Success sometimes comes slowly. About a year ago I was posting step by step guidelines to easily build a free, yet effective affiliate marketing website. You can go back and find the series called IM101: here - Start Internet Marketing with EPIC Steps and here - Finding Your First Product to Market. (Go back and read all seven of the articles if you want more information).
So you may have wondered why I haven't written about this example in about 1 full year. The reason is pure patience. My example was a very low key, simple content driven site focused specifically on a Clickbank dieting product that I personally purchased, read, and endorse. I spent about 8 to 16 hours total last January and just left the site pretty much alone except for publishing a few more articles that I thought were good material and pertinent to the product.
Well, as you probably know, content sites do take some time to rise up the search engine ranks especially if you haven't focused on building out the site daily. Nevertheless, if you are really intent to learn how to make money online keep on reading.
Patience pays off! Last December something happened. This affiliate site landed at #4 in Yahoo for the keyword search phrases I noted in the series. By the end of this January I had pulled in hundreds of dollars in about 6 weeks. And, the best part is, the marketing was absolutely free - I did not pay a penny to build it out (I only spent the money to buy the product myself - something I think good affiliates should do).
Let's go back and analyze specifically the steps I went through to build out a free, and simple affiliate web site.
1. Finding the Product - I used both Clickbank.com and CBEngine.com to find a product that I personally wanted to market. I specifically focused on newer products that may start to grow rather than older, existing products that would have significant affiliate competition. You don't want to work with a fading product - focus on rising products.
2. Keyword Analysis - I then analyzed my product and associated keywords and defined the three to four long-tail keyword phrases I wanted the search engines to discover. This is essential and should stay fixed once your research is done.
3. Marketing Blog - I created the Blogger name and description with my main keyword phrase as a holding point until I had enough content to publish. Blogger is free, simple and an excellent choice for affiliate work.
4. Author Interview - I contacted the ebook author introducing myself and asking if I may send her an email interview question list. (Most ebook authors will jump at the chance especially if their product is fairly new). This is a fantastic source of original, free content that you don't even have to write.
5. Product Review - I then wrote my first content article which was a personal review of the the ebook.
Ok, at this point let's review what I had in hand - a sellable product, four keyword phrases selected, a blog with the names reserved, and two key content articles (an interview and a review). Let's keep going:
6. Adding Content - I decided to write two more 500-600 word articles and then collected some more from the author (some will provide affiliate content for you - granted it is not original since others may share it - but, you can still use some of it)
7. Site Design - This is always the time consuming part. I spent a few hours tweaking the Blogger site design to my liking.
8. Publishing the Content - I published the two original articles, one new article and two of the article provided by the author to my new affiliate blog. I left one article for publishing to an external article directory (Ezinearticles.com)
9. Email List - Using some of the content provided by the author I then created a small set of emails for my list going forward.
The site was now ready. You can see that getting the basic building blocks together provided a basis going forward to build off of. Over the year (in this case 2009) I added 4 or 5 articles and really just let the site sit. Once the search engines let me out of their sandbox, the site was good to go!
And, after about 12 months - a winner with very low effort. Image now that you had ten of these sites (yes, I do have more) - how much would you be pulling in a day?
So you may have wondered why I haven't written about this example in about 1 full year. The reason is pure patience. My example was a very low key, simple content driven site focused specifically on a Clickbank dieting product that I personally purchased, read, and endorse. I spent about 8 to 16 hours total last January and just left the site pretty much alone except for publishing a few more articles that I thought were good material and pertinent to the product.Well, as you probably know, content sites do take some time to rise up the search engine ranks especially if you haven't focused on building out the site daily. Nevertheless, if you are really intent to learn how to make money online keep on reading.
Patience pays off! Last December something happened. This affiliate site landed at #4 in Yahoo for the keyword search phrases I noted in the series. By the end of this January I had pulled in hundreds of dollars in about 6 weeks. And, the best part is, the marketing was absolutely free - I did not pay a penny to build it out (I only spent the money to buy the product myself - something I think good affiliates should do).
Let's go back and analyze specifically the steps I went through to build out a free, and simple affiliate web site.
1. Finding the Product - I used both Clickbank.com and CBEngine.com to find a product that I personally wanted to market. I specifically focused on newer products that may start to grow rather than older, existing products that would have significant affiliate competition. You don't want to work with a fading product - focus on rising products.
2. Keyword Analysis - I then analyzed my product and associated keywords and defined the three to four long-tail keyword phrases I wanted the search engines to discover. This is essential and should stay fixed once your research is done.
3. Marketing Blog - I created the Blogger name and description with my main keyword phrase as a holding point until I had enough content to publish. Blogger is free, simple and an excellent choice for affiliate work.
4. Author Interview - I contacted the ebook author introducing myself and asking if I may send her an email interview question list. (Most ebook authors will jump at the chance especially if their product is fairly new). This is a fantastic source of original, free content that you don't even have to write.
5. Product Review - I then wrote my first content article which was a personal review of the the ebook.
Ok, at this point let's review what I had in hand - a sellable product, four keyword phrases selected, a blog with the names reserved, and two key content articles (an interview and a review). Let's keep going:
6. Adding Content - I decided to write two more 500-600 word articles and then collected some more from the author (some will provide affiliate content for you - granted it is not original since others may share it - but, you can still use some of it)
7. Site Design - This is always the time consuming part. I spent a few hours tweaking the Blogger site design to my liking.
8. Publishing the Content - I published the two original articles, one new article and two of the article provided by the author to my new affiliate blog. I left one article for publishing to an external article directory (Ezinearticles.com)
9. Email List - Using some of the content provided by the author I then created a small set of emails for my list going forward.
The site was now ready. You can see that getting the basic building blocks together provided a basis going forward to build off of. Over the year (in this case 2009) I added 4 or 5 articles and really just let the site sit. Once the search engines let me out of their sandbox, the site was good to go!
And, after about 12 months - a winner with very low effort. Image now that you had ten of these sites (yes, I do have more) - how much would you be pulling in a day?
{3 comments}:
Hi Don,
I appreciate your blog a lot, and I have a question. I use your affiliate link cloaker quite a bit. Do you know of any way to append data - like a zip code - to a cloaked url?
Thanks,
Tom Dunn
Patience is certainly important when it comes to successful affiliate marketing.
Excellent article. Thanks for sharing your affiliate marketing tips.
To really earn money from affiliate marketing, provide your visitors with strong and engaging content that will keep them coming back again and again, thus driving more traffic to your site. That valuable content on your blog will encourage them to take action in the end such as buying your product. The more visitors you get, the more money you could potentially make.
Post a Comment