November 22, 2010 | Posted by AffNoob
So it’s been a little over a year and I’m ashamed to say I haven’t really done squat. At least not affiliate-wise. I lost my job last year and instead of putting 100% into affiliate marketing I basically took a long vacation courtesy of unemployment and massive amounts of credit card debt. Well that’s not entirely true – it’s not really a vacation when you are always broke and still looking for a new day job.
But I figured maybe I needed the time off ya know? I hated my day job so much, I hated the commute, and it was giving me health problems on top of it. Now I feel great, I have lots of energy, and I’m more excited about my future than I’ve ever been! Even without a steady paycheck! So I made a deal with myself to write a piece of content every day, it won’t always be this blog because I have other sites that need attention too, but every day I will write a post or an article and so at least by the end of this next year I will have 365 pieces of content out there attracting traffic and hopefully making me some money.
Maybe in time I might even have readers to talk to! =)
But I’m pretty sure that won’t happen without blog posts so that’s why Im gonna make this work this time. I’d better because if I fail to write for another year I’m going to be too embarrassed to keep going lol.
Categories: About Me | 
Tags: my internet marketing journey | 
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November 19, 2010 | Posted by AffNoob
5 Star Affiliate Marketing Forums is a great place to learn affiliate marketing for free! It has plenty of resources including their own in-house affiliate programs to help you get started.
Check out their newbie forum here.
Categories: Free Stuff Friday | Tags: Affiliate Forums, Free Affiliate Stuff, Free Stuff Friday | No Comments »
November 17, 2010 | Posted by AffNoob
Keywords are nothing more than the words that people type into the various search engines when they are looking for a product, service, or information. Let’s say someone was interested in going fly fishing for the first time, they’d probably head over to a search engine and type in the words “beginning fly fishing”, and that would be their keyword phrase, also known as a long-tail keyword. Keywords are broken up into two categories: short-tail keywords of 1-2 words in length, and long-tail keywords having a phrase length of 3-5 words.
Short-tail Keywords
These keywords have the most traffic and the most competition, and are very broad in their appeal. Take for example the keyword “insurance”, Google shows that this keyword is searched for over 55 million times per month, (globally) – that’s a lot of searches! Let’s drill down a little and try “cheap insurance”; Google shows that to be 1.5 million searches per month. As you can see, one and two word keyword phrases are so general that they appeal to a large segment of the populace. Of course, you are probably thinking “that’s great! I want lots of searches!” and yes you do, but one and two word keywords also have massive amounts of competition, probably more than you can take on in the very beginning of your affiliate career. The top 3 sites listed in Google for the term “insurance” are AllState, StateFarm, and Geico – and I’m betting you don’t have the millions of dollars necessary to compete with them head-to-head. Even the term “cheap insurance” would be too much, Google shows over 1.5 million competing pages for that keyword!
Long-tail Keywords
This is where you begin to find the gold. Let’s stick with insurance and see what we can find. If we narrow our search to “cheap insurance in california” we find that our competition has dropped to only 283,000 competing pages – now that’s more like it! And Google shows that this phrase has a monthly search volume of 12,100 searches. That doesn’t seem like much compared to the 55 million that are searching for “insurance”, but these 12,100 people are targeted buyers. Think about it, they aren’t just browsing around reading about insurance in general, they are looking for something specific, they want cheap insurance in California; so if you were there to offer them advice on which carrier to pick they would be a lot more inclined to use your affiliate link to purchase.
Now that you know what keywords are, my next post will teach you about how to research them and use them to determine if you have a good niche or not. We will also use them to set up our sites content in a way that makes it easy for both the search engines and the readers to find what they are looking for.
p.s. If you want to get a head start on keyword research, head over to Market Samurai and grab a free copy of their fantastic keyword research tool, and check out their videos – it’s good stuff!
Categories: Learn Affiliate Marketing | Tags: Affiliate Basics, Internet Marketing, keywords, Learn Affiliate Marketing, learn affiliate marketing basics | No Comments »
November 15, 2010 | Posted by AffNoob
A niche in its simplest form is a sub-section of a broader market. For example, homeowners are a market, but homeowners who need foundation repairs are a sub-section, or niche, of that larger market. Fashion is a market, but Prada shoes is a niche in that market. Dog owners are a market, but dog potty training is a niche. Basically, a niche is a narrow market of people who have the same interests, desires, and problems.
In affiliate marketing niches are everything, you must have a market to sell to or you can’t make any money – makes sense right? So how do you find the niche that’s right for you? There are three ways:
Do What You Love and The Money Will Follow
This is what every IM guru on the face of the planet teaches, if you’re a programmer, make a site on programming, if you love corn farming, make a site on corn farming, etc. This is great advice if you have some skills and knowledge that people would be interested in. Also, if you are passionate about a subject it follows that you will be more interested in writing the million blog posts you’ll eventually need as well as engaging in lots of dialog with your readers – plus you know the subject already so you should know what your customers are going to be interested in buying.
Find a Niche You Have an Interest In and Become an Expert
Let’s say you don’t have any special skills or knowledge. That’s ok, you’re a salesman right? You don’t need any of that, you can just find a niche and start selling! True, but the best salesmen have a passion for their product and believe that what they are selling can help make a difference in peoples lives, so don’t just grab any ‘ol niche, think of niches that you have an interest in learning about so that when it comes time to sell the product you will feel emotionally attached and you won’t burn out doing all the research.
Find Something Hot and Sell It
You can check out Ebay Pulse, Amazon’s Best Seller Lists, or Google Trends to find hot products. Once you have a product that is selling like hot cakes you promote it. Hopefully, someone sees your promotion and buys the item through your link and you make money.
The key to niche marketing is finding a niche where people are willing to hand over their hard-earned cash for your product. This usually means that these people have a problem that needs to be solved, I.E. Fish owners who need to know how to keep their salt-water fish alive, bodybuilders who need to lose that last percentage of body fat before the big competition, women who need that perfect lip gloss for the big date, etc. Your job is to come up with a solution for the problems of your niche, if the niche doesn’t have any problems to solve then you can’t actually sell them anything.
So here’s what you need to do right now. Sit down with a piece of paper and brainstorm 20 niche ideas, yes 20 of them. Don’t censor yourself, just let the ideas flow – you can cross off the super crazy ones later. =) Try to think of the things you are good at, your hobbies, your interests, things that you might be an expert in or things that you’d like to become an expert in – write them all down until you have a list of at least 20 items – many of them won’t pan out so it’s good to have a large list to draw from.
A great way to find topics that you might be interested in or just to get the ideas flowing is to go to Amazon.com and browse their site. There is a wealth of markets shown, and when you drill-down into each section you are sure to come up with some specific niches that interest you. Try the magazine section, pick out the magazines you enjoy and try to think if there’s some way to further segment it down. For example, maybe you read Golf Digest, golfers are a pretty nice market right? Lots of disposable income, plenty of problems to solve, plenty of products to sell, but you don’t want to try and market to all golfers – that’s too big of a bite to take – you need a specific problem. Maybe you focus on people who need to putt better, or who need swing lessons, or golfers who want discounts on their green fees. It’s a big market and there is bound to be plenty of niches within it. The same goes for any of the other markets. Find what interests you and then segment it down to a smaller section that has a need you can fulfill.
Once you have your 20 niches we’ll move on to how to find out if the niche you chose will be profitable. See you next post!
Categories: Learn Affiliate Marketing | Tags: Affiliate Basics, Affiliate Marketing, affiliate marketing niche, Internet Marketing, Learn Affiliate Marketing, niche marketing | No Comments »
October 16, 2009 | Posted by AffNoob
Free Stuff Friday is proud to present one of the best internet marketing forums around. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you may even learn something! Check out the main internet marketing discussion to post your general questions, or move into the rarified territory of the Adsense/PPC/SEO forum.
Once you’ve got a handle on the basics, you can join the exclusive Warrior War Room for expert tricks and advice, or check out the deals in the Warrior Special Offers section. Either way, you should be well on your way to an exciting time in the world of internet marketing!
Categories: Free Stuff Friday | Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Free Affiliate Stuff, Internet Marketing, Learn Affiliate Marketing, Make Money Online, warrior forum | No Comments »
October 14, 2009 | Posted by AffNoob
I first joined PLRPro back in July of 2008, at that time the new Project Green Button, (PGB), was being hyped to arrive within about 60 days and I wanted to get in on the ground floor and take advantage of what was to be a superb tool for online affiliate marketing. Unfortunately, that dream never turned into a reality. Fast forward to today and PGB is basically an epic failure, not only was it never fully completed in all of this time, but it was amazingly buggy throughout its creation – and what really irritated me was that it took over a year to get to where it’s at today and not the two months it was supposed to take, (and that was a lot more money!).
Also, I’ve not been very impressed with the quality of the PLR articles themselves. They are obviously written by non-English speaking people and they are full of “fluff” and keyword stuffing. That being said, the keyword research they give you is good, the articles also come in multiple languages, and the header graphics are very professional looking and they give you the .psd as well. And let’s not forget that at the price they charge you are getting what you pay for.
If you’d like to check out the quality of their PLR articles for yourself; you can get free PLR articles from PLRPro by signing up for a free account at Free PLR Articles
Their Article Marketing Automation (AMA) started out well, but a month or so into it they changed the way it worked and the categories didn’t map out into the niches very well and now my AMA blogs receive too many unrelated articles to them. I’ve yet to submit an article to AMA, so I can’t speak to the quality/quantity of traffic and/or backlinks it generates.
The forum is a dead zone. Seriously, a dead zone.
With all that being said, I’m still a member of PLRPro today and I bet you are wondering why. Well first off, let me say that I believe in Daniel and Marc, they obviously care about their business and their business is to help you make money online. EVERY time I have sent an email to them they have replied personally. How many online marketing gurus answer their own email? How many of them are willing to apologize to their membership when they make a mistake? These guys are the real deal.
Secondly, and this is embarrassing to say, but I have not actually followed their system. Seriously, I’ve been a member for 14 months and NEVER used one of their PLRPro packs to make a website. How stupid is that? How can I really even review a program that I’ve never taken advantage of? Well since I can’t give a true review without actually trying the PLRPro sytem, my next couple of months will be spent working on PLRPro Case Studies. I’ll create two sites using the old PLRPro method, two sites using the new PLRPro method, two sites using the PLR articles as is, (no rewriting at all – adsense only), and also measure the traffic and backlinks that I receive from utilizing the AMA system.
It’s quite possible that I’m sitting on a gold mine. =)
Also, I should point out that PLRPro is completely revamping the way they do things. The PLR articles will now be separate from the Article Marketing System which will also be separate from the training they give you. Of course those of us that are long-time members will continue to receive all three items and over time I will review the new PLRPro system as it becomes available.
Don’t forget that you can try free PLR articles from PLRPro by signing up for a free account at Free PLR Articles.
You can also use AMA for your own blogs for free by signing up for a free AMA account at http://www.articlemarketingautomation.com/register (not an affiliate link).
Keep checking back here or subscribe to the full RSS feed to find out more about PLRPro as the reviews become available.
Categories: Affiliate Reviews | Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Marketing Review, Affiliate Review, Free Affiliate Stuff, Internet Marketing, Internet Marketing Review, Make Money Online, PLRPro, PLRpro Review | 2 Comments »
September 25, 2009 | Posted by AffNoob
Today I’d like to tell you about the best internet marketing course in the world! It’s called the Thirty Day Challenge. What makes it the best? Well, it’s comprehensive, meaning it takes you from zero to hero and teaches you everything you need to know about the basics of affiliate marketing – and it’s free! Talk about bang for your buck! Along the way you’ll receive trial versions of Market Samurai and WordPress Direct that can be upgraded to their full versions at a special price. The forum is filled with helpful people who try to answer your questions, and the training is simply top notch. Not only will you learn a ton, but you’ll have fun doing it. =)
So give them a try! Sign up for your free account at http://thirtydaychallenge.com/
And leave me a comment if you liked it, (or even if you didn’t).
* Edit * The Thirty Day Challenge has moved! You can now find it at http://challenge.co/
Categories: Free Stuff Friday | Tags: Affiliate Basics, Affiliate Marketing, Free Affiliate Stuff, Internet Marketing, Make Money Online | 1 Comment »
September 22, 2009 | Posted by AffNoob
Let’s say that you are a complete affiliate marketing newbie. Naturally, your first question is just what the heck is this thing called affiliate marketing? And how exactly am I supposed to make money from it? Well, the answer is surprisingly simple. Affiliate marketing = sales. That’s right, you’re a glorified salesperson. Well, glorified if you make the big bucks that is. =)
However, this isn’t face-to-face sales like a used car salesman, (unless you are doing video I suppose), affiliate marketing is all about pre-selling the customer and adding value to the transaction. You see, there are plenty of companies out there with products who need those products sold, and there are plenty of people out there that want to buy those products; affiliate marketers are the middlemen in between who get the two together. When you do this, you collect a certain percentage of the profit as your reward!
To find these interested consumers, you might set up a review site, a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, a niche site that collects emails (opt-in), a Squidoo lens, a wordpress blog, or any number of other ways. Once the prospective customer gets to your website/landing page, you need to let them know why the product is so great that they can’t pass it up, and give them an affiliate link to buy the product. When the customer clicks on your affiliate link, a cookie is placed on their machine. This cookie allows the merchant to track which affiliate is responsible for bringing in that particular customer. The prospective customer is sent to the merchant’s site and after buying the product, the affiliate is credited with the sale. That’s how you get paid!
Of course, it all sounds simple on paper but the reality is a little tougher. The affiliate newbie has plenty of concerns: how to get targeted traffic, finding the right niche, keyword research, tracking conversions, and many more. Keep checking back as I will cover these and other issues in future blog posts.
Categories: Learn Affiliate Marketing | Tags: Affiliate Basics, Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, Learn Affiliate Marketing, Make Money Online | No Comments »
September 11, 2009 | Posted by AffNoob
Ancient History
Back in 2003 I had been looking to purchase real estate as my “path to riches”, but instead wound up buying my own personal home. As happy as I was in having my own house, the payments, (and the rest of my bills), kept me from being able to buy anything more. Knowing that one house wasn’t going to make me rich I knew I needed some other way of getting rich. Enter Google Cash, PPC, and the whole “make money online” field. This seemed like the perfect idea! Spend a little money, make lots of money, and all from the comfort of my own home! What could go wrong? Well, after a couple failed PPC campaigns I lost interest and simply continued plugging away at my J.O.B. Around 2006 I tried again, this time I thought I’d “flip” websites and domain names. Well, everything I bought I kept! Hard to make money when you don’t want to sell lol. Next up was BANS, (Build a Niche Store), I made a couple stores, sold a few things, and lost interest with that when I realized how much content writing was involved. In the meantime, I sold my web skills to a few friends, made some cash, bought memberships, (PLRPro), joined the Thirty Day Challenge, (awesome!), read a ton of ebooks and forums, and basically puttered along like so many wannabe affiliate marketers do.
Where am I today?
I have one regular client that I host their site and make a little money on doing changes for them, 2 BANS stores, 2 adsense only sites, and about 50 domain names waiting to have sites built on them. If it wasn’t for my PLRPro membership I’d probably break even or make a pofit, but only because of all the web work I do on the side. Which unfortunately, is basically just another J.O.B. and not the “hands-free income stream” I was hoping for.
Why am I writing this blog?
It’s simple really. Within these pages I plan on amassing the sum total of all affiliate knowledge so that I become enormously wealthy and terribly difficult to get along with because I’m so damn rich! Mwahahahaha!
Well maybe not. =) I’d be more than happy with the “skills to pay the bills” as the internet marketing god Shoemoney puts it. I’m tired of the day-to-day 7:30am-6:30pm grind, (counting commute time) and I want my freedom back! In order to do this I need your help to stay focused. As I chronicle my journey from Affiliate Noob to Affiliate Rockstar, the comments that people leave, and their expectations of hearing how things are going will give me some much needed motivation to keep writing and keep trying. Also, the Internet Marketing/Affiliate Marketing world is crazy, it’s constantly changing and there’s so much hype and B.S. to wade through. It’s hard for the noob to know where to start, who to trust, or what tools are really worth using. I plan on helping out by giving honest reviews, real case studies, and links to resources that I feel are worth knowing about. Eventually this blog will help me organize my thoughts to the point where I can make a free ebook that breaks down everything the Affiliate Noob needs to know to get started and does so in an easy and friendly manner.
In other words, I’m going to do my best to provide value to anyone reading this blog, and in turn your questions will motivate me to keep going, and that motivation will be crucial to my success. We both help each other – it’s a win-win situation. =)
Categories: About Me | Tags: About Me, Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, Make Money Online | 2 Comments »