Colin answered my previous post and wanted to know how to get started, or rather how to find a niche to begin with.
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
That is a business plan summary! Love it. Thanks so much.
Yep. Darn it. Knew I was missing something. Re: link capsule and aff links on HP…
Nice work. I have never thought about using hub pages, mainly because I am not sure what they are but I am sure some quality time with Google will explain that one to me.
Love the picture, it explains my situation so well.
Most information I read appears to have the blog setup first then hubpages written so this is the opposite of what I am used to. Do you find this way saves time in finding a niche to get involved with?
If you are writing reviews every day for a month where do you get all the products from? From what I have done so far I try to stick around a certain price for the products I am researching and because of that I find it tricky to get 5 or 6 products with great review on Amazon never mind 30.
Cheers
Colin
Do you use the exact product name for the title when using Hubpages?
Thanks.
@ Jack – Most of the time I do
@ Colin – I use hubpages both ways. 1 to find niches, and 2 to get backlinks to my money sites. Here is an example of one of my hubs: http://hubpages.com/hub/Blokus-Trigon-Strategy-Game so you can see what I mean. For my larger sites, I’ll write reviews for related products, products from the same manufacturer, competiting products etc. If you go broad, you can fill up a site pretty easily. (And don’t discount those less expensive Amazon products as well – you can sell more of them).
ITA with you on the “hit ‘em high, hit ‘em low” approach, Tracey – your commission goes up in Amazon depending on the quantity of items, so it makes sense to ramp it up that way.
Also – if you only get $5 a sale, then you just need tons more traffic, which I believe you make the point well here.
Oh – I posted the conversation I had with the newbie I asked you about.
I cut off the part where I shamelessly plugged your blog…I think…
Had a question on the “add a link block” deal – you mentioned using a link block underneath a picture, that much I can do, but what about the affiliate link – is it the big ugly doo-dad?
And: it’s just the URL, correct? I’m still new to HP, I did it on a new Hub, just a few hours ago, and just want to be sure I did it properly.
1) Uploaded Picture
2) Installed Link Module
–this is where the squirrel loses the nut–
3) Used the URL from Amazon under “text only.” But just the URL, you can’t (don’t think you can) use the HTML…
Hi James,
Yes just grab the URL part of the text only link that is something like http://www.amazon.com/product/code/yourafflink-20 that’s the only bit you need. (you had it right)
t
Thanks for the info.
Can I ask what your click through rate is for the number of visitors to your hubs to the number of people who click on your affiliate link? That is, how many visitors do you have to get for 1 click on the affiliate link?
@Jack – Oh God I have no idea – LOL. Yes I really should track things much better.
Sweet cash in 1 month?
Most traffic from Ezine articles?
I’ve got more than a few dozen ezines and they’re hardly giving me shit.
I’ve got 30 posts on one Amazon sites and I’ve sent 228 PostRunners with 2 links each. All of them OnlyWired.
I’m seeing around 15 uniques per day, almost all of which are SE hits.
But they ain’t clickin’ and they ain’t buyin’.
Not that I’m giving up or anything like that. But I’m just sayin’… it takes lots of work to get the snowball a’rollin’.
Blackthorne – Wow nice to see you here. Oh dear does that mean I’m getting too well known? I’ll have to hide my head for a while again me thinks. Don’t want to get too public
EZA has always been pretty good to me for traffic and on some of my sites still remains the biggest traffic generator (but I do have quite a few articles in different pen names). SE vary – some good some bad. I’m not a KA member so don’t have access to Postrunner but often will buy backlink services if I need any rankings help.
What can I say – some of my sites are brilliant, some of them suck. Maybe I’m just lucky??
Tracey,
You’re being endorsed by Dave. You’re piggybacking on his popularity! But then again, Dave himself piggybacked on Ben’s popularity!
Us IMers are a friendly bunch.
Anyway… I think I just got lucky myself. Right after posting that comment, my website started getting some traffic and instantly sold 10 items on Amazon.
Why would you not want to be a PostRunner member? Those guys are great. I don’t know how a person can manage to rank without it!
why didn’t i come across your blog when i first started you really inspire me Tracey thanks a million
your welcome.