Easy Affiliate Marketing Lens

First we need to decide what kind of marketing we are going to do in order to get traffic to our site. There are a couple of main choices on how to approach this. You can build a website with a keyword or phrase in mind and use SEO (search engine optimization, use links and special tactics to get high rankings on the search engines) to start getting traffic to the site. You could also use PPC, (pay per click) which is when you actually pay Google, Yahoo, or another search engine a specified payment per each click on your ad which will draw traffic to your site. If you don't want to build a site, another way is to run ads with PPC specifically for your affiliates to get traffic to their site with hopes of their site making a sell for you.

I personally like building my own site in order to maximize $ from either Google Adsense, (this is where google places ads on your site and you get paid per click) listing affiliate links on your site, and putting an opt in form so you can start building a list. So we are going to focus on Keyword marketing with SEO. Being a beginner I assume you may not have a lot of upfront money to spend. SEO will cost you very little or none at all. It will take some time but will payoff more in the longrun if you can build a longlastinig site and get near the top of the search engines.

Okay, now that we know what our goal is let's get started. We need to find your niche and choose a keyword or phrase. Please, Please, Please spend a good amount of time thinking about this and jotting down notes. THIS IS YOUR BUSINESS, DON'T RUSH IT.

In the beginning you should probably avoid internet marketing topics because it is highly competitive. Choose something that you are passionate about. It will be a lot easier to write original content, which is what the search engines love.

EXAMINE THE COMPETITION!!
If your considering building a site about model airplanes, type "model airplanes" (using quotations) into Google and Yahoo and carefully examine the top 10 sites. This will be your competition. Ask yourself, "can you creat a better site"?
Do these sites have high page rank, a 6 or more. If so, it will take some hard work to get in the top 10. You may want to consider another keyword.

You can quickly check the pagerank of your competitors by using this free online Page Rank Tool.

Also when analyzing your competition you need to see how many links they have to their site. Links are very important to search engines. To find out how many links a site has, use the free Yahoo site explorer and login ( set up a free acct. if needed)
Type in the URL of the site
Click "explore URL"
Click "links"
If the sites have thousands of links to them, they're likely to be very tough competitors. You may want to choose another keyword.

First you need to do some research with Google Adwords and Wordtracker to choose the most profitable niche from your choices. Wordtracker does have a free trial but it is limited. You need more than that. I think Wordtracker is so useful that I have an anual subscription. You can get a cheap 1 week subscription and do a lot of research with that.

Because you are planning on making money with adsense, we want valuable keywords.

HERE IS YOUR CHALLENGE: Grab a piece of paper and write down 5 keywords or phrases. This will only take 2 minutes.
If you want to take a little longer, you can go to Amazon, Ebay, look at billboards on the road, or watch TV commercials to see what's being advertised and get ideas.

STOP AND MAKE YOUR LIST NOW!!!

Back so soon?

Google has a nice free tool we can use to get info on our keywords. I still think it's necessary to have more than one, so keep Wordtracker in mind. You can find the Google Adwords Tool Here.

Using this tool, we can take any of the 5 keywords or phrases you came up with and find out how many times they are searched for per month. You can also find out how many times related keywords are searched per month.

EXERCISE: Go to the tool, type in just one idea. Fill in the picture image (it's called a CAPCHA), and click get keyword ideas. A list will then populate. The keywords are on the left and the search volumes that we want to look at are in the column labeled Approx. Avg search volume.

IMPORTANT FACT:: As is, this isn't all the info we need, so we need to configure it.

Click the drop down menu labeled match type. We need to change it from Broad to Exact. We want to know how many times our keyword itself is searched without the addition of other keywords. Also, we want to add the column that shows how much advertisers are paying for your keywords. We can do this by clicking show estimated avg CPC in the choose columns to display drop down.
As you can see the search volumes have gone down a bit. These are the numbers we want to look at. We now need to evaluate to see if they meet the criteria we are looking for. Many won't and will be discarded. This will give you a lot of new possibilities for which keywords to use.

HERE IS YOUR GOAL: Find keywords searched more than 3000 times and the ones that are paying a $1 or more. Build your keyword list with these parameters. The biggest success is choosing keywords you can rank for. This goes back to the previous section on page rank. Some will be extremely difficult to accomplish. Choose another one.

BEWARE: Certain topics Google will not allow you to place Adsense ads on. For this list go Here.

You will eventually need somewhere to host your site and build it with tools recommended above. This one has a lot of the necessary tools we have been discussing and more- SiteBuildit

Or if you just need a hosting account without all the other tools use Hostgator.

Ok, so some of you may say to do this first to make sure there are good affiliate products available for your niche market. I agree, but I wanted to get the important yet boring stuff out of the way. Now it's time to start seeing the money part $$$$. You can do this step first or vice versa.

We want Affiliates that have excellent products and reputations. We also want to make sure their sell sites are top notch. It doesn't matter if you can drive traffic there if their site drops the ball and can't convert. So where do we go to get a good feel of what is out there. I would recommend CLICK BANK. They are the biggest. It is free to sell affiliate products. There is a fee if you decide to create your own product and let others sell it.

When you are searching the market place on Clickbank you should consider affiliates that pay lifetime commissions. You can view some of these Affiliates at Life Time Commissions.

You will earn repeat commissions when your customers make more purchases.

Don't just build a website. Build a useful interesting website on your niche. So many people want to monetize the site first. PLEASE, write good content then add the monetization. The key to a good site is to build one that solves people's problems. Useful sites help people decide on good free products and the right ones to buy.

You have to create a site that is content rich, keyword rich, and designed to be found by the search engines. Show your personality. Be passionate about teaching and helping others. People buy from people they like.

There is no space in this tutorial to teach you how to build a website. For that you will need a good instructional manual. Some of the hosting accounts have tutorials for their web platforms. I gave you a couple earlier.
Here they are again: For affiliates who want to simplify things as much as possible and automate the tedious techie stuff, I recommend Ken Evoy's
SiteBuildit

SBI is a site-building, site-hosting, site-promoting suite of tools, all in one place.

Once you have SBI, you don't have to go scurrying all over the Net adding more tools and software. You have almost all you need in one package, so you can concentrate on the fun part - creating useful, interesting content.

If you want to go a cheaper way and just use a basic tutorial with a hosting account i would recommend Hostgator

For those do it yourself-ers, I recommend Rosalind Gardner's Super Affiliate Handbook
Rosalind is a real been-there-done-that super affiliate.

Her instruction manual shows you how she builds very successful sites using web authoring software. It starts right at the beginning, discussing topics such as myths about doing business online, mistakes to avoid, how to choose the best topic, how to choose the right domain name, etc. One particularly useful feature is her explanation of how she achieves high conversion rates (visitor-to-sales ratios), achieving conversion rates of 4% or 6% while most affiliates are happy with 1%.

Another of the strengths of the book is her descriptions of a wide variety of ways to get traffic to your site. This is important - too many affiliates rely on just one or two traffic-generating methods. The more traffic-generating methods you have, the safer your business is.

Rosaland is genuinely successful, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Now she's also a very successful author, with sales of more $1 million from her book, which is excellent value.

When you learn from her, you're learning from a winner. Learn more about Rosalind's Super Affiliate Handbook

When you write your articles strategically place the affiliate links throughout. Your job as an affiliate marketer is to help your visitors decide what to buy. You should have already discovered the best products for them.

One of the best techniques is to lead your visitors towards the purchase that will benefit them the most. Start with a problem, discuss the solution that's worked for you, and use the call to action with the affiliate link that will help them. Your job as the affiliate is to presell, not sell. That is the merchants job. You should really read over your merchants sell page to make sure they have something that will appeal to your audiences needs.

Once you get a popular site you can also ad Google Adsense to it.
Its free- Google Adsense

Your site will never be found without links to it. The more the better. The best ones are from authority sites, ones that have a lot of links to them. In order to build links you should start by linking to them and asking them to link to you. Search engines love links. This is why I said you need a useful site. Other sites will not even think about linking to garbage.

One way to find link partners or reciprocal links is to search Google and Yahoo to find ones that compliment yours. Try to make sure they are not direct competitors. Find out who they are linking to and so on. The best way is to place a link to a quality site on your site first. Email the owner of the site saying you found their site valuable and that you placed a link on your site to them. Ask nicely if they would return the favor and add a link to yours. Do this over and over. Even better than reciprocal links are one way links. These are exactly what they sound like, links to your site without one to theirs. These increase your popularity. If you create a useful site others will naturally link to it. Also use free ping services like Feedping

Here is by far one of the easiest ways to get FREE one way backlinks. This will help you to get those first page spots on Google. Free Traffic System

Here is another really simple way to get some free traffic and its also free to sign up
Click here to get 1 Million Guaranteed Real Visitors, FREE!

There are a number of web directories you can list your site in. Some are free and some are expensive. Here is a basic guide- Web Directories and Price

You can find more buy searching for them on Google.

Here is a quick FREE easy one

Keep adding pages and making friends. Be patient. Stick with. Learn something new everyday and add it to your business. Because of all the links you built you will start to see traffic. Get yourself an auto responder and make a opt in form. The best one is Aweber

This will be where the big money is made by building a list and selling future products.
Continue to tweak your site everyday, whether it's by getting more links, changing colors, changing affiliate products, etc.

I suggest you go back and read through this again and TAKE ACTION.
Remember "If nothing changes, nothing changes".
Now get out there and make it happen.

1.) Choose your niche site, use these free tools Page Rank Tool Yahoo site explorer

2.) Make sure your niche is profitable. Get Wordtracker, check out Amazon and Ebay to get ideas on what's being bought.
Sign up with SiteBuildit or Hostgator

3.) Research affiliate merchant with CLICK BANK and Life Time Commissions

4.) Make content rich websites with SiteBuildit or Hostgator
Get a website handbook Super Affiliate Handbook

5.) Place affiliate links

6.) Use Google Adsense

7.) Get links to your site. Get some free traffic for FREE at Free Traffic System

8.) List your site on major directories Web Directories and Price

9.) Get an auto responder Aweber and build a list for maximum profits.

10.) And if you still feel like you can't do it alone get some help. These are some great products I would highly recommend
Keyword Elite Software! in order to find that niche keyword

If you had to purchase one tool for huge money making success on the internet this is by far my #1 recommendation.
Maverick Money Makers!