16 steps to Affiliate Marketing

[bukky]

STEP 1: Set a goal

If you want to go somewhere, you need to know where you're going.
Let's start with a modest goal. Say you aim to earn a total of $300
(US) a month in affiliate commissions and AdSense revenue. Imagine
what you could do with that money. A holiday? A better lifestyle?
I've kept the amount low, because it's important that you believe you
can do this. Achieve small successes first, see the money in your
hands or in your bank account, and then increase your goals.
Perhaps you have much larger goals. That's OK. Whatever your goals, I
strongly recommend that you serve your apprenticeship by taking these
18 steps. They'll give you solid knowledge and experience on which to
build your affiliate business.

STEP 2: Find your niche

To help you find your niche topic, read Ken Evoy's free Affiliate
Masters Course and use the excellent advice in it to find a niche that
suits you and your interests.
Print out the Affiliate Masters Course, find a quiet, comfortable spot
and read it several times.
Spend a lot of time thinking carefully about this and jotting down
notes. You're planning a business, so don't rush it. It's very
important.
You'll probably avoid Internet marketing topics because that field is
so overcrowded and competitive. It's much easier to succeed if you
locate a less competitive niche.
Choose a topic that is easy to write about.
Even if you've already chosen a niche, I urge you to read the
Affiliate Masters Course. It might make you change your mind.
You can follow your passion or chase the money. With luck - and a bit
of keyword research - you may be able to do both.

Examine your potential competitors
If you're considering building a site about hiking boots, type "hiking
boots" (using quotation marks) into Google and Yahoo! and carefully
examine the top 10 sites which appear in the search results.
They're your real competitors. Can you create a better, more
interesting, more useful site? Can you think of a new angle, a new
approach?
Do those top 10 sites all have high PageRank - say 6 or more? If so,
you'll have to work really hard to get in the top 10.
Let's say the top 3 sites in Google are PageRank 8, 7 and 6. If so,
you'll probably have to work hard for a couple of years or more to
outrank them. I'm not saying it cannot be done, but it will require
either a great deal of work, or a very innovative, eye-catching
approach.
You can quickly check the PageRank of your potential competitors by
using Seochat's free online tool - http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-search
. Type in "hiking boots" or whatever and you'll be able to see the
PageRank of the top 10 sites.
Do those sites all have the phrase in the title? (The title is the
words that appear at the very top of your screen when you visit a
site.) If not, you may be able to beat them.
How many links do your potential competitors have?
Do your potential competitors all have thousands of links to them?
This is important, because links are important to search engines. You
need good, relevant links to your site. To find out how many sites are
linking to a site, use the free Yahoo! Site Explorer. Go to
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com - and login (set up a free
account if necessary).
Type the URL of the site you want to explore.
Click on "Explore URL".
Click on "Inlinks".
Modify your search to make it more useful. Select the options to show
Inlinks "except from this domain" and "entire site". This will exclude
internal links and show you all external links that Yahoo! knows about
to ANY page of the website.
If your potential sites have thousands of links to them, they're
likely to be very tough competitors.
Don't decide definitely on a niche topic until you've taken the next
two steps...

STEP 3. Choose a profitable niche

Do some research on Google AdWords and Wordtracker to choose the most
profitable niche from among the ones you're considering. Because
you're planning to use AdSense, you want valuable keywords or key
phrases, if possible ones that people are paying at least 50 cents per
click for on Yahoo! Search Marketing (it used to be called Overture)
and AdWords.
You're going to build a site the search engines love, so you also want
to find key phrases that many people are typing into search engines.
You don't rely on guesswork.
You must do this BEFORE you start building your web site. That's
critically important.
Here's a useful free tool I like using for quick, rough keyword
research: pixelfast.com/overture/
Type in a phrase, for example, "hiking boots", click "Go", follow the
instructions, and you can see how much advertisers are paying per
click for that phrase on the Overture network of web sites.
You can also see how many people searched for the phrase the previous
month. For a number of reasons, this figure is often unreliable and
can be grossly exaggerated. For example, it gives you the SAME results
for "wool rug" and "rug wool", which is ridiculous. That's why I
double check results using Wordtracker.
Wordtracker's free trial is fairly limited. Fortunately, they allow
you to subscribe cheaply for a day or a week at a time. It's very
fast, so you can do an awful lot of keyword research in a day. I use
the annual subscription now.
Go to Google's AdWords and find out how much advertisers are willing
to pay for the keywords or key phrases you're interested in. Here's
how.
Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and play
around with the free Keyword Tool.
For example, try putting in a keyword or phrase, such as "recipe" and
click on "Get More Keywords". Pretend you're willing to pay the
maximum per click the tool allows - 100. (You can choose any currency.
I chose US.)
Over on the right side of the page, make sure that "Cost and position
estimates" is selected.
The tool will calculate for you the estimated average CPC (cost per
click) for a whole lot of words and phrases.
Try entering a different word, say "debt" or "free", click on "Re-
calculate" and watch how the CPC changes.
You don't HAVE to choose a topic which has expensive keywords. Often
topics that have expensive keywords are very competitive. You may do
better choosing a less competitive niche with cheaper keywords.
If you use Site Build It to build your site, you'll find the
brainstorming tool in it awesome to help you come up with ideas and
phrases you wouldn't have thought of without it.
Beware: If you choose certain topics, Google will not allow you to
place AdSense ads on your site and you'll miss out on a very lucrative
opportunity.
Such topics include gambling, firearms, ammunition, balisongs,
butterfly knives, and brass knuckles; beer or alcohol; tobacco or
tobacco-related products; and prescription drugs.
For a full list of topics you may wish to avoid see:
https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_US
Advertisers can choose to have their ads displayed only on Google or
also on a large network of sites. Will AdSense ads you see on Google
appear on your pages? To get an idea, find web pages that have
material similar to the content you're planning to create and look at
their AdSense ads.
For more accurate research, you can also use the free AdSense preview
tool to see which ads are being displayed to people in different
countries.
Another niche-finding tool I'm very fond of is Myleena's
NicheInspector. Using this powerful tool will save you a LOT of time,
because it automates a great deal of the work. If you're going to get
this tool, make sure you read her free report before you start using
it, because her free report explains why she uses the methods she
does.
Don't make any firm decision on your niche until you've taken the next
step...Research affiliate merchants.

STEP: 4. Research affiliate merchants
Before you make a firm decision on a topic for your site, you'll need
to do research to see if there are suitable affiliate products which
match your topic.
You want affiliate merchants that have excellent products, excellent
reputations and sites that look as though they're good at selling. You
can search the AssociatePrograms.com affiliate directory for ideas.
Consider aiming for lifetime commissions.
If you're lucky, you'll manage to select a web site topic that has
affiliate programs which pay lifetime commissions or residual
commissions - the sort reviewed at LifetimeCommissions.com.
You'll earn repeat commissions when "your" customers make more
purchases.
Build a useful, interesting web site on your niche .

STEP 5: Build a useful, interesting web site on your niche

Here's an very important step. Many newcomer affiliates who fail do so
because they have overlooked its importance.
Don't just build a website. Build a useful, interesting website on
your niche.
One of the best ways is to build a site which solves people's
problems. Useful sites also often help their visitors decide which
products to buy.
Create a content rich, keyword-rich site, designed to be found in
search engines.
Show your personality. Have a bit of fun. Be memorable. You need to
connect with your visitors. Remember that people like buying from
people they like.
There's no space in this affiliate program tutorial to describe how to
build a website. For that, you'll need a good instruction manual.
If you're short of money, you can hunt for free information on sites
such HTMLGoodies.
You'll save yourself an enormous amount of time and frustration if you
take the plunge and buy a good instruction manual.
Here are the two best options:
(1.) For keen do-it-your-selfers, I recommend Rosalind Gardner's Super
Affiliate Handbook.
Rosalind is a real been-there-done-that super affiliate.
Her instruction manual shows you how she builds very successful sites
using web authoring software.
It starts right at the beginning, discussing topics such as myths
about doing business online, mistakes to avoid, how to choose the best
topic, how to choose the right domain name, etc.
The book, updated in May 2006, takes you step-by-step through the
whole process.
One particularly useful feature is her explanation of how she achieves
high conversion rates (visitor-to-sales ratios), achieving conversion
rates of 4% or 6% while most affiliates are happy with 1%.
Another of the strengths of the book is her descriptions of a wide
variety of ways to get traffic to your site. This is important - too
many affiliates rely on just one or two traffic-generating methods.
The more traffic-generating methods you have, the safer your business
is.
Rosaland is genuinely successful, generating hundreds of thousands of
dollars a year. Now she's also a very successful author, with sales of
more $1 million from her book, which is excellent value.
When you learn from her, you're learning from a winner.
Learn more about Rosalind's Super Affiliate Handbook here.
(2.) For affiliates who want to simplify things as much as possible
and automate the tedious techie stuff, I recommend Ken Evoy's Site
Build It (SBI).

SBI is a site-building, site-hosting, site-promoting suite of tools,
all in one place.
Once you have SBI, you don't have to go scurrying all over the Net
adding more tools and software. You have almost all you need in one
package, so you can concentrate on the fun part - creating useful,
interesting content.
Here's what one happy SBI user says
SBI comes with a newly updated, truly comprehensive instruction
manual, a step-by-step Action Guide, and a truly superb private forum
where SBI users share information and help each other.
SBI is the tool I give my assistants. Take the free Video Tour and
you'll understand why.
Ken Evoy's instruction manual is doing my work for me. First it taught
Rupert and then Ros how to build a high quality, successful, revenue-
generating site. Now it's being used by another assistant to whom I
outsource website maintenance.
You could build a site without SBI, but using it saves you time and
effort by simplifying the process. It provides a recipe for business
success.
SBI teaches you how to optimize your web pages so they'll be found in
search engines. After building a page, you click the "Analyze It"
button and it tells you what you need to do to improve it.
The SBI technique really works. Two of the SBI sites that Rupert built
are included in the case studies on the SBI site.

STEP 6: Add affiliate links
As you write the articles for your site, weave affiliate links into
them. Always have a typical visitor in mind as you write the articles.
Speak to that visitor.
Your task as an affiliate is to help your visitor decide what to buy.
One successful technique is to gradually lead your visitor towards a
purchase. Start by outlining a problem, discuss a good solution that
has worked for you, and end the article with a link that is a call to
action, such as a hyperlink that says, "Find out more here."
Your task as an affiliate is NOT to sell (that's the merchant's job)
but to presell, to warm up your visitors. You want your visitors in a
ready-to-buy frame of mind when they arrive at the merchant's site.
For superb advice on preselling, I strongly recommend you join Ken
Evoy's 5 Pillar Affiliate Program. It's free to join.
Ken is an absolute whiz at preselling and he's renowned for working
extremely hard to help his affiliates succeed. He has a superb
program. It's been No.1 in my Top 10 for several years. I earn five-
figure monthly commissions from this affiliate program.

STEP 7: Place AdSense ads on your site

If you have a good, popular site, it's remarkably easy to make good
money with Google AdSense. AdSense is free to join.
Sign up for AdSense. Here's an excellent free AdSense tutorial.Get
good quality links to your site .
STEP 8: Get good quality links to your site

Without links to your site, your site won't be found in the search
engines. So you MUST get links to your site, if possible from
"authority" sites - ones that have lots of links to them.
First, link to other sites. Choose sites that have similar or related
themes, and invite those sites to link to you.
This is hugely important. Search engines love sites that have many
links to them - especially if those links come from sites which are
themselves popular.
Now you see why I said build a useful, interesting site. If you do
that, people are more likely to link to your site.
Here's an article I wrote describing how to get reciprocal links.
Reciprocal links should be only a small part of your marketing
strategy - not your whole marketing strategy.
Even better than reciprocal links are one-way links. Here's an article
describing how to get one-way links.
Some of these one-way links techniques are fairly advanced and require
considerable work. Most of your competitors will be too lazy to do
them, so you'll have a big advantage if you do. They can make the
difference between a hobby site and a serious, very profitable
business.

STEP 9: Anchor text

You'll also need to understand the importance of anchor text, the
words you use to link to pages on your site, the words people use when
they link to your site.
To search engines, anchor text is very important.

STEP 10: List your site in major directories and niche directories in
your industry.

You probably already know about Yahoo! (good but expensive) and DMOZ
(often takes months to get into).
Here are some more directories (some charge a fee):
Gimpsy
Skaffe
Joeant
Business.com
GoGuides
SevenSeek
ThisIsOurYear
Looksmart (probably too expensive)
BlueFind
WowDirectory
Best of the Web
GeniusFind

Guides to web directories
David Mahler has a Guide to Web Directories. It's a good list of
recommended web directories.
Here's another list: http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php
How to find niche directories:
Go to Search It!www.searchit.com (It's a very handy free research
tool.) Scroll to the Search Category, "Specialty Hubs and Directories"
Choose one of the 4 options in STEP 2
Read the "Click Here for Information..." help before proceeding
Complete STEPS 3 and 4, and then click on Search It! Read the
tutorial. It tells you what to do with the search results Get your
search results. You should be able to find relevant, themed hub sites
and directories which will list your site. Some charge a fee, some are
free.Place your articles on other websites .

STEP 11: Place your articles on other websites

Write articles and distribute them to article directories (fairly
easy) and try to persuade newsletters and other sites to publish them
(more challenging.
This step isn't absolutely essential, but it helps enormously if you
do it. Now you understand why it was so important that you chose a
topic that was easy to write about.

STEP 12: Add more pages and get more links.

Keep adding useful, interesting, keyword-rich pages (you do research
at Wordtracker for this) and keep encouraging more sites to link to
your site.
Make friends with other web site owners, and more people will link to
you...

STEP 13: Be patient.

If your new site is typical, nothing much will seem to happen for the
first couple of months or so, and you'll probably become frustrated
and find it hard to believe that this is going to work.
You're likely to feel annoyed, cheated and ready to quit. You're
likely to be a prime target for people selling get-rich-quick junk.
Many affiliates give up at this stage. Stick with it. If you're
persistent and get the details right, the process I'm describing works
beautifully.
Learn something new every day. Do something to improve your business
every day. If you do this, success is inevitable.

STEP 14: Tweak your site
To boost your conversion rate (your visitor-to-sales ratio), try
little experiments, one thing at a time.
Try changing the heading on a page, the words, the colors, the
placement of your links. With each change wait until about 1,000
visitors have seen the change, and monitor your affiliate commissions
to see if they rise or fall.
You do this because you understand that if 1% of your visitors are
buying and tiny changes boost your success rate to 2%, you'll DOUBLE
your commissions.

STEP 15: The future

When you reach your goal of $300 a month, you wonder whether you
should expand your site, perhaps adding a newsletter, an autoresponder
course or two, a forum, RSS newsfeeds, a blog, a whitepaper, a report
to sell ... and turn it into a portal. You dream big. Perhaps you even
start dreaming of having your own affiliates promoting your reports
for you...
Or perhaps you just research another little overlooked niche and start
on your next simple little, low-maintenance money-generating site.
It can be done. The main ingredient needed is persistence. Been there,
done that, and I have a very nice lifestyle to prove it.
The $300 a month target is very conservative. If that's all you earn,
you've done something "wrong". You haven't chosen profitable keywords
carefully enough, you haven't built enough attractive, keyword-rich
pages, you haven't learned the basics of optimizing pages for search
engines, or you haven't attracted enough good quality links to your
site.
That's the wonderful thing about this business. You can make lots of
mistakes and still earn useful money. Just don't make TOO many
mistakes.

STEP 16: Take the first step

That's the one that matters most.
I suggest you go back and read through this affiliate program tutorial
again.
Picture yourself owning a successful Internet business. Picture
yourself opening letters and finding checks in them. Picture yourself
going into your PayPal account and seeing the latest commissions
you've been paid by affiliate merchants.
Imagine enjoying yourself spending the money, perhaps even giving up
your day job so that you can concentrate on your own business.
Now take the first step.
And when you've quit your day job, please write and tell me. I love
getting emails like that.
bukky
http://newbies.blogspot.com