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!



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!

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!

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.