Archive for June, 2010
Your article marketing plan should center around a niche you find interesting AND that has multiple products that sell like hotcakes.
That doesn’t mean, “Do what you love and the money will follow.” Nor does it mean, “Just sell the hottest new item with the biggest commission.” Find a field you’re interested in that also sells well.
Why “Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow” Doesn’t Always Apply to Affiliate Niche Marketing
“Just do what you love,” can be great advice–but not always in niche marketing. For example: you don’t want to start out trying to sell people on a great guide that teaches them how to be a great web writer. Trust me on this one!
Likewise, beginning affiliate marketing in the comic book, pewter miniature, or 80s post-punk vinyl markets…probably not great places to start. They might be decent to you in the very long run but if you’re just starting out, it’ll keep your morale up to see more money more quickly than niches like this can provide.
Most people looking to make money online don’t want to be web writers–they want to be rich. If you’re going to pick writing as a market, do it as an adjunct to something else (and hell, even then, you should probably angle your content to marketers more than to wannabe writers. I’m just sayin…).
But if your passions include payday loans, weight loss, making money online, colon cleansing, or getting back with your ex: boy are you in luck! That’s because when you start out at this gig, you need to go with markets that are proven performers.
If you want to see if you can monetize your favorite hobby or find underserved, obscure niches, that’s great too. But it’s best to wait on that and go with proven performers when you first start out. They’ll make you more money, more quickly, and keep you from loosing morale.
Speaking of discouraging–you’re going to get discouraged sometimes. You’re going to get frustrated and feed-up, you’re going to feell like you want to quit.
Don’t quit.
Accept the frustration and move along. Persistent effort, applied intelligently (aka with an article marketing plan and not just random effort), will see you through.
How to Pick Your Article Marketing Niche
Fortunately, there are several everygreen markets and niches and hopefully you’ll find one of them–or one of their subniches–interesting enough to keep on with. (You don’t have to fall in love with it.) These markets are all profitable. You just have to learn how to work them.
(You can always start a music blog or an automotive blog or whatever and hope to make money with it. but if you really want a quick and more-likely-profitable education in niche marketing via articles, you should pick from one of the four evergreen niches.)
The basic four evergreen niches are dating & relationships, make money, get out of debt / credit repair, and health. This last one includes some beautiful specialties such as weight loss, vitamins & supplements, and colon cleansing. Seriously, colon cleansing products sell as steadily as bottled water or cigarettes.
How to Pick Your Niche Product
Go to ClickBank.com and click on the “Marketplace” link at the top of the screen. Once you’re in the marketplace, you’ll see links for various categories (Cooking, E-business, Health & Fitness, etc.) on the left-hand side. Clicking on one will show you all the sub-niches contained inside that category. It will also show a list of products in the center of the page.
It’s usually best to click on one of the niches/sub-niches beneath the category. However, if you want to find the best-selling products in the category overall, you don’t have to.
Go to the results and click on the “Sort Results By” dropdown menu and select “Gravity”. Gravity is a measure of how popular the product is among affiliates, so you’ll want to select the product at the top of the list as a product to sell.
Now, select the product below that one. Then, select the product below that one.
That’s it. You’re done. You’ve found your three products. They’re the three best-selling so you don’t have to worry that you might’ve picked a loser. All you need to concentrate on now is your marketing ability.
Nearly all good online niche marketing starts with keyword research as a foundation. Your article marketing plan should be no different. In fact, keyword research is more central to article marketing than it is to most methods. Tomorrow, I’ll discuss how to do research without driving yourself crazy.
Article marketing is easy enough–right? All you need to is a simple article marketing plan where you pick a few keywords, write a few articles, make a few bookmarks and you’re on your way to two hundred bucks a day while you sit home naked with the wife all day and take the kids to the zoo every weekend, right?
I don’t have to tell you the kind of overblown crap these guys try and pass off as the Internet marketing dream.
And I don’t want to spit on article marketing, either. I know it works. But bum marketing is a little more involved–at least on the start-up– than most gurus would have you believe.
1 Important Element the “Gurus” Always Leave Out
Article marketing really is easy and profitable once you’ve got the groundwork done and have a system in place. But you won’t make anything but chump change unless you put in some consistent work on the front end.. .
There’s a reason you never read that kind of thing in the guberus’ sales letters: it’d run off 90% of their prospects. If you’re still here reading this, you’ve probably got the right attitude.
What’s Missing from Most Article Marketing Plans?
There are several steps to a successful article marketing strategy that don’t really get talked about a whole lot. While most how-to guides at least cover a bit of niche and keyword research, almost nobody ever tells you how to write an SEO-friendly article that people want to read. There are formulas and tricks you can use to make your articles great–even if you’re not a great writer.
While some Internet marketing gurus will make a mention of pre-selling, very few go into detail on how you do it. And almost nobody talks about how and why your directory submission articles should be different from the content on your site.
I wish I’d been able to find more info on those points when I first started out. That’s why I’m writing about them here in this series. Read the series and you’ll also pick up some pointers on how to chose a market, research keywords, and leverage Web 2.0 pages. (For all that the gurus talk about “Web 2.0 properties”, they never really tell you how to use them.)
This information, combined with effort and a little bit of elbow grease, can rocket you into some pretty good money–if you put in the flollow-throuhg.
Wait, Mr. Anti-Guru: Who The #*!& are You Again?
Nobody with a big name. Just someone who’s ghostwritten for a lot of different IM clients who (most of them doing some form of article marketing) who finally started to bum market a little on the side. I plan to keep it up, too. Why? Because article marketing delivers results.
But to see those results, I had to a) figure out how to play this gig the right way b) put in a little effort (okay: a lot, to start) c) have a good article marketing plan to follow. Come back here tomorrow and I’ll show you the first step of that plan.
Article Marketing Plan in 10 Parts
How to Pick Your Niche Market and Niche Product(s)
How to Do Keyword Research
How to Write All of Your Content, Part One–How to Write a Damn Good Article
How to Wirte All of Your Content, Part Two–How to Pre-Sell
How to Make a WordPress Affilaite Marketing Website in Under Two Hours
Writing for Article Directories–Some Differences
Article Directories You Should Submit To
Web 2.0 Sites You Should Use
How to Use Social Bookmarking Sites (and Which Ones to Use)
Testing and Analytics