Archive for the ‘Affiliate Tips’ Category

Written by: Guest Author, Nikki Young

The majority of people that start down the enticing road of Internet marketing give up soon after their first promotion. An extraordinary amount of effort for little profit sees many retire from the game almost immediately. Both affiliate marketing and online product marketing may first appear as easy ways to make money, but people soon realize that the web is not an easily tapped goldmine. Internet marketing requires commitment and hard work and can quickly become overwhelming.

The marketing processes involved span way beyond creating a web page or writing an eBook. As a vendor there are a broad range of marketing methods that can be followed, with few of them ever resulting in success. And as an affiliate, even the seemingly basic sifting through of products you might potentially choose to promote, presents a challenging task. From building a list of potential customers that trust your word, to launching a new product to market, being diligent enough to understand the multiple disciplines of online marketing is the downfall of many. However, for those with the staying power, Internet marketing is a great way to establish a lucrative online business.

For those of you just getting started with Internet marketing you will no doubt hear the following phrase many more times, and if you’ve been Internet marketing for some time you are about to hear it again: testing is critical! Internet marketers say this all the time because there are so many different marketing mediums available to be utilized in the marketing process, that it can be quite tempting to flitter back and forth trying out each one in part. Once a person doesn’t experience instant success with one, they tend to quickly switch to a new strategy, and then to another, and so on. The problem with doing this is that it means not fully realizing the potential of each marketing method. By constantly switching between strategies you aren’t giving one particular strategy a chance to flourish. Therefore it is vitally important that you test, test, and test some more with each process, strategy and theory, so you can rule out what doesn’t work and rule in what does.

By doing this you will be able to select the most valuable parts of each strategy and start to build a bulletproof strategy of your own. It is important to recognize early on is that there is no “one size fits all” in Internet marketing, and that the same strategies don’t work for every niche, or even necessarily in the same niche. What works for you might not work for someone else, and vice versa. So decipher what works for you through a continual process of trial and error. Develop a system of your own. It will take some time but will be well worth it in the end. And who knows, one day you might be able to sell your system online as a top-selling product!

Trying multiple marketing methods and only putting limited input into each will only bring frustration. Instead, focus all your energy on one or two marketing approaches. Master them and make sure you have exhausted their capabilities before moving on or adding a new approach to your armory. Don’t keep dipping your fingers in and out of a bucketful of ideas hoping that one will suddenly come to fruition.

Think long-term not short-term. Invest wisely in the short term in order to make money in the long term. And by this I mean investing in the help of some educational programs/books and the advice and help of mentor(s) to help you learn faster and get to your destination of success quicker. If you can master one or two approaches, you will be well on your way toward a successful business. If you learn only parts of a number of different strategies you will remain a “jack of all trades but master of none.”

Internet marketing can take its toll on you psychologically, especially when you have tried out a variety of marketing methods, invested financially and put in a lot of time and effort for little or no reward. But this psychological battle presents a critical stage in your development and success. This is the very point at which many who made it past the first promotion and into further learning stages give up. A knack for perseverance is so very important in Internet marketing and indeed in starting any business. Don’t give up at the third hurdle. Stick by your guns and persevere with strategies that feel comfortable and complement your strengths and ability.

Four Solid Bits of Advice to Help You Succeed in Internet Marketing

Advice #1: Find a Mentor
Whether in business, self-development or Internet marketing, growth can be rapidly moved forward by finding a mentor. Mentoring helps you develop at a faster rate, helping you learn faster, develop skills more adeptly and avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. A mentor, like a good teacher, will help you understand exactly what you need to learn, how to learn it and the best time for you to execute the knowledge.

I seek mentors in my life because I know it’s the fastest way to learn. Not only has mentoring helped me to get to where I am today in Internet marketing, but it also continues to be very important to me in other areas of my life. By having a mentor for each important aspect of my self-development, I learn faster and succeed faster. Since starting out on my own journey as an Internet marketer I myself have become a mentor to others. It has truly been a pleasure watching those I have helped grow from online newbie to successful online entrepreneur.

Advice #2: Don’t Work on too Many Projects at Once by Yourself
A huge mistake beginners make is thinking they need to do everything alone. Focus your energy on the most vital areas of your business; the areas that encourage growth and will help you reach your goals faster. If you work on too many projects at once you will find your progress is slow and hindered by many barriers. You can’t be an expert in every discipline, so outsource work where you can. Set aside a budget for delegating work to third parties that prevent you from paying attention to more important areas of your business. Taking on more and more work yourself will see you bogged down unnecessarily in tasks that will significantly slow your progress. Outsourcing will also allow you to have more valuable time away from your computer.

Advice #3: Utilize Free Resources
When a person first decides to get involved with Internet marketing, he or she will be exposed to numerous different online money making products. These products appear as very attractive prospects, and it isn’t uncommon for people to get excited and buy into multiple products in a short space of time. The truth is, almost every marketing method you will read about is potentially a profitable one, but mastering one takes considerable time. Don’t splash out on multiple expensive products. Instead, choose one or two referred to you by your mentor(s). Learn them and utilize them to their full potential before moving onto another area.

In addition to this, make use of as much free information as you can. There is a huge amount of great reference material online that can be found in books, eBooks, video and on blogs. It is often difficult to sift through conflicting information and ideas online, but again, ask your mentor and trusted associates for help in directing you toward informative blogs, forums and other reliable free resources.

Advice #4 Maintain Persistence
You never know when the breakthrough will come, it could be next week, it might even be tomorrow, or it could take six more months. If things are getting on top of you then take a step back from your business and re-think your strategy. Ask yourself, “Am I focusing my energy, time and investment on areas conducive to leading me to my goal?” “Are there things I am avoiding, ignoring or only doing half heartedly that could better position me for success?”

Your success in business is dependent on your mental attitude, your strategy and your devotion to learning and developing yourself on a daily basis. Commit to your goal of becoming a successful Internet marketer and be persistent in your endeavours. Take these words of advice into consideration and go for it. I hope that they help you to become successful in your online venture.

About the Author
Nikki Young has been active in Internet Marketing for 4 years. During this time she has built up a successful online business, which includes the selling of her cookbook series within ClickBank. www.paleocookbook.com.

Written by: Michael Cecchin & Alex Miller of The Fat Loss Authority

Getting Started

Before you begin building your website or hiring freelancers, you need to decide what your niche or subject matter will be. I would suggest selecting a niche that you are familiar with, enjoy, and that has a definite demand for continuous content.

The worst thing is to be three months into the project and realize the niche puts you to sleep. You need something that is exciting for you!

I decided to choose the mother of all niches, weight loss. I guess it’s fair to say I like a good challenge, but you have to manage your expectations and figure out what is realistic when it comes to achieving your goals, and how much effort and investment you are willing to put in.

Your content should always solve problems and answer questions that users are likely to be searching for in the various search engines. Doing plenty of keyword research is necessary so you can target long tail keywords and avoid hard-to-rank-for terms like “how to lose weight” or “lose weight fast.” As a new affiliate marketer you have to be realistic with what you can achieve. But the long term goal is one of residual revenue and an online property you can eventually sell to reap the benefits of all of your (and/or your outsourcers’) hard work!

For example, a recent article I posted is on how to make your body burn more calories, which is obviously a topic with significant search volume. Once searchers find it, strategically placed affiliate ads will take users to a weight loss or diet supplement website. See how that works? Find a market you can corner that’s not over-saturated with competition and you can start building from there.

Content Needs

The days of content farms are drawing to a close, with even EzineArticles.com losing over 30% of its traffic due to a recent update to Google’s search algorithm.

The path to the future is clear—create an authentic site with quality content and a positive user experience. Otherwise, your organic ranking days could be numbered!

Once you’ve chosen what your website will be about, it’s time to start generating some excellent content. The keys to improving the flow of traffic to your website are quality content and genuine inbound links (link farms are also on the swift decline).

Setting your website up as an authority on a particular topic ranging from auto repairs to weight loss, using unique, quality content that is well-written, will help ensure your content drives the “right” kind of customers to the websites you promote.

The goal is to get people to your site and then on to the vendor’s site, and that requires helpful information that’s related to the vendor’s content. If you’re not a writer, or if you simply don’t have time to create content for an entire website, utilize the services of a freelance writer. These services can be found at sites like Elance, where I’ve found some of the best business partners around. Try to find someone that is already familiar with your niche, who has a basic understanding of search engine optimization and who can freely post quality content onto your site without you having to.

A professional with these skills will be able to provide you with high quality content that’s sure to bring visitors to your website. Without good content that keeps readers coming back, your affiliate links and promotions may not generate any additional income.

When you choose keywords to optimize for, make sure to choose phrases that are relevant to your subject matter and related to your vendor’s subject. You should also make sure to use phrases that would actually be searched for in search engines. For example, instead of ‘how to lose weight with oolong tea,’ which is too wordy, optimize your keyword text to read ‘oolong tea health benefits‘ and create a page title around that phrase.

Posting Frequency

An important factor in building a reputable site for affiliate marketing is posting fresh content to your site often. You want your site to become an authority on a subject, which means you want readers to check in with your website often for new content. By posting content at regular intervals, your readers know when to come for new information. Think of your website like a television show—you want readers to know when to come back for the next episode.

An authoritative website has many pages of content, which you will build up over time. This can’t be done in a few days. Give your website an edge by having a large amount of content ready for posting when your website goes live, and then continue to post high quality content regularly.

Networking

In addition to paying for the services of a freelance writer, you immediately want to begin networking with other bloggers. Bloggers with similar content may be able to act as ‘guest’ writers on your blog and you can do the same for their website.

[NOTE: If anyone is looking to exchange guest posts with us, just send a message via the contact form on our site].

By acting as a guest writer on another blog, it builds your reputation, and your website’s, as an authority on a particular subject. It tells your readers that you’re not just trying to make money, but you actually know what you’re talking about too. And those back links you get by guest posting will also help give your website’s rating a boost.

Inadvertent networking is another great way to boost your ranking in search engines. By creating high quality content that provides helpful information, other bloggers will link to your website as a credible resource, which will also improve your search engine ranking. This is why enjoying your niche is important, since it will make it easier for you to keep pushing out great content and chatting with new people in the industry.

Starting an authoritative website is fairly easy, and with the right tools you can be up and running in no time. Find your niche, stockpile your content for frequent updates, build your website and start linking! It’s easier than you think, and who doesn’t need another avenue to earn income these days?

Good luck!

About the Authors

Michael Cecchin in a successful Internet Marketer, Entrepreneur, and professional J-O-B escapee based in Toronto. Michael owns a number of online properties in the diet and fitness niche and is currently exploring opportunities in other niches. He has been working full-time online for the past 2 years and claims the terrifying memory of cubicle life is what keeps him motivated to continually expand his online business and live the dream.

Alex Miller is an affiliate and SEO superstar, originally from the UK and currently living in Orlando, Florida. Alex started as an affiliate in the Forex and fitness niche while building his SEO credentials. His main projects are now in the SEO niche, helping other business owners improve their site rankings through white hat tricks and tactics unavailable to mortal men.

You can check out their own authority site at The Fat Loss Authority Blog.

Written by: Harvey Segal, Guest Author

ClickBank tells us they have over 100,000 affiliates, but these are only the active ones.

The number of INACTIVE affiliates is far, far higher.

And do you know the main reason why these affiliates fail? For many, it’s because they think that affiliate marketing simply involves putting their link on a traffic site or in a free ad.

The reality is that if you just use an affiliate link you are very limited in your ability to get traffic from the major sources:

• You can’t use Google AdWords and most other PPC services
• SEO (search engine optimization) is not possible
• Article marketing is restricted. Most services ban affiliate links.
• Forum marketing is restricted. Most forums ban affiliate links.

The truth is that there is one thing you MUST have.

It’s a proper PRESELL page.

That’s a page where you offer a review or recommendation for the product you are promoting. Something that entices the visitor to read on and click through as you explain, for example, the benefits of the product, how it worked for you, what the results were, and so on.

But the problem is that you need to put the presell page somewhere. Typically, this is on a hosted site.

So why doesn’t every ClickBank affiliate have a site ?

Because it involves (they believe):

• the high cost of hosting
• the technicalities of setting up a site
• the need to understand HTML
• advanced SEO techniques to attract traffic

No wonder they shy away from using the one strategy which outranks all others – and consequently look on helpless as their ClickBank account doesn’t make money.

But it need not be like this.

Think ‘Blog’.

If you don’t want to get involved in creating web pages there’s a wonderful alternative. A blog.

Putting a presell page on a blog is simply a matter of writing the content of a blog post then pressing the publish button. Then seeing it automatically picked up by the search engines thanks to the in-built blog pinging services.

In addition, simple low-cost hosting is sufficient for a blog, as you don’t need advanced features.

The other great advantages of a presell page are:

• you can provide a tempting bonus for the customer to claim after the sale
• you can capture email addresses and build a list
• you can add tracking links in addition to those provided by ClickBank
• you can switch easily to a complementary affiliate program, if necessary, without affecting existing promotions

In summary, if you want to succeed as an active ClickBank affiliate, the small effort and expense to set up a blog and presell page will reward you a hundred times over.

About the Author

Harvey Segal runs the ClickBank Success Forum where over 14,000 members enjoy free advice for all their ClickBank questions and effective solutions for blog hosting and development.

Written by: Matt Carter of Matt’s Affiliate Marketing Blog

One of the biggest lessons I learned in my Internet marketing career is understanding how to find people online that are ready and willing to buy! Once I worked out how to do this, my Internet marketing efforts really started to take off. In this post I’m going to share with you some tips to help you master this vital online marketing concept.

Finding the Buyers

Keyword data is the biggest factor that distinguishes online marketing from the offline world. Before the days of Google and keyword data, businesses relied heavily on market research companies to provide insight into the mind of the consumer.

These days we can simply analyze the keywords they type into Google and base a lot of our decisions on this. You might think this is obvious, however you would be amazed at how many people fail to grasp this.

Commercial Intent

This leads me onto my next point; ‘Commercial Intent’. This is simply judging how likely a person is to buy, based on the keywords they use in their search.

Ideally, you want to be driving traffic to your sites on keywords with high commercial intent, as these keywords will convert at much higher rates than more general, information-seeking keywords.

Example Searcher

Let’s look at an example to demonstrate this point more clearly. If a person types “acne” into Google, I would consider this to be a low commercial intent keyword, the reason being that we can’t tell what their intention is at this stage. They may just want to learn about acne and how many people have it, or the main causes of acne. These searches are known as “information seeking keywords,” and they’re not likely to result in high conversions to sales for you.

However, let’s say that the person who typed “acne” into Google did in fact have bad acne and needed a cure. The next thing he/she might do, after they browsed some websites about acne, is head back to Google and refine the search a bit more.

They might start researching the kind of acne they have, and type into Google “Types of Acne.” This is not a buyer keyword, but it may reveal to the searcher that they have a type of acne known as cystic acne.

So they might now type into Google “cystic acne treatment” and read some more webpages about possible acne treatments that you can use. At this stage, the commercial intent of the keyword has increased, and the conversions to sales also increase with it. We know exactly what the searcher’s problem is and that they are looking for a solution for it.

You can take this even further by getting very specific, and get extremely high commercial intent with keywords like “buy cystic acne treatment.” When you see the word “buy” in the search phrase, the searcher is blatantly telling you that they are ready to buy.

Conversions & Profits

Essentially, the higher the commercial intent, the higher the conversion rate for keywords and the more profit you will make. Therefore, it is important to build your websites on keywords that have a high amount of commercial intent.

What you must keep in mind, though, are the traffic stats for a keyword. It’s all well and good to be targeting a super-high commercial intent keyword, but if no one is searching for it, then you won’t make a penny.

When I look at keyword figures I usually aim for no less than 500 exact match searches a month in the local market I am targeting. I then start with half a dozen keywords and build my sites from there, with the intention to grow the list of keywords I’m targeting out over time.

Also, I will often target lower search volume buyer keywords as my secondary keywords for a page. For example, if my primary keyword for a page is “cystic acne treatment” I might target “buy cystic acne treatment” as a secondary phrase to collect that extra bit of buyer traffic to that page.

Although there are several more steps to creating profitable affiliate sites, building on a solid foundation of buyer keywords is the most important thing to get right.

About the Author

Matt Carter is a full-time Internet marketer based in Australia. His main focus online is building affiliate sites and doing search engine optimization. To learn more about Matt and his free video training, please visit Matt’s Affiliate Marketing Blog.

Written by: Adam Short, Guest Blogger

In my previous post, I talked about the importance of identifying and targeting search keywords that aren’t overly competitive, but that also receive enough searches to build a profitable site around.

Let’s walk through the process now of finding these “Moneywords.”

Take a moment to look at the Moneyword Matrix Chart, developed by my team at Niche Profit Classroom. You can see exactly what keywords you’re trying to find within any given niche market.

As you can see, the sweet spot is finding keywords with over 500 searches per month but under 10,000 competing pages for that particular keyword.  The higher the search volume per month and the fewer the competitors, the better the keyword.  You can plug any keyword you like into the matrix and instantly see whether it is poor, fair, good, excellent, or jackpot.  Let’s walk through a real-world example of how to use this matrix, so that you can apply it to your own niche.

To begin, you’ll want to type the general niche topic into Google’s External Keyword Tool.

For example, if you type the term “Roses” into Google’s external keyword tool, you’ll get back hundreds of results. These are the terms related to roses people are actually searching with when they’re looking for information.

In the screenshot below, you’ll see three different settings you should use for your initial keyword research:

1. Type the niche topic into the search box.
2. Set your Match Type to “phrase.” Without going into too much detail, this gives you more accurate information to base your keyword research on.  Some people use the exact term, and that’s a great tip for PPC advertising. But for information on organic search results, I prefer the phrase match.  (The “exact” match is too restrictive).
3. Use the advanced filter to remove any keywords or keyword phrases that get under 500 Global Monthly searches per month from the results.

While not highlighted in the picture, note that we use the United States as the locale. Using a different country, even if you live in that country, is not going to give you the full potential audience, since you’re marketing to people worldwide.

If you get a lot of results that aren’t specific to the niche you’re looking at, use the “Include terms” and “Exclude terms” boxes in the upper left to further filter your results.

Looking at the results, we find there are tens of thousands of searches for many of the keywords. For example, according to Google’s tool, the phrase “blue roses” gets an estimated Global Monthly search volume of 49,500, as pictured below:

However, the number of competing pages for that term is 6,040,000 — which means over 6 million others are competing for it.

How did I find the number of competing pages?

Go to Google’s home page and type in the term within quotes.  It’s important that you use the quotes so that you get the correct phrase match search results and the correct number of competing pages.

The picture below shows the correct way to look for competing pages for a particular term.

Now, if we plug those two numbers into our Moneyword Matrix, we can see immediately that the results are not very encouraging. This is a poor keyword to target for your website.

One of the terms that came up in our example above was “Rose Drawings,” which has 6,600 Monthly Global Searches per month. When we put that phrase into Google’s search engine inside quotes, the number of competing pages is 12,600.  Can you see where we’re going here?

Let’s plug these numbers into the Moneyword Matrix.

We’ve found a Moneyword!

This would be a superb keyword phrase to build a page on your site about. You could feature pencil drawings, or have other drawings displayed, or maybe include an article on drawing techniques to create the perfect rose drawing.  Such a page or article is likely to be ranked at the top of the organic search results within days or weeks, and can drive continual traffic to your site.

Finding 10 or 20 of these types of Moneyword keywords will cement your site, articles, and content at the top of Google’s organic search results and drive thousands of visitors to your site every month.

You definitely want to keep all the Jackpot, Excellent, and Good keywords, but don’t discard all those “Fair” keywords just yet. They can be useful in finding additional Moneywords.  First, however, I want to tell you that very few people are going to take the time to do manual research for keywords in this manner, even with the Moneyword Matrix Chart to give them exact results.

This means that if you’re willing to take the time to do your due diligence, you’re going to be way ahead of the game when it comes to competing for search engine rankings.

Fortunately, there’s an automated solution that will save you time and effort. We’ve developed a tool that does most of the work for you. Simply download the Google results to your computer via a CSV file, and then run the tool. It will automatically get all the competing pages, match them with the number of searches per month, and return the rating of Jackpot, Excellent, Good, Fair, or Poor.

Here’s a screenshot of Niche Profit Classroom’s Moneyword Matrix keyword tool, which is available to Niche Profit Classroom members.

Remember I told you to not discard those Fair keywords? Search through the Fair keywords and locate the ones that have over 10,000 searches per month. You can then use those keywords to do additional keyword research and find other terms that may be useful.

For example, let’s take our “blue roses.”  If we put “blue roses” into Google’s AdWords Tool search suggestion box, one of the terms returned is “blue roses meanings,” which gets 4,400 searches per month.  If we go to Google and type in “blue roses meanings” with the quotes, we find the competition is only 7,700 sites. Using the Moneyword Matrix Chart, we discover that this is another Excellent keyword.

So while “blue roses” is not a Moneyword, the phrase “blue roses meanings” (note that it’s plural) is a Moneyword we can confidently rank for.

One way you can put Moneywords into action is by searching ClickBank’s Marketplace to find affiliate products to promote. By using our explanation here to find the right keywords, you can easily dominate the affiliate market for that product.

Once you’ve found a market you know is profitable, these steps make it easy to find highly searched, low competition keywords and phrases.  This is the key to your continued success and profits. The Moneywords Matrix is your key to the keyword kingdom!

About the Author

Adam Short is a successful Internet marketer, speaker, and coach. Through his training, software and coaching platform at Niche Profit Classroom, he helps others start and grow successful and profitable online businesses.

Written by: Adam Short, Guest Blogger

Have you ever tried to optimize your website for Google and other search engines, but failed to attain the results you were after?  Most Internet marketers at one point or another find themselves quite frustrated with their lack of search engine success.  Many elect to throw in the towel and pursue other avenues of traffic.  Unfortunately, this is often a mistake.  Most marketers don’t realize that just one simple change to their approach to search engine optimization could revolutionize their results.  So what is that one simple change?  Simple – it’s keywords. Website traffic success depends on the keywords you choose, and most people use the wrong ones, which inevitably leads to disappointment and wasted time.

Fortunately, choosing the right keywords is a relatively simple and straightforward process.  You don’t need to be an SEO guru, and you don’t have to spend a ton of time, money, or effort. In this article I’ll show you how to pick the right keywords to obtain top organic search engine rankings, thereby securing a free flow of highly targeted traffic to your website.

Before we get started with keyword research, let’s answer the question: Why is search engine traffic so desirable for website owners?

Here are a few of the key reasons:

• Search engines are collectively one of the largest traffic sources in the world.
• Search engine traffic is highly targeted traffic.
• Organic search engine traffic is free.

On top of that, organic search engine traffic can be very low maintenance and low stress.  Once you obtain top rankings for your “Moneywords” (we’ll define this term later), your rankings will often stick for months, or even years.  This means you do not need to constantly fret over losing your rankings, thereby enabling you to direct more positive energy towards other aspects of your business.

Furthermore, obtaining top rankings in Google (and other search engines) is a win-win situation for both you and the search engines.  Here’s why:

• Google wants to give people the most relevant search results they can.  Google wins when it can provide quality, relevant search results.
• People who search on Google win when they find web sites that give them the information they’re searching for.
• You win by targeting the right keywords and having your site appear at the top of the organic search results, thus capturing the attention of people who are looking for the very subject or niche you’re marketing.

So ultimately, everyone gets what they want.  What could be better?  With that said, let’s get into the “nitty gritty” of keyword research and how you can use it to drive swarms of free search engine traffic to your website.

First off – what is keyword research exactly?  In a nutshell, keyword research is the foundation of Internet marketing. If you understand what terms or phrases your customers use to find information in search engines, you’ll know how to reach them. You’ll understand exactly which keyword phrases you should focus on so that your marketing efforts reap the most rewards.

I’m sure you’ve heard the famous marketing tenet, “Find out what people want, and then give it to them.”  The problem is, no one really explains how to do that. That’s where keyword research comes in. It enables you to find out what people really want.

By knowing exactly what keywords people are using to search, and by understanding how to target those valuable keyword terms and phrases, you can rank at the top of Google’s organic search results any time you want.

Let’s explore two of the most common approaches to keyword research.  Do a gut check and ask yourself if you fall into one or both of these categories:

1. Targeting the highest search volume keywords in your niche
2. Targeting only long-tail keywords in your niche

While both of these methods are common, neither one is ideal.

Let’s look first at high search volume keywords.  These are usually keywords that are just a few words, such as “Roses Flowers,” or just the term “Roses.”  Sure, it may be a profitable market, but getting ranked for such short keywords can be very difficult.

The number of other sites targeting or competing with you for these keywords is often enormous, so even if you do make it to the top of the organic results for such keywords, someone is always nipping at your heels, trying to knock you off of Google’s first page.

It’s a no-win situation.  You‘ll always be competing for the top spots, always marketing to keep your keywords ranking where people can find you.

Long-tail keyword targeting also has serious drawbacks.  These are words, terms, or long phrases of four, five, or more words within any given keyword phrase. (Such as “pink roses grow best in organic soil”.)

The problem with long-tail keywords is that they get little to no traffic each month. You have to target and maintain high-ranking results for hundreds, if not thousands, of keywords to generate enough traffic to continually sustain a profitable web site.  That’s a lot of work.  Creating content for that many keywords is time consuming and can be very expensive.

That brings us to a superior method for doing keyword research – targeting “Moneywords.”  This approach examines keywords in a more scientific way.  A “Moneyword” is a keyword that has very high search volume (lots of people are searching for the keyword each month) and very low competition in the search engines (very few websites are targeting the keyword).

The benefits of targeting Moneywords are many:

• You’ll achieve multiple first-page ranking in Google’s organic results within weeks, and sometimes even within days.
• You’ll spend minimal effort — especially with our Moneyword Matrix formula and keyword tool.
• Your website ranking will stick to the top of the organic search results like super glue.

All of this results in long-term, automated traffic.

Sound good? Be sure to read Part 2, where I walk you through the exact process of identifying Moneywords and learning to dominate your niche.

About the Author

Adam Short is a successful Internet marketer, speaker, and coach. Through his training, software and coaching platform at Niche Profit Classroom, he helps others start and grow successful and profitable online businesses.

Written by: Beau Blackwell, Community Manager

It’s no secret that out of the hundreds of thousands of new people who decide to try affiliate marketing every year, only a small percentage ever make enough to quit their day job or significantly change their lifestyle. Is it because affiliate marketing is too competitive, too hard for non-techie people, or just not all it’s cracked up to be?

Having met many successful people in the affiliate marketing world, and knowing what I know from working at ClickBank, I don’t believe that any of those are the reasons why most people don’t make it as affiliate marketers.

In my opinion, success as an affiliate marketer comes down to two factors: dedication and perseverance.

Dedication and Desire

If you were seriously thinking about taking up a new craft or skill, something you’d never really done before, and wanted to get good enough at it to make a living, think about how dedicated you’d need to be.

Let’s take golf as an example—if you wanted to make a living playing golf, do you think you could just go out and hit 100 golf balls a few times a week and expect to be on the pro tour any time soon?

No way! Pro golfers hit literally thousands of shots a day, every single day, whether they want to or not—because that’s what it takes to be great.  They study the game, they try to identify their faults and fix them, and most importantly, they develop or find a training system and stick to it—for months or years on end. Because that’s what it takes to be great.

According to author Malcolm Gladwell, who studied exceptionally talented and successful people in his book Outliers, found that being in the top tier of almost any endeavor, whether sports, business, or the arts, requires incredible dedication and work. He found that people at the absolute pinnacle of their craft have all put in at least 10,000 hours of work over the years.

Hopefully it won’t take you anywhere near 10,000 hours to become a successful affiliate marketer, but you need to approach your efforts as if it will. Many people buy an Internet Marketing training system, read it and get really excited, then either don’t actually follow the system to the letter, or do it for a week or two and give up if they don’t see results.

People that follow marketing systems to the letter, day in and day out, are very rare. But they are often the people who really succeed, and sometimes even develop their own system that works even better.

Pick a System and Follow It

Over the years, I’ve seen many affiliate marketing training systems, and with a few exceptions, their advice is usually very good. However, the techniques they teach can be tedious, repetitive, and usually take weeks, if not months, to start showing results. Just like golf training, or learning a musical instrument, or anything else that requires dedicated effort and perseverance.

I’ve talked to quite a few affiliates over the years that tell me, “I’ve been doing this for months and haven’t made any money! I’m ready to give up.” Sometimes they’ll even tell me they’re using a training system I’m familiar with, and are disappointed in its results.

Whenever I talk to someone like this, I’ll ask questions like:

• How many articles have you written and posted?
• How many niche websites have you built?
• How many hours did you spend researching a niche and keywords before choosing it?
• How many backlinks do you actively try to build each week?

Typically, the answer is “Not many” or “I’ve never really done backlinking” or “I picked a niche in a few minutes.” Having seen many of the top training programs out there, I can guarantee that they don’t promise success if you don’t regularly write articles, do serious niche and keyword research, and consistently build backlinks!

It would be like a golf instructor telling you to hit 300 chip shots every day, but instead you only do 10 shots 3 times a week. Can you blame him that you’re not getting any closer to your goal? Or is it a matter of dedication and desire?

Making the Time

At this point, you might be saying, “That’s easy for you to say. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.” For a very small number of people that might be true, but according to the Nielsen Company, the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV every single day. Imagine how much you could accomplish in your Internet Marketing efforts if you used 1 or 2 of those hours each day to focus on the kinds of tasks I mentioned above!

Remember the 10,000-hour rule? Think about how much quicker you’ll get to that level of success if you dedicate your time and focus to becoming great at affiliate marketing, rather than trying it for an hour or two here and there without a real system or plan.

Fortunately for you, with a high level of dedication and perseverance, it’s not going to take a decade of practice to become great, like it does for athletes or musicians. It can be much quicker (though not overnight or in a few weeks). Depending on the amount of time you spend, it could be anywhere from a few months to a couple of years. In the grand scheme of things, to reach your goals and change your life for the better, isn’t it worth skipping some TV every day?

If you’re really serious about becoming an affiliate marketing success, maybe it’s time to ask yourself, “Have I been doing everything I can to make the dream a reality?” If not, there’s no time like the present to start!

Written by: Beau Blackwell, Community Manager

We’re back with a fantastic new episode of Affiliate Marketing Today! In this episode, Dush Ramachandran and I interview Adam Short of Niche Profit Classroom about the techniques he uses to find and dominate niche markets with lots of buyers but very low competition. Adam is a veteran of affiliate marketing, and has one of the most comprehensive systems I’ve ever seen for identifying hot but relatively untapped markets, quickly building websites that will allow you to rank in the search engines, and turning that traffic into affiliate sales.

If you’ve never been lucky enough to hear Adam speak on one of the many webinars he participates in, be sure to check out this week’s episode!

For more information on Adam and his niche marketing techniques, visit Niche Profit Classroom.

Written by: Beau Blackwell, Community Manager

ClickBank is very proud to announce the Beta release of our new Featured Marketplace! This complement to our current Marketplace is intended to showcase a wide variety of top quality ClickBank products, including top sellers, great new products you might not be aware of, and featured listings from a wide variety of established ClickBank vendors.

In the Featured Marketplace, you’ll be able to learn more about a vendor’s products before deciding whether to promote them, and every listing includes a link to the vendor’s Affiliate Tools page so you can get immediate help and guidance in promoting their products. It’s a great new way to learn about products and quickly get your promotional efforts up and running.

You can check out the Featured Marketplace here: http://www.clickbank.com/featured

We’d love to hear your feedback on the Featured Marketplace, so please leave a comment with your thoughts! Since this project is in Beta, we’ll be making regular improvements based on feedback and testing.

Written by: Simon Hodgkinson, Guest Author

The secret to becoming a successful affiliate marketer: WORK BACKWARDS

This might seem odd so let me explain…

Over the last few years, we’ve generated millions in commissions and taught thousands of budding affiliate marketers how to make more money online. After many unsuccessful attempts, we finally realized what we were doing wrong.

Statistics show there’s a 95% chance that you aren’t as successful at affiliate marketing as you’d like to be, and even if you’re doing great, by simply applying the little ‘mind shift’ I’m about to share with you, you’ll be able to take your current success to an entirely new level.

Before you begin any promotional campaign you need to identify your end goal.

Think about it for a second, and ask yourself why are you even working as an affiliate in the first place? Although affiliate marketing can be fun, making money is essential.

Like everyone else, you’re an affiliate because you need the money. Making car payments, paying bills such as rent or mortgage, family vacations or the 101 different things that factor into our cost of living add up.

One of the biggest problems is that most people never sit down and add the cost of all these expenses. Once you begin to crunch those numbers and figure out exactly what it takes to live without the worry of how much things cost, or where the money for the next bill is coming from, is when you will start to see the true power of affiliate marketing.

The revelation is that affiliate marketing doesn’t just have the power to make you some ‘extra cash,’ it has the power to set you free!

So how do we start? First you need to know how much you need (pretty simple right). ☺

Grab a notebook and make a list of everything you spend money on each month. At the top of your sheet, you want to write “living expenses.” Go through the fixed costs that you have each month (everything should go in here, rent/mortgage, car payments, cell phone, utilities, food etc.).

Then you want add in your entertainment expenses (the fun stuff!). You can estimate the monthly costs but include things like movies, eating out, monthly mini-vacations etc. Next combine your living expenses with your entertainment costs and you’ll have a total monthly expense figure. Got it?

Don’t underestimate the power of doing this. This has been the number one exercise we ask our coaching students to do because affiliate marketing is not the be all and end all – it’s the tool that gets you there. Without the end goal, you don’t have any kind of way to evaluate your progress!

Let’s work an example: Say $5,000 is the amount you need each month. If your affiliate income can match $5,000 (which is peanuts compared to what you can do if you really push things), you’ll have all of your expenses covered!

Now it’s just a matter of building your system that will generate this income for you automatically, every month. We need to calculate how many sales we need to achieve our income goal. What I want you to do is take your income goal and divide it by the net amount of commission you plan to make with each sale.

For example, let’s say that we’re going to make $30 per sale. $5,000 divided by $30 is equivalent to 166 sales a month. When you break that down, it’s just 6 sales a day.

Now, if you think it’s hard to sell 6 ClickBank products a day, just understand that there are people who can sell 150 ClickBank products a day and more. What I’m talking about here doesn’t even take into account rebills and future payments and how they can compound over time!

So how much traffic do we need to get to those 6 sales?

Just take the monthly number of sales you need (which was 166), and divide that by the vendor’s sales page conversion rate.
We can make a quick assumption that sales page conversion rate will be around the industry standard of 2%. Then, we divide the total number of sales we need by .02, and see what we get from that. Don’t worry if you don’t want to do all the calculations right now, I have handy ‘one click’ resource for you coming up at the end. ☺

For example: 166 / 0.02 = 8,300 unique visitors a month. Break that down and it becomes just 277 unique visitors a day.
The point is, with this formula you’ll know how to figure out exactly how much traffic you need to reach that goal, and vice-versa. If you know how much traffic you site is getting right now, you can reverse the calculation to determine which programs to promote based on commission amounts. It’s not just random numbers floating around anymore!

You have a target to aim for!

Well, kind of. That’s the number of visitors you need to get to the vendor’s page (the page of the person you’re promoting), however, you’ll probably want to send them to your own site first, and then get them to the vendor’s site. In a perfect world you could get every visitor to go from your site to your vendor’s page (that would be a 100% conversion rate), but it’s not a perfect world. So the big question is how many do you actually need to come to your site to reach your goal?

For a quick and dirty answer just divide the number by 0.3 (this is a 30% conversion rate from your site to a vendor’s site). Although you may be able to achieve a higher conversion rate (we have pages that covert to 40%-50%), we will estimate on the conservative side. So, 8,300 / 0.3 is 27,666 and that’s the traffic we would need to reach the goal in our example. The next step is to take that 27,666 and divide it by 30. That tells us how many visitors per day we need to arrive at our own website. That’s 922 visitors a day.

And that’s everything you need for financial freedom! Beautiful how this works isn’t it?

Conclusion:

When you calculate your own personal freedom formula number, you might be surprised how close you are to it already. It’s just a matter of setting up your traffic plan and finding the best programs from the ClickBank Marketplace to promote.

You can also run more than one campaign, identify programs that offer recurring billing to automatically add fresh commissions each month to your tally without having to drive more traffic and test and tweak your own pages to increase conversions to ultimately reach your goal. In fact there are many easy-to-apply adjustments that will reduce the time it takes to achieve your objective. Just remember that knowing your objective first is the best way to achieve it.
If you’d like to calculate your own freedom formula number (and you don’t want to crunch through all those numbers in your head), we’ve put a useful online tool that will do it all for you with just a couple of clicks. Click Here: http://www.cbcashgrenade.com/freedom

About the Author

Simon Hodgkinson and his business partner Jeremy Gislason have been involved in Internet Marketing for more than 10 years and are the creators of a number of best selling information products and software applications. For more information about their business visit www.cbcashgrenade.com.