Thursday, January 24, 2008

Affiliate Marketer Beginner- 3 Important Beginner Tips by DeBora Collins

If you have just begun your quest as an Affiliate, you probably have done the easy things, like signing up with the popular affiliate networks like Clickbank.com, LinkShare.com, CJ.com, and PayDotCom.com just to name a few. These are some of the most popular affiliate networks. Of course your next step would be to choose products that you would like to promote or advertise. This step also seems easy, as most people would just pick the product or products that pay the highest commission, right? Well...as a affiliate marketer and beginner, you need to choose products that are wanted and needed by consumers. If you really want to make some money doing this business, you are going to have to take the time to analyze what people are searching for online. One of the biggest mistakes affiliate beginners make, is they skip that part altogether, they try to promote something that is not in demand now or they don't brainstorm to see what the market is in need of. As you might not know, what's hot today is not necessarily hot tomorrow or next month. Do yourself a favor and do some research, find what people want or need and then match the product to that need, or want. To really prosper in the affiliate business, you have to keep up with, not only what's hot, but what search terms people are typing into the search engines. These keywords are the meat to your prosperity because your ad or article for your product will show up in the search engines if you know what search terms consumers are typing into the search engines. It sounds hard but it really isn't when you know how to implement certain strategies from finding a niche product to represent - to driving traffic to that niche product. Of course this process requires patience and perseverance but before long you will reap what you sow, if you don't give up. The strategies I will present here are for those who are just beginning and I am assuming you don't have a website and you want to spend as less money as possible or none at all to begin as an affiliate marketer. Here's 3 tips to getting started for the affiliate marketer beginner:

1. Brainstorming Ideas - Write a list of ideas you are interested in, or know about, or research them if you don't. Perhaps you're a great cook, and with the holidays quickly approaching, you may have some special recipes you would like to share. Very Important - always try to give your potential customer something free and beneficial to their need. So say you give up a few recipes in your article, but you are also promoting a great recipe book. A person would be more inclined to clicking your affiliate link because you gave up some great recipes, and they want more. Sowing and reaping here. Now let's assume this person is a beginner cook or is recently married and unskilled at cooking They don't only need holiday recipes but recipes for everyday cooking. They want to learn, and you will help them by providing the product that fills that need or desire. So give your potential customer something of value freely, and then let them know about your product - that will further enhance what you've already given them for free. Here is a website, www.google.com/trends. You'll see the top ten trends. You can click on "More Hot Trends," this list has a 100 trends listed that have been recently searched for and updated hourly. Perhaps this will get your mental juices flowing on brainstorming ideas.

2. Keyword Optimization - Keyword optimization is when you do a search on keywords you think people are typing into the search engines for whatever it is they're searching for. The objective of this search is to see if people are actually looking for what you have with the keywords you think they would use to search for what you are promoting.(Think like the searcher would). Here is a free trial tool that will help, although it is limited, but will do for the affiliate beginner, who can later on get the paid full version. This tool called Wordtracker - www.wordtracker.com will give you the count on how many searches were done using your keyword or keyword phrase and how many in the last 24 hours. It will also give you the amount of competing websites for that given phrase. You want your term searched with a count of at least 100 times, with few competing websites between 1000 to 5000. You simply type in your keyword or keyword phrase, and wordtracker will give you other related keywords , you can ignore these if you feel they are not related enough and just click on the keyword or phrase you typed in and wholla, the information is provided. You may have to try several keywords before you come up with a profitable one or you may even have to try another niche idea altogether. Now, being that Wordtracker extracts the amount of competing websites from MSN, which represents only a partial amount. You can really see the competition by going into Google and typing your phrase in quotes, like this: "leasing homes." This will pull up a more accurate count of competing websites which are usually higher than MSN. Wordtracker gives words with a low count and zero or few competing websites a higher KEI (keyword effectiveness index). Don't use those words, what good would it do to use these words and no one was actually using them to search. You only want keywords with a high KEI, if they are searched for a lot, not less than a 100 times, with not very much competition, 1000 to 5000 competing websites or less.

3. How to use the keywords Effectively - If you have decided to write articles which is a free method of advertising, then you must use these keywords in your title and throughout your article naturally. Be careful not to over use your keywords purposely to get a high ranking through the search engines, they will pick up on this. Write an article that is content rich, meaning very interesting and informative which is beneficial to the potential customer. Give them something that will peak their interest enough to want what you have or at least allow them to remember how informative your information was to the point, that even if they don't purchase then, they may later, and they may also recommend your article and product to others. Keep writing rich and informative content with your keywords inserted naturally within your article.

Summary: Find a targeted niche (a specialized interest), not one that is too broad and therefore too competitive for a beginner just starting in the affiliate business. Choose a niche that is more targeted to a specific group. Painting, Guitar Lessons, Eczema, etc. Find a need and offer your product to fill the need. Remember to give something of value and free in the process and then offer your product to enhance what you have already given. You will learn a lot in your affiliate business, and can later implement other techniques that would allow you to target broad audiences such as the weight loss market, or even the making money market. For now, stay narrow. Think like your potential customer, when coming up with keywords they would use when searching for your product in the search engines. Optimize these keywords with the free tool, Wordtracker, then go to google and type in the keywords or search phrase in quotation marks to assess the full competition. Use these keywords in your article or ad. The title should contain the keyword or phrase. Use these keywords and phrases naturally throughout your article. Of course these keywords should be relevant to the product you are promoting. Don't write an article about candy and then promote peanuts as your product. Relevancy counts! These methods are free but if you have a little cash to implement into your business for more advanced tools, then by all means use them. This is for the affiliate beginner who is short on cash, but have time to implement these strategies.


About the Author

DeBora Collins is an affiliate marketer, if you are short on time and would like a quicker method on finding hot products, and their keywords, Go Here http://hop.clickbank.net/?topnotch34/aequalizer

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