<>No storing of products
<> Do not need your own website?
<> Do not Deal with customers and their complaints.
<> You need little or no knowledge of product being sold
<> Low startup cost
<> Open 24/7
<> Sell globally
<> Do not deal with shipping/delivery
The flip side of the equation is that you have to market and sale, which can be difficult, but not impossible. Most people new to affiliate marketing think that all they have to do is post a few ads in the classifieds, or a bunch of links. If you do just those things chances are you won’t get a sale. There are thousands of products to market but you must has some knowledge of how to market, and perform analysis, in order to compete in the marketplace. I will focus on the analytical strategies that I have out lined below so you can get an idea the different types of analysis that could contribute to your success.
-Domain Name
-Backlinks-Domain Name
-Marketing and Advertising
-Starting a Campaign on Google AdWords
-Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- The #1 Position for a Keyword
- Competing on Keywords
-Google Page Rank- #1 Position
DOMAIN NAME
I mentioned that you don’t need to own your own website, this is true, however, you gain more credibility with our own website and you have the flexibility of making changes. You can buy what is referred to as a domain name. A domain name is unique, and Internet users access your website using your domain name. For example the website could end in .com, .biz, .org etc. I could choose a domain name like http://www.mycookies.biz, it doesn’t matter as long as the domain name is available. You design your website based on the affiliate products you are representing. Also it easier to build good quality backlinks and moves up in the Google ranking and I will discuss why that is vital to your success.
BACKLINKS
Backlinks are links from other web sites to your site. They're sometimes known as incoming links. The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website. Backlinks are important for SEO because some search engines, especially Google, will give more credit to websites that have a good number of quality backlinks, and consider those websites more relevant than others.
MARKETING AND ADVERTISING
The big question everyone asks is, how do I start marketing the products? There are many avenues to pursue. You may consider getting some great leads by writing articles, swapping advertising, swapping articles, using message boards, chat rooms, banner ads, or classifieds. Think about online communities like a virtual café, or other gathering places for people to get together with similar interests. Lastly there is PPC(pay per click). Let’s explore PPC (pay per click); Google’s PPC program is called “AdWords”. It’s a good program, the instructions are very detailed and it’s easy to get started once you signup. Before you start a campaign ad you should do some analysis. Try to pick a product preferably one that people cannot readily obtain at the mall or shopping center and it has low competition and high probability. Try to get inside the head of the customer and think about how the customer would use the product or search for the product.
PPC(pay per click) is based on keywords, therefore, keyword analysis is extremely important. I would suggest starting a list of 5-10 keywords. To expand the list go to the Google keyword tool at: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. Type a keyword from your list. After the list is displayed change the MATCH TYPE to EXACT for more accurate data on the amount of searches that people are typing into Google. Continue looking up each keyword from your list and expanding them.
STARTING A COMPAIGN ON GOOGLE AdWords
Google provides in-depth information and videos on setting up and running a campaign and you should have no trouble getting started, refer to: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=61149
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)
SEO is the way that Google ranks websites. It means ensuring that your Web pages are strategically positioned to improve the chances they will be readily found by search engines. This can be used to determine if you can obtain a #1 ranking for a key word being used. Successful SEO websites use articles and keywords that are based on those words that Internet users type into search engines as they browse for a particular product or service.
THE #1 POSITON FOR A KEYWORD
Once you have a campaign running you should analyze the number of impressions that each keyword get daily for a period of say ‘3’ days or a week. Impressions means; how many times a banner advertisement was displayed or viewed. If you see ‘1000’ impressions over a period of ‘3’ days for the keyword "how to get a tattoo" then you know that keyword gets ‘333’ searches per day. In essence, you want to know which competitor holds the #1 position for a chosen keyword. This SEO analysis can be done using the Fox Fire browser. If needed this browser maybe downloaded at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/. Also you need to install a plug-in for Fire Fox called SEARCH STATUS found at: http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/. The plug-in will look similar to @ after it completes loading. It will be located on the upper left of the screen or the bottom right.
1. Open up the Fox Fire browser, type the keyword "how to get a tattoo" in the search box and click on the first result displayed.
2. Do a CNTL ‘F’ and a FIND box will display usually at the bottom left of the screen. Type the keyword "how to get a tattoo" in that box, hit NEXT to determine how many times the keyword is displayed on the competitors page. This is vital information for your on page factors, which I will also discuss. The next step is to figure out how many links are coming into the competitors web page.
3. Do a right click on the SEARCH STATUS icon, which is the symbol that looks similar to @.
4. Select Backward Links, then Page External Only, followed by Yahoo Site Explorer. You will see displayed on the left hand side, Pages (1) Inlinks (9). This means that the URL http://www.ehow.com/how-to_4845390_get-tattoos.html has ‘9’ inbound links. This lets you know how many backlinks are needed to possibly grab the #1 spot from the competitor.
COMPETING ON KEYWORDS
You want to how high or low your competition is going to be for a particular keyword. Go to Google and type in a keyword from your list. Once the list is displayed take a look at the SPONSORED LINKS in the top left hand column and also the SPONSORED LINKS on the right hand side. Particularly check the MORE SPONSORED LINKS at the bottom right hand corner. If more than ‘3’ pages are listed, it could mean that a lot of people are making sales and it might be tougher to get a good ranking. A good example would be the keyword “weight loss”. If you type “weight loss” in the search box on Google you will see several SPONSORED ADS at the left top of the page, and several on the right hand side of the page. If you click on MORE SPONSORED LINKS, there are pages of ads being displayed; therefore, you know that the competition is going to be tuff. Sponsored Links ties back to the Google AdWords(PPC) program. Advertisers submit their ads to Google using the AdWords(PPC) program. They write a headline and a short piece of text and those ads appear underneath SPONSORED LINKS.
GOOGLE PAGE RANK- #1 POSITION
Google has what is known as PageRank. PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. This ranking is determined by many factors, for example, they look at keywords and key phrases in your title. They also factor in the content of the page and the pages linking to it. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be and the higher ranking it will receive. In essence Google takes all of the many factors into account when PageRank is calculated.
It’s important to know how the competition ranks for a particular keyword, there is a tool called nichewatch, at http://www.nichewatch.com/. This let you know how easy or hard it will be to get ranked in the top 10 position for a keyword. Enter a keyword into the search box and click check competition. There are ‘3’ main factors to consider:
-BLD: Number of backlinks in yahoo
-Title: The title of the page
-Anchor: Anchor text is the hyperlinked words on a web page - the words you click on when you click a link. Anchor shows a ranking in Google based on how many links they have built to their website. It tells search engines what the page is about. Used wisely, it boosts your rankings in search engines, especially in Google.
PageRank isn't just an indication of how many Web pages point to your page, it's an indication of how important those sites that point to your page are too. For example, if you wanted to know which website was in the #1 spot for the keyword "roses" go to http://www.nichewatch.com/ and enter keyword "roses" and click Check Competition , you will see a display of the top ‘20’ websites.
Based on the analysis at the time of this publication, heirloomroses.com held the #1 ranking for the keyword "roses". Google’s search engine determined that heirloomroses.com has good quality BLD (backlinks), ANCHOR, as well as TITLE and TEXT. The website charlieroses.com was in the 16th position, although, they had more BLD (backlinks) than heirloomroses.com, but no points were scored for ANCHOR, TITLE, or TEXT.
Note: Text often times has no ranking just a dash (-).
When marketing your product you are going to have to compete with other sellers on ‘2’ factors, on page and off page. The search engines rank you on a page basis, not a website; every singe page on web is a gamble to get ranked on the search engine. For each key phrase that someone types into Google there are different factors and competition.
On Page Factors
-Size of website-Internal link structure
-Keywords on page.
Off page factors
-Links pointing back to the website, which count as votes. The more votes you have for a keyword compared to your competitors, the higher you will rank. Off-Page factors are the most heavily weighted?Based on the information provided you can now understand my “YES and “NO” answer, because being an affiliate marketer does require dedication and hard work. There are many different ways to perform analysis so don’t get hung up on one or two methods. Affiliate marketing is a learning curve and you need to acquire the tools to do the proper analysis. There are lots of free resources that you can use for analysis and some that I found beneficial are:
http://www.linkpopularity.com/
To see who links to a URL
http://www.gorank.com/seotools/ontology
Type in a word and find other words treated as similar words by Google.
Provides a list of semantically related words to the words you enter.
See what people search for before and after your keyword.
http://www.seo-browser.com/
See a website as the search engines see it.
Simulate how a search engine spider moves through your site. You will see spidered links, meta keywords, meta description.
Allows you to see if your web content is being utilized anywhere else on the internet. Great tool to see if your copy written material has been stolen.
Provides a rating on how your popular your site is compared to the rest of the web
Analyzes text on your pages to determine if your text is customer focused.
http://www.google.com/trends
Lets you see and compare search trends for seasonal (or any, really) search phrase.
The numbers represents the number of daily searches for a particular keyword.
I have purchased several types of software, some were good and others were not. I will recommend the one’s that I found useful.
http://ihid.us/?i=pbx
This software is great for a beginner it gives step by step video instructions on
Implementing a Google AdSense (PPC) campaign and many more marketing tips that will help.
http://lynk2.me/qmy
This software will help you to find hundreds of relative backlinks for any website niche quickly & easily?
http://ihid.us/?i=rbz
This software is SEO driven and it shows you how to get high-quality incoming links and drive more profitable and free traffic to your Site. You can easily submit to many directories with this software.
http://ihid.us/?i=rc6
Use this software to obtain a domain name cheap
