Yesterday, I attended the IANteract NJ Meetup: 2nd Edition at Panera Bread in Edison, NJ, and I had the pleasure of meeting some really cool affiliate masterminds in the flesh.  I’m really glad that I went because I walked away with some really good tips on how split test, track camps, and how to market by using polls, not to mention I made some invaluable contacts as well.  Afterwards, Ian, Peter Hall, Erik Ahlgren, Ad Hustler, Benny Tejada and myself headed on over to Champs to grab a bite, have some drinks, and to continue our discussion on affiliate marketing.

Here’s a shot of the gang, we actually had about 17 attendees, but this was taken towards the very end, so some people had already left.

(Ian Fernando, Ron, Ad Hustler, Erik Ahlgren, me, Kenrick, Thiago Prado, Peter Hall)

See everyone at the next meetup!

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A few weeks ago, I started running some campaigns on Myspace, and I noticed that my clicks weren’t tracking correctly as there was a disparity between the click counts that Myspace was reporting and what Market Leverage’s system was reporting.  I the contacted Chelsea Osoling, my affilate manager, who confirmed that they indeed were having issues with their tracking system.  After hearing this, I immediately became concerned because I was getting some decent CTR’s, but no conversions.  So, I asked Chelsea to check if the conversions where tracking correctly, and she assured me that everything was working fine with the conversions tracking system.

A couple days had passed, and I still wasn’t seeing any conversions, so I asked Chelsea if they could create a test lead to see if the campaign conversion was tracking correctly.  She said that they couldn’t do this on their end, but that I was more than welcome to run a test for myself if I wanted…and this is where the nightmare began!  The product I decided to test was “Easy Profit Shortcuts”.  I filled out the registration form, and even paid $2.97 shipping for a CD that was supposed to arrive in the mail in a few days.

After completing the purchase, it said that I could get started right away, and I was taken to http://www.easyprofitshortcuts.com where I was supposed to logon…but wait, there was a problem.   At no point during the registration process was I prompted to create a user account, nor was I automatically assigned one via email.  There wasn’t even a register or create account button, so I decided to try the “forgot password” link, but to no avail.  Instead of prompting for an email, it asked for a username, which I did not have.  I tried using my email anyway just in case, and instead of getting an error like “sorry, username does not exist”, the page completely errored out with some XML errors.  At this point, I was starting to question the legitimacy of this offer, so I pinged Chelsea on AIM, and she said that she would notify an Ad Manager who will look into it.

The following day, I followed up with Chelsea on the issue, but she said that the advertiser has not responded yet.  7 days later, I received the CD.  There was an insert which said to logon at https://easyprofitshortcuts.com/Login.aspx, and to click on the “forgot password” link if you forgot your username or password.  I wasn’t surprised that this page didn’t even exist, and that I got an HTTP 404 error when I tried accessing it.  I continued reading the insert and a bit further down, it stated, “you received a 14 Day Free Trial Membership in the Easy Profits Shortcuts Club.  After your free trial ends, we’ll bill $39.99 for your membership fee each month, etc.”…WAIT, what?  I don’t remember reading that disclaimer anywhere when I registered!  I immediately inserted the CD to see if I could find any support email or phone number I could call to cancel my “membership” immediately, and you will never guess what happened…it FREAKIN hung my machine!

At this point, I was furious and my suspicion was pretty much confirmed, I HAD BEEN WAMBOOOOZLED!!  I messaged Chelsea to tell her everything that had happened, and this was her response:

[09:56] AThoDinh: this is an unacceptable offer, uve got to help me fix this issue!
[09:57] mktlvgchelsea: cancel it
[09:57] AThoDinh: i cant even login
[09:57] mktlvgchelsea: call them
[09:57] mktlvgchelsea: shouldnt there be a number with all of your stuff you received
[09:57] AThoDinh: theres no number
[09:57] mktlvgchelsea: email them
[09:57] mktlvgchelsea: there should be some kind of contact
[09:57] AThoDinh: heres my problem…u guys r supporting a bogus offer
[09:57] mktlvgchelsea: i reached out the ad manager but theyre traveling so if you have another alternative it might be quicker
[09:58] mktlvgchelsea: well i did my part i will follow up again
[09:58] mktlvgchelsea: but what else can i do?

What else can you do?  That’s when I demanded to speak to a manager, like pronto!  Kyle McCall, one of the Senior Affiliate Managers, hopped on.  Kyle provided me with an email as well as a link https://secure.secureorderpages.com/_includes/tos_profits.aspx to the advertiser’s terms and conditions, and asked me try contacting them.  He said that, “sometimes advertisers do some shady things”, so I asked him, then why would a reputable company like Market Leverage even conduct business with them and not just drop them from the network?  His response was, “well we have a legal team that goes through all of our offers but sometimes things can slip through the cracks, check in with the advertiser and let me know if you have any other questions”.  Later that day, I told Kyle that I had tried emailing the advertiser at support@easyprofitshortcuts.com, and you guessed it…it came back UNDELIVERABLE!  He requested that I email him my full contact information, and he was going to have the advertiser contact me directly.

The next day, I followed up with Kyle, and he said that the Ad Manager in charge of the account was away and that she’d be back in the office the following day.  He suggested that I send them a cancellation letter via snail mail to be safe…you’re kidding right?  Not only does the trial end in 4 days and I will be automatically charged the $39.99 monthly fee, but everything we’ve tried up to this point has lead to a dead end, so what makes you think that they will even reply to my letter?  In case you’ve lossed track by now, let me outline the number of RED flags that I’ve encountered with this whole offer:

1. cannot login, no username/password provided
2. “forgot password” feature is useless and returns XML errors
3. sneaky 14 Day Trial, and $39.99 automatic monthly charge
4. no telephone number/email provided to customer
5. support email provided by Market Leverage comes back undeliverable
6. login page provided with CD insert doesn’t even exist and returns HTTP 404 error
7. CD opens Flash but does absolutely nothing and even hangs my machine

Let’s see, I encountered 7 RED flags, and everywhere I looked was a dead end.  How on earth did this offer even make it through to your network?  So much for Market Leverage’s “Legal Team”, they’ve failed horribly on this one, they deserve a big fat “F” for Fucken Sucks!  Whoever reviewed this offer should be fired, how freakin incompetent can you be!?  This offer has SCAAAAMM written all over it!

3 days left until the trial offer ends, and again I follow-up with Kyle on the status of what is starting to become a total headache.  He was busy, so I messaged Chelsea to see if they’ve made any progress in contacting the advertiser.  “Not yet, we are still waiting on a call back, we have called the advertiser several times”…surpise, surprise…NOT REALLY!  Geeee, I wonder why the advertiser isn’t answering your calls, hmmmm?!  Chelsea said that they’d definitely let me know as soon as they have any word from the advertiser.  I’m a very patient kinda person, but comon now, you’ve been giving me the same line for the past few days now!

I emphasized that the trial was ending in 3 days, and I wanted to know what recourse I would have if they started charging me $39.99 every month.  I felt if they did their due diligence and peformed the required checks, then they should be held accountable.  Chelsea asked me for a confirmation number, and I told her that I did not receive one, therefore I had no record of the sale.  I told her that I had the CD in hand and that my bank statement reflects the purchase, so I sent her a screenshot of that for proof.  She told me that they’d reimburse me if I were to get charged, and that they’ve a “good” relationship with the advertiser.  Well, think about it, they purposely give you no way of contacting them or any way to cancel your membership.  So, of course the poor customers who have been scammed have nowhere to turn, and that’s why you never hear of anything like this happening.  Fortunately, for me, I happen to be an ad publisher, so I know the correct channels to go through.  I know that Market Leverage will refund me, so I wasn’t really concerned with that aspect, but my frustration was the lack of due diligence by their legal team.  God knows how many poor people are being charged these obscene monthly fees because they don’t have any way of cancelling it.  To me, this is very unethical business conduct, and very BLACK HAT!

Today is day 14, the last day of my 14-day trial period.  I messaged Kyle, again he was busy and didn’t reply, so I checked with Chelsea to see if she had any updates.  Apparently, both the Ad Manager in charge of this account as well as a Senior Affiliate Manager have been making multiple attempts to contact the advertiser, but none of their calls have been returned.  I find it very ironic that this advertiser with whom you claim to have a “very good” relationship has been dodging you all of the sudden for the past 2 weeks.  I really hope that you will reconsider continuing your business relationship with them, and hopefully you will drop them from the network.  Personally, I can’t understand why a reputable company would want to even run the risk of hurting it’s image by associating with such a fraudulent advertiser.  They’re out there scamming people everyday, and by doing business with them, your basically enabling their efforts, therefore it makes you just as guilty and accountable!  Obviously, this issue is not going to be resolved today, so I guess I can look forward to a $39.99 monthly fee on my next credit card statement…thank’s Market Leverage!

Stay tuned guys, I’ll keep you posted with any updates and the final outcome of this whole ordeal…let me know if you’ve had any negative experiences with advertisers like this!  Here’s the advertiser’s info if you’re interested…STAY AWAY!

support@easyprofitshortcuts.com

Mining Gold Corporation
No. 348
3780 Old Norcross Road, Suite 103
Duluth, GA 30096

 ** Find this post useful or entertaining? Then please consider subscribing to my full RSS feed or have new posts sent directly to your to email. **

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 5 - Build a Website Around Your Keyword“, 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 5 - Build a Website Around Your Keyword

After you’ve selected your niche and researched some affiliate products, it’s time to start building an interesting and informative site entirely around the keyword(s) that you’ve sniped from Lesson 3 - Keyword Sniping to promote these products.  The structure of your site must be built correctly in order to achieve SEO optimization and higher ranking, so it’s important that you chose an SEO friendly template.  Courtney Tuttle offers a few nice ones that I would recommend.  Remember, a quality affiliate site should be rich with content and keywords, be SEO friendly, and should help the visitor make an informed decision between one of two products to purchase.

You will need to create and publish a minimum of 10 posts surrounding your keyword and product with some solid content that speaks with authority on the subject matter.  Before you do this, you will have to purchase a domain, preferably one which contains your keyword.  This will definitely help you rank higher for the keyword, not to mention it will be much easier to sell the domain in the future if you ever choose to do so.  If you’re able to find a used domain on TDNam.com that contains your keyword, it would make getting ranked significantly easier and much quicker as the domain has already been indexed and backlinked by other sites.  Additionally, a domain that’s been live for awhile will help you in avoiding Google’s notorious “sandbox effect”.  If budget is an issue, you can also opt to use a free Blogger sub-domain.  I currently register and host all my domains with IX Webhosting, so I would definitely recommend them for your hosting solutions.

Now that you’ve got your domain, the next step would be to either install Wordpress or create your page statically using straight HTML if you are proficient at coding.  Just remember that it is much easier to link build and make your site SEO friendly using Wordpress.  Though you probably will be using Wordpress blogging software and your site will look like a blog, the difference is that you won’t have to post regularly as you would with a typical blog.  As a matter of fact, I would suggest removing all post dates as the information you provide should not appear to be dated in the readers’ eyes.  Be sure to use a nice, clear headline that catches the reader’s attention and compels him or her to click on your product.  Also, including social proof, testimonials and screenshots will help in convincing the visitor that your solution works and it’s what they’re looking for.

Each of your 10 posts should be at least 300 words and contain a keyword anchor text link back to the homepage which also contains the keyword.  It may seem like a daunting task to write 10 posts about the keyword, but you can simply Google for the keyword to get some ideas, but don’t copy or steal the content!  Linking each of your posts back to the homepage with the keyword anchor will help your homepage rank by giving it more internal and external links with the keyword anchor text.  The external links come into play in the event that an aggregator or scraper site steals your content, there will always be a keyword anchor link which points back to your homepage.

Once you’ve installed your template, place your keyword in the following locations.  Doing so will ensure that your site will be well optimized. 

1. Page Title: This can be accomplished with the All-In-One SEO Pack plugin.  I prefer the “post title | site title” format.
2. H1 Tag: The keyword should appear in the H1 tag on all your site pages.
3. Footer: The footer should contain a link that points back to your homepage using the keyword as the anchor text.
4. Inpost Link: As mentioned above, each of your 10 posts should contain a link back to your homepage with the keyword as the achor text.
5. Homepage:  Ideally, your keyword should appear about 6-7 times on your homepage, but this is usually covered by virtue of the links that you’ve placed within each post.  Being the homepage, it will get ranked for your keyword, so be sure that your keyword appears on it enough times.  To avoid tripping off Google’s spam filter, your homepage should contain at least 1000 words, this should be covered if you have 4 posts with a minimum of 300 words each.

For those of you who are less technically inclined and wish to simplify things by automating that whole process, I would recommend using Ken Evoy’s Site Build It (SBI) software.

SBI is an all-in-one program that will enable you to build, host and promote your site all from a single location.  Once you’ve built your page(s), SBI will teach you how to optimize them so that they are SEO friendly simply by clicking on the “Analyze It” button.  Its comprehensive manual, step-by-step Action Guide and user forum are invaluable and will surely get you started on the right track to success.  SBI will help you simplify the process which will save you some valuable time so you can focus on the more important aspects of building your site, such as writing interesting and informative content. 

To learn more about Site Build It, I highly recommend watching the video tour below.

VIDEO TOUR

** Find this post useful or entertaining? Then please consider subscribing to my full RSS feed or have new posts sent directly to your to email. **

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 4 - Research Affiliate Programs“, 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 4 - Research Affiliate Programs

Once you’ve selected the niche that you want to write about, you’ll need to research for some affiliate products which suit your topic.  When selecting an affiliate program, some things to consider are:

• variety of ads/product offerings
• merchant reputation
• sub-affiliate/publisher referral programs
• commission payout percentages; two merchants may offer the same product, but one might offer 10% commission while the other offers 30%
• payout minimum and frequency (weekly vs. quarterly, etc.)
• payment methods (paypal, check, bank transfer, etc.)
• timeliness of commission payments
• technical support and assistance in promoting products
• means of tracking sales/visitors referred through daily/weekly reports, dashboard, emails, etc.
• lifetime/residual commissions where you earn repeat commissions when your customer(s) make future purchases

For those of you who are unsure of where to start, I would recommend the following affiliate networks.  I’ve already done the research and am currently using these programs, so the hard part’s already done for you!

• Market Leverage - Ad Network
• ClickBank - digital products
• Commission Junction - Ad Network

Market Leverage is one of my favorites for many reasons.  Not only do they offer a huge ad inventory to choose from, but their no-hassle payments come quickly via FedEx on a weekly basis if the minimum is met.  Also, their affiliate managers are very responsive and will quickly answer any technical questions that you may have regarding the program or any of their products.  When you refer other publishers to the network, you will earn 5% of their commissions for life!

Just to give you an idea of the huge CPA (cost-per-action/lead) commissions offered by Market Leverage, here are some of the ads that they offer.  Often, the users don’t even have to make a purchase, they just need to simply complete the opt-in information and you get paid! 

1. Government Funding Solutions (grant offer that gives users a free CD on possible grant opportunities) - Pays $25 CPA

2. Tri Slim (weight loss product that will burn fat fast, suppress their appetite, boost their metabolism, increase energy, and begins working instantly! They pay only S&H on a 15 day supply free bottle) - Pays $28 CPA

3. Easy Google Cash (Google is where it’s at! Add this offer to your Biz-Op rotation today!) - Pays $25 CPA

…Next >> Lesson 5 - Build a Website Around Your Keyword

 ** Find this post useful or entertaining? Then please consider subscribing to my full RSS feed or have new posts sent directly to your to email. **

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

 ** Find this post useful or entertaining? Then please consider subscribing to my full RSS feed or have new posts sent directly to your to email. **

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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