Posts Tagged ‘promote products’

Written by: Steven Clayton, Guest Blogger

One of the things I get asked a lot is where to begin as an affiliate marketer.

It can all be so overwhelming. There are so many different ways to get traffic, build sites, and pick products to promote (these are the three components of any affiliate marketing effort). In addition, some of these traffic and site building options can be expensive and highly technical, requiring a lot of training and expertise.

My goal in this post is to highlight a way to get started as an affiliate that’s relatively easy, risk-free, zero cost, has a great chance to make your first money online, and doesn’t require any technical knowledge or experience.

We’re going to use ClickBank for our product, a BlogSpot blog for our website, and search engine optimization to get traffic. If you’re totally new to search engine optimization and want a very quick introduction, you may want to check out this video.

Step 1 – Find 10 products you’re interested in promoting

• One of the best parts of being an affiliate for ClickBank is that it’s so easy to get started because there are thousands of unique products to promote. Once you have a ClickBank account, go to the Marketplace and browse it to find products that you have an interest in and/or that you or someone you know would buy.
• Make a note of the products, including their Pitch Pages and the custom HopLinks you’ll use to promote them (you’ll get these by clicking the Promote button next to the Marketplace listing). It’s a good idea to save this information in a text file on your computer.

Step 2 – Find potential keywords using Google’s keyword tool

• Go to Google’s external keyword tool.
• For each product you picked in Step 1, enter the most generic keyword that applies to your product. For example, if you’re promoting a product on how to cure tinnitus, use the keyword “tinnitus” and click the Get Keyword Ideas button.
• Go over to the Match Type drop down box and select Phrase Match.
• Sort the list in descending order of global search volume by clicking on the column Title.
• Make a list of any keyword that is between 10000 and 30000 global monthly searches, and that has something to do with your product.
• At the end of this step, you’ll have 10 lists. Some of these lists may be empty, as it’s possible that there won’t be any keywords that meet our criteria.  We’re being very careful about selecting only the ones that will work for us, so have patience and don’t get discouraged.

Step 3 – Evaluate the competition for SEO

• Now we need to see if it would be possible for us to actually rank in Google for terms that would drive traffic to the product we’re going to market. For each keyword identified in Step 2, head over to Google and type the keyword in quotes. For example, if the keyword phrase was “cure tinnitus,” you’d type “cure tinnitus” into Google.
• You’ll see the search results and the words “Results 1-10 of about xx,xxx” on the right hand side. If the xx,xxx number is less than 100,000, move on to the next step. Otherwise, discard this keyword.
• Do another Google search by typing inurl:”keyword phrase”. For example, for our keyword above it would be inurl:”cure tinnitus”. Take a look at the number of results again. If that number is below 1,250, this keyword is a winner. Make a note of it.

Step 4 – Pick the keyword you want to start with and build a BlogSpot blog

• We’ve picked a BlogSpot blog for 2 reasons: it’s easy to build a nice-looking site quickly, and blogs rank very well in Google.
• In general, pick the keyword phrase that has the highest search volume, the lowest competition numbers from step 3, and seems to be the best fit for someone looking to actually buy your product. There are really no wrong answers here, just go with your instinct using these criteria as a guide.
• Build your BlogSpot blog. Sign up and watch the tutorials on how to create content like posts. When setting up your blog, make sure that the blog title is your keyword phrase.
• Make sure that the blog address (URL) also contains the keyword phrase you’ve picked in some way. So in our example, best-tinnitus-cure, my-tinnitus-cure, etc., all work just fine. Dashes are fine anywhere, so with a bit of creativity you should have no trouble coming up with a name that’s not been taken.
• The goal of your blog is to inform and to sell. Provide valuable content from the Pitch Page of the product, as well as outside resources. Add your HopLink to the actual product using text and possibly images. You can often get images from an affiliate page for the product, which can be found in the product’s Vendor Spotlight in the ClickBank Marketplace.
• Important: Never make up any information about the product! I encourage you to buy the product or have someone you know purchase the product, so you can give a truthful and accurate opinion of it.
• The exact steps to build out the site are too extensive to go into here, but an example should do the trick.  Check this page out.  It will give you a great idea of what we’re after.

Step 5 – Do some link building

• Link building is the key to search engine optimization, and the best way to quickly get included in search engine results for the keyword you’re targeting.
• The process of getting a backlink is a bit different for each option listed below, but you can’t go wrong here.  The idea is to do three things: get a link to your site, use your keyword phrase in the description or tag when you’re using a bookmarking site, use your keyword phrase as the “anchor text” (the text that’s clickable…that is the actual link to your site) whenever possible.  Don’t worry about getting this perfect…any link is better than a perfect link, and you can do no harm!
• Blog comment posting is a popular way of getting backlinks.  Here’s a nice page that explains how to do it.
• Social bookmarking can be a great way to build backlinks to your site.  Here’s a huge list of them! Just set up an account with them and add your site.
• Web 2.0 properties like Squidoo, Hubpages, etc. are great places to put up a small amount of content and then to add a backlink to your site.  Here’s a nice list of these types of sites.
• Also take a look at this guest blog post I did previously for other ideas.

Try to build at least 5-10 backlinks every single day! This will give you the quickest results.

Conclusion

The most important part of this process is the keyword research in steps 2 and 3.  If you have trouble finding the right keyword phrases for the 10 products you selected, go get 10 more and try again. Have patience. If you stick it out and find the right keywords, the rest will usually take care of itself.

After a while… it could be days, could be weeks, you should show up in the Google search results and people will click on your links to the ClickBank product and you’ll make your first money online! Best of luck in your affiliate marketing efforts.

About the author

Steven Clayton and his partner Tim Godfrey are the creators of several best-selling Internet Marketing information products, including Commission Blueprint 2.0, Niche Blueprint, and SEM Business Blueprint. You can get more great advice and information on their blog.

Posted by: Simon Slade, Guest Blogger

At Affilorama we specialize in helping our members get buyer-converting traffic. One of the most important ways to do this is learning what keywords to use. We want to share some lesser-known techniques for building a highly-optimized keyword list, including some novel ways to catch extra traffic. You’ll learn methods that will help you find keywords your competitors are missing. Follow these steps and you should be on the right path to affiliate success.

Step 1: Know who your target is

Start by thoroughly researching your target market. The better you know your buyers, the more effective your keyword list. Here are some ways you can do that. As you research, note down potential keyword phrases you could target.

• Visit forums related to your niche
• Join special interest groups (online or offline)
• Subscribe to competitor newsletters
• Read up on the industry

Once you’ve done your background keyword research on your chosen niche, it’s time to start seriously drawing up your keyword list. From this list you can build out the structure of your campaign.

Step 2: Brainstorm keywords

On a blank sheet of paper note down all the keywords you gathered from your research. Let your mind freewheel and try to capture as many as possible.

Your list can be as broad or as narrow as you like – anything from single words to five- or six-word phrases are worth recording. For example, in the dog training niche you could have a broad keyword like “dog obedience” and a narrow phrase such as “Walking a Chihuahua on a leash.”

This brainstormed list is a great starting point – now let’s convert it into a killer list with some advanced techniques.

Step 3: Fragment your list the easy way

Since there’s a lot of search engine competition for popular keywords, one of the best ways to make headway is to “fragment” your list into a much larger collection of keywords you can target. To help fragment, or expand, your list, use the following tools.

• Google Keyword Tool
• Traffic Travis SEO Software (Traffic Travis queries all major search engines, not just Google, to get its results)
• Affilorama Keyword Suggestion Tool

Using one of the keywords you noted down earlier, enter it into either of these tools and it will build a list of similar phrases that actual searchers have used, along with their search volumes.

This can be a great way to find some variations of keyword phrases that you haven’t thought of to add to your existing list. Google’s keyword tool will also give you an idea of how competitive a phrase might be, so you can decide whether the competition to traffic ratio is worth trying to rank well on it.

Step 4: Smart ways to uncover effective keywords

Another way to expand and add variety to your keyword list is to try these different methods. With a little lateral thinking you can often uncover some largely untapped, yet high value, traffic.

• Misspellings – If you check the search volumes for “loose weight” you might be surprised how much traffic this misspelling gets. Try to think of similar common misspellings in your niche.
• Product or Author Names – Adding a product or author name to your list can help you target searchers nearing the end of the purchase cycle.
• Immediate Words – One of the main reasons people turn to the internet is to solve a problem. When they want a problem solved they want it done now. Even tomorrow is too late. So add some immediacy to your phrases by adding words like “stop,” “fix,” or “now.”
• Money Words – Target the buyers by using words they are likely to search on such as “get …” “review …” or “buy …” No surprises there.
• Information Words – Not everyone who goes online is planning on buying but that doesn’t mean you don’t want them visiting your site. The power of your sales copy could easily lure their credit card out of hiding, or if you have a tool to build a mailing list, you can contact them again in the future. Try adding words such as “how to…” “free guide…” or “homemade” to catch this type of traffic.

After assembling your keyword list, it’s important to identify the intent of the visitor that has searched for the particular keyword and group them into different traffic types.

Step 5: Focus your aim by sorting your list

It’s important to think about the intent of your visitors and the types of keywords they will use. Linking your keywords with specific visitor types will allow you to concentrate and strengthen the focus of your sales pages.

Divide your keywords into the following three types of visitors:

• Buyers – This is the highest quality traffic you can attract, since they are right at the end of the purchase cycle and very close to buying. Unfortunately it is also the lowest volume. Words that buyers use include the money words mentioned above, as well as product or author names.
• Product seekers - This segment has more traffic but it is lower quality, since they are not as close to making an actual purchase. They know about the niche and are thinking about buying a product to improve their experience but they don’t really know what products are available. Words found in this group are similar to information seekers but will tend to be more about solving an immediate problem and recognize the need for help. For example, in the dog training niche, they may be searching for a “dog training book,” “fix Doberman behavior problems,” or “training collar.”
• Information seekers – While this is the lowest quality traffic it is also the highest volume, meaning it’s easier to get plenty of these types of visitors. The keywords assigned to this type will be the most general, or broad. Group your information-based words (see above) in this category, including any phrases that relate to information on how to solve a problem.

The first two are your most valuable; in particular, you should focus most of your energies on attracting product seekers. This has the best combination of traffic and potential buyers.

Shorter, broader phrases often have more competition, so don’t be afraid to target the long tail keywords that are more focused and have less competition. For example, in the dog training niche, you could focus on a specific breed or a well-known trainer like Cesar Millan.

With experience comes the natural intuition of recognizing “money keywords.” Spend time studying the search engine results for the keywords you are targeting. Monitor the traffic you are attracting to your site with the use of statistical tracking. Refine, tweak and experiment.

What types of keywords do you find work best to target your buyer traffic? What methods do you use to unearth good quality keywords? I’d be interested to know what works best for you.

About the author

Simon Slade is the CEO of Affilorama, an affiliate marketing training portal that offers free video training, education and software tools to both beginning and advanced affiliate marketers.

Please note: Any opinions expressed here represent those of the author, and are not necessarily recommended or endorsed by ClickBank.