Posts Tagged ‘research’

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: Steven Clayton, Guest Author

In Part 1 of this series, I discussed why moving from affiliate to vendor, or doing both at the same time, is a great idea. I also discussed how to pick a topic or niche. In this part, I’ll answer a couple of other common questions I get asked.

Don’t I have to Be an “Expert”?

This is something I talk about often with our customers who are starting a search engine management consulting business. They feel very insecure, as they think they have to be the most knowledgeable expert in this field in order to begin marketing their services. That’s simply not true.

In order to be valuable to someone (a customer), you simply need to possess information that they don’t. That’s it. Not ALL the information, or the LARGEST resource of information, or anything like that. Knowing more than your potential customer and being able to present that information to them creates the value.

This can even be true when you are less of an “expert” than your potential customer. Let me give you an example. I’m a complete home theater nut. Projectors, TV’s, Pre-amps, amplifiers, speakers, sound formats, Blu-ray, etc.

I consider myself an expert on all of these things. However, I haven’t had a lot of time to focus on the latest home theater craze: 3D. It would be VERY valuable for me to have someone prepare a report (an information product!) on the various standards, equipment, and integration techniques for this technology. This is called information or content aggregation, and it’s essentially a research project. It just requires going through all of the available information online and in print, etc., and aggregating (summarizing) all of the content out there in one cohesive package. This would create a highly valuable product for an expert like me, and could easily be researched and created by a non-expert.

Can I outsource this so I don’t have to do it all myself?

Information products are excellent candidates for outsourcing. You can outsource the entire thing, or just the pieces you want help on. There are many people that make a full time living online creating information products for people. These are people that truly enjoy research and writing and the whole creation process, rather than trying to find ideas and markets and trying to sell their own products. The key is to find out the parts of information product creation that you enjoy and that you’re good at (very often the same!). These are the steps to do yourself, and the others are perfect for getting others to do them for you.

How do I outsource ?

The first challenge is to find a place where there are contractors waiting to do work for someone like yourself. There are several options, but we find the best overall place to go is Elance. The quality is very high, and there are plenty of choices there.

When picking someone to work with, I recommend you pick a person that specializes in creating information products, and someone that has a portfolio of examples you can examine to determine their quality level. This is not to say that someone completely new wouldn’t be able to do a good job, but you have to ask yourself if you have the time to risk your project to a complete unknown. Usually, it’s better to pay an experienced person a bit more to lower your risk.

One thing everyone wants to know about is cost, so I’ll give you an example. We recently outsourced a whole information product that required a lot of research (50 page ebook and a 1000 word sales script) for about $750 USD. This will give you some idea of the cost. It’s incredibly reasonable, and only takes a few sales to make your money back.

The biggest thing to focus on during the outsourcing process is managing expectations. The key is to ensure that you know what you want, that your outsourcer knows what you want, and that he/she can deliver what you want in the timeframe specified at the appropriate cost. This is harder than it may seem!

If you spend a LOT of time upfront specifying what you want, you can typically be successful in managing expectations.

Here are the things to focus on:

Deadlines – Make sure that the work can be completed in the timeframe by which you need it.

Chapter titles and summaries – This may seem like you’re having to do a lot of the work, but it’s time well spent. It doesn’t have to be the final version of the product, but the more you can give your outsourcer about what you expect, the better the whole process will be. You can be clear that they can still exercise their creative powers (that’s one of the reasons you’re hiring them) and make changes, but it’s a starting point for both of you to work from.

Voice, tone and style – In some markets, a casual or fun tone and writing style is important. In others, you need a more serious one. Make sure your outsourcer knows what you’re looking for.

Overview of the audience – Give your outsourcer as much detail as you can about the potential audience. This will only help them as they craft your product.

100% original content – Make very clear that you need original content. Research from sources is just fine, of course, but the finished product MUST be their own work product.

Specify font size, margin size and spacing (and/or just use word count) – A 50 page document can be a very small amount of content if the fonts are huge and lots of spacing is used! Ensure that you’re getting the amount of content you’re paying for.

Table of contents/Index – Do you want or need these?

Check in regularly – Don’t wait until the product is completed to check on progress. Request regular updates over the life of the project and check each chapter as it’s done. This will ensure that you’re on the same page.

Revision policy – Ask and make sure you understand what the creator’s revision policy is. What if you don’t like what’s being done? How many times and what scope can you change and still stay at the same price point?

These are the biggest things to get correct up front and to track during product development. In order to help, here’s an example (PDF / Word) of the product spec sheet that we use to communicate back and forth with outsourcers.

These tips on getting started and outsourcing should help get you on your way to creating a great product, but check back tomorrow for the final part, when I’ll talk about how to get affiliates to promote your product!

Update: Part 3 is now available!

About the Author

Steven Clayton and his partner Tim Godfrey are the creators of a number of best selling information products in the Internet marketing niche, along with many other markets. Their Info Prodigy course (teaching how to create and market information products) is currently closed to new members, but you can get on the waiting list and get a free and very detailed 26 page report that gives away even more secrets right here. In addition, don’t forget to sign up at www.blueprintaffiliates.com to see excellent examples of affiliate resource pages.

Written by: Chris McNeeney, Guest Author

In my years as a super affiliate, I have seen some of the best and worst that copywriting has to offer and almost everything in between. ClickBank is awash with sales letters and copy for vendor products and it’s not always obvious which ones will convert to sales at first glance.

Even the ugliest site will convert browsers into paying customers if the copy is well written and does its job as it should – and if the copywriter understands how to sell to the niche in question.

In this post, I am going to teach you the copywriting elements that are vital to the success of any sales page (no matter how good or bad the design and graphics). The end result should be that your customers feel they simply have to buy the product you’re offering, without delay.

The Key Element of Converting Browsers into Buyers

One of the most important elements to concentrate on when promoting your own or someone else’s product is your sales copy. The better your copy converts, the more products you will sell and the more you will attract affiliates to sell your product for you. It’s all a virtuous cycle – and arguably your sales copy is the most important factor in the entire mix; perhaps even more important than the product or the affiliates you recruit.

If you can write a great sales letter, one that converts into sales, then you will have other marketers ‘eating out of your hand’ in a bid to promote your ClickBank products. Get it wrong and you won’t get any traction in the ClickBank Marketplace, and your product will stagnate and die.

The starting point of writing killer sales copy is to understand your market. By that, I don’t mean reading a few articles and assuming you know the market. You really have to do a bit of leg-work to understand who you are talking to, establish what they want, and research what’s already out there and what isn’t.

Find a gap in the market and fill it. Visit forums and find out what people are talking about, what their frustrations are, and how likely they are to spend money to get a solution to their problem or need. Read your competitors’ sales letters and sign up to their e-mail newsletters. Listen to the problems they talk about that the average customer has (e.g., “Aren’t you sick of diet pills that don’t work?”), along with which benefits they push hardest (“Lose weight without hunger pangs”). This will highlight important clues as to what is on the mind of your target audience.

So do your research and work out what is going through their heads. In other words, you really need to resonate with your potential buyer. If you can do this you can establish empathy with your potential buyer. If you do this, you are well on your way to a winning formula for your sales copy.

Getting Started

Now, before you exclaim, ‘But I can’t write copy,’ know that it is actually easier than you think. In fact, the transition from never having written a word of copy to being a ‘monster’ copywriter is perfectly achievable in just days – but only if you follow and implement some simple but extremely powerful copywriting rules.

The Short Cut To Copywriting Success

One of the fastest ways to get yourself from 0 to 60 writing great sales copy is to leverage the years of experience of some of the great copywriters who have already tried, tested, and proven the elements of copywriting. In short, we are going to cheat a little by building up a big pile of other marketers’ copy and swiping it (a.k.a. “the cheat sheet”).

Note: before I proceed, I want to be very clear on something. I am not suggesting you break copyright rules by copying other people’s work – you simply cannot do that – it would be copyright infringement. But the good news is, we don’t need to. Instead, we can examine and discover the successful elements, phrases, hooks, and buzzwords that are being used, and spin them to work into our own copywriting. In other words, we are going to extract the most important elements and rework them into our own sales letters. This is not only lawful – but its common practice in successful copywriting circles. The trick is to go to other niches and take elements from the most successful sales letters there for your own inspiration.

For example, let’s say you want to write copy for a bodybuilding product. You might come across a Forex sales letter with a headline that reads:

“Just In: Renegade, Grass Roots Trader Exposes Forex Loophole and Siphons Off $3,000 In 30 Days.”

You have a lot of words you can work with and use here, such as renegade, grass roots, exposes, loophole, siphons, etc. So if your niche was bodybuilding, you could work those words into your own headline:

“ Renegade Bodybuilder exposes muscle-building loophole and packs on 8 lbs of muscle in 3 weeks.”

The idea is to take the words and adapt and fit them to your own copy, whilst keeping the same elements of newness (renegade), something uncovered (loophole, exposed) and, very importantly, how quickly something can be achieved (6 days / 3 weeks). This method should not only be used for your headline, but also for your sub headers and the body copy of your sales letter.

Benefits Are Vital

Why? Because it’s a proven fact that people will buy something based on its benefits. Benefits are simply what the customer gets out of buying a product – in short, they’re the reason that people decide to buy a certain product. For example, if you have a product on making money, people will buy because of the perceived benefits that making money will bring, such as being able to pay off debts, improve their lifestyle, and by doing so appear more attractive to people around them. If it’s a more advanced guide, benefits might be very specific – for example, if it’s a blogging guide, one benefit might be “generating a flood of backlinks to your blog.”

Also, there’s a deeper psychological aspect here. Whilst people think they just want to make more money, in truth the benefits they will gain from doing so are much deeper than it at first appears. So it’s not enough to just sell the ‘idea’ of making money – this is far too general and unfocused. Instead, you should sell the benefits that will have a knock-on effect as a result of making money. So the more you understand the deep reasons behind why people want something, the more likely you are going to be able to tap into a person’s psyche when writing sales copy.

Check Out What’s Working

The best place to start when researching what is and isn’t working in a given niche is to check out the top performing products in that niche. This is easily achieved by heading over to the ClickBank Marketplace and doing a keyword search in a given niche. Alternatively, you can check out affiliate niches or the top ClickBank products on my site, Affiliate X.

For example, let’s look at dating. We know that Internet dating is a huge market that continues to grow repidly, but what about digging deeper into the dating niche?

Doing a search in ClickBank on any aspect of dating will bring up the top performing products, which are easily identified by their high gravity score. Take a look at the headlines of the top performers. The headline is the most important part of the sales copy. If you don’t grab the reader’s attention at this point, you will have lost them forever. A headline should be compelling, intriguing, and raise curiosity so the reader wants to read on. In the same way, the sub header should pull the reader in with a taste of what’s to come.

Generally, a good formula for a headline is: “How [someone like the customer] [got the kind of benefit the customer wants] in [x days].” For example, “How a 27 year old renegade Forex trader made $1,000 with a breakthrough new robot in 10 days,” or “How a 21 year old scrawny kid stacked on 13 lbs of chest muscle in 31 days.”

Remember that empathy is a powerful copywriting tool. If you can identify with the reader and show that you understand their problem or need because you have been “in their shoes” yourself, that helps build trust. Explain your situation and how you worked to discover a solution, and now you want to share it so that others don’t have to go through the same hurdles and problems that you did.

Empathy in any situation is beneficial, but in copywriting it’s essential. For this very reason, your story (i.e., how you arrived at this point) should make up a major part of your copy. It’s important not to underestimate the value of empathy within your copy – get it right and your copy will result in insane conversions.

Don’t Ignore The Competition

When writing your copy, you may be tempted to ignore the competition and hope that potential buyers will see your product for what it is and just buy it. Don’t make this mistake. Instead, explain in your copy why your product is better because it covers an angle that isn’t covered in competing products.

Try to think of a unique selling point that makes your product different from the others out there. Maybe it’s a better value, easier to understand, quicker to implement, or has better proof. Whatever the unique selling point is, elaborate on it and make it stand out. Just put yourself in a reader’s shoes – if you wanted to buy a product on dating women or learning to play the guitar – would you just check out one product? No, of course not; you would check out what’s available from a selection and then choose the best one.

Which brings us nicely to…

The Power of Proof

The number one reason why people don’t buy a product is because they don’t believe its claims. How many times have you thought to yourself, “that sounds too easy” or “that sounds too good to be true?” This is why it’s so important to demonstrate empathy within your copy.

However, the second element that cannot be overlooked is proof that your products does what it says it does. If you can provide screenshots of profits you’ve attained using the product, or a live working example, or even testimonials from existing customers, then you are on to a winner. Once you have the proof, it will be easier for potential customers to identify themselves with the benefits your product will deliver and they will want it for themselves.

To Conclude

It’s important to understand that in order to write great copy that will convert into sales, you DON’T need to be an experienced copywriter. It’s as simple as breaking down the sales copy of highly converting web pages out there, and carefully working out why they are selling. That’s just something that comes with a little digging and a bit of experience.

It doesn’t matter what niche the sales copy is in. You can swipe the buzz words and curiosity elements within the headlines, sub headers and sales letter body and rework those to your suit your own niche. Well thought-out copy and strong proof will almost guarantee your sales pitch will convert into sales. Once you have mastered these essential elements, you’ll be able to create copy that converts in any niche you choose.

About the Author

Chris McNeeney is the owner of Affiliate X – a resource for ClickBank affiliates with affiliate tools, affiliate videos, and training information.

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.

Written by: Simon Slade, Guest Blogger

This is the final post in my “Competitive Niches” series. Be sure to check out Part 1,  Part 2,  Part 3 and Part 4 if you haven’t already!

#5 – Look for the niche within a niche

Some affiliates fail because they think of a niche as a single entity. So if you ask them what niche they’re in, they’ll say “weight loss” and then they wonder why they don’t seem to be getting any traction. The sites that thrive in these competitive niches are the ones who have discovered niches within the niche.

For example, some successful affiliates have targeted a specific subset of weight loss customers, such as people looking for high protein diets. When you start researching this sub-niche you start to discover a lot of different products you can promote, and it can be enough to support your Internet marketing business.

So remember, you don’t need to take on the whole niche. Just find a healthy niche within the niche and you’ll have your sales without the excessive competition that comes with being too generic.

For example, some weight loss sub-niches you could try include:

• High protein diets
• Bride diets
• Belly fat diets
• Low carb diets

We’re barely scratching the surface here, but something you’ll find with competitive niches is that they fragment really well, allowing you to easily find a sub-niche you can quite happily take on.

Have you been scared off taking on a competitive niche? What would make it easier? Do you think taking on competitive niches is a waste of time? Please leave a comment with your thoughts!

About the author

Simon Slade is the CEO of Affilorama, an affiliate marketing training portal that offers free video training, education, and affiliate tools to both beginning and advanced affiliate marketers. You can follow them on Twitter.

Written by: Simon Slade, Guest Blogger

Something that I love about the internet is the way it has removed a lot of the barriers to getting started in a particular industry or niche. There is a certain amount of democracy to the online world that has removed the stranglehold that large, well-established players had on the marketplace. Ten years ago it would have been very unlikely that a small Internet marketing company from New Zealand would be competing successfully on the global scene, but now it’s a reality.

With that said, it’s still not exactly a piece of cake. Taking on a competitive niche and clambering your way to the top is a challenging task involving tactical thinking and determination.

If it seems like shooting for the stars, I invite you to think about these 5 ideas on tackling top niches – you might decide it’s more achievable than you think.

#1 – Know your target

If you’re thinking, “this sounds familiar,” then you’re right. I talked about knowing your target in a recent post about keyword research, but it’s worth repeating.

So what does knowing your target have to do with tackling a competitive niche? Lots. To illustrate my point, I want to use Subway as a real-world example. Subway took on the world’s biggest franchise, McDonald’s, and became a big player in the fast food niche. They didn’t do it by trying to copy McDonald’s – they did it by getting to know their target better. Learning that fast-food customers wanted healthier options, Subway targeted that hole in the market and became very successful, building up almost twice as many outlets in the US as McDonald’s.

You can replicate Subway’s strategy by thinking about the niche you’re tackling and really getting to know your target market. For example, are you in the ‘stop smoking’ niche?

• What products are quitters talking about right now?
• Is there a new product that’s just come out and is in demand?
• Is there something in particular that is a real concern for people trying to quit, such as dealing with a relapse? Remember to really listen to what people are saying here. Be prepared to alter your perceptions and don’t make the mistake of clinging to your own assumptions.

You’ll notice that effective affiliate sites keep up with the latest trends and stay in tune with what their target market is talking about.

Stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow, where I’ll discuss developing an effective SEO strategy.

About the author

Simon Slade is the CEO of Affilorama, an affiliate marketing training portal that offers free video training, education, and affiliate tools to both beginning and advanced affiliate marketers. You can follow them on Twitter.

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.

Posted by: Michael Poston, Product Manager

As a rule of thumb, you should gather competitive intelligence (CI) for your business. Doing so will allow you to better understand current and potential competitors, industry trends, and possible threats. As a result, you will be empowered to make more informed decisions about your product and strategic initiatives.

To do this effectively, you should implement a process designed to filter large volumes of data into clear and actionable insight. For instance, using a RSS parser such as Jawfish to receive, organize, and redistribute feed content can automate CI data mining and distribution. Simply take the repurposed RSS feed content and display it on an intranet or wiki page, and voila, you have a CI portal.

Similarly, you can use Web page monitoring tools to ensure you are “in the know” regarding your competitors’ activities. For example, you can use a tool like TrackEngine, InfoMinder, or WatchThatPage to notify you every time your competitors’ news or press release pages are updated. Review the content as you are notified, identify if it is significant, and redistribute within your company as necessary.

Lastly, use tools like Twitturly or Twitterfox to easily monitor popular links being tweeted for subjects related to your competitors, your industry, or possible threats to your business. Doing so will give you nearly real-time visibility into their activities and the community’s response to it. You can also use the tool Tweet Scan to get emailed updates on tweets for particular keywords. It delivers information less frequently than the other tools, but can be good for receiving summaries if you don’t have a lot of time to monitor the other tools.

In conclusion, the Internet has changed the meaning of “readily available information.” If you haven’t already, you need to leverage tools like these to help you capture this information and organize it in a fashion that makes sense for your business. Taking the time to do so will lead to greater success.

Happy selling, friends!

Please note that all applications mentioned in this post are not affiliated with ClickBank and should be used at your own risk.