Affiliate Marketing Blog: Halloween Costume Affiliate Programs: The Tricks To Get the Treats

Affiliate Marketing Blog // via fulltextrssfeed.com

Impart your knowledge. Learn how to start a business by offering an online course. Signup for our ebook today. From our sponsors

Halloween Costume Affiliate Programs: The Tricks To Get the Treats Sep 28th 2013, 22:09 The 100-day countdown to Christmas may have begun, but before we celebrate the most wonderful time of the year, we need to celebrate the scariest, creepiest, most sugar-laden time of the year: Halloween!  Yes, time to bring out the creepy costumes and the bowls of candy ... and time to make money off them, too! Halloween Costume Affiliate Programs: A Trick or a Treat?  Definitely a treat if we go by the National Retail Federation's report that back in 2012, 170 million people planned to celebrate Halloween. Their report further states that an average person will spend around $80 on decor, costumes and candy, including roughly $28 on costumes. These costumes may be store-bought, but a certain percentage will simply look for inspiration online. You can read more of their report here. This infographic on Halloween statistics also shows that in 2010, adult Halloween celebrants spent a total of $1.21 billion on costumes alone. There's certainly more than just candy and chocolates in this niche. Consumer statistics are not enough, of course. We need to look at how the Halloween-related keywords are doing in the searches, so I launched Traffic Travis to start my keyword research.  You can immediately see that there are some good keywords in there. There are some long-tail variations that target specific groups, too, like "baby Halloween costumes" and "Halloween costumes for women."  It's always good to have some variety, so I went into KeywordBuzz to look at variations of my target keyword:  ​ There are 399 variations of my main keyword, "Halloween costumes," and each variation appears to refer to a specific market.  Other keywords I can target are "costumes" and its variations like "costume party," "costume party themes," etc. You're certainly not going to be stuck with just targeting "Halloween costumes" on your site. Halloween Costumes Affiliate Programs I went to ClickBank first to see what products they had for Halloween and if they had affiliate programs for Halloween costumes. Unfortunately, they didn't have anything, so I decided to Google it. I found some really good programs that are offered through other networks, mostly ShareASale and Commission Junction. Halloween Costumes HalloweenCostumes offers a wide range of costumes, including unique ones available nowhere else. They also have costumes for other occasions, such as Christmas, Valentine's and Easter. The average purchase on their site costs $70 and you get a 10% commission for each sale. Their program is offered through Commission Junction and ShareASale. Costume Craze Costume Craze is similar to HalloweenCostumes. They have a large inventory of costumes for adults, children and even pets! They, too, are not limited to just Halloween costumes. They are part of the Commission Network, same as HalloweenCostumes, but offer a slightly higher commission of 12% per sale. Fright Catalog I think Fright Catalog is the best when it comes to Halloween costumes. They have the creepiest, scariest ones. They also have other costumes, but I think the best costumes they have are the ones for Halloween. They offer their program through ShareASale. I had to dig around a bit to find that because they don't have an affiliate page like Costume Craze or HalloweenCostumes. You get a 10% commission for each sale through their program. There are other programs on ShareASale that are worth looking into. There are interesting ones in Commission Junction too, but they're a bit limited compared to ShareASale. Amazon's affiliate program is also worth considering. The commissions are not that high, but don't forget that Amazon gives you a commission for anything else that the customer buys off the site through your link, so you're not limited to Halloween costumes or decor. There are a few programs in Offervault, but I don't think they're worth looking into, as the good ones are for ringtones and such. Promoting Halloween Costume Affiliate Programs We've got the keywords and the affiliate programs; there's definitely potential to earn here. But how do you go about promoting your site on Halloween costumes? Pinterest, Instagram and Other Social Media Sites Note that I put Pinterest first. This is because Pinterest is a social media site where images are shared. Since people will be looking online for inspiration for their Halloween costume, then they will most likely go to Pinterest, or stumble on it.   Content Sharing and Strategy You need to make sure your site has a strong online presence: lots of Facebook likes and plenty of image-sharing on Pinterest. This means you need to have a constant stream of content that you can share and that users will want to share in turn. Content management and strategy play important roles here. While you can make a lot of money off this niche during a particular season, it doesn't mean that you should drop the site during the lean months. Keep in mind that there are costume sites that have costumes for other occasions, not just Halloween. You also won't be able to share images all the time. You can share DIY costume ideas, or costume party ideas. You can review sites that sell Halloween costumes. You can also have columns like Featured Costume of the Week or annual features like Most Popular Costumes for Valentine's day and such. Link Baiting Sharing content does not necessarily mean sharing content from your site. You can also share interesting articles or images from other sites in the niche. If you're going to be reviewing a Halloween costume site, then make sure to let the owners of the site know that you're publishing a review. Let them know you're linking or referring to their site. That's the bait. Hopefully, they'll like the review and link back to it from their site. That's the link. Halloween Costumes Affiliate Programs: The Bottom Line We've looked at the keywords, the products and the programs, as well as possible strategies for going into this niche. I find the subject of this niche interesting and exciting. The commissions, while not that high, aren't so bad either. Promoting the site and driving traffic to it will take some planning and strategy. It's going to be a bit of a challenge, but if this is where your interests lie, then that won't be a problem.  I hope you enjoyed this week's niche! If you found my post helpful, then please share it on your favorite social network through the share buttons at the end of this post. Questions or comments? Just leave them below and I will make sure to reply to them. For in-depth lessons on keyword and niche research, please visit AffiloBlueprint!

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions

Read More

Affiliate Marketing Blog: Google's Growing Up - What It Means for SEO

Affiliate Marketing Blog // via fulltextrssfeed.com

An aspiring entrepreneur? Learn about how top Silicon Valley entrepreneurs grew their businesses in our free ebook. From our sponsors

Google's Growing Up - What It Means for SEO Sep 26th 2013, 23:41 Happy birthday to Google! According to most sources, Google's birthday is generally celebrated on September 27th, and this year marks Google's 15th year. I fondly remember first using Google in 2001, doing my primary school homework on the first computer my family had ever purchased (just thinking about this is making me nostalgic). But before you continue celebrating Google's birthday, we have a great offer on our top SEO product that is going to make your website a hit with Google! Go here to see the full details and take advantage of this exclusive offer. I can still remember the fantastic feeling of typing a few words in the Google search box, hitting the search button, and then waiting forever for the 56k modem to return a page of results. Since then I've used Google to drive traffic to websites, find deals on things I want to buy and access resources for school and college assignments. The development of Google Drive, Gmail and other services has transformed how I work, and has probably done the same for you too. And just for a birthday laugh, here's a fantastic SEO meme that one of my colleagues sent me today: Now it's time to get down to business! In this blog post we are going to look back on some of Google's most famous algorithm changes, updates and service tweaks and what they meant for affiliate marketing at the time. We are also going to look at how Google's "coming of age" is likely to affect your business in the future, and what you can do to ensure that you get to celebrate many more of Google's birthdays with a healthy slice of search traffic and profit! Google Algorithm & Update Timeline If you thought that the Panda update was the first "surprise party" Google ever threw for affiliate marketers, then you need a bit of a history lesson. Let's take a quick look at the history of the most important Google algorithm changes & policy updates, and how they affected affiliate marketing and SEO. If you want a comprehensive history of all Google changes, then check out this great Moz article. Early Days In the beginning, Larry Page and Sergey Brin created Google. Now there were relatively few websites, but the number grew every day, and the spirit PageRank was used to rank websites for a given phrase. Some clever people soon discovered that a website could be manipulated into appearing higher up in the search ranking for a desired phrase by: Repeatedly using the desired keyword in a page, aka "keyword stuffing" (this often involved cloaking text to make it the same color as the page background) Using meta tags to tell Google what a website was all about Having links from other websites point to your site to boost its PageRank In these early days, SEO practitioners and early affiliate marketers had a huge amount of power to manipulate Google rankings as they needed, until ... Google's First Named Algorithm Update – Boston Announced late in 2002 and released in February 2003, "Boston" started the tradition of Google Dances (major index refreshes and algorithm changes). At this stage Google Dances occurred roughly every month and would result in major changes to search rankings. The scene was set for future Google updates! Florida Causes Fallout In my humble opinion, Google's Florida update in November 2003 is the first easily identifiable instance of the kind of Google update we still see to this day. By this I mean an update that specifically targets something Google doesn't like webmasters doing to rank for keywords. Basically, Google used the Florida update to crack down on websites that were being ranked through "unethical" means (sound familiar anyone?!). This article from all the way back in 2004 explains the full fallout caused by Florida, but what I think is most telling is where the author states that "Google's search engine results pages (SERPs) are now displaying high spam sites near the top of the list for many competitive keywords." Something I have noticed over the years is that every time Google releases an update designed to combat webspam, there is an inevitable tidal wave of people who complain that spam results in SERPS have actually worsened. Anyone who doesn't believe that history repeats itself needs to take a look at Google algorithm changes, obviously! The Florida update started the tradition of certain SEO methods/tactics being penalized by Google. In particular, this update targeted SEO techniques that had been effective in the late '90s, such as keyword stuffing. Big Daddy Makes Little Kids out of Link Buyers These days most white-hat affiliates and webmasters understand that buying and selling links that carry PageRank (i.e. dofollow links) is a big no-no. In 2005 that wasn't the case, and the Internet was rife with people doing all kinds of dodgy link deals. Mass link exchanges were also commonplace. People used these methods because they worked very effectively; one of the problems with Google algorithm changes is that they tend to cause a lot of collateral damage to people who are simply trying to do what works for their website and business, and they often don't understand why Google might not like what they do. Big Daddy, which lasted from 2005–2006, put paid to the effectiveness of link exchanging schemes. Unlike Adam Sandler's movie, this Big Daddy wasn't very funny at all. Unleash the Kraken (I Mean Panda) By the time Google Panda rolled around in 2011, I was personally generating a lot of my traffic from websites like EzineArticles, HubPages and Buzzle. My affiliate marketing career was formed in the crucible of "bum marketing," because at the time I was too young to have a credit card to buy my own hosting and domains with. When Google Panda came along early in 2011 most of my business was wiped out overnight, and I can distinctly remember trawling the Warrior Forum and other SEO hangouts to find thousands of others in exactly the same situation. Just to relive the pain, here's how much carnage Panda unleashed on some popular content farms that most affiliates were using for traffic, links and revenue: Google's Panda update taught us that you can't rely on low-quality sites that are only designed to squeeze as much dosh out of visitors as possible. Whether that site is your own or a massive property like EzineArticles, the phrase "content is king" never had more meaning. Penguin Arrives, No Happy Feet Are Seen To celebrate Google's 15th birthday, let's cap off the history of Google algorithm changes with one more painful reminder of what Google can do to webmasters who fall out of its favor. Released in April 2012, Google Penguin didn't target poor-quality content like Panda did, but instead went after perceived black-hat SEO tactics. In particular, its attack on the use of heavily optimized anchor text and junk backlinks meant that many webmasters and affiliates saw their rankings plummet. Making Sure You're Always on Google's Guest List As you can see, Google has had a tendency to strike webmasters and affiliates off its guest list (i.e. search results) for years now. The type of debate you see about Google hating on SEO, webmasters and affiliates is nothing new at all! So what can you do to make sure that you're always on Google's guest list? Here are some important strategies you should incorporate to make sure you can keep enjoying your place high up in the SERP party for years to come: Add fresh content to your website on a regular basis. Content is increasingly becoming the lifeblood of high search rankings as Google becomes more adept at sorting the good from the bad.  Encourage your site visitors to share your content on their preferred social networks for optimal rankings and traffic. Start using Google Plus to build author rank and prominence in your niche—if you haven't set up authorship for your website, then do so immediately. Focus on the development of natural, high-quality links (the more links other people willingly build to your site, the better). Build a brand—read my blog post on Google-proofing your website for more about doing this. Tweak your website to reduce your bounce rate and increase average time on page and internal click throughs. Use AffiloTools to Keep You on the Right Track Keeping on top of SEO can be a nightmare. Luckily for you, the team here at Affilorama has developed the cutting-edge AffiloTools suite to make managing and improving your SEO a breeze. AffiloTools will help keep you ahead of Google updates by helping you deliver a quality, white-hat experience to your visitors. Here's what AffiloTools will let you do: See the precise rankings of the keywords you target, and track your site's performance over time Check the health of your website, especially on-page SEO optimization Discover which keywords are giving you the most traffic Track your ClickBank earnings, Facebook and Twitter stats, traffic and more Legally "spy" on your competitors' backlinks and then hijack them for your own website Discover thousands of QUALITY link opportunities with the exclusive Link Finder tool Use AffiloTools on your PC, phone or smart device See the full list of AffiloTools benefits here To help you make the most of Google's 15th birthday, we are offering AffiloTools for just $47 per month (that's a saving of $20 each month, or $240 per year!). Go here to take advantage of this special birthday offer. You'll only pay $1 for your first 7 days' access to AffiloTools, and then just $47 per month after that. This offer is for a strictly limited time only, and will be gone come 7pm EDT on September 29th. Share Your Most Memorable Google Experience One final thing: I want you to join in Google's 15th birthday bash by sharing your most memorable Google experience. Maybe you found a funny picture of yourself in Google image search, or all your websites were wiped out by the Google Panda update (memories can be bad too!). Just leave a comment below and get the discussion started. And don't forget to take advantage of AffiloTools' special Google birthday pricing either!

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions

Read More

Affiliate Marketing Blog: How to Protect Your Website against Google Algorithm Updates

Affiliate Marketing Blog // via fulltextrssfeed.com

Impart your knowledge. Learn how to start a business by offering an online course. Signup for our ebook today. From our sponsors

How to Protect Your Website against Google Algorithm Updates Sep 18th 2013, 23:57 Google algorithm updates, such as Panda and Penguin, are dreaded by most affiliate marketers and webmasters. Nothing feels worse than having put countless hours of effort into a website, only to have it struck down by an "algo" change. I have written about Google algorithm updates a number of times on this blog, but in this post I am going to do something a little different. I am going to give a number of pointers on how you can protect your website against future Google algorithm updates, whether they be Penguin/Panda refreshes or something entirely new. Consider the advice in this blog post a "bulletproof vest" for your website.  From the outset it is important to understand that nothing in this blog post is guaranteed to protect your website, and Affilorama cannot bear any responsibility if you do follow the advice in this blog post and still fall afoul of Google somehow. If Google algorithm changes have taught us one thing, it is that nothing is for certain, and that good sites can be downgraded in the SERPs for seemingly no reason. However, by following the advice in this blog post, you will put a stronger arsenal at your disposal for protecting your website(s) from algorithm updates and refreshes.  Focus on Unique Content The main focus of Google's penalties and updates over the past few years has been on improving the quality of web search results (at least from the perspective of your average Google user). We could debate until kingdom come as to whether this has actually been achieved, but I'm sure you and I will agree that Google has declared a war on low-quality websites. Of all the markers of low quality, duplicate content is probably the most harmful for your website. No matter how tempting it might be to buy a bunch of PLR articles and slap each one up on your site as is, don't do it. It's just going to end in disaster. To safeguard against Google updates, you must first focus on filling your website with unique content. Bear in mind that it is not simply good enough to arrange a pretty collection of words on your website; your content needs to be unique AND provide value to your readers. The easiest way to ensure your content is up to scratch is by following this checklist: Is your content unique? Consider using a tool like Copyscape to check. Is it free from grammar and spelling errors?  Does your content provide value? If you write an article on five ways to train a puppy, ensure it actually teaches five different puppy training methods. Can you incorporate other media elements to enhance the user experience? Consider embedding images, YouTube videos, and audio where appropriate to create a more compelling experience for your website users. Would you be happy to read your content? Imagine that you were a new visitor to your own website; if you read the content, would you leave feeling satisfied? If not, then you need to go back to the drawing board and tweak your content to make it more worthwhile.  Develop a Natural Link Profile Google's Penguin update took to websites with "spammy" link profiles like Mike Tyson took to Evander Holyfield's ear. In both cases, the results weren't pretty! Therefore, the takeaway lesson from Penguin/Penguin 2.0 is that the backlinks pointing to your website can be used against you by Google. To counter this you need to focus on developing a natural link profile. The difference between a spam link profile and a natural link profile is that the former deliberately targets exact anchor text most of the time, whereas the latter has a diverse range of anchor text options. Many sites penalized by Google for their link profile faced this penalty because they had very precise anchor text; every link was "dog training NYC" (if that was the keyword they targeted) or some variation on that. Here's how you can develop a natural link profile going forward: Create relevant and engaging link bait on your website  Use naked URLs (e.g. http://www.affilorama.com) liberally when building links Incorporate your website's brand name into a large proportion of your anchor text Use generic anchors, such as "click here" or "learn more"  Only use exact-match anchor text on the highest-quality links Never use automated link-building software Ensure that some of your links are no-follow—avoid focusing solely on do-follow links  Incorporate Social Media into Your Campaigns Most affiliate marketers already have some knowledge of social media, but I tend to find that social media is still underutilized by so many affiliates. You need to build an active social media presence for your website and encourage social sharing of your content. Social media marketing for affiliates is a very diverse subject, so I recommend that you check out the Affilorama social media / Web 2.0 lessons to get started. At the very least you should have: Branded Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus accounts A branded Pinterest account if you have lots of unique images on your website Social sharing buttons installed on all of your content pages to encourage visitors to share your content with their own social networks I strongly suggest that you dedicate plenty of time each week to enhancing your social media presence, as this can have a big impact on how Google views your website.  Reduce Your Bounce Rate Once again I want to draw your attention to the focus Google is placing on quality as a determining factor for which sites benefit from its updates, and which sites are punished. Your website's bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors who arrive on your site and then leave within a short period of time without taking any further action. It is seen by many as a reliable measurement of the quality and relevancy of a website; if you have a low bounce rate then people are arriving at your website and finding what they want in a manner they like. This is great news for your site quality. Conversely, a high bounce rate (especially anything over 80%) means that a great many visitors who arrive at your website are deciding that it isn't up to their standards, and then leaving immediately. Google may take this as a signal that your site doesn't deserve high search engine rankings. The good news is that there are a number of easy steps you can take to reduce your bounce rate by a substantial amount. I actually wrote a detailed post about this last year, which you can read here. Inside that blog post you will learn everything you need to optimize your website for lower bounce rates. "Cloak" Your Affiliate Promotions There is a popular belief within the affiliate marketing community that Google dislikes affiliate marketers, especially those who try to hijack organic search traffic in an attempt to make money. Aaron Wall of SEO Book makes the interesting argument that Google has always disliked affiliate marketers—you can see his evidence here. Whether or not this is true remains open to debate, and I personally think that Google isn't as opposed to affiliate marketers as some argue. However, thin affiliate websites that offer little value to visitors and simply exist to extract cash from others will probably always remain in Google's crosshairs. Therefore, you might want to consider "cloaking" your affiliate promotions by shifting as much as possible to selling through your email list. Presell and review pages are fine, but you will probably find your bottom line improves if your articles and main content pages are used to build your list. Google is likely to to consider your site as being of higher quality if the majority of your promotions are directed to prequalified leads on your email list, as opposed to cold leads on your content pages. Build a List Now! If you're sitting there scratching your head as to what a "list" is, then prepare to take action. One of the most effective ways to protect your website and livelihood from any future Google updates is to start building a targeted list of email subscribers. To build a list you will need an autoresponder / email marketing account. If you're new to the concept of list building, then try Fluttermail here for $1, as it is very newbie friendly compared to most autoresponders.  Once you have an autoresponder account you can work on building your list. The most common way affiliates do this is by offering some kind of free giveaway in exchange for a visitor's name and email address. If you have ever filled in a form like this, then you have subscribed to someone else's list: Once someone has signed up to your list you can send them an automated series of emails, which is where the term "autoresponder" comes from. These emails can include promotions for your affiliate products, links to important content on your website, and more. All good autoresponder platforms allow you to send one-off emails to your list as well, which can be great for promoting new products or alerting your readers to a new blog post. In terms of safeguarding yourself against Google updates, building a list is the equivalent of a military-grade flak jacket. With a quality list you can continue to make money from the same audience over and over again. Furthermore, if your site suddenly disappears from Google thanks to an ill-fated algorithm update, then you still have your own private cash-generating list to which you can promote. List building is a very deep subject but it is crucial you start doing it now. I suggest you watch the Affilorama email marketing lessons immediately. Your Google-Proofing Checklist In order to make your life even easier, I have put together the following step-by-step checklist you can follow to ensure that your website is ready for the next time Google decides to strike: Remove all (if any) duplicate content from your site. Commit to adding at least one unique piece of content per week to your website going forward. Ensure every piece of content you create offers significant value for your readers. Build quality links using naked URLs, general anchor text, and brand name variations to balance your profile (very important if you have been focusing on traditional exact-match anchor text linking). Set up branded Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Pinterest accounts to promote your site. Add fresh updates to these social media properties regularly. Ensure that your website/blog is configured to enable social sharing. At the very least you should have social sharing buttons installed. Work to reduce your website's bounce rate. Improve page load times. If possible, try to move more of your affiliate promotions to your list (this is largely optional). Build a list, now! Conclusion Google algorithm changes can be scary for even the most battle-hardened affiliate marketers. I have personally lost a few websites and profit streams to Google's updates and changes, but every time I have managed to come back with better campaigns than before. However, the best offense is a good defense, which means you should put effort into protecting your website from any future Google algorithm changes. Follow the methods outlined in this blog post and you will be leagues ahead of your competition.  If you have any algo-change battle scars to show off, feel free to share them in the comments. Don't hesitate to ask me questions, either—I'll be happy to help out!

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions

Read More

Affiliate Marketing Blog: Affiliate Marketing Niche Idea: Time Management

Affiliate Marketing Blog // via fulltextrssfeed.com

Easy Facebook Retargeting Bring back lost customers with the #1 Facebook Retargeting platform. Customers get $12 in sales for every $1 they spend. Start a 2-week complimentary trial today. From our sponsors

Affiliate Marketing Niche Idea: Time Management Sep 13th 2013, 19:08 I'm back with this week's niche idea and I have chosen to highlight a sub-niche of the self-help niche: Time management. It was not easy for me to pick this niche, because I personally am not into self-help, but I was browsing about how to better manage time a few days ago and thought to myself: How many others out there are looking for the same tips I am? So I took aside some time (no pun intended!) to look into it and found that time management affiliate programs can be worth any affiliate marketer's time. Time Management Is There Really Such a Niche?  Evergreen niches like weight loss, self-help and skincare tend to be major industries. According to Wikipedia, the self-help niche is an $11 billion industry in the US Market alone. This does not necessarily mean you will earn a lot from the niche, but it does let you know the self-help industry is growing and that there is potential to earn from the niche. The self-help niche is huge with several sub-niches under it like dating, marriage and relationships, self-esteem, personal finance, success and time management. Stress management, including curing anxiety disorders, is part of the self-help niche. In a niche this big and diverse, it's important to focus on only one sub-niche for your site. It will be easier to search for target keywords if you're building a list for a particular sub-niche. It's easier to get organized as well. Dating, marriage and relationships, and stress management / curing anxiety are lucrative self-help sub-niches. There are a lot of good products in them that you can promote, like The Tao of Badass, Magic of Making Up and Panic Away. You can choose any of these sub-niches but as I mentioned earlier, I'm going with time management. It's a little less popular than the other self-help sub-niches, but there's a demand for it. After all, we're all leading busy lives and can't seem to find enough time to do everything we need to. Now let's see how big the demand is for time management programs and products. Time Management Keywords I went into Traffic Travis and entered "time management." The keyword variations with the highest monthly search values came up: ​ There are plenty of keywords I can target from the results I got from Traffic Travis, but I like to have options, so I went to Ubersuggest to look into other variations of my target keyword:    Time Management Affiliate Programs and Products  There are several time management products on ClickBank, but I only found two that I think are worth looking into: If you are unable to find any good ones on ClickBank, check out other networks like ShareASale and Commission Junction. You can also go into Google and use your target keywords to look for products. I did just that and came across several, such as Brian Tracy International. Brian Tracy is a professional speaker and author on success and time management. He also has an affiliate program for his books and seminars through Commission Junction and ShareASale. I found an affiliate program for a time/project management software, Dovico. It's not really what I'm looking for right now, as I'm targeting individuals, but it's good to know about. Maybe it's something I can branch out into later on. There are several more I found, like the Time Management Secrets affiliate program. Their affiliate page has various resources you can use if you choose to be their affiliate. The commission looks good too. Then there's Amazon yet again, filled with various books, PDFs and audio cassettes on time management. Promoting these products is going to be challenging for sure, but I think I will enjoy putting up the site. There's the added bonus of learning here, as well as the opportunity to share my journey of improving my time management skill with others. Promoting Time Management Products  Link building is a way to promote your site. It can be very time consuming and frustrating, which is why you need to map out a link-building strategy during the early stages of site creation. Right after picking out the products, consider how you'll go about with building links to your site and getting traffic to it.  Forum and Blog Participation I mentioned that I got into time management because I was looking for tips on how to better manage my time. During the course of my research, I found some good blogs that I follow and participate in, like the Time Management Ninja, as well as forums like Toodledo. The important thing to remember when participating in forums and blogs is that you're not just participating for the backlink or the traffic. Aim to build relationships by providing valuable, helpful info.  Social Media  I think this particular method applies to any site in any niche simply because social media sites are big and have regular followings. The key to marketing through social media networks like Facebook is to gain a following as well as "Likes" (or their equivalent), and to do that, you need to share, share, share. It doesn't have to just be content from your site. It can be a short, funny comic strip showing what happens if we don't know how to manage time, or an infographic of how one can jumpstart their time management skills. Always keep in mind the content needs to be "shareable."  Content Strategy / Content Marketing  This is not about submitting articles to various directories. This is about managing the content on your site and making sure you are providing your visitors high-quality, informative content on a regular basis. One thing I can do within my niche is content curating, meaning I rank and review the top 10 sites on time management (good opportunity for link baiting as well!). This particular method helps you create shareable content for your site and your social media marketing efforts.  Is the Time Management Niche Worth the Time?  A lot of you are probably asking the same question. The answer depends on you, and on what interests you. Picking a niche is not just going for what you're into or what will get you the biggest income. There has to be a good balance between your interest and the earning potential. In the case of the time management niche, though, it's more about going after what I am interested in and less about how much I can earn off it. There are more lucrative sub-niches in the self-help niche where I can earn more, but I am in it for the knowledge. It's just a bonus that I can make a bit of money while I improve my time management skills. If you have a similar mindset, then creating a site on time management won't be a waste of time for you, either. I hope you liked my niche of the week and gained a few insights on how to go about selecting your niche and keywords. Be sure to leave me a comment and share my post! :) If you are looking for step-by-step training on creating an affiliate site from scratch, including in-depth lessons on keyword research and niche selection, then check out AffiloBlueprint.

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions

Read More

Affiliate Marketing Blog: 5 & a Half Steps to Turn Your Blog into an Affiliate Marketing Cash Cow

Affiliate Marketing Blog // via fulltextrssfeed.com

Your small business full-time assistant Join the 500,000+ people using Shoeboxed to streamline accounting and bookkeeping. Turn a pile of receipts into digital data to save time, money and hassle. From our sponsors

5 & a Half Steps to Turn Your Blog into an Affiliate Marketing Cash Cow Sep 12th 2013, 23:39 By Guest Account on Sat Sep 21 Saturday September 21 Comments Blogging is hard work. You're always writing and forever brainstorming so you can write some more. It's hard work that is usually completely unpaid for. But what if you could make money out of your blog? What if all the work you put into sourcing the perfect image and positioning the comma correctly actually put some dollars in the bank? No, it doesn't involve selling your soul, I promise! Affiliate marketing can be a really great and reliable way for a blogger to make a steady income. But it has to be done right. A lot of affiliate marketers will probably sell you the get-rich-quick affiliate marketing Kool-Aid, but once you drink it, you probably won't see money growing on trees. So today I wanted to talk to you about how to start making real dollars from your blog without turning into a slimy used car salesman. Step 1: Throw A Party OK, so this might sound like common sense to most of you, but sometimes people think they are bloggers because they jumped on WordPress yesterday and set up thisismyfirstblog.wordpress.com. There are about two posts (one of them says "Hello World!") and now they're ready to make the big bucks! It doesn't work like that. Before you can start making money, you need to build a successful blog. It should provide good content and attract plenty of regular, real readers who enjoy what you have to say. Once you get this party started on your blog, you're ready to get started with affiliate marketing. Step 2: Play Hard To Get There are millions of products for which you can become an affiliate and there are thousands of affiliate programs grabbing at you, screaming "pick me pick me!" Don't just give in to the hype—do your research before you start advertising products on your blog. Ask yourself some super important questions like: Do I believe in this product? Is this relevant to the topic of my blog? Would my readers be interested in this product? Is it a reliable/trustworthy product or service? Will my audience spend $X to buy this product? Would *I* buy this product? Always, always keep your audience in mind when you're picking products to become an affiliate for. A great product doesn't mean anything if your reader isn't interested in it, so be relevant and offer value. If you carefully select which products to promote instead of jumping at every affiliate opportunity that comes along, you're going to make more sales and become a better, more successful affiliate marketer. Step 3: Be Yourself This is quickly starting to sound like advice for a first date—"Play hard to get but be yourself"—but it IS sound advice! When choosing a product to promote, it's important that it's something relevant to your blog and your audience but it's also important to be authentic about your experience with it. Your audience reads your blog because they like what you have to say, so if you have an opinion about a product, they will probably be interested in knowing what you think about it. Be honest and provide genuine recommendations. One of my favorite sites is Smart Passive Income and if you've ever listened to Pat Flynn's podcasts or read his posts, you will come across a product recommendation at some point. Pat's recommendations are usually very personalized and often he will also talk about his own experience using the product or service. This is pretty powerful stuff for affiliate marketing. His personalized recommendation acts essentially the same way word-of-mouth does for a group of friends and his audience is more likely to buy the product because of the authenticity of his review. Step 4: Don't Be Slimy Nobody likes a pushy, sneaky salesman who just wants the money and doesn't mind selling you a lemon in exchange. Affiliate marketers can trick you into clicking on links or redirect you to product pages just to try and make some money out of you. So don't be that guy. Nobody likes being tricked into doing something. Be upfront about your affiliate links. Carrying on from Pat Flynn's example above, he usually makes a full disclosure when he recommends an affiliate product so you, the reader, will be more likely to trust him. You don't have to put up huge warning signs every time your readers are clicking on a potential money-making link, but a fair amount of visible disclosure that your readers can easily identify (such as at the end of a post that includes an affiliate link) is just good practice. Being open and transparent is the best sales tactic. Step 5: Practice Zen So you've done Steps 1 through 4 but aren't seeing any money yet. Hate to bring out the cliché again, but money doesn't grow on trees and you have to work hard and be patient before you start seeing results. If you're doing things right, you will start seeing results (and dollars), but be patient and always be tracking. Most affiliate programs will provide you with some sort of tracking tool—be sure to use this to measure your performance and make tweaks where necessary so you can keep getting better at it. Step 5.5: Keep On Being Awesome You're obviously a little bit awesome if people are reading your blog, so just keep doing what you're doing. Keep producing that great quality content that your audience loves you for. Sure, you will have a few sponsored posts and product review posts now that you're an affiliate marketer, but don't let that overshadow the main content of your blog. Remember that without this content you won't have any readers to sell products to! That's it for today—I hope you find these tips useful as you get started in the world of affiliate marketing. Let me know if they work for you in the comments below, and feel free to share your own tips with our other readers.

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions

Read More

Affiliate Marketing Blog: Affiliate Marketing Niche Idea - Star Wars: The Old Republic

Affiliate Marketing Blog // via fulltextrssfeed.com

Refresh your vocabulary. Learn a new word everyday by subscribing to Word of the Day. A great tool if you're studying for the GRE, GMAT or LSAT, or simply want to enhance your lexicon. From our sponsors

Affiliate Marketing Niche Idea - Star Wars: The Old Republic Sep 12th 2013, 23:40 When most affiliates think of niches they automatically run to the "big guns": weight loss, dog training, making money online etc. There is nothing wrong with these evergreen niches—in fact, I recommend them all the time because of their proven profitability and huge potential for earnings. However, there are times when you need to look beyond the heavyweights of the affiliate world and find relatively untapped niches that are also lucrative. In this blog post I'm going to show you the potential of a very exciting niche by looking at Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) affiliate programs. Ever since my dad took me to see Star Wars when the films were re-released in the late 1990s I have been an avid fan of the series. Picking a niche in which you have personal interest is a very good idea. What is the Niche? Star Wars: The Old Republic is an online role-playing game that allows players to explore the Star Wars universe with their own custom character. You can battle other players, find treasure, amass in-game money, and socialize with digital friends. It's a bit like World of Warcraft, only "Star Warsey." The niche consists of the people looking to improve their skills and abilities at playing this game.  How Popular is the Niche? If you've been an affiliate for a while, then you will know that World of Warcraft strategy guides still sell strongly, even though many years have passed since the game's release. I personally know that video game strategy guides for online multiplayer titles are always very popular (a couple of years ago I made some decent money promoting Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty affiliate products).  SWTOR has millions of active subscribers, and is growing its membership at a steady rate thanks to its hybrid "freemium" subscription system—it's free to play the game, but you can pay real cash to get ahead of the competition and unlock extra features. This kind of thing is a growing trend in the entertainment industry, which is great news for affiliates as it means more potential customers for you.  In terms of niche keywords we can see that there is some reasonable search volume for SWTOR strategy/leveling/tip-related keywords. I used Traffic Travis (download it for free here) for my keyword research, and within a few minutes found these results: Now compared to some heavyweight affiliate niches that kind of search volume doesn't seem impressive, but the good news with this niche is that there are huge numbers of long-tail keyword phrases you can target.  Check out these scraped Google Suggest long-tail keywords for "SWTOR leveling" I found using Keyword Buzz: ​   Considering that there are a whole bunch of different seed keywords such as "SWTOR credits," "SWTOR tips," "Old Republic guide" etc., there are obviously a massive number of potential long-tail keywords ripe for targeting. Clearly there is potential for getting traffic in this niche.  Of course traffic potential is only one aspect of successful affiliate marketing and niche hunting. I'm sure there's a heck of a lot of search traffic for "Miley Cyrus dancing," but I don't think any vendor would make a product about that! To search for Star Wars: The Old Republic affiliate products I'm going to take a quick look at Clickbank. Normally players refer to the game by its initials of "SWTOR" (you should always try and learn some of the jargon people use in any given niche), so I'll type that into the search box and see what kind of results appear: 17 different products on Clickbank for what is a very focused niche is already a positive sign that there is money to be made here. Let's scroll down and take a look at what kind of gravity scores and $ per sale are on offer: Right off the bat I can see that there are products with gravity scores and $ per sale of more than $20. Realistically speaking, this niche is unlikely to be a millionaire-maker, but there is irrefutable evidence right here that other affiliates are making money from the Star Wars: The Old Republic niche. Competition is a great thing online, and as Willie Nelson once said, "the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese." There are other affiliates making sales, but not so much competition that it would be impossible to get a foothold.  SWTOR CPA Offers You might have heard that CPA offers are millionaire-makers. There's certainly a lot to be said for CPA offers where you earn a payout for getting people to perform a simple action (like opening an SWTOR player account for free). Compared to converting traffic into sales, it is generally much easier to convert visitors into leads. The Peerfly affiliate network currently has a CPA offer that's paying over $1 per free signup you refer to the game:   The earnings per click aren't that flash, but at the end of the day this still gives you another opportunity for making money from freebie-seeker traffic. Any extra layers of monetization you can add to your affiliate marketing campaigns are going to help boost your profitability in the long run.  Other potential affiliate programs include: Star Wars: The Old Republic CPA offers on Offervault.  Star Wars merchandise and memorabilia on Amazon—someone who plays this game would probably be interested in cool Star Wars toys or gadgets. In-house Star Wars affiliate programs—in my research I found independent affiliate programs selling Star Wars: The Old Republic t-shirts and more.  Sub-niche specific Clickbank offers—SWTOR credit/gold guides, keyboard mapping software to help people play better (this is very popular for video game niches), and more. Clearly there is not only traffic but potential to profit in this niche.  How Could You Promote?  Whenever you are thinking of making inroads into a new niche you should always consider niche-specific promotion methods. Affiliate marketing goes far beyond simply building a website and doing rudimentary SEO; there is a diverse spectrum of promotion methods you should consider, and finding new opportunities in your niche can give you a huge edge over your competition.  YouTube Videos Because gaming is visual/aural thing, one of the best ways to promote your website and affiliate links is to get on YouTube and make videos. Gamers are, by their very nature, tech-savvy people and tend to enjoy watching YouTube videos. For example, this quick search for "swtor guide" on YouTube reveals over 400,000 videos—many of which have hundreds of thousands of views: Because this game is free-to-play you could easily create your own character and chronicle the methods you use to level up, defeat enemies, and gain loot. Use screen capture software, such as Camtasia, and then upload your videos to YouTube. Target them to the keywords you have found using Traffic Travis, and then include a link to your website in the video description. If you're really desperate for quick commissions, then you could even send people straight to your affiliate link through a redirect. For example, this affiliate has created a very basic webcam review video and linked people through to a cloaked affiliate link: ​   Over 18,000 views in under 8 months for a simple webcam review is not too shabby! Assuming a click-through rate of 5% (which I don't think unreasonable for a review video), that's over 900 clicks to his YouTube Link. If that traffic converted at 1% then he would have made about 9 sales from a simple video. You could easily create a targeted YouTube channel full of long-tail optimized affiliate review videos and drive real traffic back to your links and website.  Gaming Forums & Blogs Forum and blog marketing is always a popular method for promoting affiliate websites. Once again I recommend actually building a website in this niche—follow the exhaustive AffiloBlueprint method to learn how—and set up a quality landing page that either reviews a leading affiliate product or offers a free hook in exchange for joining your list. You can then post in gaming forums, and comment on gaming blogs, leaving links to your website in a signature file or contextual post. If you add value (and I mean this—do not spam or you will get shot down quickly), then forum and blog readers will click your links and visit your site.  Post on Strategy Guide Websites Sites such as GameFAQS.com allow users to upload their own strategy guides, walkthrough guides, and cheats for the rest of the world to download. Many of these sites get massive traffic volume, so consider creating a brief guide that features prominent calls to action that lead back to your main website. Search Google for video game walkthrough websites where you can upload your own guide, and you will get referral traffic from this.  In-Game Promotion One final niche-specific method you might consider exploring is actually promoting within the game itself. It's possible to chat with other players and in groups; you could create your own character and then chat with other players in-game and encourage them to visit your site for ways to become a better player. I have seen people do this before on games that I play such as Call of Duty, and have actually seen a couple of case studies from people who made decent affiliate commissions doing this. The secret is not to spam other players, but to actually use this method to get your "brand" out in front of a highly targeted audience. Just remember not to break the terms of service when promoting within the game itself.  Conclusion When it comes to finding profitable niches there are relatively untapped opportunities such as this one. There are a number of great Star Wars: The Old Republic affiliate programs that clearly make money for other affiliates. There are some good keywords without too much search competition, and even PPC costs aren't too extortionate for many long-tails. From a "holistic" viewpoint this would also be a good niche because gamers are clearly willing to spend in order to get ahead of the competition—and online role-playing games are full of passionate players who take their gaming very seriously. The Force is strong with this niche. Of course, the best way to get started with niche affiliate marketing is to find your own niches. By targeting a niche in which you are interested you will find it much easier to stay focused and motivated. It's also important to understand what the people in your niche are looking for; getting inside the niche mindset is crucial. Watch the free Affilorama lesson on understanding what your market wants to see how you can mesh niche research and buyer psychology together for the best possible profits. If you would prefer to fast-track your affiliate marketing success, then you should check out AffiloBlueprint, which takes you by the hand and shows you how to research and find a niche as well as how to build a site, create content and promote it. If you enjoyed this post please share it on your favorite social network by using one of the share buttons, and as always, if you have any questions or comments just leave them below. I might even be willing to debate about which Star Wars movie was the best!

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions

Read More