G’day folks and welcome back to my mammoth getting started post! You can catch up on part 1 here.

Building Your WordPress Affiliate Site

Now that you’ve identified your host, bought a domain, found a niche with good merchants, and worked out your content it’s time to build that site.  Well. Where do I begin.  An absolute age ago I wrote my WordPress 101 post, and its follow up – WordPress 102.  I think WordPress is the absolute dogs danglies where affiliates are concerned.  Both of those posts are fairly out of date, but most of the points about finding suitable themes and customising them to your needs still hold true.

I’ve noticed a lot of affiliates are using magazine style themes these days. These are great for creating static looking websites. What I tend to do is create a category structure that looks a lot like the menu structure of a standard retail site. I have found this works well in combination with adding a couple of hundred words of unique content to my category descriptions.  Do watch out for the themes that will use category descriptions as link titles though, not good!

Once my sites have a few posts up and running I then feature some of the posts from my key categories on the theme home page and voila! My site has a relevant and regularly updated home page with little to no input.

If you want to create nice looking landing pages check out this post to get all my trade secrets on laying out a landing page. It’s really not as hard as you’d think to create and customise your own affiliate landing pages. You just need to be handy with pen and paper plus a pinch of imagination and basic HTML. It’s very worthwhile and increases your click through rates to merchant. Your visitors like to see an attractive landing page when they arrive. It’s worth spending some time messing around with these even if you don’t implement them immediately.

Now Install Some Essential Plugins

Great plugins that are a must install for an affiliate site? This is the bit that’s probably out of date in my WordPress posts, so here goes!

1. Sitemap Generator Plugin – not the XML kind, one that’s actually part of your site.  Helps search engines find your content and index it. Kinda pivotal.
2. XML Sitemap – creates a lovely Google compliant XML sitemap of your site. (I’m not entirely convinced this helps you any, but it sure doesn’t hurt!).
3. Robots Meta – Absolutely essential. Helps you stop Google indexing uneccessary content and also eliminates some of the problems WordPress can throw up re: duplicate content.
4. RSS Footer – Ha ha!! Those naughty RSS content robbers will shoot themselves in the foot with this one (geddit?). If someone publishes your content from your sites RSS feed on their site, this neato little plugin will add a link back to your site making sure you get credit and they don’t – denied!
5. Search Meter – Find out what your blog visitors were a cravin’ when they came to visit your site. Handy dandy little tool that will give you additional information on how your visitors are thinking and searching. Great to use to create extra content and can reveal some search term gems that Google won’t.
6. Contact Form – When you set up your Contact Us page, you’ll need one of these. It’s handy to make sure people can contact you via your site… you never know what you’ll miss out on if you don’t!
7. Similar Posts Plugin – Great to help give your readers a view of some related products or information. I use this plugin because it’s very customisable.  I’ve added a thumbnail to all related posts on my sites which really creates an attractive looking page. I think it also gives my visitors a sense of “choice”. As soon as they arrive on one of my pages they immediately see lots of products and navigation options, giving them confidence this is going to be a good site to have a nice look round.
8. Thumbnail For Excerpts – I use this to create nice looking images on my category pages.  Because I started noticing visitors often landed on category pages as my sites got stronger in the SERPS I figured I might as well give them some nice images to look at as soon as they arrived rather than a boring page of text that might result in them clicking away.
9. Link Exchange Plugin – If you want to set up a link exchange page on your site, this handy dandy little plugin will help you manage the process and keep an eye on your link partners to make sure they’ve not pulled the old trick of removing your link back a few weeks after exchanging.  Sneaky eh?!
10. Pagination Plugin – Do not build a blog based site without one of these.  These will help keep your posts in the index by creating a good cross linkage structure in your site.  Google doesn’t like orphan pages and as time passes old blog posts look an awful lot like that.  This plugin convinces Google that your older content is still very much loved and part of the family!

And Your Shiny New Site is Complete!

All you need to do now is get some inbound links (OK, I know… not so easy but we’ll save that for another post I think!) and follow your ongoing content strategy to keep adding new and relevant pages for Google and other search engines to chew on.

At this stage, your journey to a profitable affiliate site is really just beginning.  From now on you’ll have to master the finer and more subtle points of SEO, learn to identify new ways to monetise your traffic, and find new and exciting merchants and products to promote to keep your affiliate business rolling. So not much then

Finally…

Good luck with your new site. Affiliate marketing is hard, hard work. There are no easy wins, but when you do get there it is incredibly satisfying.

If a “best of” montage episode is good enough for the Simpsons, it’s good enough for Affiliate Stuff. We’re now entering Season 3 of my career as a blogger so definately time to pull together a few good posts for the beginners and try to create a good reference point. I’m going to link to the various different guides I’ve written that are still relevant and fill in any gaps where things have changed or there’s an area I realise I haven’t covered properly.

I originally thought this would fit in one post, but it looks like it’s going to be a series… so stay tuned

First… Get Yourself A Good Domain Registrar and Host

There’s a surprising disparity between what lots of different people charge for domains and hosting so make sure you shop around and get a good deal. For the record I use Clook who I recommend and Fasthosts who I don’t.  If you plan on making use of WordPress to build your affiliate site, do make sure that your host supports the platform and makes it easy to use. Be aware of any additional charges for hosting the SQL databases WordPress runs from. Clook has a good wordpress setup that is easy to use. I’ve recommended you do the above for one good reason. So you feel like you’ve actually broken dirt on your new project.

Oh, make sure whatever domain name registrar you choose will actually allow you to change nameserver details via their interface.  Most do these days, but it’s best to double check.

Now Decide Upon Your Niche

The next bit is fun, but it is also very hard. Yep, it’s time to decide on that niche! I’ve written various posts on finding that first affiliate niche (post is quite old so things mentioned such as keyword tools etc may no longer be current), brainstorming, and using your own shopping interests to work out if a niche is worth pursuing. Identifying viable merchants at this stage in your research process is very, very important. Make sure there is someone out there who you feel can effectively convert the traffic you will ultimately send them. The only thing that is worse for an affiliate than a site not ranking is a site that ranks, gets traffic, and fails to sell anything. Very disheartening!!

The following are key points in your niche selection journey: -

• Make sure you are interested in what you are trying to sell. I can never, ever say this too often. I can’t work out why so many people don’t believe me and decide to do a bingo site, or car loans because “the commission is £50 a sale”.  Yeah righto. Do you REALLY think nobody else thought of that??  At the very core of your ability to create a site that really works should be a strong sense of empathy with the people you are trying to attract to your site and push through to merchant to make that sale. The best way to do this when you’re starting out is to make sure it’s something you can see yourself buying. This will better enable you to put yourself in the shoes of the buyer and work out what you’d want to see on a site devoted to it. More importantly, you won’t die of complete boredom trying to create and update your site content.
• Keep the product area you are targeting fairly tight.  Personally I’d go for something a little broader than a site looking to sell a single product as it’ll give you the chance to add additional content and experiment with growing the site further as you move down the affiliate marketing path.  It also gives you the chance to test the market within a highly targeted product area. When you do this you’ll see that some products convert, and others don’t. It will offer good practise in identifying what sells and taking steps to modify your traffic stream to better target your “hot products”. That’s not to say single product sites aren’t valid – they are. It’s just that they can be very hit and miss for the unseasoned affiliate.
• Don’t target something too broad either. Try to do a general site about fashion for example, or even dresses and you might find your site is a huge task to complete and subsequently ranks nowhere. It would in time, but I feel its very important for a first site attempt to get traffic early on to keep you encouraged and interested. Something like Maxi Dresses, or Bodycon Dresses would be far more appropriate.  Plenty of scope for quality content, and the site will attract traffic that is easier to convert thanks to its more precise and targeted nature.
• Once you’ve decided, I recommend you do some keyword research within your niche.

A good niche can often be staring you in the face amidst a seemingly crowded marketplace. Here’s a post I wrote when I was feeling all smug about beating the crowds at an iconic Aussie location. Just because an affiliate space looks crowded, doesn’t mean there aren’t things in there people have missed. Most people look at the obvious. I urge you to be different and think different

Now Register Your Domain

Feed your keyword research into registering a domain with the company you’ve identified in step 1.

A domain that has relevant keywords will really help you out in the search engines. It can also help if you find an available domain that is an exact match to a traffic bearing search phrase. This isn’t always a good thing though – I’ve seen lots of affiliate sites formatted like REALLYPOINTLESSLYLONGANDSILLY.CO.UK – just don’t do it to yourself, it looks ridiculous!

As an aside, a nice short domain name also helps you to create more compelling looking Adwords ads.  The shorter your domain, the more space their is to add a brand name or unique identifier to your display url i.e. LingerieBrands.co.uk/Calvin_Klein. At the very least make sure your domain meets the Adwords display URL maximum length of 35 characters to prevent complicating your life should you decide to give PPC a crack down the line.

Create a Site Structure Plan

There’s really nothing worse than trying to complete a site without a plan. Not only will it lack decent structure, it’ll probably be a bit of a pigs ear and overall waste of time. I suggest using the keyword research you’ve already completed above combined with a look at a few merchants in your chosen niche to sit down and rough out what your main site sections will be.  Choose up to 20 main site areas where you’ll showcase your wares. Any more than that and you may fall by the wayside because you’ve given yourself too large a site to put together.

One of the reasons I recommend you target a narrow product group is that in a well defined niche the main pages you define here will have a much better chance of ranking. Good for those motivation levels.

Now its Time to Get Busy With Some Content
And I mean actual, meaningful content.  Not slapping up a whole load of products and a two line intro that’s exactly the same as the one on every other page of your site bar two or three key words that have been changed, and then acting all surprised and bewildered when your masterpiece sinks without a trace.  The amount of thin affiliate sites I see along these lines is totally ridiculous. Well here’s a newsflash guys – it’s just not good enough!!  Without content your site just won’t have a chance to rank.  This is the point at which a huge number of would be affiliates fail, but never fear – it’s not rocket science.

I suggest at least a couple of hundred words on each page. I usually structure my own pages so that the first 50 to 100 words are at the top (depending on the template) and tuck the rest neatly away after what I’m actually trying to sell.

Forward Content Planning

When you’re sorting your content for the main sections of your site, write out a plan of what additional content you will add to your site once the initial structure is in place.  I feel I have to clear something up here. When you finish an affiliate site, it’s umm… generally speaking not finished!!  Unless you keep adding quality content to your site there’s a fairly good chance that Google will lose interest in your site and your traffic will drop off.  It’s important to keep adding to your site on an ongoing basis. Believe me it really will help you no end to build traffic and a quality site that converts well.

How Do I Decide What To Write About?

I hear you ask. Well, there’s a few tips in the article I’ve referenced above. Apart from that I’d base some articles around any search term areas you weren’t able to include in your main site structure.  Product review / highlight posts can work great for attracting the long tail.  Going back to my maxi dress example above, I might look at writing about maxi dresses featuring particular patterns i.e. geometric or floral, fabric types i.e. cotton or satin, particular shapes i.e. strapless, spaghetti strapped, colours, and finally particular brands or online stores i.e Motel or Miss Selfridge.  Product copy 101 is here, I’ve given a specific example of how I’d write a short article about a single product.  I followed that post up with an overview of the sort of traffic I got in from it.

Phew!

That was quite long, wasn’t it? Now you know why I had to split it up.  Tune in for next time’s exciting installment on getting that site built and marketed. Or just built if I keep on going back and adding stuff like I did with this post LOL.

Questions?

Please if you have any questions on this, pop them in the comments field below and I will do my best to answer them for you. If there’s any glaring gaps in the above I’d like to go back and fill them in. I will be linking to the finished result of this endeavour site wide so that when someone new to AM hits the site they can go straight off and read this.

Comments and discussion will also enhance the resource so please, please, please jump on in – it really does help!

An interesting question from Rod that I’m sure I’ve touched upon before, but this is one of those topics that does bear regular revisitation – is PPC still the go for new affiliates?

Here’s his question: -

Hi Kirsty
I stumbled on your blog while doing some initial research into affiliate marketing and was very impressed the writing is refreshingly clear and actually pointing to one of your niches (the lingerie site) is generous – I haven’t found many people who actually give examples of their sites.

If you have time (I’m sure you get plenty of questions from latecomers to AM) I wonder if you could tell me if there is still any mileage in doing PPC campaigns
- I read so many different accounts on the web and it’s pretty hard to be sure of getting current information, any advise you could give to a struggling newcomer would be appreciated.

I’ve been following Jeremy Palmers Blackink seminars in the states
http://www.theblackinkproject.com which has a lot of good information but the course is aimed mainly at people developing affiliate sites and for me at the moment this seems like biting off more than I can chew – I thought running a some PPC campaigns might be a better way to get a feel for things – do you think this is realistic?

Hello Rod,

There’s Still Money In Them Thar Hills

PPC can still make you good money. Most of my income comes from this, although I’m using landing pages and diversifying into SEO again also. I guess what you are asking is “Does direct to merchant still work?”

I say… yes it is!! If I were you, I’d be looking to try out dipping a toe in with a few direct to merchant campaigns on Google and perhaps a few simple landing pages on Yahoo.

The good thing about direct to merchant activity is that it gives you the ability to test out a market before you go spending your precious time building a site around a particular merchant or niche. Although many merchants no longer want affiliates competing on their URL in Adwords in particular, that doesn’t always mean you can’t give MSN a whirl. Also, there are plenty of merchants still out there very happy to allow direct to merchant activity.

Don’t Take A Scattergun Approach…
I will caution you though. Please, please, please be careful what you bid on!! Think before you bid 50p on the word “chocolate” or something, lol. It’s sad but true that quite a few newbies chuck traffic at a merchant and hope for the best. This is not the way to go. Really sit down and have a good old think about what you might search for if you wanted to buy your target products… base your campaign on very tightly defined terms for very specific things, and make sure you send your traffic right to the spot on the merchant site where they will find what they seek. Therein lies the holy grail – conversions!!

My Best previous posts in the keyword research area were about Keyword Research Techniques and also a bit in a broader post about Where To Send PPC Traffic & Identify Keywords.

I Wouldn’t Dream Of Creating A Site In An Untested Market…

I have based every single site I’m developing this year on a direct to merchant PPC campaign. I use them to gather information about which merchants work in which sectors. Once I know a merchant or niche can cut it, I am safe to spend my time creating a good site around them… so I think your idea is a good one.

Let us know how you get on Rod, the next thing you need to do is… something! Get into it mate!!

I’ve been meaning to do this post for a very long time. I’ve now written so many “Ask Kirsty” and various “Affiliate How To” guides that when read together they’d make a damned fine overview of how to find your way through the maze that is affiliate marketing.

So get your looking gear around this guys and gals, it’s Kirsty’s handy dandy one-stop affiliate marketing learning shop!!

So Where Do You Start In Affiliate Marketing?

• First things first, you’ll need something to sell! Easier said than done however. So you’d best dash off right now and find out how to Find That First Affiliate Niche. Once you’ve focussed in on a niche, you’d best think a little bit more about how to identify product areas you will do well in and Get Some Information on What Works From Merchants.

See? That was easy wasn’t it?! OK, so now that you have your product area in mind

You’d Best Research Some Keywords

• Now, some people might be surprised that my next recommended step is finding your keywords as opposed to sorting out a site. But if you feed your keyword data into your site structure plan you will have a much stronger offering for the search engines. So first off, Have A Sit Down And Brainstorm Your Keywords.

Now You Can Start Thinking About Your Super-Duper Affiliate Site!

• You don’t have to be a technical genius to put together a really nice affiliate site these days, so don’t panic. My personal recommendation is to use a WordPress Blog. It’s dead set easy. Panic ye not if you have never heard of it, for Auntie Kirsty put together a Basic Guide To Everything You Need To Create A WordPress Site. Even better, she has also provided another WordPress guide featuring Everything You Need To Create A More Advanced Site.
• Finally, you will need to create some compelling site content that will be good for SEO. Check out the following content guides which are available FREE from your local friendly affiliate guru: -
• Writing Content For SEO – It’s Not Rocket Science
• My Suggestion If You’re Rubbish At Writing
• How To Write SEO Friendly Posts At The Product Level

Gosh Darn It, You’re Racing Along Now!

• You’d best perform some basic SEO on your site. Building Links Effectively and carefully is very important – so give some of that a go.
• To gain an overview of how Search Engines look at websites and the basic bones of how they rank them check out my basic guide to SEO – Definitions and On Site Factors.

Confident Enough To Enhance Your SEO With Some PPC?

• Then you’ll need my Google Adwords Beginners Guide!
• …and here’s a handy wee overview should you find that you Can’t Make Your First PPC Attempt Pay.

So there it is. There’s a fair amount of reading there for you, but when you’ve finished I hope you’ll drop me a comment and tell me what you think. Are you further forward? Where are the gaps in your knowledge now? Feedback will help give me more ideas about what everyone wants me to talk about.

Oh, and if you like this article… please share it with others. Stumble it, Digg it, Sphinn It, darn it…. even just do it the old fashioned way. Tell people about it verbally!

… but it’s not actually all that easy either! I’ve been thinking about this subject for a while now. After almost 9 years working online, writing content for SEO has become second nature.

It was only recently when I’ve been trying to show a couple of people how I do this that I’ve realised it’s not all that easy, or obvious. So whilst everyone in the know is banging on about content being king, lots of people have been saying “Yeah, alright but what kind of content does the king bloody well want to see?!”

So with that in mind… here is Kirsty’s basic guide to creating compelling content that will help drive relevant traffic to your site!

OK. So lets look at this in two parts. Firstly, how you should go about writing content for your site in general, and Secondly how to come up with ideas for creating additional, relevant content around your chosen niche.

1. How To Write Your Site Copy
Lets assume you’ve sorted out your merchant. Lets further assume that your shiny and new site is sitting there resplendent with exciting products for your potential customers. All you have to do now is learn the ins and outs of SEO in order that you may have a chance of anyone ever seeing them!

Now, simply copying whatever the merchant has on their site (or having nothing at all in there) just ain’t gonna cut it. The King of content has outlawed the copy and paste marketing method, so it’s time for y’all to get creative. What I’d recommend you do is something a little bit more than simply re-wording your merchant’s product or product group blurb.

Oh, and obviously I’m writing this guide with no idea of your site structure or how / where your products are situated, so its quite general. Swap “product section” for “product” in the below if you will – it’s still relevant! Don’t worry, I’ll be answering questions at the end as usual!

So for each of your product sections, do the following: -

– Sit down with notepad and pen and have a really good brainstorming session. Try to imagine you want to buy the products you are trying to push.

- Write down all the search terms you’d personally use if you wanted to buy something from each of your product sections. Get REALLY detailed with this. Think of every possible different way you can to describe the group of products you’re trying to sell.

- Check your search phrases out on your local friendly keyword tool such as the Google Keyword Sandbox, and work out which of your search phrases is likely to be most popular. Also, you may find some additional search term variations. Add these to your master list for each of your product pages.

- Now it’s time to write a product section description! To avoid accidental plagarism I suggest you read over the merchant copy, then read your own list of keywords which is talking about all the different ways you could search for your products. Then try to write something in your own words (WITHOUT looking at your keyword list or the merchant site) that talks about all the benefits of the product, and try to weave in as many of the search terms from the list you’ve compiled as possible. If you want to include specific information, you can go back and get the details after you’ve written the main copy.

NB I’m not telling you to stuff in as many keywords as possible here, its really important to have a completely natural style of writing. Just keep your search terms in the back of your mind and when you get the opportunity – mention them!

OK, so hopefully by now you have an original and keyword rich product section description.

– To put the icing on the cake, make sure you include a really relevant page title. I see so many sites with poor titles, and it’s a shame because it really, really, helps with your search engine positions. Make sure you use your page titles to their very best advantage. Don’t just settle for “Product Name”. Really make the most of the opportunity to mention as many of your keword variations as possible.

i.e. Buy Cheap Product Name UK : General Site Topic Term : Product Name

OK, now repeat the above until you’ve written original content for all of your site sections. Now it’s time for step…

2. Writing Content Around Your Product Sections
I thoroughly recommend that you do more than simply write a bit of content for each of your site sections. There’s no way you’ve been able to cover all those wonderful search terms in your list from earlier. What a waste of an opportunity for some good traffic!

So…

– Get that list back out! Now, identify the search term areas you weren’t able to include in your site section descriptions. I’d recommend looking at terms that are looking for specific product features that match those you are trying to promote.

i.e. if your page is about acne look out search terms such as “solutions to teen acne” “natural acne treatment”

- You can now create some really genuinely helpful articles designed to capture searches from people looking for solutions to questions, or a specific product feature. Link to your product section from each of them, or direct to merchant… the choice is yours. And guess what? It’ll bring in traffic that converts like mad!

It will be so much more relevant than general terms to do with your product area, getting people to your site who really know what they want but don’t know where to find it. It’s simply up to you to show them the way by creating good SEO content to capture their search.

Integrate your articles into the main navigation of your site, and even link to them from the relevant product section. Trust me, this simple system will create a site with great SEO and will increase your chances to rank for lots of different search terms.

If you want an example of where I’ve done this successfuly, you may refer to the Lingerie Brands site I’m always talking about here. In particular, check out one of my Lingerie Brand Sections and see how I’ve written my content. No, I don’t always follow the steps I’ve outlined above – but I find content and SEO intuitive and really love writing it.

I really hope this general guide has helped. I’ve now realised just how difficult it is to write good SEO copy for many affiliate marketers. I’m luck enough to be able to push it out without thinking about it, and can generally write 1,000 unique words per hour. Gives me numb fingers though!

For further reading in this area, check out Kieron’s guide to getting traffic to your new site. He mentions some areas I’ve not touched on in this article which I think a lot of people will find very helpful.

Well, it’s time to get back to work folks… and what better way to start your new year than by getting organised with your keyword strategy?

A nice chap called Ian Fernando dropped me a wee line recently to see if I might be interested in taking a look at a tool he had created to help work out which keywords are converting within your PPC campaigns. He’s created this tool with newbies in mind, but I reckon a lot of people would find his excel-based solution useful.

Whilst I was fiddling around on his site I found another great video tutorial in which he explains how he uses Google’s Keyword Research Tool to identify potential keywords and then uses excel to analyse them to work out which search terms are likely to deliver traffic at a reasonable CPC.

They say you learn something new every day… and I must say I liked how he was using the Google data. I’m a bit more of a seat of the pants gal myself (but then you sort of get a “feel” for keywords after a few years!). I think this tutorial is an excellent look at how to get your keyword strategy organised.

Once you’ve gotten your keywords into a nice PPC campaign, you’ll be needing to analyse them to see how your precious PPC spend has fared. Ian has come up trumps again with this great video tutorial on how to work out which keywords are bringing in the bling: -

Even better, Ian has uploaded his great spreadsheet to Google Docs so that you can log on in there, have a good old fiddle about with it and chat with other users (possibly the man himself as well) about how to use it.

I’ve been trying to work out how to describe the process by which I research keywords so it’s actually intelligable. Well, as of last night that problem is solved. Not a shadow of a lie here, I had the most lucid, clear dream in which I was back at school and sat along with my well behaved, keen classmates (that’s how I immediately knew I was dreaming). We were being asked to participate in a hugely fascinating lesson.

The teacher was in front of the board, chalk in hand. The essential days learning?
This Is How We Research Keywords Boys & Girls!

So Are You Paying Attention Class?

Good. Then we shall begin our class on how to effectively research keywords for online marketing.

Now, as we all know, choosing the correct keywords is a drastically important function of online marketing. As affiliates, it’s important to winkle out absolutely every possible keword variation so as to identify some niche keywords that can be got at a reasonable cost per click.

So class, today we are going to perform a hypothetical keword exercise. It’s a little like a word game in which you find as many ways as possible to describe an object or series of related objects (henceforth referred to as “products”)

OK boys and girls… let us pretend that we are promoting beanbags that people seem to like to use to furnish their living areas in a casual manner. How many different ways might we find to describe them? Who’s going to start?

**Now it’s at this stage your beloved author in her dreamlike state is that irritating kid in the class who always had their hand in the air “oohhh, miss miss, I know… pick me!!”**

“Yes, McCubbin?”

“Size miss, what about size? For Example Big beanbags, large beanbags, giant beanbags, sofa beanbags, enormous beanbags”

“Well Done McCubbin. Anyone else? No? OK, McCubbin. You again.”

“Oooh miss, colour. Blue, Yellow, Green, Orange etc oh, and
Texture or fabric – Suede, furry, cotton, cord, corduroy, leather, suedette”

“Goodness McCubbin. This is the most we’ve heard out of you since that alcohol awareness class last week when we asked for the names of alcoholic beverages. Right. What else?”

“Umm…. shapes. Round, square, oval, oh, and all of the above plus generic buying terms like cheap, discount, online, buy”

“Right then. Can you think of anything else?”

“Yes Miss. Always make sure there isn’t more than one way of describing your original product. For example the two word “bean bag” variation. But that’s all I can think of now.”

“OK, now what we do is to go and enter all of those variations into your local friendly keyword research tool. Grab them, and pop them in a spreadsheet. Also, keep your eye out for any search terms that might either give you clues as to current hot sellers or perhaps to a keyword grouping that you haven’t found in your initial efforts.”

Phew!! I feel better for having got that out. That is basically the initial technique I use to find keywords. I sit with my notepad and come up with as many word groupings around an individual product or group of products as I possibly can and then follow the above steps. I tend to use a combination of Overture Search Term Suggestions (although they’re hideously out of date at the moment) and Google’s KeyWord suggestion tool.

Once that process is complete, I start it all over again with any additional variations that may have popped into my head as I worked my way through the results from my keyword research tools.

I don’t know if that will help anyone or not, but that’s how I do it… and finding niche keywords is a skill I pride myself on. I do wonder if I’m working a bit too much though. I mean seriously, dreams about keyword research? Medic!!

Yahoo are currently offering everyone who signs up for a Yahoo Search Marketing Account a voucher for a £50 account credit. You’ll need a credit card number to sign up I believe.

I thought this might be a great opportunity for all you newbies out there to get some free moolah to try out your ideas. OK, you do have to put down £50, but Yahoo will match it. This will give you £100 to play with, or 2,400 clicks paying 5p per click to try out that idea that’s been burning a hole in your pocket.

Yahoo has improved a great deal recently. They now have similar dynamic ad titling to that offered by Google, and the good news is that their landing page rules are nowhere near as stringent. Could be the ideal time to try out a wordpress based landing page or pages for some of this year’s top Christmas toys!

Click here to find out more about Yahoo’s Free voucher code offer

U.S. Affiliates – Shoemoney has posted about a free $25 Yahoo Coupon on His Blog

I went to the “Meet The Super Affiliates” session at the A4U Expo last week. Unsurprisingly, it was one of the most popular sessions I attended.

Lots of good (but understandably general) advice was given out to the attendees. Again, these are just my notes frantically scribbled down on my conference programme to refer back to. If something doesn’t make sense – blame my shorthand!

The session was run by a panel of 4: – Kristopher Jones, Kieron Donoghue, Sri Sharma, and Duncan Jennings. I won’t do a bio on all of them, I’ll say only this: – Each one of them generates millions of pounds of revenue each year. Kieron in particular mentioned a monthly PPC spend I don’t think I’ve achieved in my entire career. That’s what a super affiliate is!

OK, so the session kicked off with a question to all panelists: “How Proprietory To Affiliate Marketing Success Is Technology V’s Strategy?” Here are some of the responses. Alas I can’t tell you who said what. But hey, it’s all wonderful advice!

– Technology helps but strategy is key to success was the overwhelming response from all.

So what strategy tips did we glean for our super affiliate panelists?

– Start small, and build your expertise around a simple strategy.

– Focus on a niche. Become the best within that niche. Create quality content.

– Find an angle to create your income stream.

– Understand the market before you even begin your strategy. Study market stats and buyer behaviour information to help you target your efforts effectively.

– If you lack an essential skillset, try to partner with someone who has those skills on a rev share basis.

– Pick a topic you are passionate about for your marketing efforts.

– Think about a different angle in order to direct relevant, converting traffic to merchants rather than taking on the big boys on generics. The example Kieron gave on this tip was based on promoting satellite TV signups. Rather than targeting people looking for straight satellite TV, look at targeting search terms relating to sporting events only available on pay per view. i.e. A Ricky Hatton fight on Sky.

– Don’t have the technical ability to develop a web site? Use WordPress, Kieron is a huge fan of this excellent, free, and easy to use system. Here’s an example of a really, really basic Photo Developing Offers Blog I’ve recently added to one of my small niche sites. It took about 4 hours to set up, start to finish… including content!

- Want to know what this years top selling products will be? Ask. Next time you’re out shopping, keep your eyes open. Look for any products creating a buzz, ask retailers what they think will sell this year.

The overwhelming response from these guys was that you don’t need to be technical to be a success. Affiliate Marketing is, well, marketing after all. In my personal opinion it’s great if you’re technical or have technical resources at your disposal, but it’s FAR more important to be able to think creatively about new niches and how to target buyers.

Another question posed to the super affiliates was: –

Which Industry Sectors Do You Steer Clear Of?

Kieron: Travel, it’s a huge and competitve sector that involves a lot of work and very little return.
Sri: B2B products, which have a long sale time and where potential customers are likely to make a call rather than completing a purchase online.
Duncan: Web Hosting – Merchants make huge profits in the long term within this area, whilst the affiliate gets a one-off CPA. This makes for a situation where the lead rate is too low and the paid search costs are too high.
Kris: – Non branded products where there is a recognised brand within the same marketplace.

Finally, the panel was asked to give Two Top Tips for success:

Kris:
1 ) Find your strategy, replicate your strategy, and scale it up to build your business.
2 ) Respect the industry. Don’t be tempted to get rich quick, think long term.

Duncan:
1 ) Focus on quality. You’ll benefit far more from this approach.
2 ) Pick an area where merchants pay decent commissions.

Sri:
1 ) If a plan doesn’t make sense in one minute when you are talking about it. Drop it.
2 ) Put in 300%, but enjoy it or it simply won’t work!

Kieron:
1 ) WORDPRESS!
2 ) Don’t lose your shirt on PPC. Learn it first before you jump in with both feet. It’s way too easy to crash and burn!

Very, very simple and straightforward advice… but I really thought it would be very valuable for many of the readers of this blog and also serve as a good example of just how worthwhile it will be to attend A4U Expo 2008. And yes, I am angling for a free pass. Matt Wood, take note!

I was furiously taking notes I thought might be of use to blog readers during some of the sessions at the A4UExpo last week. I attended “The Confluence Of Search And Affiliate Marketing” by Kristopher Jones on the first day of the conference and thought he had some really pertinent points to make. Obviously, the below are not his own words I’ve only noted down some key points which appealed to me and how I interpreted them.

For anyone who is not aware of Kristopher’s work, he is one of the world’s top internet marketing experts, President and CEO of Pepperjam, a full service internet marketing agency which is one of the top 500 privately owned business’ in the US. In other words, he’s a super affiliate and he really, really knows how to generate revenue!

There were lots of really compelling stats right at the start such as 60% of affiliate sales are driven by SEM affiliates, 95% of sales come from 5% of affiliates, and much about how affiliate marketing is a great vehicle for merchants to improve sales. But this is a blog for affiliates, so we don’t need much convincing.

Kristopher’s original strategy way back in the day was to find a way he could generate a small amount of revenue each and every month for every merchant on the scene (around 2,000 at that time). His aim was to find $50 of revenue for each one, and he achieved this in 2000 / 2001. For those of you with poor mental arithmetic skills, he managed to rake in $100,000 US per month by following a very simple strategy. He found a very small, simple way to make a bit of revenue for a single merchant and then scaled it up to apply to every merchant in sight.

I suspect that brand name bidding had a lot to do with this kind of success back then, but its a very, very, pertinent bit of advice. You only need to find a way to make £5 a day from something 20 times to make £100 a day. That’s a very strong part of my own strategy. I always aim to get something up and out there every day. Following this formula I grew my own affiliate business to a full time income within 3 months.

Look to the long term – Perhaps this might seem an obvious bit of advice when it’s written right in front of you. However, many conversations I had at the Expo focussed on a distinct group of affiliates who still don’t look beyond next month and towards the way affiliate marketing will change in the future. It’s important to build quality landing pages and content which will support your affiliate business through periods of change. The old saying quality is king is well worn for a good reason.

Make sure you have a strong PPC account structure – We’re all very much aware of the mystic (or is it mythical?!) Adwords Account Quality Score. Much of the cost you pay and the rankings you achieve is based on an overall quality score applied to your account by the great “G”. According to Kris, by bidding on fewer keywords and making them strongly related to each other you can improve the old quality score, reduce your click costs, and improve your rankings. Also, if you have a keyword within an adgroup which has a poor click through rate, you should consider weeding it out or removing it to another adgroup to give your other keywords the best chance for strong performance.

Some Recommended Resources

Kris mentioned a few url’s of some online marketing resources he makes use of…

Competitive Research Tools
GoogSpy – Adwords competitor research.
Hitwise – Search behaviour and interaction data (although I believe this has a rather hefty subscription fee. Perhaps only for people with thousands of sites!)
SEO Digger – Analyse competitor sites to determine which keywords they rank high enough for to be in the top 20. Looks intriguing…
Compete.com – Competitive metrics for every site on the web.

Keyword Tools
Key Compete – Download competitors keywords and adwords. (Dunno about this one personally, I do well from stuff my competitors haven’t thought of yet, but that’s just me!)
Rapid Keyword – Generate keywords and typos (although there are loads of free typo generation tools knocking about.

A Final, Random Hint
If you’re creating an adgroup to target a common mis-spelling of a product name or keyword, spell it wrong in the adcopy. I’d imagine this only works with search terms where people genuinely think they have entered the right spelling into their search engine, as opposed to missing out or interposing letters.