Charming? Is That You?

Yes affiliates, it’s time to ramp up your product reviews and pages because Christmas season is upon us.

So in the spirit of giving, ‘tis the holiday season after all, it’s time I wrote another post on this here poor neglected blog of mine.

Okay then, let’s start at the beginning shall we?

Once upon a time there was a princess named Tracey. She was a lovely girl who liked to write. One day a handsome prince arrived at her door, he was gorgeous and told her that he could make all of her desires come true, he started unbuttoning his shirt to reveal a smooth .. Oh shit, wrong story. Sorry about that.

Where was I?

Oh yes. Promoting stuff.

So what do you promote? How do you find the right products?

Firstly head over to Amazon. This is where you’ll be doing all your research (no keyword tools required).

There are three lists that you will need to look at, they are the Bestsellers List, Hot New Products List and Movers & Shakers List. Each main category on Amazon has these lists. Most people just stick with the Bestsellers List because it’s easy. That’s fine. But I tend to concentrate on the Hot New Products and Movers & Shakers lists – just to be different.

Great, now you’ve got a list of the top 100 or 200 products that you know are selling well on Amazon. You could choose any one of them and do fine. However you want to find the really hot products don’t you? Of course you do.

Then it’s time to have a closer look at the lists. What you are looking for is the products that people are TALKING about. If they are talking about it, it’s a good sign that they are searching online for it as well rather than just randomly buying it from Amazon.

Have a look at the listing for this Vtech Mobigo toy:

See that little “8 Customer Discussions” link? That means people are TALKING about it. This is a very good sign of a hot product. And it’s also got lots of positive reviews. Another plus. Oh and you also know that it’s selling well because it’s moving UP the movers and shakers list.

Are your fingers burning yet?

Ok. So you’ve chosen your product. What do you write about it?

There are two areas where you can get your info – the Amazon page for the product (where most people go and still a good place for the basic information).

But remember that this product had discussions right? Well let’s see what people want to know about this product. Click the “Customer Discussions” link.

Very interesting. People want to know if it’s appropriate for 5 year olds, the comparisons between this product and the iXL and so on. Bet most affiliates won’t put this GOLD information in their reviews. Can we say long tail keywords baby?

Oh and while we are here and talking about keywords. What keywords should you be using?

Look at the customer reviews and the discussions. What are people actually calling this product? You know, NOT the manufacturers description but the actual words people use when they talk about it? Seems most people just use the word Mobigo. So that’s the keyword you want to target with your “Buy Mobigo” “Cheap Mobigo” “Mobigo Review” etc. Of course put the whole product name in your content, but your main keyword to concentrate on in this case is just Mobigo.

Alrighty then. You’ve got the product and have written a review. Oh and I forgot to mention that yes you’ll need to write it yourself. Don’t just cut and paste the text from Amazon – lazy boys and girls don’t win in this game. Try and make it long and juicy. Never below 300 words. I try and aim for 500’ish words. Just so I can get more long tails in there.

So now what? Where do you put the review? On your own site? On a web 2.0?

Let’s look at these starting from best to just ok.

BEST: Your own website that is already ranking well on G.

GOOD: Web 2.0 sites (squidoo, hubpages, etc etc) << because these will rank quicker than a new site that you put up even if you don‘t own the domain.

OK: A new site that you’ve just started. Probably won’t rank as high as quickly, but will be great for next year or the year after.

Cool.

Now let’s get that baby ranking.

Onpage SEO. Let’s start here because it’s the easiest. You want your main keyword in the TITLE, CONTENT, URL (page/post name not domain name), IMAGE ALT TAG, at least.

You also want to add some internal links using both exact and partial anchors. (Don’t use too many exact’s as it can work against you).

That will give the page a good boost on it’s own.

Now external SEO aka backlinks. If you can afford a link building service such as Build My Rank then do it. If not then you are going to have to spend a bit more time finding links yourself. You can use web 2.0’s and other sites you own etc for backlinks. Don’t bother with directory submissions or blog commenting. Not quick enough and fairly worthless for seo juice anyway.

I like to send around 10-20 backlinks directly to the money page, then write a web 2.0 which points to the money page and send IT 10-20 backlinks, then other web 2.0 property that points to the money page and send IT 10-20 backlinks. And so on and so on.

These are not going to be quality links like guest posting (which is a better way to build up your authority sites but not really relevant here for ranking quick product reviews for Christmas).

Again you want a teeny tiny few exact match anchors, but mostly you want partial anchors. Partial anchors are those that have one or two keywords plus some other words. So if your exact match you want is “Mobigo“. Your partials would be “mobigo review”, “new vtech toy mobigo”, “read about mobigo here” and so on. Also throw in a few non anchors here are there. “read the review”, “click here”, to keep it natural. So MAINLY you want partial anchors, and then sprinkle a few exact match’s and non match’s as well.

Keep your content original and useful even those that you are just using for backlinks. I don’t use spun content (yeah I know it can work, I just don’t do it, ‘k)

Oh if it’s YOUR site then use only TWO or less affiliate links per page. One up the top and one down the bottom. I’ve found reducing the amount of aff links on the page helps it rank better. Doesn’t matter as much with the web 2.0’s but still don’t overdo it and make it look spammy. ‘k?

And that’s it really.

Summary:

• Choose products that people are talking about
• See WHAT they are talking about it
• Write a good original review with long tails thrown in
• Good onpage SEO and some internal links
• Backlinks to the page using mainly partial anchors.

Merry Christmas!

Thanks for reading 100 Days Until Christmas. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

Well never fear dear reader, because this article should help you get closer to what Google wants but more important what your BUYER wants.

Yes, hopefully by the end of reading this, you’ll be able to build a USEFUL website that has the potential to become an authority in its niche.

But before I get to the ‘how to’, you first need to understand that you can’t build a site to make money if you want to make money. If you really want to make money then you need to focus on your buyer, and what THEY want. You can’t think about what you want, you need to think about what THEY want.

Generally there will be three types of visitors that will visit your site.

#1 People looking for either entertainment or information.

These people do not usually buy. However that doesn’t mean you can ignore them. In fact, you probably are going to have to create about 50% of your content around the site to satisfy them (and Google).

Let’s say your site’s primary objective is to sell food dehydrators.

That means you will need to add articles about How to Dehydrate Pineapple, How to Clean Your Food Dehydrator and How Long Does Dehydrated Food Last. These need to be useful articles too – not just quickly written, spun or copied articles. The longer that you can make these the better. 1,000+ words is good if you can do it. And it goes without saying that they must be original. If you can make them entertaining too – so much the better!

Plus you want to think about anything that will make the article better than anything else on the web. Pictures are usually a must. Video is really good too – especially for how-to articles. Have a look on youtube to see if there is anything useful there – or even better create your own video’s if you can.

Do not try to sell anything in these articles. Your customer will find the relevant pages they want when they are ready to. The less salesy and the more informative your articles are, the more likely you’ll get some natural links to them (yes people still do link naturally to sites they like – shock hey!).

Oh and add a facebook like button to the end of these posts (some good wordpress plugin’s do this and it does bring in some extra traffic and links).

#2 People researching different models and looking for comparisons

About 30% of your visitors are thinking about buying but are not quite ready to do so yet. They are in the 2nd stage of the buying cycle. They are looking for comparisons of different models, prices, features, and any other information they can about the products they are interested in.

Some of these people will buy, but many will not. However you still need to create some of your site’s content to these visitors.

Creating graphs and tables are usually good with these articles. Arrange three or so similar products together and compare different features including prices (or just price ranges if you don’t want to have to update the prices all the time) of the different models in the range.

Add new posts when sites like Amazon are having sales on some of the models so that customers are aware of the specials. These quick posts can be short, but the comparison posts should be as detailed as you can make them.

Don’t be afraid to tell your customer other places that stock these products even if you won’t get a commission there – you want to create a USEFUL site. Remember this site is for your customer, not for you.

I don’t even add aff links to these pages, but rather link to the individual posts about the particular product. Whether you include aff links on the research/comparison pages is up to you. If you do though, think about WHY you are doing it. Is it to help the customer or you?

#3 People Ready To Buy

Finally we come to the visitors that have their credit card in their hands and are ready to buy. They are in the 3rd stage of the buying cycle. About 20% (or less) of your visitors will be the ones that are ready to buy and will make you a commission. Here is where you create pages for specific products, with original (and USEFUL) information about that product.

And yes, on this page you include your affiliate links. And don’t be shy about adding your links and images up high (above the fold) to make it easier for your buyer to get to Amazon (or wherever).

The old 80/20 rule usually applies to authority sites – 80% of your income will come from only 20% of your visitors.

I know it can be tempting to skip all the information articles and the product comparison posts and skip directly to the ‘money’ posts. And many ‘money-chasers’ do just that. But you won’t be rewarded for it. In fact it’s likely that you won’t be able to rank a site for long that is all take take take.

You need to give first.

So there you go. THAT is how to create an authority site. It’s not about how many pages you have. It’s about your content and how USEFUL it is to visitors.

Oh and of course the backlinks .. but that’s another post …

Thanks for reading Building a USEFUL Authority Site. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

What I look (now) for choosing products are two main factors: one is that it already HAS converted for me, and two that it earns a decent commission as well.

Casting the Net

If you are an absolute beginner to promoting Amazon products then I first suggest that you take up the challenge I made prior to Christmas. Basically I suggest writing up to 10 different Squidoo lenses based on popular bestselling products in Amazon’s bestseller lists. You probably won’t earn as much as you would at Chrissy time – but you still should get some sales.

Actually if you can do more than 10 that would be great, but I don’t want you to get overwhelmed straight away. Once you have done your 10 you will need to backlink them.

If you have BMR (which is great and should pay for itself within a month if you use it) then send 10 links per day to your 10 lenses. You can decide whether you want to concentrate on one lens at a time, or do 1 link per lens per day until you reach your 10 quota.

If you don’t have BMR then you’ll need to do other methods of backlinking such as guest posting, writing articles, blog commenting and so on.

Try and get around 20 links to each Squid.

Check your Stats

It should take around 2 to 3 weeks for your lenses to start ranking and bringing in some sales.

At the start of a new month, go into your Amz Associates and look at the Earnings Report for orders from the last month. You can look at it on screen, but I actually prefer to download the report (choose xml or tsv) and then open it with Excel to get it into the excel format.

You’ll get much more information this way – including which id gave you sales for which product (important if you use different tracking id’s).

Next you can filter or sort your results so that you can mine for different information. I usually just filter them to only show results on products that have earned me at least $20 commission per product.

You can also see which products sold the most too to see which ones convert the best.

Most of the time it will be products that you are already promoting, but often it will also show items that you were not promoting.

For the products you were not promoting

If you were not promoting a product that earned you a good commission then I suggest creating a squid around that product to see if was a fluke, or might be a good product to promote later on.

Send that new lens 20 BMR’s (or other links)

For the products that you were promoting

Congrats – you’ve found a product that converts AND earns you a good commission rate. This is one that you can then use to build your niche empire with.

The next step is to create your own website/blog. Keep the domain name general if you can rather than specific. That way you can add lots of different products to it over time as you build it up.

I like to write a good original review and have a big call to action on the post. Add your product review to the site and then link your squidoo lens to it (your first backlink).

If it’s a new site, then start to add backlinks to it slowly. Perhaps no more than 1 or 2 per day. If it’s aged 6 months or more then you can be more aggressive – but I’d still do no more than 10-20 per day.

With your new money site – you want to get a variety of links – not just BMR’s. If you can get guest posting gigs then go for it because these are usually the best to get.

Also add some analytics to the site – either Google Anal, or another one you prefer. (I’m not overly paranoid so usually do use G Analytics). That way you’ll start to get a feel for more keywords that people are using to find your website. Write more posts around those keywords and link them back to your review post to funnel the traffic and build up the authority of that post.

All the while you still should be creating more lenses (or hubs if you prefer) to mine for more profitable products that convert to add to your main site.

And so as the cliché says – rinse and repeat.

Over time then you can start to create support sites and the like for your main site to increase the rankings even further – but that’s a whole other post and I’m on a time deadline so must run.

Enjoy and comment below (so I feel like someone actually read’s my posts )

Thanks for reading Finding Profitable Niche Products on Amazon to Promote. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

I’m always looking for great ideas on finding a good product to promote online, and while I look at a range of products from info, to services, I most often promote physical products through the Amazon affiliate program because for me this has proved the most successful.

Generally I just browse the Amazon bestseller lists to find a product that looks good, but lately I’ve been playing around with the Google Product Search and I have to say that it has brought up some great gems of ideas that I probably wouldn’t have even considered on my own.

So I thought I’d write a quick post showing you how cool it is to find a good product to promote using this tool.

So anywhere, just pop on over to Google Product search and it will give you a list of some of the most recently searched for keywords and phrases that people are looking for.

On my first search (obviously you are going to get different results) it has suggested things like square coffee table, natural gas grill, fabric steamer and more. Each time you refresh the page you’ll get a different list of products that people have searched for.

You can also type in your own search terms if you want to focus just on a certain item or range of items.

Ok, so let’s say for this example I like the look of food dehydrator and decide to click on it for some more information.

You’ll see a page that contains some of the top food dehydrator’s but also some other incredibly useful information such as brand names, price ranges, related keywords, the stores they are available in (I always make sure that Amazon is included here) and more.

This product even has a buying guide listed where you could get lots of information that could fill a site.

Think you could make a kick-ass site about food dehydrators with this information? I do!

You could have different posts on the brands, price ranges, include lots of different information and then sprinkle your Amazon affiliate links where necessary.

Add a few backlinks and you’ve got a very good chance of making a great site.

I love this tool, it’s given me some great ideas.  Hope you like it too.

Thanks for reading How to Find a Good Product to Promote. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

Ok, so we are about to hit December and sales for Amazon stuff is about to heat up ALOT in the next few weeks.

I’ve heard a lot of people say that they don’t have time to set up their own sites, but that’s negative thinking, I remember I made a hubpage last year three days before Christmas that still made some decent sales (actually it made most of the sales in the post Christmas sales but the point is that it still made money). 

So there is still time! 

Now the choice is yours whether you choose to set up a hubpage (faster rankings) or squidoo (better flexibility) but both react nicely to some backlinks and should be able to make you some nice Christmas cash – or rather February cash when you actually get your money  

(Oh and yes you can use your own sites too, but they might not rank quite as quickly as the web 2.0 sites – they are a better long term solution). 

How do you choose whether to target Squidoo or HubPages (or other web 2.0 site of your choosing?). 

Usually I’ll check how many pages are already on those sites using the keyword that I want to target. Let’s say I want to write about the new Fisher Price Dance Star Mickey doll. If I do a search for site:squidoo.com Fisher Price Dance Star Mickey I can see that 384 lenses are targeting that toy and site:hubpages.com Fisher Price Dance Star Mickey have 402 hubs targeting it. 

Usually I choose the one that has the least amount of sites with my term in it (by the way – I’d actually probably go with snipsly.com for this toy because it only has 3 other pages that have that term (and only two that are actually targeting it) – much easier to rank better with them even though I hate the layout for that site). 

Squidoo 

As I told you last post, I’ve been pretty pleased with how Squidoo has been reacting to backlinks and while it still takes a few days to a week for the lenses to get indexed, they are very responsive to backlinks and have been moving up nicely. 

The problem is that SO many other marketers are using Squidoo too, so it can sometimes be difficult to get your lens ranked higher than theirs (which is why I usually don’t target products that have too many other pages also targeting that term). 

By the way – I’m LOVING the Amazon banner creator that you make from SquidUtils.com – all you do is place the product code and your affiliate id in the generator and it will make a cool banner just like the one below for you! Just copy and paste the html onto your lens and voila – image banner created! LOVE IT !!! 

This banner was created by Squidutils.com - cool ain't it!

It’s not too late !! 

Anyway back to the point of this post. That it’s not too late to set up some more sites and start ranking them. So I have a challenge for you.
Create 5 Amazon product sites on any web 2.0 site of your choosing before the end of the month and start backlinking them. 

You can choose any products you like – although I usually prefer to find products that are on the Amazon bestseller lists that have at least a four star rating AND 10 or more reviews. Price is not really an issue for me, but I tend to prefer products that give at least a decent commission – so if there are 10 products that you like, choose the five that cost the most –  

That’s it. 5 review type pages. Then start backlinking them. Use Build My Rank if you have it, or write articles if you don’t. 

If you manage to make more than $500 from them, then thank me by giving me a little donation – I just bought a new house and want to update the kitchen in it

Thanks for reading Squidoo Lens or Hubpage for Quick Chrissy Cash?. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

Yeah yeah and the sky is falling and all that as well. Lately I’ve been reading my favourite blogs and there seems to be a bit of panicking going on in regards to promoting Amazon products this Christmas.

Because the rankings have changed a lot of people are saying that it’s not worth promoting Amz anymore because the sites have been dropping or disappearing from Google and it’s all over, dead, gone for affiliates.

Rubbish.

Sure there has been a lot of weirdness going on in the rankings lately for everyone (me included) but things are not over yet – not by a long shot.

In fact, I just checked my stats and my earnings for October are actually double from last year. Granted I wish that they were a lot more, but things are actually better than this time 2009. At first I was worried because my earnings in Sept were MORE than my earnings in Oct, but since seeing that this was actually the case last year as well, and then sales picked up Nov and Dec again I’m not worried at all.

Now I’m not going to say that I’ve got the magic formula and you don’t. Because I HAVE lost rankings on many of my sites, but I’ve also gained rankings on some others so it’s evened itself out.

And while there doesn’t seem to be much of a pattern as to why some sites are ranking and others are not, generally:

• My sites that have more than 10 pages do better than those with only 2 or 3 pages – and that is 10+ pages of good content – excluding disclaimer, privacy pages etc.
• A good mix of backlinks HELP – don’t stop backlinking.
• Original content ONLY – don’t copy and paste from Amz
• Exact Match domain names do better (but of course this isn’t always possible).

Also mix up your templates a bit. Don’t make every site look the same. Move the nav to the right instead of the top. Make the front page a ‘portal’ page (that is, just directing to other pages on your site with no aff links on it).

Anything to make them look more legit and not just an Aff Site.

So quit the whining, the sky ISN’T falling for Amz affiliates, it’s just that G wants you to create better sites. There is still plenty of money to be made this Christmas.

Backlinks Experiment

A few weeks ago I embarked on an experiment to see if I could break one of my sites by throwing a bunch of links at it.

The rankings have stabilised now, but overall I discovered.

Profile links still work great – but they are best done by hand and not automated software like SeNuke or Xrumer. So either do them yourself or hire someone who does them by hand like Backlinks Philippines.

Do NOT send BP links to Hubpages though – they have been known to unpublish hubs that have ‘spammy’ backlinks to them.

Article directory links like UAW and AMA don’t work as well anymore. They are barely making a dent in my rankings. It’s not worth the cost in my opinion.

I still like article marketing, but more for the direct traffic it brings rather than the backlinks now. If you want to use it just for the traffic stick to the biggies like EZA.

But having said that, I haven’t written an EZA for over a month now. Why? Since I’ve discovered Build My Rank I’ve been writing there instead.

Hint: Hubpages and BMR is a killer combo – just don’t create more than 10 links a week to your hub (not that you’ll need to *wink*).

There – and I haven’t even included any affiliate links in this post. So therefore if you find it helpful and if anything I’ve said makes you money then just send me a donation instead.

Now get back to work and start creating posts, hubs and more like crazy. Christmas is coming don’t you know?!!

P.S. I’m noticing that Squidoo is quite responsive to backlinks too – hmm I’ll need more checking out there before I can say more.

Thanks for reading Promoting Amazon is Dead – You Will Never Make Money. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

Overall my rankings haven’t changed that much. My good sites are still ranking top 3 (and my best site #1). My shitty sites still aren’t ranking great, but they are improving as I work on them by adding content and sending backlinks to make them better. My hubs and lenses are still doing ok.

So then what’s the problem, are people just not buying this year?

Checking my stats, my visits are down on last year. Heck they are even down from a few months ago, so I suspect that something else must have changed in the last month or so ..

Can you guess what I think is responsible?

Yes, I think it has something to do with Google Instant.

It’s changing the way people put in keywords. So before when people were searching for, say, Fisher Price Smart Cycle they’d type that in. All the keywords. And of course the sites that were optimised for that keyword would appear.

Now things are a little different.

Now if you start typing in Fisher Price Smart Cycle it’ll start suggesting keywords and changing the results as you add each letter. In fact which each extra letter entered the results on the page will change.

What do you think most people will do? They’ll stop when they see what they are looking for whether they’ve finished typing the keyword or not.

So it’s quite possible that you are not optimised for “fisher price smart c” yet that is now what people are using to find what they are looking for. They are too lazy to continue typing because they’ve found what they are looking for and chances are that it’s not your site.

Damn you Google Instant!

So how can you overcome this?

Like you’ve been hearing over and over, the smaller sites which only target one or a few keywords are getting lost. Especially now that now it seems that nobody is heading to page 2 or further anymore – they are just typing different keywords in.

If you are not coming up page 1 (and preferably top 5) then you are probably getting lost.

The first quick solution is to start typing your keyword into instant and check when the results start to match what people will be looking for. Add that word (or letters) to your tags or meta keywords. I’m still testing if this helps much and will let you know – but for now it certainly can’t hurt.

Secondly you are going to have to bulk your site up. Yes that means making it more of an authority sites. Lots more pages. Lots more backlinks.

Yes that means lots more work too. But at least your lazy competition probably isn’t going to bother with this right, so you might just win out in the end.

Don’t just think in the tens anymore, think hundreds and thousands (no not the colored sugar balls that make fairy bread – but the picture is making you hungry yeah?) – Hundreds of pages on your site, Thousands of backlinks. Yes, I said thousands of backlinks.

We can beat this Google monster as long as we put in some more work. And remember there’s always Yahoo and Bing.

Backlink update week 4

Stats:

KW2 – 160 (last week 86)
KW3 –47 (last week 27)
KW4 – 23 (last week 41)
KW5 – 127 (not ranked last week)
KW6 – 139 (last week 111)

Backlinks indexed in YSE = 71

As you can see some of the keywords have slipped back this week. Although they have been dancing around a lot too – for eg kw 3 has gotten as high as 21, but seems today to have slipped again. Some of the keywords are ranking VERY well in yahoo and bing though.

The article run has finally been done and is being dripped out as we speak (and will continue to do so over the next few months). I suspect I’ll need to do another backlinks run from BP though. Plus I need to go back and optimise the pages better myself. I didn’t want to tweak the pages because I wanted to test just backlinks, but I do want to add some keywords and play around with meta descriptions a bit so I think I’ll do that this week.

Thanks for reading Where Did My Amazon Sales Go?. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

Now I could drag out this post and tease you along a bit before revealing the answer like it was some huge secret but really it ain’t anything you probably didn’t already know.

But on my sites. 60%’ish of the time it’s text links that get clicked and 40%’ish of the time the image link. Oh and yes that image over there is typical of how I do my images. A big pic of the item, the Amazon stars (only if it has a good rating LOL) and of course the buy from Amazon button. And for those that are wondering YES IT’S AN AFFILIATE LINK. Because to be a good internet marketer you NEED to own Cougar Town yeah? 

If you want the “buy from Amazon” buttons you get them from the associates site here: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/t6/a9

Oh but of course have both. The text link AND the image link. Good.

Backlink update week 3

Stats:

KW2 – 86 (last week 192 – it’s also jumping around a lot right now)
KW3 –27 (last week 138)
KW4 – 41 (last week 75)
KW6 – 111 (not ranked last week)

Backlinks indexed in YSE = 65

Nice jumps huh! And the article run still hasn’t been done (don’t ask – they lost my order and grrr it SHOULD be done this week) so these results so far are purely from forum profile links (Backlinks Philippines and MakeBacklinks.com) Who says those links are dead?

Thanks for reading More Clicks from Links or Images?. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

Now there are numerous ways to go about this, but in this post I’ll talk about how I do this with Amazon products (since they are my favourite affiliate program).

Now while sometimes I’ll get ideas for products to promote by watching tv or reading magazines, usually my first step is to head over to amazon.com and look at their bestseller lists. They have them in nearly every department, and often you can drill down quite well too.

So for example, here is the bestseller list for Air Purifiers (Home & Garden, Vacuums, Air Purifiers). I just chose that list totally at random as it sounded cool (and let it be known that I know nothing about air purifiers LOL). http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/home-garden/267554011/ref=pd_ts_hg_nav (not an aff link).

As you can see, there are lots of different types of air purifiers to choose from, so the next thing I usually do is pick one at random. I usually like to pick something that has been in the top 100 for more than 60 days, have at least 10 customer reviews, and a four or more star rating.

Just from a quick glance, the Honeywell Air Purifiers seem very popular (lots of reviews), are a good price (so your commission will be decent) and have been around awhile (most of them more than 900 days in the top 100).

So I’d probably pick one of them (again at random) and write a unique hubpage around it.

Don’t worry too much about how much the item costs, many people will tell you to choose only products that are high priced, but I’ve promoted things as low as $10 before and still made good money (because I can sell more, and people always put more stuff in their carts at Amazon).

Then I’d repeat that for 9 other products (all in totally different categories and lists – so your next one might be a baby product, and other might be a garden chair etc) and write hubs around those too until I have 10 new hubs written.

With my hubpages, I’ll write a 300-400 unique post usually review style just talking about the product. I often will read customer reviews and reword this when writing my hub. Add a picture of the product top left and underneath it place your affiliate link directly to Amazon in a link capsule. Also in the first paragraph of the article, as a text link, I’ll also place a link to the product on Amazon. (You are only allowed two links – so keep it as one in the first para of the article, and the other under the picture in a link capsule).

At the end of the article I’ll also place a hubpage Amazon capsule too (you only get revenue share with hubpages with the capsule, so don’t put it at the top).

Once you’ve done all 10, sit back and wait a week.

At the end of one week you need to identify which hub got the most views, was ranked the highest and (fingers crossed) made you some sales. (Although to be realistic, most hubs don’t start earning until after a month or two).

Once you’ve identified your best item, this is what you are going to build a site around. Buy a generic domain name and get some hosting. I like using wordpress blogs, but you can use static hmtl sites too – makes absolutely no difference in ranking in my experience.

Let’s say your best performing product was about a lawnmower. Don’t think mini site, think authority site, with lots of different reviews and articles about lawnmowers. So perhaps you want to buy lawnmowerblog.com (no idea if it’s available). Try and get your main generic keyword in there if you can (it’ll be hard to get exact match so be creative – toplawnmowerreviews.com, thelawnmowerwebsite.com, ilovelawnmowers.com – you get the idea).

For the next 30 days write one post/review to your blog every day, and write one article to submit to ezinearticles.com (you can also add the eza article to your blog as well if you like).

Within a month you’ll be earning some sweet sweet cash. Most of your traffic at this time will be coming from ezinearticles, but over time your backlinks will build up too and you’ll get google traffic as well.

Oh and don’t forget to add a link to your new blog from that old hubpage as well. Once your site is established, then you can go and get some more backlinks for it if you like. Or you can repeat the above steps with a new site.

Hope that’s helped!

Tracey

Thanks for reading How to Get Started Making Money Online. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)

But lately many of my online friends have had their sites deindexed due to what Google has called Made For Adsense (MFA) sites or thin affiliate sites. Of course some of these are not thin at all, they just happened to be hosted on Blogger which if you didn’t know already is going through a major cleanup right now.

I still have all of my Blogger sites for now, but then I never really developed any of them substantially and most of them are just sites I played around with, so it would be no huge loss if I did lose them (although I’d rather they stayed as most of them are true blogs about my experiences of certain life experiences). I didn’t develop them to make money – which is probably why they haven’t been touched.

Now let’s get to the mini site issue. If you’ve been in IM for a while you’ve no doubt heard of the x-factor type micro site model where you build a site around a certain keyword, usually a physical product and then use an ugly theme and a big in your face Adsense block right at the top of your article to encourage people to click your ads so you earn money.

Now the problem for these types of sites is that Google has said enough is enough, and is deindexing them left, right and centre.

Why?

Well if you look at it from Google’s point of view, or rather the advertisers that are paying for ads on Google, then you’ll realise that these are probably not real customers but more likely just people trying to run away quickly from your ugly theme. You will earn money, but the advertiser is not likely getting a true customer. If they are unhappy then Google is unhappy. If Google is unhappy then they will kick your ass right out of its index, no questions asked.

You can read more about this at my favorite blogs:

Griz – Making Money Online in 2010
Ben – How not to make money online

So why is Amazon better?

So we have established why having Adsense can be risky, but does that mean all mini sites are useless? Well no. I have quite a few mini sites but they all have one main difference – they use Amazon on them.

Why should that make a difference?

Adsense is a pay per click program. You get paid when someone clicks an ad on your site whether they are a real customer or not.

Amazon however is a pay per sale program. The advertiser (Amazon) can’t lose out because the customer MUST make a purchase before you get paid. Therefore it’s less risky and Google won’t care about your mini site as much. (They still want to provide value to the searcher, but they won’t totally diss your site unless you blatantly do something wrong).

Any pay per sale program is going to be safer for your business and your website

Does that mean you should avoid Adsense altogether?

Of course not, I still have Adsense on many of my sites, but here’s the difference: most of these sites have good amounts of content that I personally wrote (so it’s original and written from my point of view in most cases), the topics are those that I know about, they are updated fairly frequently, all have different themes (I could never do the ugly theme thing as I’m too much of a girl and like things to look pretty) and I try and provide real value.

Now, I do need to go and ‘tone down’ the Adsense on some of these because I do use ‘above the fold’ big square Adsense blocks on them which I’m now quite nervous about, but these are definitely not crap sites.

So what do I recommend for you?

If you have been using the Adsense mini site model (less than 5 pages of real content, ugly theme, big in your face ad block) then I suggest you either add loads more content (and make it GOOD content) or swap Adsense for an affiliate program or pay per sale program like Amazon or eBay. Oh and change your theme too. Make sure it doesn’t look like every other site out there in terms of content, layout and colours.

Start to try new things and don’t follow the herd. The reason Griz and Ben are so successful is because they do their own thing, try things out. If you just follow the advice of the latest ebook then it’s likely not to work long term unless it’s built on a solid business model. If you do like a particular marketer’s strategy then add your own spin to it. Mix it up.

And the biggest lesson that I’ve learnt from Griz & Ben is that if you are in the MMO niche, then for goodness sakes, don’t stick your head out and become too popular (I’m thankful that only about 3 people online know who I am).

Gotta go and feed the baby now, catch ya next time.

t xx

Thanks for reading Why Amazon is better than Adsense. If you liked it, consider leaving a comment. Tracey :)