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Internet Marketing > Weekly
Tips > SSWT 12/15/04
Step-by-Step
Blueprint for
Creating Affiliate Sites
I've
had quite an interesting week so far, which started with my laptop
refusing to load Windows first thing on Monday morning. While
I do have 3 computers here in the office... ALL of my data happens
to be on my laptop. You can imagine my response <gasp!>
hehe.
Anyway,
there went all of the great tips & resources that I had put
together to share with you in this week's issue. Right out the
window, along with: my contact database, task list, client data
and emails. No problem, really - I'll get the data recovered and
be back in the swing of things in a few days.
In
the meantime, I'd like to share with you the material that I am
studying this week - and a bit about my "secret site".
If you've been following my
blog you already have a general idea of how well this project
has been going. But I was prompted by a frequent reader to give
*more* details... as in "step-by-step, can you show me how
to do this, too?".
"Sure!"
And
so, in this week's issue, I'll begin to lay out the step-by-step
blueprint of my affiliate-based website... one you can easily
copy, and use to create your own profitable venture!
First,
though, there are 2 Downloads -both free- that I really (*really*)
encourage you to grab and read. You can get the quick scoop on
those here:
If you havent yet downloaded it, and read every single word...
drop everything and go grab John
Reese's latest issue of Marketing Secrets (PDF format - free).
Plus:
"Discovered!
Success Secrets..." This is a great new manual, with
full reprint rights - plus a 60 minute Teleconference included!
(A VERY Good Read!)
Again, both are free to download - and contain exceptionally good
content... with tons of tips, resources and things that will undoubtedly
provoke some money-making thoughts!
About the "secret site"...
It's
not really a secret. It's simply a website that I am working on
"behind the scenes" that has nothing at all to do with
Internet Marketing. Actually, I have a lot of projects that I
work on outside of SSWT. In fact, most of the things that I share
with you here in the weekly newsletter are a result of the projects
that I am working on - and having success with. Such as PPC, Affiliate
Marketing, SEO, RSS, Blogging... etc.
Rosalind
Gardner's primary source of income is her Dating Sites. AFTER
becoming successful, she wrote The
Super Affiliate Handbook and began publishing a newsletter
via email. I would be willing to bet that her Dating Sites STILL
out-perform her Internet Marketing ventures. And that's the way
it *should* be.
When
I began blogging earlier this year, I started sharing some of
the details of my projects. Goals, progress, resources - obstacles,
thoughts, brainstorming. I find it to be a terrific way to document
my progress and really think things out... and it's also turned
out to be a great resource for others.
So
now you have a bit more background about me, and what it is that
I DO. Contrary to popular belief, I dont 'make my living' sharing
these details. My primary income is a result of putting them into
ACTION ;)
Most of the people that have inquired about it dont mind that
I prefer not to share the theme or topic of the site... they just
want to know HOW I did it - step by step.
How I created & promoted this affiliate-based site
"How did you decide or know which product to become an
affiliate for?"
The concept for the site was initially planted at a Seminar I
attended earlier this year. It wasnt a specific presentation,
but more of a single comment that was made that stuck in my mind.
Over the next several months, it just sort of sat idle there in
the back of my mind... but I was aware of it, and finally decided
to make a move on it.
Actually,
to backtrack, I did have some experience promoting an affiliate
program to the type of market I would be targeting. It was one
of the first group of pay-per-click campaigns that I tested, and
also a program that I used to get some hands-on experience with
SEO.
Having
had a small bit of success with it, combined with this comment
that struck me as interesting - with some definite potential,
I imagined that a full-blown website would do very well.
---> Go back to John Reese's latest issue of Marketing Secrets,
and re-read the section where he talks about turning "Underachiever
Sites" into "Overachievers". If you're familiar
with these terms, a huge lightbulb should go off! But even if
you're not, the point is not lost... it makes sense to "put
out a feeler" before spending long hours, days or even months
putting a project together!
Research
is GOOD, but experience - and a bit of success - with the market
can really give you an edge!
Finding an Affiliate Program to work with, or coming up with your
own idea for a product-based website, is the easy part. Honestly,
it is. You can simply visit one of the many Affiliate Networks
on the internet, and browse through the programs until you find
one that catches your interest. Or you could just as easily start
with something YOU are passionate about or experienced with. All
you have to do is PICK a topic, or a product - and you can fine
tune your plans for the project from there ;)
It started as an idea. I tested it on a very small scale. I began
to see potential in marketing these types of products on a larger
scale.
However,
I knew that the market was VERY competitive - both online and
offline.
BUT - Competition is GOOD. Often, when people think of a great
idea for a website - or any type of business, they are immediately
put off by the amount of competition. DO NOT let that deter you.
I'll share with you how I am using the amount of competition to
my advantage on this particular project...
The
First Step --> Research
Once you get an idea in mind, you can easily determine whether
it has profit potential. Your very first step is Keyword Research.
There
are a lot of tools that you can use, and a variety of ways that
you can accomplish the task. I'll share with you what works for
me...
I
use a combination of WordTracker
and Keywords
Analyzer.
Keywords
Analyzer accesses the Overture database, and is an *excellent*
brainstorming tool. It not only shows you the number of searches
for any given keyword or phrase, but also shows you the number
of results (web pages) in the search engines - AND the number
of Adwords & Overture pay-per-click campaigns that are currently
running for that keyword/phrase.
And
actually - this is just a TASTE of what kind of data you can pull
from the program. You can even analyze the PPC Ads that are running
on Adwords and Overture for each of the keywords: see the headlines
they are using, the URL's of their landing pages, etc. As you
can imagine, this is helpful in determining if most of the competing
advertisers are promoting the same product ;)
(If
you are researching keywords for a PPC campaign, you can also
wrap all of your keywords in "quotes" and [brackets]
... from right within the Keywords Analyzer program!)
You will get a very good idea about the profit potential of any
product or market - in a matter of minutes... and "at a glance".
Quite literally, it will show you hundreds of related keywords
& phrases - and enough data to get a basic idea of how steep
the competition is... or not.
Chris set
up a web page awhile back where you can get a $14 discount
on Keywords Analyzer, and I just noticed that the page is still
up: www.selfstartersweeklytips.com/special.htm
I
can't guarantee how long you will be able to order KA at the discounted
price, as that offer was made last month... but while it's available,
you might as well take advantage of it if you were planning on
getting a copy ;)
You
can access WordTracker's Free Trial here
I generally start with the Free Trial at WordTracker. I type in
the most general keyword related to the topic or the product that
I am researching. This gives me an idea of whether I want to dig
deeper into the research, or drop it and choose another product/topic
altogether.
That
intitial decision is easy: I am looking for a decent number of
searches (ie how many people are looking for this product, or
searching for things on this topic)... and I am looking for a
good selection of keywords/phrases used.
--> At this point in the process, I am *completely* open-minded.
I may or may not have chosen a product or an affiliate program
- - or I may have already chosen the product, and am looking for
a market or an angle from which to promote it. It simply does
not matter, as there is no wrong way to do this.
Pick
a word - any word - and dig in!
Let me give you an example. Off the top of my head, I'll pick
"beanie babies". When you type this in to WordTracker's
free trial, these are the results that you get:
beanie babies 1323
ty beanie babies 317
sell beanie babies 83
selling beanie babies 62
price guide for beanie babies 52
value of beanie babies 44
beanie babies value 41
beanie babies price list 40
how many beanie babies are there 30
beanie babies current value 26
buying beanie babies 24
beanie babies values 23
beanie babies for sale 22
ty beanie babies canada 22
uk beanie babies 22
My thoughts:
Looking
over the list as a whole, it seems to me that most people are
interested in selling their beanie babies, or finding out the
current value of their collection. You can usually get a pretty
good idea of what the 'majority' are "thinking" when
they use certain search terms by looking at a group of related
keywords like this.
I
also noticed that aside from the general search term (beanie babies,
with over a thousand searches a day), the search numbers drop
off dramatically. There's not a lot of room for "digging
deeper" here, obviously.
Out of curiosity, I checked "beanie babies" on Google
The
first result is Ty's official site.
The first Adwords ad that I see is:
All Beanie Babies Cheap
Beanies as low as $.99. All
TY In Stock. Orders Ship Same day
beaniewonderland.com/
Pretty tough
competition for a limited market. I would either a) drop
it and move on, or b) come up with a very creative
way for people to cash in on this 'dead hot market' - and develop
or promote from that angle.
Let's look at another one. This time I'll do "tv" -
and I'll tell you why. For the last several months I've noticed
a growing number of commercials on television about new TV's.
Now, I'm not a "tv person", so forgive my ignorance
- but one that comes to mind is the flat one that looks like a
picture hanging on the wall, and it has an ambience color effect.
Here
it is - I found it by searching 'ambience color effect tv flat'
on Google:
http://www.audioholics.com/cedia/cedia2004/philipsLCDambilight.php
(You
can laugh at me now, I dont mind :p)
Anyway, in addition to those commercials... I noticed a whole
new section at Wal-Mart for these flat TV's in their electronics
department - and it was a very large and prominent display.
Anytime
I see media and local retailers promoting the same type of products,
I pay attention. They pay BIG dollars to get consumers interested...
and you can easily step in and capitalize on this situation, where
the buyers are "pre-sold" and coming online to get more
information and find the best deals!
Back to the keywords, when I type "tv" into WordTracker's
Free Trial, I see:
direct tv 9793
tv guide 8106
court tv 4827
tv listings 4537
tv 3478
as.seen.on.tv 2888
plasma tv 2566
satellite tv 2099
food tv 2091
lcd tv 1867
mad tv 1832
internet tv 1562
tv stands 1508
dish tv 1424
fox tv 1292
And I'll also go back and check the results for "television":
television 8888
televisions 1446
television without pity 486
interactive television 466
abc television 450
television reviews 424
television listings 417
internet television 379
lcd television 375
lcd televisions 349
plasma television 340
reality television 334
plasma televisions 298
television schedule 288
sony televisions 284
There is obviously PLENTY of room to "dig deeper" and
research each of those terms individually. My next step, before
immersing myself into days and days of in-depth Keyword Research,
would be to make sure there is an Affiliate Program of some sort
related to the topic.
I head straight to Google and type in: "plasma tv"+affiliate
The
reason that I typed it in that way is because "tv affiliate"
is going to bring up a lot of results about 'network affiliates'
and 'tv affiliates' that have nothing to do with Affiliate Programs.
So I chose "plasma tv" (putting it in quotes to tell
Google to look for the entire phrase - not just the two words
individually) and added "+affiliate" (with no spaces)
to tell Google that I wanted to see web pages that contained "plasma
tv" and "affiliate" within their content.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=%22plasma+tv%22%2Baffiliate
Bingo!
So you have a market, and you have Affiliate Programs. And you
can determine all of that in under 10 minutes!
Next, you would look over several of the Affiliate Programs and
determine which offers the best products, the best payouts, etc.
You can compare this to the search terms you found at WordTracker,
too, as you go... and then choose the program that you feel would
convert well, that already has a decent demand, and that has a
decent commission rate.
Now you are
ready to REALLY dig in to your Keyword Research. You need to find
out if you should promote a certain brand of television. A certain
type of television. Whether you should promote it via PPC, or
build a specific kind of website so that you can promote the products
via free search engine listings.
In
this next step, you'll really begin to dig into the keywords,
and then work from there into Competition Analysis. By the time
you look at this topic/product from EVERY angle, you will KNOW
what your next step should be.
I'll tell you what I found when I was doing the research for my
newest site. I found that there were A LOT of web pages for each
of the keywords I looked at. I also found that there were A LOT
of pay-per-click ads running for those keywords. I temporarily
marked PPC off of my list - pending more in-depth research - and
took a closer look at the SERPs (search engine results pages -
or free listings on Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc).
What
I found: Most of the web pages were very poorly optimized, and
looked like homemade "geocities"-type websites. It wasnt
nearly as competitive as it first appeared. In fact, after more
research... it was going to be downright EASY to get Top 10 listings
for most of my keywords.
In fact, ANYONE - with no prior experience whatsoever - could
grab a cheap website template from BasicTemplates.com
and create a better website than most that I found.
I'll close for now, and in next week's issue we'll talk more about
in-depth Keyword Research and Competition Analysis, and how to
begin using it all to create your website or advertising campaign.
I'll
show you how to determine the best angle from which to enter a
market (even a supposedly "saturated market"), and how
to out-perform your competitors!
Until then, I've included the links to each of my Blog posts regarding
my current project - listed in order of date posted. You can read
along from idea, to implementation, to search engine indexing
(within 5 days)... to when the sales began:
http://clicknewz.blogspot.com/2004/11/3-site-project.html
http://clicknewz.blogspot.com/2004/11/motivation-multi-tasking.html
http://clicknewz.blogspot.com/2004/11/research-effort-reward.html
http://clicknewz.blogspot.com/2004/11/back-to-work.html
http://clicknewz.blogspot.com/2004/11/google-wins.html
http://clicknewz.blogspot.com/2004/11/morning-after.html
http://clicknewz.blogspot.com/2004/11/my-first-sale.html
http://clicknewz.blogspot.com/2004/11/rss-brainstorming.html
http://clicknewz.blogspot.com/2004/11/msn-search.html
http://clicknewz.blogspot.com/2004/11/mailing-lists-rss-feeds.html
http://clicknewz.blogspot.com/2004/12/google-sends-buyers.html
http://clicknewz.blogspot.com/2004/12/quick-update.html
http://clicknewz.blogspot.com/2004/12/best-internet-directories.html
http://clicknewz.blogspot.com/2004/12/sales-continue.html
http://clicknewz.blogspot.com/2004/12/secret-site.html
Have a Super-Profitable Week!!
