Step by Step Affiliate Marketing Guide

Coming Up with a Website Idea

It’s very likely that you already have a website in mind however please don’t skip this step – it will help you in REALLY getting in touch with the core of your actual website.

While you may have grand plans for your website(s), it’s best to start off very small, because no matter how smart you think you are, or how hard you follow this guide – you’ll make mistakes.  Guess what?  I have 10 years experience at affiliate marketing and have over 100 websites and I still make mistakes when launching a website!

So think of the general topic of your affiliate marketing website.  Then break it down into very small niche.  If you want to start a website about online poker, then a rakeback site or a poker strategy website isn’t a small niche.  A website about one specific poker room is a small niche, or a website about one specific poker player.  That’s another small niche.

Here are some more examples:

General Term: “Casino”

1: List of casinos that use a certain software.
2: Site dedicated to specific game strategy  Blackjack or Slots Strategy website only.
3: Site dedicated to one form of game, like European Roulette, or Interactive Slots.
4: Site dedicated to one specific progressive jackpot.

General Term: “Books”

1: Focus on one niche like “mystery fiction” and aim to dominate for that.
2: Write about one specific author who has a series of books.  Lot easier to dominate for that, and if someone discovers one of the books and wants more in that series, it’s an easy big sale.
3: Books that got turned into movies.
4: Book recommendation on a specific niche like “romance novels”.

General Term: “Video Games”

1: Video game website dedicated to popular franchise like wrestling video games.
2: Combine two niche into one: “Wii games” and “Video games for Kids” and have a Wii Games for Kids website.
3: Video game informational website for a specific game, ie: the Fallout Wiki.
4: Video game site focusing on a small niche like “easy achievement/trophy games”.

Hopefully you understand what I am getting at here.  I’m not telling you to build a small, 5 page website.  I’m telling you to break down your target market and focus more on an exact market than a broad market.  You’re never going to dominate a popular term like “play online poker” but if you add more words onto that term, you’re more likely to succeed.  “play 7 card stud online poker” or ‘play razz online poker” are just two examples.

How Will Your Website Make You Money?

While your ultimate goal is to create the best website possible for the topic you are covering, you also need to determine how the website will make you money.

This is a very important stage, because you need to really sit back and think outside the box for this one.  If you were building a website dedicated to wrestling video games – well, the obvious one is by selling wrestling video games on the website.  Reviews and previews of wrestling video games, with links to Toys R Us or whatever.

However there’s many more methods for that website to make you money.  You have to think about your target market, and what they like.  They like video games, and they like wrestling.  So you could market the following to them:

1. Wrestling merchandise, t-shirts, replica belts etc.
2. Wrestling DVDs & CDs.
3. Tickets to WWE Events, even promote hotels in the area.
4. Sell advertising to the likes of Wrestling Observer/Figure Four.
5. Reviews and news of other video games that wrestling fans may be interested in.
6. Wrestling books & reviews.
7. Information about wrestling schools; sell ad space to wrestling schools.
8. Official strategy guides for wrestling games.
9. Links to sportsbooks who offer WWE betting events.  Yep, there’s some out there that do that.
10. Wrestling tournaments online.  People pay a buy-in, winners get 90% and you keep the 10%.

These are just ten of many potential ideas for a wrestling video game website.  You don’t have to implement all these ideas immediately, but it’s a good idea to have these thoughts in your head going forward with your website.

It’s very important to identify your visitors, while keeping an opening mind.  Don’t think about what a wrestling video game fan wants from your website; think about what a wrestling video game fan wants in general, then market to them based on that.

Check Out the Competition

At this stage, you should have a good idea of the main topic for your website, be it “Harry Potter Books” or “Interactive Slots Strategy”.

Before going any further, you need to check out the competition, purely to see what you’re up against.  Search a phrase like “Harry Potter Books” or “Interactive Slots Strategy” and look at what websites are in the top 10 in google.

By quality alone, ask yourself: “Can I offer a better resource than these people?”

Searching “Harry Potter Books” for example makes me think that – no – based on quality, we can’t actually offer anything better than the existing sites there.  As of this writing there is lots of top quality websites in the top results like JK Rowlings official website, Scolastic Books and other websites which offer a great deal of information on the Harry Potter Books.

So at this point you may need to go back to the drawing board slightly – try phrases like “the order of Harry Potter books”, “Harry Potter audiobooks”  or “buy Harry Potter books online”.  Even use this Google Keyword Tool to offer suggestions.

“Interactive Slots Strategy” on the other hand, you’ll see at this point absolutely no competition.  That may actually not be a good thing: if theres’ not one website optimized for the phrase, it may mean no-one really cares about the phrase.  So you might want to use Wordtracker to see if anyone is searching for the phrase.

Even if it looks like it isn’t a competitive phrase, sometimes it’s best to just to go for it.  It may not be a popular niche or searched term now – but if it becomes popular in a few years then you’re sitting pretty.

You can even use automated tools like Search Metrics. This is an awesome program that I use and would highly recommend.

I remember when Cake Poker first launched – I was one of their very first affiliates, and I started promoting them like crazy even though no-one actually cared about them at that time.  They could have went the way of many a poker room which closes after 6 months but they didn’t; they grew, they prospered and they became hot.  Guess what?  I reaped the benefits, because I was dominating the search engine results and had got in before everyone else.

Overall though – check out the competition, see what you’re up against and if you can tell yourself “I can be one of the top 3 sites for this term” then you’re good to go!

Picking A Domain Name

I think one of the first steps an affiliate should take is picking out their domain name.  Buying a domain makes it official, and it really helps you visualize the site in your head.  You’re actually DOING something and getting your website in motion.

Google is all about “branding” these days, and there’s nothing more brandable than an actual domain name.  Therefore when you want a domain name, you want to get one as close to the topic that you are actually promoting.  Exact match domains DO give a boost in rankings – believe me, I’ve tested this out many, many times.

You also need to aim for a .com first and foremost, although if that isn’t avaiable then go for a .net or .org.  In my honest opinion I would not purchase a domain name with any other extension, unless I was going for a country specific website(ie: if my website was targeted towards Canadian online daters, I’d be fine with getting a .ca domain name).

When it comes to domain registration, I use GoDaddy.  I’ve tried other services but I like GoDaddy the most.  They are always offering special deals like 10% off or 20% off, make it very easy to renew your domain and also offer various additional extras.

I should note that while I recommend GoDaddy, another very popular domain provider isNameCheap. In a recent poll conducted at LifeHacker.com, Namecheap was voted the #1 domain registrar, with 38% of the vote.

So head on over to GoDaddy.com or NameCheap and see if you can find a domain name that will suit your website.  If your website topic was on Matt Damon movies for example, then these would be acceptable:

MattDamon.com/.net/.org

Matt-Damon.com/.net/.org

MattDamonMovies.com/.net/.org

Matt-Damon-Movies.com/.net/.org

It’s hard to really summarize how to pick a domain name – except go for one that matches the website topic you have in mind, includes the keywords, AND makes you happy.

If you are having any problems with coming up with the perfect domain name, please don’t hesitate to contact me and I’ll help you come up with something.

Planning Out The Content

We’ve came a long way haven’t we?  By this point we:

• Know the topic of our website
• Know how the website is going to make us money
• Have a domain name

Those are some big steps, and now is really the biggest and most important step of all:

Planning Our Websites Content.

It’s tough to really summarize how to plan out your websites content – it differs depending on the website that you are planning on running.  However don’t feel restricted by the topic of your website.

If we use the aforementioned “Matt Damon Movies” website as an example – don’t just come up with a list of Matt Damon movies to review and stop there; think outside the box.  How about a Matt Damon bio?  How about top lists involving topics like “Amount of minutes Matt Damon appeared in this movie” or “Matt Damons Biggest Box Office Hits”.

What I like to do when I am planning out content is step away from the computer, and use my imagination.  Get in the head of the visitor, and understand what they could be looking for.  No matter what the site I am about to start is, I like to come up with about 5 or 6 categories for articles, and then come up with approximately 100 article ideas total for the website, separated into category.

You’re not going to write all those articles right away, but it helps you with your vision of your website.  It also really gets your creativity going, and gets you thinking a lot about your website.

So get a pen and notepad and leave the computer.  Write your domain name at the top of the paper, and then come up with as many possible content ideas that you can think of.

Once you’re done that, it’s time to rely on others for content ideas…

It’s Website Building Time!

This is what you’ve been waiting for, I know it.  It’s time to actually take all your ideas and get them on the world wide web.

This is where your website becomes a reality.

Over the next few steps, we’ll be setting up your website, getting a design, setting up a backend and get some content flowing, as well as touching on basic search engine optimization to help get you started.

At this stage, we’ll just be setting up a website without affiliate links or banners or call to actions or anything like that.  Don’t worry – we’ll get to all that.  However the actual setup of your website is a big hurdle, so let’s just get over this phase first!

Let’s roll!

Let’s Write 5 Articles

I hope you’re getting excited because this is the last step to actually having a live website – now you get to sit down and write five articles to start your site off with.

Five is a nice number.  You create one article for your homepage, then you create four additional articles split into categories if possible.  So if your website focuses on poker room reviews by software provider, you might want to write two poker room reviews for iPoker sites, and two poker room reviews for Cake Poker sites.

It’s up to you if you want to sign up for affiliate programs right now or wait just a couple of extra steps.  I’d recommend waiting and just focusing on the writing just now, but it’s up to you.  If you want to skip ahead(be sure to come back) then head on over to Step 21: Signing up for Affiliate Programs.

I’d like to recommend the following books for writing internet articles:

• Web Copy That Sells
• The Elements Of Style
• On Writing Well

You may be thinking “Ick – Reading.” You don’t have to stop this step by step guide just to read those books, however I highly recommend purchasing them and reading as you go.

The fact is Knowledge is Power. Content is one of the most important things on a website, and one thing I see again and again from new affiliates is extremely poor content. Read those – especially “Web Copy That Sells” – and it’ll have you thinking about writing in a whole different way.

Also here are some basic guidelines for constructing your articles:

1. Go for 500+ Words. Longer content is so much better for you, as it can help in long-tail keywords.  Everything else being equal, google also would most likely prefer a 600 word article to a 300 word article.  I’d say always aim for 500-1000 words per article.
2. Use Subheadings. Separate the content via sub-headings and creating separate sections for everything.  It makes it a lot easier for the reader to find what they are looking for, and it’s a lot more user-friendly for skinners.
3. Use Short Paragraphs: No-one likes long blocks of text.  Use short paragraphs of 3-4 lines at most if possible.
4. Highlight Key Words & Phrases: If you want to catch the readers eye on a certain topic, use bold to highlight certain aspects of the text so that even if they are skimming, they’ll easily see that phrase.
5. Sell when Appropriate: One of the biggest mistakes I see is people writing content but not providing an affiliate link when appropriate.  If you’re promoting kids toys, and you’ve just finished a paragraph talking about how it made your kids day and he never stops talking about it, then be sure to provide a link in that section to encourage people to click through.  While you shouldn’t go overboard with call to actions, NEVER EVER force a reader to have to look around for a link to click.
6. Use Lists: Top X lists or just bullet point lists are great.  People know they are short and to the point.  They also draw attention and help break topics down for people.
7. The Reader Is An idiot: Always assume that the reader is an idiot, and that everything should be broken down clearly for them.  If you’re talking about how Full Tilt have rakeback for example, don’t assume the reader already knows what rakeback is.  Either explain within that article, or have a link to a more detailed article on “What Is Rakeback?”.
8. Anticipate the Questions: Your article may provoke questions from the reader, or your reader may have questions going into that article.  Anticipate the questions, and then use subheadings to answer those questions.
9. Write Short Sentences: I’ll put my hand up and say that I fail at this one, so I don’t practise what I preach in this instance.  I just can’t help it; no matter what I do, I use run-on sentences all the time.  You shouldn’t.  Keep it all short and to the point.  Don’t bore or lose the reader at any time.
10. Personalize Your Content: If at all possible, personalize your content right from the beginning.  I remember at one point I was researching Pokerstars reviews, and had about 50 of them open in my browser, glancing through them.  I saw one review which started with the following text: “I’ve played over 250,000 hands at Pokerstars”.  I was hooked right away.  I knew this was personal content, and it was also written by someone I could no doubt trust.

Whew.  Now that list is over with – GET TO WRITING.  Write those articles, publish them on WordPress and WE HAVE A LIVE SITE!!!!

Of course the step by step guide isn’t over……now the fun REALLY begins….

Hey Google, Come Visit My Website!

We’ll we’ve got a website – but now we need to tell google and all the other search engines to actually come visit.  How exactly do we do that?  The easiest ways are as follows:

Google Webmaster Tools: Register with Google Webmaster Tools, register your website with them, and submit your sitemap.  Webmaster Tools will also offer you a lot of advice on your website which can help you in the future, and let you know if there are any problems with your websites.

Yahoo Site Explorer: Submit your website to Yahoo Site Explorer much like Google Webmaster Tools, and submit your sitemap to Yahoo too.

Bing Webmaster Tools: Just like the above two – register your website with Bing Webmaster Tools and submit your sitemap.

Write An Article: Write an article for an external source, like an article submission website.  A nice easy one to start off with is EZineArticles.  Write a 400-500 word article on a topic relevant to your website, and add a footer link linking to your website.  Then submit it.  External links from high pagerank websites always help in getting your website submitted into search engines.

Submit to BOTW: BOTW, or Best of the Web, is one of the best online directories to submit your website to. They don’t accept just anybody – only quality websites – therefore their links are all deemed trustworthy by search engines. Check out Best of the Web.

If you have any friends with blogs or websites you can even ask them to throw up a link to your website too.

And now, the final step in affiliate marketing….

The Final Word

First I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart if you followed this guide all the way through.  It took me weeks to write, and years of experience to even get to the stage where I can write a comprehensive guide on this topic.

If you didn’t read the guide the whole way through – if you skimmed it or barely pad attention – I also want to thank you.  Because that just means less competition for me!

If you need any guidance or help or mentoring when it comes to running your website, please don’t hesitate to contact me.  I absolutely love helping new affiliates, and I do it free of charge.

The only thing I ask is that when you sign up at a new affiliate program, you go through my links.  It doesn’t hurt you in any way and it can only help you – I’m a respected affiliate with these programs, and people going through my links will get hooked up with better affiliate managers, and will find it easier to get better deals.

You can see a grand list of all affiliate programs or you can read my affiliate program reviewssection.

Thank you very much for reading.

Dealer Dan