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Affiliate Marketing Apprenticeship Program - Lesson 1/13
written by Anthony Dinh
May 30, 2008 · Filed Under affiliate marketing| backlink building| blogging| make money online| marketing & advertising| seo · 4 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:
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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Web-Reviewers.com - Did You Get Your Free Review? I Did
written by Anthony Dinh
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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Why Pay for Reviews When You Can Get Them FREE?
written by Anthony Dinh
By now, I’m sure most have you have either read or heard about Jason’s previous post “You Are A Moron If You Buy Paid Reviews For Exposure” in which he expresses his disdain towards worthless paid reviews. I was actually in the process of shopping around for a paid review and had narrowed my choices down to a few of the more reknowned bloggers when I came across his post. I was ready to spring for the $500 price tag JohnChow charges per review, but I’m glad I saw this post because it saved me a lot of money! Jason stated that paid reviews don’t convert 90% of the time, and the buzz that they generate is short term, usually only lasting a day or so. Read more about this topic in my follow-up post “Jason Pereira and Fabian Speak Their Minds About Paid Reviews“, where Fabian of SmallFishBigMoney and I also share our views regarding paid reviews.
Insignificant as it may seem, I still however, feel that there’s still some value in the buzz and traffic generated by having your blog reviewed, not to mention the backlinks that you will gain. So, instead of paying for one, I did some research and found a handful of sites where you can get your blog reviewed for free! I’ve used some of these services with positive results, so I just wanted to share them with you so you too can build up your backlinks, increase traffic and hopefully even gain some RSS subscribers.
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Service |
PageRank |
Description |
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PR3 | submit your blog by writing a quick summary, and gain a backlink back to your site. you can also rate or review other blogs for a chance of getting your site featured on their front page. |
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PR4 | just leave Abhinav a comment and he will review your site for free! |
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PR3 | extensive, honest and opinionated site review based on site appeal, content and design using 5 star rating system. gain a backlink to your site as well as tips on how to improve it. |
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PR6 | free reviews, but due to high demand, waiting time may be extensive. $50 donation option available to expedite review within 3 business days. |
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PR3 | a subdomain of UntwistedVortex.com. queue of blogs awaiting review was 13 deep when I signed up and it takes a bit of time to get through the queue, but well worth the wait for some free link love. |
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PR3 | complete 10 question interview, and your blog will be selected for review if they find it interesting. either way, you will gain a backlink. |
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PR0 | free review and link juice with “dofollow” backlinks to your site. |
Keep in mind, these are free services, so the quality may or may not be great, but every little bit helps in building your brand and getting yourself known within the blogosphere. Also, the unbiased opinion of these experts can only serve to make your blog a better place where entrepreneurs come to not only ask questions, but to also learn and grow as they embark on their journey to making money online and financial freedom.
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Keyword Sniping 101
written by Anthony Dinh
key•word snip•ing [kee-wurd snahyp-ing] - noun
1. selecting a keyword, and building a niche site or network of sites around the keyword with the intent of achieving #1 ranking for that keyword.
1. Selecting the Keyword
When deciding on a keyword to snipe, some factors to consider are:
- The more specific the keyword, the more difficult it will be to obtain a high ranking, so keep it broad for now (i.e. breast surgery vs. breast surgery doctor philadelphia).
- Your keyword is searched for 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!
- There’s less 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, etc.)
The daily search volumes and competing pages figures mentioned above are just guidelines that I would stick to until you’re comfortable and have gain more confidence with keyword sniping. Once you achieve #1 ranking for the long-tail keyword, then you can certainly focus on ranking for the bigger 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 are doing here.
2. Sniping the Keyword
- Building a Website/Blog Around the Keyword - In order to successfully target a keyword, you will have to build an entire site or blog around the keyword. 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. Now that you’ve got your domain, the next step would be to either install Wordpress or create your page statically using straight HTML. Just remember that it is much easier to link build and make your site SEO friendly using Wordpress.
- Link Posts Back to the Homepage - You will need to create and publish a minimum of 10 posts surrounding your keyword with some solid content that speaks with authority on the subject matter. Though you are using Wordpress blogging software and your site looks 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.
- Post Requirements - 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.
- Keyword Location and Site Structure - 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.
Once you’ve installed your template, place your keyword in the following locations:
- Page Title: This can be accomplished with the All-In-One SEO Pack plugin. I prefer the “post title | site title” format.
- H1 Tag: The keyword should appear in the H1 tag on all your site pages.
- Footer: The footer should contain a link that points back to your homepage using the keyword as the anchor text.
- 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.
- 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.
- Backlink Methods
There are many ways of creating inbound links to your site, but if you focus your efforts on the following methods, you will surely be able to out-rank all the other sites.
- Varying the Anchor Text: By varying the anchor text while still maintaining your keyword within the links, you will be able to avoid setting off the Google link spamming filter. For instance, if I’m targeting the keyword breast surgery, I can vary the anchor text with words like “breast surgery doctor”, “breast surgery philadelphia”, “about breast surgery”, you get the idea.
- Obtaining Links from Pages About Your Keyword: To achieve this, write an article about your keyword like “What You Should Know About Breast Surgery”, and submit it to a bunch of article distribution sites like Article Marketer or Ezine Articles. Then, use the author profile/bio section to link back to your sight with the desired anchor text. Also, you can start forum discussion threads about your keyword and then link back to your site using your signature.
- Obtaining Links from Other Types of Pages: Though not as effective as getting links from pages pertaining to your keyword, getting links from other pages will still contribute to your ranking to an extent. You can comment on other blogs that don’t pertain to your keyword and use your brand to link back to your homepage, but keep it mind that some authors may ban you for keyword stuffing their comments, so use it sparingly. Also, this method will only work if the author has disabled the “nofollow” feature.
- For more tricks on building backlinks, check out Courtney Tuttle’s “102 Ways to Make Your Site a Backlink Superstar“.
As far as timeline goes, getting ranked for a used keyword based site can vary, but you should have no problem achieving it within 1-2 month’s time. Getting ranked for a brand new site, on the other hand, may or may not take more time. There’s simply just too many variables to tell, like the number of existing competing pages for your keyword, so starting off with a single, long-tail keyword would be the route to take. Once your’e comfortable with the whole process, you can go for the gold and start targeting bigger keywords. If you follow the steps that I’ve outlined here, you should have no problem achieving a high rank for your keyword and blowing your competition out of the water!
* source: CourteyTuttle.com
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