Blogging
• Social Media Marketing
• List Building and Marketing
• Membership Sites
• Website Flipping

Now, if your thing is affiliate marketing using Wordpress blogs, pick one niche (like Persian rugs) and focus on that.  That one niche is enough to keep you busy all day:  setting up your blog(s), adding content, adding to directories, tweeting about it, FaceBooking about it, forum posting, finding good affiliate programs for it, contacting other sites to link to you, setting up your PPC campaigns and tweaking them… and so on.

If you get tempted to start ANOTHER campaign at the same time, well, your chances of generating revenue just dropped 50%.   What winds up happening is both of these campaigns are done half-assed because you spread yourself too thin.  Your site’s content will suck because you won”t have time to write frequent, good content, and as a result your sites won’t make it to the first page of Google, and/or they won’t convert.

The only way around this is to leverage your time by OUTSOURCING the SEO.  There are content writers in India and the Philippines who can crank out content for you at reasonable prices, but you need to get over the urge of doing everything yourself.

Example 1. If your main strategy is selling ClickBank products, do ONE PRODUCT AT A TIME.  What I mean by this is, do everything you need to do to get your campaign producing a steady stream of income before you even think about starting a second one.  If you are driving traffic through PPC and direct linking, well, make sure your campaign is tweaked and making you money before you abandon it and jump to another product.  Otherwise you’ll be like a dog chasing its tail.

Example 2.  If you plan to create a comparison site for several Clickbank products and don’t plan to use PPC, then put all your energy in making the best site you can in terms of keyword targeting and search engine optimization.  Then, hit the off-site SEO hard.  Stay focused until you see the dollars rolling in.

A third guideline can be to limit yourself to no more than 2 or 3 niches; two preferably.  Remember, as you take on more niches, you are diluting yourself.  It’s like biting off more than you can chew, and you will LOSE.

Ok, here’s a simple task you can do as part of you rehabilitation.  When you are in the mood to take a stab making money online, write down your niche, campaign, and vehicle.  Turn off all other distractions (email, forums, blogs, web surfing) and implement the Golden Rule.  Examples below:

Niche:  Persian Rugs

Campaign: Persian Rug CPA Offers in CJ and PepperJam

Vehicle:  WordPress SEO optimized blog

————————-

Niche:  Weight Loss

Campaign:  ClickBank product FatLoss4 Idiots

Vehicle:  PPC

Remember, DO NOT change or start a new niche, campaign or vehicle until you FINISH what you started by seeing the MONEY rolling in.  Be disciplined!  Do whatever it takes to keep you focused.

Now, go for it.

Ever watch a Discovery Channel show on marine life, where a school of thousands of fish swimming tightly together are somehow able to turn in the same direction in the blink of an eye?  Try getting a bunch of humans to do that.   Well, I’ll take that back….

The internet marketing community is very similar to a huge school of fish that can turn on a dime.  A handful of gurus (top dogs– the visionaries) create, or are able to see a new sub-niche in the internet marketing market (people in the make money online business) and push some kind of new product around this sub-niche.  All of a sudden, the email autoresponder messages that everyone is subscribed to pitch this new angle to make money (these are IMs who signed up for the affiliate programs of these gurus’ products).  Then, a couple of lower-tiered IMs ride the wave and come up with their own product.

 Here are examples of past internet marketing crazes:

• Article marketing
• Pay per click/ Google AdWords
• List building
• Continuity programs
• CPA arbitrage
• Affiliate marketing
• Social Media/ Twitter  marketing

The latest craze to appear on my radar is content outsourcing.  And, for good reason.  Most aspects of internet marketing will require content creation.   Whether you’re trying to build a high PR (page rank) landing page for your PPC campaign, or trying to get your blog/affiliate website ranked high in natural search for your main keywords, you will need to create content:  blog posts, tweets, articles, viral ebooks, static pages to your silo website, free ebooks for opt in campaigns, and so on.  Well, this takes a huge amount of time.  And guess who has more time than you?  People in the Philippines and India.

The current trend is to outsource your content creation to the Philippines and India.  The special thing about these two countries is that many of their citizens speak, read  and write English.   The other thing is that their hourly rate is a fraction of what you would get if you were to hire a US-based content creator.

There are a couple of companies that specialize in outsourcing content creation to these two countries, and you can bet more will be coming.  Just Google “outsource article writing Philippines” and see what comes up.  I guarantee you that you will see more coming into existence in the coming months.

Outsourcing content creation is basically leveraging time:  let other people do the heavy lifting while you work on strategy implementation.   Plus, it’s a win-win situation because you are making life better for these foreign writers.  There are very few opportunities in the domestic job market for these people.   These people are thrilled when they are able to work for an American company.  The word is out that, if you find a very good foreign writer, treat him or her very well (pay bonuses).   He (or she) will remain fiercely loyal to you and will go out of his way to turn out great service.

So, if you want to dislodge yourself from the quicksand we know as internet marketing, take the plunge and try outsourcing your content creation.  The freedom will be exhilarating.  Finally, someone to shoulder all the heavy, time-sucking and tedious work!

Ok people, here’s a rundown of the Commission Blueprint 2.0 (CB) technique of affiliate marketing. 

Commission Blueprint is an affiliate marketing course comprised of video lessons, pdf files, and website templates.  It also includes the use of various keyword research tools.  At $497 it isn’t cheap, but at least it’s not one of those recurring monthly membership sites that can cost a lot more over time.

I’ll explain their approach, and inject my experience and analysis.  Here goes:

As an affiliate marketer, what you’re doing is promoting other people’s products/services online and getting a commission for all sales you are responsible for.   Your sales are tracked by specially coded links that identify you as the referrer, and the retailer or affiliate program intermediate cuts you a commission check every two weeks or every month for the sales your links generated.

Here’s the challenge.  Most of the affiliate offers are in high-demand, high competition consumer goods and services categories, such as car insurance, bags and accessories, online dating, kitchen appliances, and so on.  Google any one of these keywords and you’ll see over 10 million competing pages.  If that wasn’t enough, the retailer itself that has the affiliate program  is going full-throttle online, promoting its products.  So you basically are competing with the product owner, who owns an authority site that you are not going to be able to outrank because it has an aged domain and hundreds if not thousands of indexed pages.  Give up yet?

So, how can you be successful in affiliate marketing, given this scenario?  In the past, it was easier because the big companies didn’t know how to do SEO for their sites.  Now in 2009, with all the SEO consultants and in-house SEO experts, the WalMarts and small-to-medium sized retailers are on par and even better at SEO and IM than your average, solo internet marketer who has bought 50 courses and ebooks and is on multiple email lists.   Yes, the picture turns more gloomy– the retailers have the resources and know-how to bury you in the SEO game now.

BREAKING UPDATE:   The internet marketing community is abuzz about a recent FTC (Federal Trade Commission) rule that is going to make the affiliate marketing game even more difficult.  Basically, the FTC is going to crack down on false and misleading claims in advertising.  No longer can you cloak an affiliate link and leave it at that.  You are going to have to place a statement on your webpage that has the links that specifically mentions that you get commissions if the visitor buys something through your link.  And you can no longer state “results are not typical” if you promote any kind of money making product; you must state something more realistic.  However, since this is a new regulation, there is going to be a time lag on enforcement/ penalties.  We’ll have to see how this rule pans out in the next couple of months, and adjust our marketing accordingly.

But, alas, some persistent IMs have found windows of opportunity.  Like a small group of wildebeests finding a small pocket of water in a parched desert.  Here’s the angle:

It’s all about KEYWORD research.  Apparently, it is possible to outrank the big guys in natural search if you create your landing page/ website around a long-tail keyword that gets a decent amount of clicks (500 or so a month) and a smaller number of competing pages (6,000 -10,000).

Secondly, it’s about analyzing your competition.  After you find a decent keyword that meets these requirements, you analyze the top natural ranking websites for this keyword.  You try to spot weaknesses in these websites that you can exploit, which will make it easier for you to outrank them.  Things like having the keyword in the URL, the Title, and in h1 tags; the number of inbound links, whether it’s in Yahoo Directory, and so on.   If you find a long tail keyword that matches the search and competition criteria, and find that three or more of the top websites have weaknesses that you can exploit, you’ve found your window to success.

The next step is to create a website around the keyword, find relevant affiliate offers (ClickBank, Commission Junction, Pepperjam, Shareasale, Hydra, AzoogleAds, etc.) and employ relentless SEO into it.  Watch it climb in natural search, and you’ll start seeing clicks on your affiliate links.

You will also need to work on your site’s conversion rate.  Do A/B split testing on its headlines, fine tune your copy, experiment with graphics and position of graphics, and so on.  Check your server logs to see where your traffic is coming from, and use this info to “work it” more.

That’s basically it.  To recap, CB2.0 says to focus on long-tail keywords associated with a monetizeable sector (one that has a decent number of potential affiliate offers) that have low competition and decent amount of searches each month.  Create a website/blog around said keyword; preferably using it in your URL.  Embed it with affiliate offers.  Then, pour on the SEO– article marketing, blog posting, getting inbound links, etc.  Play around with headlines, graphics, and copy to get the highest conversion rate possible.  Rinse and Repeat– create one of these sites a month, and wind up with an empire of sites that collectively bring in $thousands a month for you on autopilot.  Best thing about it– NO PAY PER CLICK COSTS.  Just the cost of your time.

By the way, the software the CB2.0 system highly recommends is Market Samurai.  It does all the keyword analysis I mentioned here.

So, what are you waiting for– get to work!

After months of reading and studying affiliate marketing, I’ve had enough for the moment.  This stuff is like trying to take a sip from a fire hose.  At some point, you have to put it down and get to work.

I canceled my Affiliate Classroom 2.0 membership because I felt that I already knew most of what its courses teach.  They are really into “over delivering” at AC2.0 (Lurn, Inc.) but for seasoned internet marketers like me, who get blasted with free reports, free courses, webinars, free software, free trials, etc. every day of the week it becomes more of a distraction than a benefit.   My opinion is that the AC2.0 format doesn’t have enough direction.  It’s got a lot of great content scattered throughout the site (self-paced courses, previously recorded webinars featuring successful IMs, videos, etc.) but it’s so voluminous that it’s easy for one to get “paralysis from analysis.”  At $97 a month, I couldn’t see myself sticking with it.

I may still get Commission Blueprint 2.0.  This course is a one time payment of $497, but in reading their website, it seems very structured and directional.  It has video lessons, pdf files, and resources to help you create a professional looking website.  It’s affiliate marketing all under one roof.  I like that.  The free report they gave out prior to the launch encapsulates the CB2.0 strategy.   It’s one of those “keeper” free reports.  The guys at CB2.0 are known for bypassing the hype and getting down to business, so this free report contains some real, “actionable” information to help you make money in affiliate marketing.  Send me a Reply if you want a copy.

I’ll post the CB2.0 method next (just finishing 10 straight hours of IM today… very tired).