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Affiliate Marketing Apprenticeship Program - Lesson 3/13
written by Anthony Dinh
June 6, 2008 · Posted Under affiliate marketing | blogging | make money online | marketing & advertising · 5 Comments
First, I’d like to say thank-you and congratulate you for joining my Affiliate Marketing Apprenticeship Program. You’ve taken the first step in the right direction towards building a successful online business and financial freedom. This 13-step program is your roadmap to wealth, and it’s jam-packed with invaluable information…no tricks or gimmicks here folks, just solid and proven methods that work! SEO (search engine optimization), copywriting and various internet marketing methods will be covered throughout the tutorial. I suggest that you read through it once, let it soak in, try it out, then go back and read it again because you’ll surely pick up something new that you missed the first time around.
Here’s a breakdown of each lesson for your convenience:
Lesson 1 - Set Your Goal
Lesson 2 - Find Your Niche
Lesson 3 - Keyword Sniping
Lesson 4 - Research Affiliate Programs
Lesson 5 - Build a Website Around Your Keyword
Lesson 6 - Incorporate Affiliate Links in Your Posts
Lesson 7 - Build Quality Backlinks
Lesson 8 - Submit Your Site to Web Directories
Lesson 9 - Submit Your Post to Article Directories
Lesson 10 - Add More Content and Build More Backlinks
Lesson 11 - The Waiting Game
Lesson 12 - Tweak Your Site
Lesson 13 - Scale Your Campaign
Before we begin with “Lesson 3 - Keyword Sniping“, please bookmark this page and subscribe to my full RSS feed as there are 13 steps, so you definitely won’t want to miss out! If you are just joining us now, be sure to go back and read “Lesson 1 - Set Your Goal“.
Affiliate Marketing Apprenticeship Program
Lesson 3 - Keyword Sniping
Now that you’ve selected the niche that you want to write about, the next step would be to “snipe” the keyword. When deciding on a keyword to snipe, some factors to consider are:
- The more specific and the more long-tailed the keyword, the fewer the competition, and the easier it will be to obtain a high ranking (i.e. “breast surgery doctor philadelphia” vs “breast surgery”).
- Your keyword should be searched at least 200 times a day, obviously, the more the better. There’s a bunch of keyword search tools out there, but I use WordTracker which shows daily search volumes, and it’s free! You can also use Google’s Keyword Tool if you already have an Adwords account.
- There are fewer than 1 million competing pages returned for this keyword in Google, obviously, the fewer the better. You can determine this by searching “your keyword” with quotes around it.
- The keyword has value to advertisers. Basically, anything that can be sold or has commissions has value.
- Select a keyword that is outside of the techie/internet world. Think of a keyword that your average teen or 70-year-old would likely be searching for. Doing so will not only leave you with fewer competitors, but it will also increase your conversion rate as people who aren’t as tech-savvy are more likely to click on ads.
Just to give you a few ideas and to get your mind going, here are some niches I would consider looking at:
(pest control, lawn care, hair products, acne treatments, teeth whitening, mortgages, loans, debt consolidation, home improvement, baby products, men’s/women’s health, weigh loss, etc.)
Bear in mind that questionable topics such as firearms, ammunition, butterfly knives, brass knuckles, concealable weapons, prescriptions drugs, beer and alcohol, tobacco or tobacco-related products, racial intolerance or gambling will not be not be supported by Google Adsense ads. Check out Google’s Program Policy for a full list.
The daily search volumes and competing pages figures mentioned above are just guidelines that I would stick to until you’re comfortable and have gained more confidence with keyword sniping. Once you achieve a #1 ranking for the long-tail keyword, then you can certainly focus on ranking for the bigger and broader keyword. One big advantage that you already have going for you is that most sites out there are targeting keywords with a single subpage. It’s much easier to obtain a higher ranking if you build a whole site(s) around a keyword as we will be doing in Lesson 5 - Build a Website Around Your Keyword.
To snipe your keyword using Google’s Keyword Tool:
1. first, login to your Adwords account and navigate to Tools->Keyword Tool
2. next, check the “Website Content” radio-button, enter the URL of the site you are going to promote, check the “Include other pages…” checkbox, and click “Get Keyword Ideas”
3. a list of keywords relating to the site you entered will be returned and organized in “groups”, click on the “Avg Search Volume” column to sort the list by highest to lowest search volumes
4. then, copy and paste the top keyword from each group into a text document
5. now search Google for forums where each of the keywords from step4 are being discussed by placing the “keyword” within quotes followed by the word forum: “keyword” forum
6. visit the first forum from the results list and browse through it, looking for additional keywords that are not included in your list. for example, if your list includes “weight loss”, then you wouldn’t add “weight loss excercises” since the phrase matches a keyword that’s already on your list. instead, you want to look for completely different keywords that are the subject of popular discussion threads with many user responses within the forum such as “yoga” or “pilates”
7. taking one word at a time, Google your entire list of keywords and copy down the URLs of all the Adsense ads displayed on page one of the results
8. take the resulting list of URLs from step7 and enter them one at a time back into the Adsense Tools->Keyword Tool->”Website Content” and click “Add all” which will add all the keywords to the selected keywords pane on the right-hand side
You will find that many of the resulting keywords are shared between some of the URLs you entered, but there will be some new ones as well. You now have a very powerful list of valuable keywords related to sites that are willing to pay for them! Click on the “Download these keywords” to your desired text or csv format for safe keeping…this is the list of keywords you will be using to build your affiliate site.
…Next >> Lesson 4 - Research Affiliate Programs
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Affiliate Marketing Apprenticeship Program - Lesson 2/13
written by Anthony Dinh
June 2, 2008 · Posted Under affiliate marketing | blogging | make money online | marketing & advertising · 3 Comments
First, I’d like to say thank-you and congratulate you for joining my Affiliate Marketing Apprenticeship Program. You’ve taken the first step in the right direction towards building a successful online business and financial freedom. This 13-step program is your roadmap to wealth, and it’s jam-packed with invaluable information…no tricks or gimmicks here folks, just solid and proven methods that work! SEO (search engine optimization), copywriting and various internet marketing methods will be covered throughout the tutorial. I suggest that you read through it once, let it soak in, try it out, then go back and read it again because you’ll surely pick up something new that you missed the first time around.
Here’s a breakdown of each lesson for your convenience:
Lesson 1 - Set Your Goal
Lesson 2 - Find Your Niche
Lesson 3 - Keyword Sniping
Lesson 4 - Research Affiliate Programs
Lesson 5 - Build a Website Around Your Keyword
Lesson 6 - Incorporate Affiliate Links in Your Posts
Lesson 7 - Build Quality Backlinks
Lesson 8 - Submit Your Site to Web Directories
Lesson 9 - Submit Your Post to Article Directories
Lesson 10 - Add More Content and Build More Backlinks
Lesson 11 - The Waiting Game
Lesson 12 - Tweak Your Site
Lesson 13 - Scale Your Campaign
Before we begin with “Lesson 2 - Find Your Niche“, please bookmark this page and subscribe to full RSS feed as there are 13 steps, so you definitely won’t want to miss out! If you are just joining us now, be sure to go back and read “Lesson 1 - Set Your Goal“.
Affiliate Marketing Apprenticeship Program
Lesson 2 - Find Your Niche
When selecting a niche, I would start with something that interests you or that you’re knowledgeable about such as cars, sports, fitness, men’s/women’s health, lawn & gardening, wood-working, making money, arts & crafts, pets, baby products, debt consolidation, hiking/camping, traveling, etc. Picking a niche that interests you will make writing content for your page much easier. If you are unsure about what niche to get into, search forums, usergroups and sites like Yahoo! Answers to get some ideas of current hot topics that people are discussing and the kinds of questions that they’re asking.
Secondly, in order to succeed in the already saturated and highly competitive affiliate marketing business, I would recommend that you select a “micro niche” as to avoid having to compete with the giant marketers who are already monopolizing the broader niches. The more specific the niche, the fewer the competition, and the easier it will be to obtain a high ranking (i.e. breast surgery” vs. “breast surgery doctor philadelphia”). In order to identify your potential competitors, simply Google your long tailed “keyword” in quotes and examine the top 10 sites in the results. Alternatively, you can use the PageRank Search tool which will return the top 10 sites along with their page ranks.
Take a look at the sites and ask yourself, can you create a better and more informative site on this topic with more useful information by putting a new spin on it or by approaching it from a different angle? Also, do those sites have a high page rank of say, 5 or higher? If so, it will take a lot of time, effort and innovation in order to be competitive, but it certainly is doable. A couple other things to look for are, do the sites have the keyword in the page title and in the domain name itself? If not, then you may have a good chance of outranking them. 
Lastly, you will need to find out how many incoming links these sites have from external sites. Yahoo offers a nifty SiteExplorer tool which allows you to do this rather easily. The more authoritative the referring site, the more valuable the link due to Google’s weighting system. Simply type in the domain name and click on “Explore URL”. Next, click on “Inlinks” to filter for incoming links only, then select “Except from this Domain” and “Entire Site” to exclude incoming links from the site itself, but to include links to any of the site’s page, not just the default homepage or index page. If your prospective competitors have thousands of incoming links, then be prepared for an uphill battle because they will be very difficult to overtake in ranking.
…Next >> Lesson 3 - Keyword Sniping
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Affiliate Marketing Apprenticeship Program - Lesson 1/13
written by Anthony Dinh
May 30, 2008 · Posted Under affiliate marketing | backlink building | blogging | make money online | marketing & advertising | seo · 1 Comment
First, I’d like to say thank-you and congratulate you for joining my Affiliate Marketing Apprenticeship Program. You’ve taken the first step in the right direction towards building a successful online business and financial freedom. This 13-step program is your roadmap to wealth, and it’s jam-packed with invaluable information…no tricks or gimmicks here folks, just solid and proven methods that work! SEO (search engine optimization), copywriting and various internet marketing methods will be covered throughout the tutorial. I suggest that you read through it once, let it soak in, try it out, then go back and read it again because you’ll surely pick up something new that you missed the first time around.
Here’s a breakdown of each lesson:
Lesson 1 - Set Your Goal
Lesson 2 - Find Your Niche
Lesson 3 - Keyword Sniping
Lesson 4 - Research Affiliate Programs
Lesson 5 - Build a Website Around Your Keyword
Lesson 6 - Incorporate Affiliate Links in Your Posts
Lesson 7 - Build Quality Backlinks
Lesson 8 - Submit Your Site to Web Directories
Lesson 9 - Submit Your Post to Article Directories
Lesson 10 - Add More Content and Build More Backlinks
Lesson 11 - The Waiting Game
Lesson 12 - Tweak Your Site
Lesson 13 - Scale Your Campaign
Before we begin, please bookmark this page and subscribe to full RSS feed as there are 13 steps, so you definitely won’t want to miss out!
Affiliate Marketing Apprenticeship Program
Lesson 1 - Set Your Goal
First, you need to set a goal so you know where you’re going and when you get there. Otherwise, you will be wandering aimlessly, and you’ll have no way of gauging your progress. You don’t get up in the morning and just walk out the door without setting some goals for yourself do you? Subconsciously, we all set goals for ourselves without even realizing it such as making some new business contacts, making a sale or meeting a deadline.
I recommend that you start with a modest goal at first, one that you can achieve relatively easily. Of course, we all want to earn tens of thousands of dollars per month, but a more realistic one would be about $300 a month. If you start off with an unattainable goal, you’re just setting yourself up for failure, and you will probably be discouraged and give up without giving adequate time for your goals to be realized. Once you are consistenly hitting your target for a couple months, then you can certainly aim a bit higher, but taking baby steps until you’ve mastered the process is key.
…Next >> Lesson 2 - Find Your Niche
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Download Peel Away Ads for FREE!
written by Anthony Dinh
May 27, 2008 · Posted Under affiliate marketing | make money online | marketing & advertising · 4 Comments
By now, I’m sure most of you have noticed the nifty little Peel Away Ad feature that has been implemented on various sites around the blogosphere such as on JohnChow.com. This ad unit also goes by the name PageEar, PagePeel, Magic Corner and PeelAd. Basically, the ad is located in the upper right-hand corner, and the full ad is revealed when a user hovers over it to “peel away” the page. Not only is the ad very cool looking, but its also non-intrusive and very effective in increasing campaign CTRs as well. Within an hour of implementing it, John says that five new members signed up for the product that he was promoting.
Normally, the plugin is priced at $127, but you can get it through John’s affiliate code for only $37 which is a huge discount. Today, you won’t even have to spend a single penny because I’m going to tell you how you can download this feature for FREE from WebPicasson.de. The script is pretty robust and will support Wordpress, Joomla and Typo3 content management systems. PageEar has been tested and runs on just about every browser including IE, FireFox, Opera and Safari.
Download
PageEar v1.2a
Installation
- upload the entire ”pageear” directory to your wp-content/plugins folder
- login to your Wordpress control panel and activate PageEar under plugins
- you will now see a ”pageear-config” link under plugins where you can edit the configuration
- make your desired changes and click save
You will need to create two creatives, one thumbnail at 100×100 pixels as a teaser to pique the visitor’s interest, and another at 500×500 pixels for your full banner. The larger 500×500 image will be revealed to display your full ad when a visitor hovers over the 100×100 thumbnail.
Offering this desireable ad space to your advertisers will surely help your blog to generate some extra income. Currently, John is offering this space on his site at the rate of $1000/m, so it goes to show that advertisers are willing to pay a premium price for ads in highly visible areas on well trafficked sites…what are you waiting for? Go install the PageEar plugin and start making some money!
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Web-Reviewers.com - Did You Get Your Free Review? I Did
written by Anthony Dinh
May 23, 2008 · Posted Under backlink building | drive traffic | marketing & advertising · 7 Comments
A couple weeks ago, I posted a blog discussing my thoughts on paid reviews in which I shared with you a handful of sites where you can get your blog reviewed for free. If you missed it, I recommend that you go back and read it at Why Pay for Reviews When You Can Get Them Free. I took advantage of all of these free services, and found that the quality and length of each review varied drastically from a few lines to a full blown, in depth analysis. Some reviews were completed within days, while others are still awaiting their turn in the queue. Regardless, this is free publicity and exposure, so you have nothing to loose, but everything to gain. Not only will you build some strong backlinks from trusted authorities, but you may also get a boost in traffic or even gain some new RSS subscribers.
Of all the reviewers, I liked the one done by PR3 site Web-Reviewers.com the most which was based on my blog’s content and design using their 5 star rating system. The review offered extensive and honest constructive criticism, and it appears that they actually took the time to look around my blog before providing me with some meaningful feedback instead of giving some generic comments. Overall, I received a pretty good report card, scoring a solid 4 stars across the board. Here’s the full review:
Diaries of a Blogger
Archived in the category: UncategorizedPosted by Web-Reviews.com on 21 May 08 -
If you opt to not take advantage of all of these free site reviews, I would recommend that you use the services offered by Web-Reviewers.com at the least. The tips that they provide on the shortcomings of your site and how to improve them will be invaluable.
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