Affiliate Marketing Blueprint 2
Ok in Affiliate Marketing 1 we came up with a basic Blueprint that lists a plan of action. We have a starting point, and a Step-by-Step Guide to an end. We then evaluate to see if any changes are needed. If not we repeat the process.
Finding A Product
The first step in the process is finding a product, if you don’t already have one. There are four basic places for you to find a product, or you can type into a search engine your topic and add the words Affiliate Program after it. For our time here though we will concentrate on the four major players in the Affiliate Marketing arena for products. If you really want to make your Niche search easy there is a tool called Micro Niche Finder, which will allow you to find little known Under-the-Radar Niche Markets. Here are the links to search for a product or Affiliate Program that you would like to promote.
If you have Your Own Product then you can list it through Clickbank, PayDotCom, or even PayPal. Just Sign Up as a Vendor and you are good to go. You could even start your own Affiliate Program and have Affiliates selling your product for you, but as I mentioned before you should start with promoting someone else’s product if you are just starting out, or don’t have your own product.
Research
Next on our list was Research. Is our product marketable, and what is our competition. I kind of went over this in the last post so I don’t want to be repeating myself, but basically you want to take your main keyword or phrase and see if there are any ads that are being promoted. If there is a lot of ads, then what is the competing page count and do we need to drill down further into the niche to where we can compete.
This research does two things for us. One it tells us if we can make money with our product and two forces us to drill down to keyword phrases that we can rank for. There is no sense spending all this time getting a product and making a website for something we can’t get ranked for because the competition is too high. Golf is billion-dollar industry but we would never be able to rank for the term golf, so leave that for the big boys and drill down into the niche for your piece of the pie.
Keywords
That brings us to keywords. This is a subject that is a post or two in itself, but I will break it down here as best I can and give you some basic ideas. When you think keywords you should be thinking about what is called long tail keywords. What that means is keyword phrases that are made up of three or more words. By doing so you are drilling down within a market that is less competitive so you can rank better in the search engines.
Your main keyword is the topic, or product that you are promoting, but you will want to also include what I call secondary keywords that relate directly to your topic, or product that will be included into the content of your website. They too can, and should be two or more words in length. Have a list of a half dozen or so to go along with your main keyword.
If your website is going to have more then one page make sure that each page has it’s own main keyword phrase and secondary keywords. Keywords are important, so you want to take the time to get the keywords that work best for your topic, or product.
You are probably wondering how you are going to come up with these keywords. Now you could sit back and try to come up with as many keywords and phrases on your own, but there is better ways to get your keywords. Here are some tools for you to get your own list of keywords.
Keyword Elite – This is a very powerful tool that could save you a lot of time with your keywords and research.
SEO and Free Book
Next on our list is SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO involves everything we have already talked about and where to place it on your website. Once again, this is a topic that is hard to cover with just a post on a blog, especially one within one covering many points like this one. Therefore I figured it would be better to offer a Free download for you (SEO Made Easy by Brad Callen) to better explain this part.
If you want to really know what SEO is and how to harness its power I would read this ASAP and would also recommend his SEO Elite Software. When it comes to getting it right and making your site the best it can be for the search engines. It will equate to free traffic to your website. You don’t want to shortchange your Website SEO. It will be time well spent.
Enjoy the book; it is packed with all the right information.
Website or Blog?
Next we have Website, or Blog? What is the difference and why you need to consider which to use. The difference between a static website and a blog is pretty simple actually. With a static website you can create completely different pages for each part of your Niche Market. All of them can still have the same header or logo but the content and layout can be totally different.
You can have a different Title, Description, Keywords, Content, etc. which for some Niches might be better if there is a number of products that can be presented for the same general theme of your website.
Blogs on the other hand have a theme that is carried throughout the whole site. You can have more then one page on a Blog like an About Page, Contact Page whatever you want, but again the theme is carried to each page of the blog. That isn’t a bad thing, just part of how a blog theme works. They are easy to set up and easy to use. You have thousands of themes to choose from in all different types of layouts. They are generally easier to use for someone who does not know HTML, CSS and other coding used to create static websites.
You could also use both as I have done with this site. The Affiliate Link Cloaker site is a static page, which I can add to or just leave it one page with the Affiliate Link Cloaker for Affiliates to use to cloak their Affiliate Links. Then I have this Blog for my Affiliate Marketing and Internet Marketing Strategies to help out other marketers.
It is a little harder to change the Title, Description, and Keywords etc. with a Blog, but there is a plugin you can install after you install Wordpress which will help not only with making your Blog better with SEO, but also which other Plugins to use, and setting up your Title, Description and Keywords for your blog. Here is where you can get the Free Traffic Getting SEO Plugin. The site also gives Step-by-Step instructions on installing the Plugin once Wordpress is installed on your server.
In the Website, or Blog controversy I would recommend that if you are new, or don’t know how to edit and write HTML, CSS, PHP, etc to start with a Wordpress Blog and if you want to learn more about writing and designing your own website later, you can. It isn’t that hard to learn. If you want to learn more about Blogs, HTML, CSS and Designing Your Own Website you can visit our Link Master Store for all of your learning needs and more.
Coming Up Next:
Affiliate Marketing Blueprint 3
Domain Name
Hosting
Site layout
Our Blueprint Continues…
