I'm making money online so I don't have to get a Job
10 Aug
I’ve had quite a good week in terms of getting things done but surprisingly I haven’t made one ClickBank sale as an affiliate. Not one!
I think perhaps this week I need to spend a bit of time increasing the ranking and amount of pages that I have out there. The more pages you have, the better chances you have of making some sales.
Autoblogging Update
I told you last week that I was trying out Instant Blog Submitter to test autoblogging on one of my old domains. Well the program up and stopped working on me last Tuesday. It keep coming up with an error about sockets or something. (I don’t know – I’m so untechnical).
I was still keen on the idea of autoblogging though, so I’ve downloaded a free wordpress plugin called wp-o-matic. That does all of the stuff I was using Instant Blog Submitter for (pulling rss feeds and publishing them to my blog) but it’s free. Can’t do better than free I say.
So far I’ve got 81 posts on the site – and I haven’t written one myself. Google has indexed about half of them. I’ve only had 4 search engine visitors so far though. Once I get to about 10 per day then I’ll add some eBay monetisation.
Just a note. If you want to try this I suggest that you DO NOT put adsense on your sites to monetize. It creates kind of junky posts and some don’t make much sense. Use either clickbank, ebay or amazon (depending on your niche).
I also suggest adding some youtube video’s and articles (grab them from ezinearticles keeping the resource box intact) so you get even more content.
Making Money Online with Amazon
I had quite a few people want to know more about making money with Amazon so I thought I’d let you know exactly what I do. This method can be applied to clickbank, cpa or anything really. I should really write an ebook and charge you all $27 for it – and if I was a good internet marketer that’s probably what I’d do, but you know what, I don’t care about that anymore and I really don’t have the time.
Anyway the biggest trick for making money with Amazon is to target actual product names. This way you’ll get people at the end of the buying cycle who are looking to buy with credit card in hand. Don’t bother yourself trying to find related long tail phrases, go right to the people who are ready to buy.
I usually head over to Amazon and check out their bestseller lists first, then look in Google Adwords to see how many searches they get. Finally I check out competition by using the intitle search parameter to see my competition. I usually do this for around 10 or so products and then set up hubpages or squidoo lens (I’m preferring hubs at the moment) around those products. If one product starts to make some good money then I’ll build a website around it to further capitalise on it.
Let’s take a look at this in more detail. I’ll take you through a process so you can follow along.
Let’s say that you want to target kids bicycles. Looking at Amazon’s bestselling products the top seller (as I write this) is a trike called Schwinn Roadster 12-Inch Trike. It’s a good price so you’ll earn a decent commission (although I rarely worry too much about price).
Heading over to Google Adwords Keyword Tool I plug in a few variations to find out the exact match searches for various phrases that people might use when searching for that item.
Make sure you have exact match selected in the match type drop down.
The results I get for this trike is:
schwinn roadster – 1,600
schwinn roadster 12 inch trike – 720
schwinn roadster trike – 590
schwinn roaster 12 inch – 36
Right now the top three look promising. I like them to have over 500 exact match searches – preferably over 1,000 though.
Now let’s look at the competition for the first three. I go to google and type in intitle:”keyword” to find competition. That’s just how I do it. You might have a different way.
Using this I find that I get the following number of competing pages:
schwinn roadster – 12,800
schwinn roadster 12 inch trike – 1,020
schwinn roadster trike – 163
I usually look for results under 1,000. I’d probably made an exception for the second one because it’s so close. The top phrase has too much competition – it’s unlikely to make you any money, but the bottom two are good candidates.
Next I’d create a hub or lens using that exact phrase in the title and probably a few extra times through the text too.
There you go. Easy! Now go and build yourself some pages.
JV Auction Profits Review
My former coaching teacher John Thornhill has just released a new ebook called JV Auction Profits and I was lucky enough to get a review copy from him. In his latest guide, he talks about how to use eBay to secure joint venture deals.
You can use his ideas whether you have a product or a list. He even gives help and advice if you have neither of these, and how you can still make money using this method.
He will give you his exact email that he uses to send to potential JV partners, what to say and how to set up the deal. The best part of the guide however is Chapter Nine in which John goes into detail about how he used this method to make $34,000 from one deal. The ebook is worth it just for this chapter!
It’s only a short little guide – 30 pages – but it’s got some really great information on making money this way. And the best thing is that John is only charging $10 for it. An excellent price for some good information.
My plans for this week
Well I’m going to concentrate on my adsense sites this week. I’m getting some good rankings for long tails, but I’d like to get my main keyphrases a bit higher in the search engines. I’ve written a few articles and I’ll also do some more backlinking from commenting and using Angela & Pauls links as well to get this higher if I can.
Phew, my fingers are starting to hurt. I think I’ll leave it there for now, but I’ll write more soon.
Take care
Tracey
25 Responses for "Making Money with Amazon & Other Stuff"
Tracey,
Do you have a good resource for PPC?
Rob
Tracey,
I really like your style of sharing with your readers…
that’s what I like to do to!
Congratulations on your last ebook about eBay
classifieds, it’s helping me a lot…
Fran
Hey Tracey,
Thanks for the heads up on Amazon. I noticed a few people writing articles on specific product names and very little competition. A great tip!
I’ve also looked at shopping.com as a nice resource to see what products are actually selling in the marketplace. Not only does it give you some great keywords, it actually gives you a nice little retail list of the best prices out there.
I may even try wp-o-matic. I must admit I’d never heard of that particluar plugin but it sounds interesting and cuts down the workload a bit. Especially if you’ve got a few blogs. If I install it I’ll let you know the results and whether there’s a traffic increase from the keywords and overall content.
Hi! I’ve heard about “Hub Pages”, but don’t know a thing about them. Can someone tell me what to do and where? Thanks! Stan
Hi Tracey
Thanxs for all the information and I also like your style of sharing with us on how to do things !!! A Newbie like me learn a lot from you !!!
Keep it up !!!!
Lucas
Dear Tracey,
Thank you for the info I received. I would like some of the books but I never use credit cards over the Internet, and I do not have any. I will appreciate if at a suitable time you let me know if there is another kind of payment could be accepted by you.
I thank you in advance for your cooperation.
Best regards,
N. Christopoulos
Hi Tracey,
Good timing with the post , i am looking into selling skincare products on amazon, and thia is the path!
Cheers Tracey TTFN….Ed.
@ Rob
I don’t use PPC much and frankly I’m not that good at it. Not sure, perhaps someone else here will mention something.
@ Fran
Thanks Fran. I like your site too (yes I visited
. Glad I could be of some help.
@DesDrec
Great resource. I’ve used shopping.com before as well. Hey let me know if you use wp-o-matic and what results you get. It can bring back some junk (depending on where you get your rss feed from) but it’s good for bulking up content around your regular posts.
@Stan
Just head over the hubpages.com and join up. You then get a mini ‘blog like platform’ to create one page sites on as many different topics as you like. As a bonus you get paid 60% of the revenue share from any advertising that are on your pages.
@ Lucas
Thanks for the kind words! Yes I plan on keeping it up. Makes a refreshing change I think
@ Nikiforos
Hi, which ebook are you referring to? Auction Classified Cash or one of my other ebooks. Do you have paypal?
@ Ed
Cheers Ed. Good to hear from you.
PPC is a great way of getting highly targeted traffic. Maybe you should try with creating new adgroup per each keyword (with all three match types) – just for highly relevant keywords.
You can use AdWords Intelligence to generate keywords (by using adwords api or by creating keyword permutations), automatically create new adgroup for each keyword (with all match types), download competition ads for each adgroup and upload generated campaign directly to the adwords system. You can find more at (free trial available): http://www.adwordsintelligence.com
Thanks for the tips, Tracey!
I used Squidoo before but have found them difficult to rank and even index.
I’m familiar with Hubpages but haven’t put anything up there yet. Are you allowed to post your Amazon affiliate links directly into your article or do they have a Amazon capsule like Squidoo?
What an excellent tutorial! Thanks for sharing all that great info.
With regards to using product names as domain names, its worth baring in mind that if you do this you “could” be breaking copyright laws. In which case, it may be worth checking with the actual company that you wish to use the name of in your choice of domain name.
Sorry to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm but its as well to be aware of this, I think.
Regards to all
Tracey great info. Do you backlink your Amazon-centered hubs? Do you find you can make sales without the links?
Thanks.
@ Carrie
Yeah Google has lost all it’s love for Squidoo. I’ll create the odd lens for backlinks but I don’t rely on them to make me money anymore.
Yes you can post affiliate links in hubs, but only 2 links to the same domain per hub. There is also an Amazon capsule as well. I usually have both – my direct aff links and the amazon capsule as well.
@ Joseph
You are right if you are referring to buying top level domains, but you have more leeway if you are using a directory of hubpages or squidoo. You can have whatever product name you like such as hubpages.com/hub/ben-10-toys with no problem.
If you are buying your own domain then you need to be more careful. Some companies don’t care but other’s will get upset. Some of the more well known companies that don’t allow it are Lego, eBay and Harley Davidson.
Usually if the name is a trademarked term (has the symbol TM after it) then it’s a no go.
But again that applies to top level domains, not directories.
So you could have your own site called, buildingblocks.com and then have a page called buildingblocks.com/starwarslego.html and that would be fine.
@ Nat
Depends on the competition. I usually keep a track of rankings and if after a few weeks it’s not on the first page then I’ll throw a few articles and other backlinks towards it to give it a boost.
Some rank well on their own, other’s need a bit of help.
Thanks for making the copyright issue clear Tracey. I know for a fact that many people are totally confused by this so what you have said really does help a lot!
Regards
Joseph
Hi there,
Discovered you site via, Ben at make money online with seo.
Oh dear, he just told us not to get distracted and get working and look what I am doing, I am getting distracted. Had to comment regarding the making money with Amazon etc. Thanks for the tips. It is really helpful to get additional help with these sort of things.
However I will not be distracted from my current task, which is to complete 100 info barrels by the end of the month (about 35 to go), then I can start looking at creating more hubs with amazon affiliate.
With helpful tips like the ones in this post, I don’t know how long you will remain anonymous:)
Thanks.
@ Tiptopcat
Thanks for dropping by. How are your infobarrel’s going? I’m very keen to get started there but just haven’t gotten around it yet (I’ve signed up just haven’t written any articles there yet). I plan to get to it soon.
Hopefully I can remain anonymous for a little bit longer. I haven’t optimised this site for any search traffic so the only people that come here are subscribers to my lists and people who see my comments on other sites.
Although I must have a few followers as I notice some of my hubs are getting copied LOL – ahh I guess I should be flattered.
I can not figure out how you got the number 163 for the roadster trike when I went to google I came up with
67,600. What am I doing wrong? Thanks, and love the post.
Hi Kevin,
I just did it again and got 169. (Perhaps a few people took my advice
)
Make sure you put your term in quotes and have the intitle at the start like this
intitle:”schwinn roadster trike”
HTH!
Tracey
Thanks I’ll try that!
Kevin
Tracey, when I put that term into google I got 4400. I pasted it in like exactly like you said. I’m just trying to make sure I’m searching the correct way. Thanks for all the great info.
Hi Tracey,
Thank you for providing the Amazon info. Now, please help me to understand how to monetize the Hub pages or the squidoo pages. What is an Amazon capsule and how does it work? any additional info will be much appreciated.
Hi Marvin,
For hubpages you’ll need to apply to the amazon affiliate program and then you’ll get a code that you can put in your hubpages affiliate settings page so you can earn commissions.
You don’t need to apply for squidoo, they will just give you commissions directly.
Tracey
Hi Tracey,
Thank you for providing the Amazon info. Now, please help me to understand how to monetize the Hub pages or the squidoo pages. What is an Amazon capsule and how does it work? any additional info will be much appreciated.
Hi Jeff,
Once you start your first hubpage you’ll see that you can add capsules to your page. One of them is the Amazon capsule and all you need to do is add your keywords and it will add the products for you! Go ahead and try it.
Tracey
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