How to make money on the internetz.... a tutorial, not a question :P

Yes, i drank too much coffee and i can't sleep and instead of working on my lowbie-crappy affiliate site i'll just post some ramblings here.

i hope it helps newbies who are new and don't know where to go.

1. picking your niche.

think of something you love writing about. you love dogs? start with dog training! you have experience in relationships? gogo getexback.... playing too much world of warcraft lately? promote some of the gold / leveling guides out there.

2. choosing the right keywords.

search for 'adwords' on gOOGLE (yes!) and click the first site. put in your keyword there, select 'broad'. a few keywords will appear. put keywords with less than 10.000 searches / month (still broad) in the search box, uncheck 'choose synonyms' then search again, this time as phrase.

pick some keywords!

3. research competition.

go to google.com and search for each keyword phrase. do the search again using quotes ex "how to train your dog faster"!

then do intitle:"keyword"

if the number of results without quotes is under 100k and the number in quotes is under 10-20k and the number of intitle is under 1k... gogo, you have a winner ! very easily to rank for.

use yahoo site explorer (google that, too) to check the backlinks of the sites on the page 1 of google. use a page rank checker (google for that, too) to see the page rank.

if the links are under 1000 and the page rank is 1-2.. then it's easy to rank. also if some EZA / articlesbase / hubpages are on 1st page - it's even easier.

gooooooooood!

you have a few long-tail keyword phrases, the competition is low, you love the niche so you can start writing some content.

starting again with 1

1. go to eza and find some articles on your niche. check the nr 1 and nr 2 and nr3. rewrite them in your own words - make them better and more informative

copy/paste each paragraph into google to see if you did your job well. make a new blog at blogger.com and use copyscape on your content, after that, delete the blog (do a 'copyscape' on google and while we're here, do a 'keyword density checker' on google, too).

2. write 20 articles. remember. point out the problem and promise you'll give the user a solution if he continues reading.

'the unfortunate problem with dogs barking is that your neighbour is very angry but fear not, there are some known tricks to work! by reading and putting into practice these informative >>>dog barking tips<<<< (anchor this) you'll be more peaceful with yourself.

ye, bad text but still, you get the point

3. put that article on EZA, after it approves it (or if you're lazy go with articlesbase) put the same article on 10 more article directories. make sure they are dofollow (go to google and search for a 'nofollow plugin').

PUT ANCHOR TEXT!!! don't put the same anchor text, 'cause it will look spammy. use different combinations, synonyms etc.

go to web 2.0 sites such as hubpages, squidoo, weebly etc. create users, put articles. link all these to your EZA or AB. link these 2.0 websites together, too!

do a google on 'rss feeds' and learn it's basics. apply what you learned from rss feeds tutorials on you web 2.0 properties and blogs (blogger, wordpress etc).

in the end your EZA or AB article should have 10 article directories linking to it, 8-10 web 2.0 properties and blogs.

go to onlywire.com and make an user for everything. stumble / digg etc everything. (yes, it looks spammy but heck, you're a newbie so you need to make that first sale!)

the traffic comes but where should it land? on your landing page, of course.

we have two options here

1. squeeze page + optin material (quick .pdf you'll create in 2 hours giving essential tips). after giving away the .pdf wait 1 day then slap him with an affiliate offer. you'll need an aweber which is expensive for newbies but if you google around you'll find some free of 30-day trial auto responders.

2. landing page, you review 3 products. Videos will increase your conversion rate! become personal with your reader!

your goal is to get an article on 1st page of google for some low competion / low search volume keywords. you'll get some nice traffic from the web 2.0 sites, stumble, digg, even from eza and AB. that probably won't convert but pfft, the dofollow links can't be bad, right?

try do to things that don't look spammy. linking 10 article directories to that EZA every single day for 1 week looks spammy. linking a few today, a few tomorrow, even more the day after tomorrow seems organic and google will send you on 1st page faster.

what matters most, in my opinion, in order to make good sales:

1. anchor text (for seo purposes)
2. link building strategy (article directories, free blogs, web 2.0 properties, rss, pingomatic, social bookmarking etc) - always randomize things and mix things up!
3. your signature on EZA or AB! that's like 50%
4. your landing page.

of course, you can google for each of the above to get some good tutorials but remember, those tutorials are made by affiliates who want to shove down your throat some make $ online products.

yes, going to cut down on caffeine now.

 

very detailed - very helpful

 

actually i missed a good tips like blog commenting, forum posting, web directories, yahoo answers, having a blog /blog on your landing page domain, how to PROPER do keyword research...

you'll learn everything reading on forums. do a search on 'adwords' or 'squidoo' or 'hubpages' or 'eza' on this forum and read... keep reading for a few days!

then have a rest, think about it and then continue reading.

the make money online ebooks have all the information available in a nice format (and no, i'm not gonna link something with my aff link) but some of these ebooks are filled with crap. there are a few good ones, tho (don't know 'cause i haven't read any).

back to the point: after you've been reading for a few days / weeks... time to put everything into practice.

the first time it would probably suck big time. 1 week, no sales... 2 weeks no sales.... but eventually, as long as you send targetted traffic to your landing page... you will get that sale!

to get better conversions tweak everything... anchor text, author bio box, landing page reviews etc.

1. learn
2. act
3. if you fail keep going!

now go make the money.

hmpfft, wait! that redbull did it to me again. time for some calculations!

you want 100 sales / month. your affiliate commission is 25$ so that's 2.500$ / month. (compared to romanian standards, 250$ / month that's very nice...)

100 sales / month can be translated into roughly 3 sales / day.

3 sales means you must send 300 visitors to your vendor (with a 1 in 100 conversion rate) every single day.

on your landing page the CTR (click-thru rate) will be something like 25% (speculative) so this means you need 1.200 uv / day going to your landing page.

if you try to get EZA 1st on google for a few keywords and have a CTR (again) of 25% then you need 4.800 uv / day.

now go find a bunch of long tail keywords that... when combined will have a search volume of 144.000 searches / month.

probably 30 keywords ... so that's 4.800 searches / month / keyword

for each keyword on EZA you need a few tens of articles to send it on 1st page and do constant link building to keep it there. get that link juice so google thinks 'omg, everybody links to this eza article. it must be good!'

you can also try to dominate 1st page on google for that long tail keyword linking heavily to a squidoo lens or hubpages or articlesbase. you want to have 2-3 positions on first page on google.

not 100% of the traffic will click on your site. maybe 30-40-50% etc..more positions on 1st page = the better.

so let's recap!

144.000 searches / month (on 30 keywords)

4.800 searches / month per long-tail keyword phrase

if 100% of this traffic visits your ranked EZA or articlesbase article and 25% clicks on the author bio box (THAT"S WHY YOU NEED TO MAKE IT VERY ENTICING FOR THE VIEWER TO CLICK!!!) then 36.000 UV will land on your landing page! weee.

if 25% of the guys who landed on the landing page click the hoplinks (PUT A GOOD CALL TO ACTION! HAVE A GOOD REVIEW!) then 9000 clicks will reach the vendor's site.

Congratulations, you just sent 9000 targetted unique visitors through your affiliate link.

with a 1:100 conversion rate you'll make 90 sales.

this whole process will probably take a few weeks, a month, two of constant link building, seo... so hard work is required to make money on the internet.

then pick another niche... some of the ranked EZA will continue to stay on 1st page if the competition is sleeping (which rarely happens). as long as you add a few good backlinks now and then... everything should be ok.

yes, now go working! i want to see 1 sale by the end of the week.

remember, this calculation was made with 100% traffic going to your ranked EZA article.. but you won't get 100%... maybe 70% if you have multiple spots on page 1. cut 70% from the profits or do more work to totally dominate page one on GUUUGEELZ!!

 

absuolutely helpful!!!

a few questions:

1. How do i tell that my articles are generating profit?

2. So you're basically saying to find 30 keywords and make 10 separate articles for each keyword?

3. Are these right? Articles ==> EZA Article ==> Landing Page ==> Product Page
Articles ==> Landing Page ==> Product Page
Articles ==> Product Page

4. What does RSS do to help the process?

5. What's a squeeze page? Is it the same as a landing page?

I know it's a lot, and you don't have to answer all of it. Just wanted to put out there.

Anyway, thanks for the useful tips on here. Hoping to hear more out of you.

TC XD

 

Most affiliate programs allow you to track your sales through tracking id.Clickbank also provide such an option when you create a hoplink.

Use different tracking id's for different articles so that you can find which article is generating profit.

Squeeze page is a landing page where you ask the visitor to put their name and email address to get something for free.

 

1. How do i tell that my articles are generating profit?

profit comes over time. you can't expect to make an article today and make many sales with it tomorrow. your 'endgame' must be that article on 1st page of google. that's why you need a longtail keyword (3+ words) and low competition (yes, check the pr of competition, their backlinks, domain age etc). also you must keep it there on the first page with constant link building.

THE LINK BUILDING MUST BE RANDOM! no 6 linkwheel or 10 articles pointing out at that article. random random random random random!

2. So you're basically saying to find 30 keywords and make 10 separate articles for each keyword?

you must target a few buying keywords and make a few articles. the articles should simply point out the problem and give some basic tips to get rid of the problem. at the end of the article entice the reader to click the author bio box to find a solution to his problem.

"the problem with dandruff nowadays is that people don't what exactly to do to get rid of it completely. Fortunately for you i created a FREE report which i'm giving away that will solve your dandruff problem once and for all".... something like that!

3. Are these right? Articles ==> EZA Article ==> Landing Page ==> Product Page
Articles ==> Landing Page ==> Product Page
Articles ==> Product Page

select either EZA or articlesbase to put your main article there. build links to that article. that eza or ab article should point at your money page, be it a squeeze page or a landing page.

everything you can think of link building => landing page and EZA/AB article
EZA/AB Article => landing page
landing page => vendor page

since you probably have a new domain without much content you need EZA's juice to get fast on first page.

however, if you want a long-term attack plan... make a blog on your landing page and try to rank those articles first! in the end, after a few weeks / months (depends on the competition) your landing page's blog will rank first on google... not eza!

4. What does RSS do to help the process?

rss helps with traffic, link juice and link building!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU here's a nice youtube video about rss explaining it in plain english.

5. What's a squeeze page? Is it the same as a landing page?

SQUEEZE PAGE IS THE SHIZ!

'the money is in the list'. on some elitist forums people who don't use squeeze page are considered newbies!

with squeeze page you ultimately CONTROL your traffic.

you have a landing page... nice!

people come to your landing page, they read the reviews, say 'omg, nice' and probably buy one of the products. some probably won't have money right away.... or are undecided..... if they buy the product in the future and they find other article ranked on google they'll buy through his affiliate link!

now let's go to the squeeze page.

people comes and sees 'OMFG A FREEBIE! A FREE GUIDE ON HOW TO GET RID OF MY PROBLEM'. the CTR (click-thru rate) is higher here.

for giving away a freebie .pdf (you can write them in 1-2 hours, 5-10 pages long) you'll get his email!

the 2nd day you'll be like "hey, remember the problem you said you have? i might have found a solution after searching the internet! you can't miss this as it will help you greatly".

he'll trust you after receiving a freebie.

then after a few more days another mail "hey, did you checked that product? what do you think about it?' etc....

then after a few more days slap him with something similar like a CPA.... or giving away another quick freebie.... then wait a few more days and shove down his throat another product

ex: dandruff niche (go petehols!)

1st time on squeeze: you're giving away 10 essential tips to get rid of dandruff
1st mail: you're telling about a product that will cure his dandruff
2nd mail: hey, did you love this product? tell him you bought it and you feel great now that dandruff is gone (it's always better to get personal with these people)
3rd mail: tell him about a great offer (you can win up to 200$ which can help you get anti-dandruff shit - just go to that site). yes, spank his arse with a quickie CPA

some will buy, some won't. just don't spam daily with affiliate links.

be like his friend, recommending something good that will help him with his problem.

that was all! : (

 

Can you please explain in more details? What's the problem if I have 10 articles pointing at other article?

Cheers!

 

normally, to be effective 100% you must write 1 unique article / backlink but google doesn't penalize you that much if you use duplicate content.

so this isn;t such a big problem.

however, let's say you write an article and put it on articlesbase
you use the same article on other 10 article directories such as buzzle, goarticles etc.

then you write another article.... on AB
then you use the same article on the other article directories

then you write another article.... on AB
then you use the same article on the other article directories

notice the trend? all will point to your site! what will google think of this? it's like submitting your website to over 2000 web directories in 1 day!

make it look natural.

first AB article gets 7 articles.

the second gets 10

the third gets 6

change the title, too, as petehols suggested in his thread!
also .... never use THE SAME ANCHOR TEXT!

google thinks "omg, a guy at buzzle found out about a great article on AB and it's linking it in his article as reference". now if all writers link your article with the EXACT anchor text.. how will that look in the eyes of google?

bottomline, make it look natural! do not let a blueprint behind your action because sooner or later, you'll be penalized for it!

 

@ evilpuppy

Can I further clarify on what you are saying:

say your main article in AB was - "Learn How To Eat Healthily."
And you next link it to GO articles ( i generally use the anchor text for the exact title).And do the same for the next directory and so on.
So are you suggesting to keep changing the main article anchor text to different versions? or are you talking about using different anchor text link versions for the landing page domain name?

hope my questions make sense...

 

Just don't use the SAME anchor text for 100000 times. I guess a few times it's ok, but if you're using the same anchor text over and over, google will eventually penalize your landing page or AB/EZA article.

think of 10-20 combinations of the anchor text and use those.

even a word if you change in the anchor text, it will do wonders in the long run.

teaching you how to eat healthily
eating healthily
teaching you how to consume healthy food
etc

and another quickie:

if you want to link a goarticles to both EZA and landing page and the goarticles is identical to the EZA one (for seo purposes) do this trick:

at the bottom of the article put two links:

first one, an enticing link near the end of the article which makes him click your landing page.

second link should be right under the author bio box (to the absolute bottom of the article), something like this:

"Original article can be found here: <keyword/anchor text>"

don't anchor text "original article can be found .... etc", put the anchor text right after the ":"

your 'original article thingie' should be linking to your EZA/AB (this is 100% for seo purposes, if a visitor will click this link he'll see the same article and will probably click on some adsense on the site or just leave. yes, it sucks when people see the same content on two different sites)

hope that made sense.

 

evilpuppy - that made sense.
I guess you never know if you don' ask! Thanks for the info shared.
I wish I knew this earlier - not to worry - I'll rectify this.
I've been doing this since Sept 6th - and every day I am learning something - it's mind boggling. But i love it.
Thanks again.

 

@evilpuppy: great answers man! they were exactly what I was asking about.

just for clarification: what do you mean by 'buying keywords'? also, would google penalize you if it notices that the other articles pointing to your main article have the same username/nickname/authorname? do you suggest to use different names when signing up for the other directories?

Again, I'm very grateful that you took the time to answer my queries. Appreciate it a lot.

You rock!!!

 

"search for 'adwords' on gOOGLE (yes!) and click the first site. put in your keyword there, select 'broad'. a few keywords will appear. put keywords with less than 10.000 searches / month (still broad) in the search box, uncheck 'choose synonyms' then search again, this time as phrase. "


why look for those less than 10,000?

 

"earth4energy product review" can be considered a buying keyword
"how to get rid of love handles fast" = desperate fat chubby gurl, needs to get rid of that extra weight. this too can be considered a buying keyword.
'dell laptop' is a general term but 'dell inspiron 1525 review/buy' can be considered a buying keyword.

I don't know to say about changing usernames/nicknames/author names. Theoretically, 350 articles all around the web from "john doe" pointing to another article written by 'john doe' looks suspicious.

google's policy is something like this: 'if a site gets backlinks it means people recommend it because it's good'. These backlinks count as a vote from those sites to yours, giving you some juice to get a higher SERP rating.

on the main article, which you wanna rank on google, have the same author as on your landing page but on the other articles/web 2.0 sites linking to your ranked article you can try with different usernames

ex:

"If you're interested in more quality info about losing those pesky love handles then check out this article today: love handle exercises." - Written by X Y, expert nutritionist.

Yes, on the internet everybody is an expert.

ah, and about 10.000 searches or less.

you can't expert to find a keyword with many searches (over 100.000) and not have killing competition chewing your sites.

if you're new and want to rank something quickly, go with a keyword that has fewer searches / month thus fewer competition.

for a starting affiliate marketing, something like 500 - 2000 (phrase) searches / month will do the trick. the competition will probably be lower and you'll rank your site quickly on the first page. then start working on other long-tail keywords or keywords with higher search volume.!

 

Ok, I get the keywords thing and how google ranks articles. But I'm still a bit stuck on the 'choose keywords with lesser searches' thing. If I choose 'lesser searches' keywords, won't there only be very few people targeted? If few search for the keyword, then the chances of having one of them actually buy the product gets smaller right? I'm still a bit confused.

But again, thanks for the reply man. I appreciate you helping me .

 

Low search volume keywords have less competition. Getting some traffic is better then none, however if you target lots of low haanging fruit it all adds up. There is no point targeting the bigger keywords only to discover you can't get them ranked.

Great thread btw evilpuppy! You really ain't that evil mate

One question, how do you manage the list?

 

I know, i'm a goodpuppie!!! and btw, what list to manage?

anyway, time to talk about long tail keywords!

i'm just giving examples here, from the top of my head! i didn't bother (yes, sucks to be me) to adwords (used as verb) these keywords!

keyword1: 'love handles' has 100.000 broad searches / month and the competition is huge!

keyword2: "remove love handles' has 30.000 broad searches / month and the competition is still big!

keyword3: 'how to remove love handles" has 10.000 broad searches / month and the competition is medium!

keyword4: "how to remove love handles fast" has 1.000 broad searches / month and the competition is low!

better have 5-6 keywords similar to keyword4 and rank easily on each. if you add the traffic from each keyword you'll even surpass keyword3, who knows?

when you get a content site with lots of pages, great content, old of age, time to attack those keywords with higher searches / month!

to do a proper keyword research, follow these steps!

1. find broad keywords
2. save a few longtail keywords in a .txt
3. put the longtail keywords you searched BACK IN THE SEARCH BOX!
4. get even more long tail keywords
5. see what keyword looks like a buying keyword

'what are love handles' = not good
'getting rid of love handles for good' = good!

then check each keyword on google.com and check the competition (page rank, incoming links to that website, domain age).

basically, if you see an eza or hubpages or squidoo on first page means it's relatively easy to rank for that! (let's hope the creator of that eza didn't spend the last 6 months building links to that article!)

that's all (for now!)

 

Earlier in this thread you recommended that you should build a mailing list.

 

Yes, sorry. i thought you asked about MY list.

step1: get visitors to your squeeze/optin page!
step2: offer them something for free (7 day course sent via mail, free .pdf report etc) to gain credibility and trust
step3: after some time slap them with an affiliate offer/cpa/something.

Let me upload a picture!



Hope it makes sense!

 

I understand the process. Sorry I'm not being clear. I mean what software is good for managing the list, setting up the autoresponder series, sending broadcasts and what not.