the seaworthy marketer

This is the true joy in life – being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. – George Bernard Shaw.

Content can make or break your online efforts. Even if you have all of the traffic in the world your conversions are likely to be very low without decent articles on your site.

Furthermore, Google are getting better and better at recognising and thus rewarding good content.

What good content does for your site:

1. Increases conversions, enabling you to get the most out of your traffic.
2. Decreases your bounce rate (good for search engine rankings).
3. Increases your time on site (again, good for rankings).
4. Decreases your reliance on backlinking alone to rank sites. People seem to get stuck in a mentality that off-page factors are the only ranking real factors worth worrying about, but a well written piece of content can get your page ‘most of the way there’ thus requiring less backlinks to finish the job (and thus less of a monetary investment).
5. Increases the chances of your content being shared socially, which not only creates hands-off backlinks but emulates what Google really wants on a site.

Writing content for Amazon review sites

Writing content for most Amazon or other affiliate network sites will mean reviewing physical or non-physical products.

Although you can’t possibly buy every product you review, there are ways to differentiate yourself from the thousands of other Amazon review blogs out there who really don’t put too much effort into their reviews.

Most of this time this simply means including more information in your review from a greater number of sources and generally going that extra mile, but what else can you do? 

Solve problems.

• Is the product out of stock on Amazon and can you recommend another retailer (even if it means losing the commission?).
• Does the item routinely get damaged during shipping? Warn of this in your review if so and post possible solutions.
• Maybe the item is too heavy to lift up a flight of stairs for only one person? Suggest that they have someone on hand for the day it arrives.
• Is the item shipped an older model version of the one being advertised? You would be amazed how many times I’ve come across this researching products on Amazon.
• Does the item function better with the aid of another item? Are there cheaper ways to get the same thing?
• Perhaps there is a newer model of the item that you can promote, which addresses some of the issues of the older model? Maybe the newer model is worse and you advise people to buy the older model?

The above details might seem hard to find or not worth including, but some problems or suggestions will undoubtedly jump out at you as you are browsing through the customer reviews on Amazon to get a feel for the product before you begin to write.

If nothing else it just adds a bit of personal touch to the review and lets the reader know you actually care about their buying experience, and you really should.

Catering for every type of searcher

The reality is that you are going to get many different types of people to your blog. Most people are only concerned about the country of origin of their traffic but I like to dig a little deeper than that. I like to break the people down into three main categories; The Browser, The Committed and The Buyer.

The Browser

This is the sort of person that is interested in a particular niche (or group of products) but doesn’t really know where to start. If we take the headphones niche again as an example, they might specifically be looking for the best headphones under $200 or the best headphones for listening to classical music.

Generally their conversion rate as buyers is very low because they aren’t sold on anything yet. This is why I like to include the general buyer guide or how-to articles on the website, to not only satisfy the search engines but also the actual readers of your site.

Your actual specific product review pages however won’t appeal to this sort of person and that is a fact of life unfortunately, though if you write a good review or make detailed, valid suggestions you might be able to convince them that a particular product is well worth their consideration. They might even bookmark your site and come back at a later date.

The Committed

This is the sort of person that is more or less committed to buying a certain product in a certain niche within a narrow price range. They might even have narrowed down their search to 2 or 3 products and just need a gentle push in either direction to make their mind up.

Where you come in is by providing great reviews of each product on your site and highlighting their main selling points high up on the page where the reader has a chance to see them with a minimum of fuss or scrolling down.

This type of person is more likely to read the whole review in order to make sure that they are absolutely parting with their money on the right product, but it doesn’t always mean they’ll buy something from you.

The Buyer

The Buyer might have read a million different reviews on your product and is just looking for the best place to buy it or for some last minute reassurance. Your job is to provide a link high up on the page to Amazon to make sure that you get the commission.

Obviously these types of people are going to be the highest converting on your site, but the idea is to not make them do too much work to find a buy it now link.

The challenge – structuring a review to cater to all three types

As far as structuring reviews is concerned, I like to keep it pretty simple. My basic template is as follows:

1. Product picture aligned left (300 x 300px) with a large ‘headline’ next to it (usually in H3 header tags). The headline can be anything that grabs the readers attention. I usually mention 1 or 2 of the products distinguishing features.
2. Under this I’ll usually have a brief introductory review with dot points listing (and expanding on) the best features of the product for the people that like to skim read or want to find out if the product is going to appeal to them. By this stage you have taken care of The Buyer and The Browser might also keep reading on if the brief summary review encourages them to do so.
3. Next I’ll have the main review, expanding on a few of the important features (good or bad) listed in point 2 and suggesting improvements or fixes where applicable. I’ll also left or right align some more pictures of the product which I think are pretty important as humans are very visual creatures. If you can’t find any pictures on Amazon then go elsewhere to another large online store such as Walmart or Best Buy or even the manufacturer website. People aren’t going to buy something based on one picture and a large block of text.
4. Next section will be customer reviews. I usually put these in quote boxes if copying word for word (don’t do this too much, 2 to 3 lines at the most) and then paraphrase the rest. Obviously you’ll include snippets of text that appeal to the person reading the review (social validation). State the name and location of the person you are quoting or referencing.
5. A brief 4 or 5 line conclusion is the last thing I’ll do, with 1 more affiliate link (making 2 for the review in total). Basically sum up what you have said and include the major selling points of the product, who it is suited to and your general opinion on the product.

The general idea is to make the reviews attention seeking and easy to read. Include pictures, video demonstrations and lots of headlines, dot points and numbered lists wherever possible.

How to write great product reviews with personality factor

Skimming through the customer reviews on Amazon is a good way to become instantly acquainted with a product even if I have never heard of it before. I can see what people like and what people don’t like, but it’s more than that.

It is identifying the equivalent good and bad emotions and finding out what makes people tick and what sort of pain they might be trying to avoid. Once I know who and what I am tackling I can generally weave some sort of ‘personality factor’ into the review to make it sound like I know what I’m talking about.

For example if I’m reviewing a coffee machine I will and will not say the following:

Bad: This coffee machine is quiet and it has an auto shut off feature.
Good: This coffee machine is quiet enough that you can make a hot chocolate on a winters afternoon without waking the kids up from their nap. It also has an automatic shut off time for the forgetful amongst us who tend to leave things on all the time. Also great for power conscious folks who are cutting down on energy bills, etc.

Too many people list the FEATURES instead of the BENEFITS. You can do both and still make it sound like you know what you’re talking about.

Using common sense

Now, not everyone is going to have kids that need to nap in the afternoon. But I’m 27 and kidless and I know that kids need their sleep and parents will do anything to avoid waking them up. It’s just common sense.

People relate to people and people situations. They don’t necessarily want to know that it operates at 50 decibels because this won’t mean stuff all to the majority of us.

You can certainly include a 50 db operating noise in the specs list or whatever but it’s not the figure that will sell you the coffee machine.

However, by at least including both you can appeal to the young couple who love drinking and also the 1 or 2 sound technicians who might have some sort of appreciation of what 50 db actually sounds like.

The same goes for having hot drinks on a winters day. Intuitive. You don’t fill the whole review with this stuff though, it’s more of a way to get more personal with the reader and connect with them on some small level.

Moreover its a good way to beef up the content and not look like 10 other reviews on the same product that it is an Amazon rewrite.

Finding points of contention

I also go into the Amazon customer discussions of the individual reviews themselves as this can be a good source of juicy information.

Amazon is no different to the majority of message boards on the net. Lots of keyboard warriors, lots of arguments, people writing paid reviews for brands and so forth.

If you find something contentious, go out and find the answer to the debate and include it on your blog in your review. One of my more successful blog posts was writing up a blog post describing how to tell apart a fake product from the real one. Of course I then link to the product page of the real version at the end of the article and its done quite well.

Standing out from the crowd is more important than ever

Producing high quality content on your sites is extremely important these days. As I’ve said, Google is better and finding it and better at ranking it. Not only that, but I’m sure you’ll also agree that there is a ton, an absolute TON, of garbage Amazon review sites ranking out there.

They are all using well pushed and well peddled Amazon review themes that you have to have in order to make money (otherwise you’ll die a horrible death).

The majority of these garbage sites you just know straight away they’ve never owned the product and what is worse they can’t even be bothered trying to sell you the product.

Every one of us expects to be sold to to an extent, we want to be convinced and we want to be pointed in the right direction. Think about it the next time you are shopping online for a product yourself.

We have become so used to it it’s scary. But there is an art to it like anything else.

Collect your information

I can’t remember if I said it here or somewhere else, but I like to think of writing reviews as organising information into an easily digestable and reviewable format. If I want to buy the Keurig B70 coffee machine I might look at the Keurig website first and then look on coffee forums/authority sites second.

The thing about forums is that you ask for recommendations and every man and his dog has a different product that is right for you (in their opinion). They all have the best intentions of course but it only serves to make you, as the buyer, even more confused!

Thirdly they may end up looking for a Keurig B70 review and that’s when they find your site. Most people aren’t going to sift through 500 reviews and take notes. A rare amount will but the majority won’t. Just like people don’t want to have to look at 10 different websites to get a full idea of a product.

Go the extra mile

If you go to that extra length you will make money if the niche converts and keeps people on site. They’ll think that “Wow this guy must know his stuff” and even if someone can tell you’ve never owned the product concerned, they at least might be appreciative of the fact that you’ve saved them time by arranging the info in a nice way.

I still think people buy on benefits, price and how nice the product looks in the pictures. Throw in some social verification and you have the best chance of converting in my opinion.

It’s all about placing emphasis on the vital information and downplaying (well not downplaying maybe, just not placing any emphasis on) the rest but still including it of course.

Such is Amazon anyway that if you don’t manage to sell the Keurig B70 they will buy something else there anyway.  I usually try and recommend related products on my blogs too,  which makes them seem less salesy.

For example you might say “if you are a casual coffee drinker and not mind the smaller cups or extra noise  then check out the Keurig B30“. There would be no point in someone buying the larger, noisier and more expensive B70 if all they needed was the B30. They’ll just refund the B70 and you’ll lose your commission and it is a waste of everyone’s time.

Give people a way out and don’t back them into a corner. They’ll appreciate it!

Summary

That is about it I think for writing product reviews. If you take anything away from this post it would be to provide genuine value to the web and of course your potential customer and differentiate yourself from the rest of the review blogs out there.

Research the product as if you were buying it yourself, and link your general how-to articles (no affiliate links) to appropriate review pages (affiliate linked).

Next up, I am going to get into on-page SEO and discuss what you need to put on your blog to comply with the Amazon Associates TOS.

If you found this post useful, please like or tweet it! Thanks!

Everyone talks about age, but it’s not about age. It’s about work ethic. Winning never gets old.

- Lisa Leslie.

Once you have your domain name servers set up then you should be able to get on with installing WordPress through your CPanel.

If you purchased your hosting with Hostgator as recommended in the last post then you will need to log in to your CPanel with the FTP user and password that was given to you when you signed up to Hostgator.

Any additional domains will need to be added to your hosting account using the Add-on domain functionality. While you will still need to enter a unique FTP username and password for each domain, you can access every site you own in your Hosting account in FTP software using the username and password that you received in your hosting welcome email.

This might be hard to understand at first, but just know that because all your sites are on a shared server under the same account, that the details are (for FTP purposes) the same. You will get a clearer picture of what I mean once you have more than 1 site setup.

Once you have that taken care of (remember: for your second site and beyond only) you need to scroll down to near the bottom and click on the Fantastic De Luxe icon (smiley blue face) and then choose WordPress from the left hand side column under Blogs.

Once you have clicked on WordPress you then need to click on New Installation and choose the site from the drop down menu that you wish to install WordPress on.

Fill in the relevant forms and remember to:

• Choose a relatively complex username and password (best practices with passwords apply here). It is important that you don’t use the same username and password combination for all of your sites because you are just asking to be hacked.
• Make sure to include your root keyword in the Site Name and Description fields.
• Write down your username and password and other important info in a safe place. I keep all of my information in a small notebook (the pen and paper kind of notebook) but you can opt to store it digitally or both.

Click through the prompts and you are done, you have now installed WordPress!

Configuring WordPress – FTP

Once you have installed WordPress you should be able to log in straight away with the username and password you just set up.

It is at this point that you will need to install an FTP program to deal with the following:

• Installing and configuring plugins.
• Installing and configuring themes.

Many people get scared whenever they hear the dreaded acronym FTP and I did too. I hated it and spent many hours trying to figure it out or fix my mistakes. Looking back now I laugh because I find it extremely easy now. Hopefully you will too with practice.

As far as FTP programs are concerned, I’ve used FileZilla since day dot and it has never given me any problems. It’s free and easy to use.

Once you have FileZilla open you need to enter the following details in the top left hand corner boxes:

1. FTP address – usually ftp.yourdomainnamehere.com/net/org
2. FTP username
3. FTP password
4. I leave the Port field blank.

After you click connect you should get your sites files and folders show up on the right hand side of the screen. Whatever is on the left hand side of the screen is your own computer files and folders.

It is simply a process of dragging the files you need from left (your hard drive) to right (your site) and into the appropriate folders. If only I had known this when I first started. It’s not like the information wasn’t available, I was just too damn stubborn to read it and tried to do it all myself. Silly me!

Anyway, 99% of what you will ever need to drag across are plugins and themes, which I will get to later on.

Plugins go into the public_html/yoursitename.com/wp-content/plugins folder.

Themes go into the public_html/yoursitename.com/wp-content/themes folder.

Pretty simple right? You also have the option of installing plugins and themes via the WordPress dashboard but this involves leaving them zipped and you can’t do it in bulk, and it usually takes longer.

So I would just stick to using FTP unless the instructions of the plugin explicitly state that it must be uploaded via WordPress in zipped format.

Essential plugins

Everyone has an idea of what the essential plugins are and it comes down to personal preference. I like to keep the number I need as small as possible because too many can make your site load slower and thus potentially affect your rankings.

Lots of plugins also increases your chance of vulnerability to hackers as some plugins might not be updated in a long time and old code may present an opportunity for a way for someone to unlawfully gain access to your site.

The following is a list of the plugins that I have on any basic WordPress install.

WordPress themes

Like plugins, themes are point of debate for many internet marketers out there.

Before I make any recommendations, I want to make it clear that a good, clean theme is all you need. Don’t agonize over colors, graphics and other distractions too much because you are only taking away time from yourself that you should be spending writing content and creating backlinks.

A good theme gets the visitor to do what you want them to do, and that is read through a bit of content and hopefully click on a link to make a purchase. Don’t distract them with unnecessary stuff or give them a reason to click away.

As far as the challenge is concerned, I’m using Flexsqueeze (paid) and Nick is using Matt Carter’s Affiliate Theme (free) and there is also the free version of Flexsqueeze which is called Flexibility 3.

They are all more or less the same in function and looks. Flexsqueeze gives more customisation than the other two but for all intents and purposes, a free clean theme is all you need.

Please, for your own good, don’t get too hung up on this.

About, Contact, Disclosure, Sitemap and Privacy Policy pages

At the very least you should have the above pages on your site to satisfy the likes of the FTC and Google.

Have a look at the footer of this site for the sort of pages you will need. Feel free to copy and paste.

The Privacy Policy is mandatory if you are going to be dealing with Adsense but I like to have it on all sites anyway.

Some sort of disclaimer or disclosure statement is also vital for Amazon sites, you can practically write your own. All you have to say is that you receive a commission for recommending products on Amazon and that you don’t necessarily own or have used every product you review.

Have a look here at a nice homemade Amazon affiliate disclosure.

Summing up

Well, that is about it I think. I hope I haven’t left anything out but if I have, I’ll can always make alterations later on.

Again, this is pretty boring stuff (both to explain and to perform), but I really wanted to have an all-in-one resource here and not gloss over any steps if possible.

By now you should have the following:

1. A niche.
2. A domain name and website.
3. All privacy and disclaimer pages in place.
4. Relevant plugins activated and configured .

Got this far? Great, that means the next step is adding content. In the next step I want to address how to structure and write good reviews and maximise the amount of click throughs you get to Amazon.

Getting the right mix of content on your site is becoming more and more important too.

Thanks for reading (or skimming) this far.

Any questions? Then do ask below.

This post is written by Nick, and outlines how he has fared with the challenge now that we are 6 weeks in.

This is usually the stuff you never read about that is always going on behind the scenes!

- Ben.

Ben asked to write a little bit about what I’ve been up to with the challenge over the last month or so. It has certainly been busy and I feel like I have learned a huge amount of stuff.

I’ve had one or two stumbling blocks on the way too, so hopefully talking about those can help anyone else who hits them. I’ll work through in order what I’ve done since the start of Amazon Assault 2012.

1. Choose my niche.

This for me was both very easy and a bit problematic. I knew I wanted to do something in one particular niche, which happens to have a lot of stuff on Amazon too. However, it is also a huge, competitive area and it took a bit of work and bouncing ideas back and forth with Ben before finding the precise corner of this niche for me. I’m happy with the choice and it is something I will enjoy writing about. I followed the method Ben explains in his posts with a couple more things he suggested and if I can get it right, it really must be foolproof!

2. Choose my domain.

Once I knew what I wanted to do, it was a question of looking for possible domains, again using the method Ben explained. I found a nice Exact Match Domain that has about 900 exact searches a month according to the google keyword tool. This lead to the first of my difficulties.

I bought the domain at namecheap and host at hostgater and it took me a while to get forwarding from one to the other right! It can be frustrating spending a couple of days trying to deal with stuff that makes your head hurt!

Again with some help this was sorted out. It is also (at least for me) satisfying to work out a solution to something that seems to be a roadblock.

3. Keyword Research.

I wanted a list of 20 or keywords that could be article/post subjects. I found some very easily, but others for some reason I struggled with. For example, I found a few that I thought were good and then Ben pointed out that they weren’t actually receiving any searches!

Double check “ok, how did I miss that?” I also found that sometimes I would stray off the subject and find keywords that weren’t closely enough linked to my sub-niche.

4. Themes/Widgets/plugins.

This is where the fun really starts! After spending the last few weeks looking at this stuff, I can understand why people never get beyond this. Which theme? Do I need a plug in for this? Pages or posts? How do I fix the settings on this widget? The questions are endless here.

Fortunately Ben gave me a list of stuff I needed. For me, I am learning that the important thing is to get stuff done here. Write the post and then worry exactly about the other stuff-you can always add/change it later. That said, there are certainly one or two things that made my life easier.

5. Write and Publish.

So far, I’ve written about 1350 words as a front page post. It was fun to write about a passion and so easy compared to some of the stuff I’ve written for other people. There are only some many coffee-maker reviews I can do without going mad! I have also tried outsourcing this month, mainly to see if it is something I should do more of later.

I feel naturally a bit uncomfortable about having someone else produce stuff about an area I know very well. The article I ordered was fine though, and I will probably do a couple more like this too.

6. Promotion.

I really haven’t started on this side of things yet. I created a socialadr account and have submitted the two articles that I wrote there. I have also mixed in some amazon links/photos on the pages, so that if someone does end up there by mistake, they light still make me money!

So what’s next?

I think the best thing for me to do is create more content. Ben is telling me this is the way to go, and with all the good advice he’s handed out so far, who am I to argue?

I’m really enjoying the whole process so far. Even the stuff that is problematic (mainly technical stuff) I see as a challenge and it is helping me to learn. I want to get 20 good posts up as soon as I can, although with (real) work and family, this isn’t going to happen in a week! If I were to sum up my progress so far, it would go like this:

• Don’t sweat the details
• Keep taking little steps forward (write/find a keyword/add an image/whatever)
• Find someone to bounce your ideas off/to reassure yourself

Nick

“A person should set his goals as early as he can and devote all his energy and talent to getting there. With enough effort, he may achieve it. Or he may find something that is even more rewarding. But in the end, no matter what the outcome, he will know he has been alive.”

- Walt Disney

In the last post about assessing keyword competition I talked about compiling a list of 5-10 seed keywords that could be used as the basis of your site.

Remember that the keywords on your shortlist should all be keywords that you can expand on with a list of products to write reviews on but also some informational articles too.

How to check for available domain names in bulk

When I need to quickly check for available domain names I head on over to a site called EMDHunt.com. All you do is paste your list of keywords into the left hand side column and it will go out and find any .com/net/org’s that are free to register.

The good thing about EMDhunt.com is that it can handle the square brackets that the Google Keyword Tool gives you, so there is no need to remove them.

Now, if we get back to the headphones niche that I have been running with for the whole series, my experience tells me that the chances of finding an exact match domain for my shortlist of keywords is pretty low.

However I’ll paste them in there anyway for demonstration purposes – well all of the keywords that I narrowed down that were between 1,000 and 3,000 searches a month in the previous post.

You can see from the list of keywords with available extensions that most of them are brand names with the exception of a couple.

My experience is that domains with brand names in them are harder to rank than those that don’t, and there is always the risk of the company sending you a cease and desist letter telling you to shut the site down or face legal action.

How to choose a seed keyword for your new site

It is clear that the keyword I used as an example in the last post, studio headphones, is not available as an exact match domain. If none of the keywords that made it on to your shortlist are available then I would look at buying what I call a pseudo-EMD.

Let’s just say that studio headphones is a really cool keyword (which it is) and I don’t want to pass it up just because I can’t find an EMD.

What I would do is add a suffix to the end of the keyword. What a suffix does is preserve most of the ranking power of an EMD but give you a chance to get in on the action as it were. Some examples I might consider include:

• studioheadphoneshq.com
• studioheadphonesreviews.com
• studioheadphoneshere.com
• studioheadphonesreview.com
• studioheadphoness.com

If you really needed more ideas then you should look at this long list of stop words. Basically a stop word is a common term that is ignored by the search engines in order to speed up search results and save time.

It stands to reason then that stopwords in a domain name would be ignored more than a word that wasn’t in that list.

But do they work? Personally I’ve had some good results using ‘here’ as a suffix, but you don’t have to use that list or even that word, I’m just putting it out there as a possible resource and you might find something you like.

In general though, try to keep it as simple as possible. You don’t want to detract from your main keyword.

Where to register domain names

Namecheap.com is the best place to register domain names. You need to sign up for an account there and then you can start buying domains right away.

I’ve never had any problems with them and their support is responsive. When you are looking to buy a domain make sure it is either a .com, .org or .net domain (in that order).

Don’t waste your time or money with other extensions. You shouldn’t need to look at other extensions using my method anyway because there are always plenty of domains available!

Where to get hosting

Hostgator are by far and away what the majority of people I speak to use. I’ve been with them for years now and there has never been any down time or any issues that weren’t caused by my ineptitude with the technical stuff.

Being the technical noob that I am, I’ve always fired a lot of support questions their way and they are all answered politely and courteously, sometimes within a couple of hours which is great.

If you are just starting out in internet marketing you should opt for the Hostgator Baby Plan which gives you the ability to host multiple sites in the same account for a very small monthly fee.

How to get your hosting set up:

1. Go to Hostgator.com and click on Web Hosting in the top left hand corner.
2. Select the Baby Plan (the middle option) and select Order Now.
3. Enter your new domain that you just registered for the Amazon challenge.
4. Enter coupon code “seaworthyamazon” in the box below where you put in your new domain. This will give you $9.94 off the purchase which is around 1 month hosting for free!

Then you are pretty much done!

You’ll receive a welcome email with all of your details and a couple of important bits of information which you will need for the next step.

Configuring your nameservers

Before you can install WordPress on your site or doing anything else with it you need to configure your nameservers.

This might sound complicated if you are just starting out and I know it baffled me for weeks when I was trying to work out what to do with them.

Your individual nameservers are going to be in your Hostgator welcome email. If not you can find them in your hosting control panel on the left hand side near the top. They should look something like:

ns1005.hostgator.com and ns1006.hostgator.com

Note: your numbers and address may vary. They won’t be exactly the same as above but they should have ns at the start as a reference point and generally consecutive numbers.

Once you have located them you need to do the following:

1. Login to your Namecheap account.
2. Click on the domain that you want to edit.
3. On the top left under General you need to select Domain Name Server Setup.
4. Enter your domain name servers in position 1 and 2 in the first couple of boxes.
5. Click on save changes.

And that is it! What this basically does is links your hosting account at Hostgator with your domain registrar at Namecheap. You will have to do this with every new domain you register but it’s not a big deal.

Your hosting and domain account should take about 24 hours to find each other (otherwise known as propagation) and it is then and only then that you can start to install WordPress and associated plugins.

This will be covered in the next post, so stay tuned for that.

I hope you find this post useful though! It is not the most glamorous step in the world but it has to be done and it can be very confusing to get your head around.

If you have any questions, let me know in the comments section below.

“Let your mind start a journey thru a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. Let your soul take you where you long to be…Close your eyes let your spirit start to soar, and you’ll live as you’ve never lived before.”
– Erich Fromm – Philosopher.

In the previous post I looked at how to choose the right keywords for an example Amazon site. The other half of this very important equation is assessing the competition of each individual keyword to see if you can rank for them in a reasonable period of time.

Minimising effort and maximising return on investment (ROI)

The methodology of Amazon Assault 2012 is such that we want to choose keywords that are relatively easy to rank for. The easier a keyword is to rank for, the less effort (both in time and money) is required to get it ranking and hopefully making money.

While it is very hard to quantify exact time frames and traffic figures, which of the following would you prefer?

• One keyword with 10,000 searches a month, which takes 8 months to rank in the number one position. (All eggs in one basket)
• 20 keywords with 500 searches a month, which all take 4 months to rank in the number one position. (Eggs in a number of different baskets)

I hope you said the second option, because well, it’s obvious really! Many people aim too high with their keyword research when they are first starting off and you can’t blame them really.

It might be what they are told to do by others or the keyword might look more attractive, but unless you have thousands of dollars to invest and a lot of patience it would take you a long time to see any sort of ROI on the first option.

I’m also willing to bet that most people choosing the first option would quit after 4 months anyway and give up, not knowing that they were 50% of the way there. Of course a very small percentage may stick it out but the unfortunate reality is that many won’t last 4 weeks let alone 4 months.

Keeping yourself in the game

The nature of internet marketing is that it requires a lot of patience. Progress is usually measured in weeks and months instead of hours or days. Bluntly, it is patience that most people don’t have.

By choosing keywords which have been mostly overlooked by other marketers you can see progress faster, and turn a potentially failed internet marketing career into something you can be proud of.

How to assess the headphone seed keywords for competition

The good news here is that you don’t need to buy any expensive software to do this step for you, and you certainly don’t have to worry about putting your keyword in quotes and looking at the exact number of competing pages.

That is so 2008!

I use Traffic Travis 4 (the free version) because it allows you to enter keywords in bulk when looking at competition.

After I open up the program, I’ll go to the SEO tab up the top, and then click on the Competition module.

I’ll then do my keyword research as per the previous post, but I might set a filter in the Google keyword tool to only give me results that get between 1,000 and 3,000 US exact searches a month. This is because numbers in this game usually give the best balance between competition, search volume and thus profitability.

This gives me a list of 86 keywords to choose from. I would not suggest putting 86 keywords into Traffic Travis because it would take a very long time to process them all, but I’ll try the first 40 first and see what it brings up.

What I’ll do next is check all results and then select View as text, then Selected, and then I’ll select all (Control-A) and copy that entire list into a word editor to remove the square brackets.

I use Open Office which has a Find and replace function under Edit where you can remove the square brackets.  I’m guessing there is similar function in Word or you could do it manually if you had a smaller list of keywords.

(Not removing the square brackets and pasting straight into Traffic Travis does not seem to alter the data anyway. But I’m an obsessive person in that way and I’d rather just remove the square brackets just to be sure).

All you need after that is click on the keywords box and paste them in there, and then click Fetch.

You will find that Traffic Travis will conveniently go through the list and give you the all important data plus a snapshot of the top 10 results if you click on Report on the far left.

The key parameters

What are some of the things you actually need to be concerned about when checking competition? First I’ll tell you what you don’t need to worry about: median Page Rank and backlinks, SERPS, InAnchor and InTitle.

Now, the important stuff.

1. The total number of backlinks to each page (not to the whole site). Ideally this number needs to be under about 500 or so. I don’t like stating exact with numbers though because it implies that it is a rule that cannot be broken, but it really depends on the strength of the top 10 overall and the types of sites that are ranking. You might be able to stretch it higher, but keep reading for examples.
2. The Page Rank (PR) of each site in the top 10. Not as important as many people think, but it is still relatively important. Aim for an average PR of 3 overall. Again, this is not a hard and fast rule, but a good starting point.
3. What ‘type’ of sites are ranking? If I see lots of other affiliate sites ranking in the top 10 I pretty much give it the green light straight away. That is as good as a keyword tapping you on the shoulder and saying pick me! I also look out for manufacturer sites as they can be difficult to beat initially because of age and authority. It’s not so relevant to seed keywords because you won’t have a brand name in there, but when it comes to choosing product keywords I’ll generally stay away from products where the manufacturer takes up the top 3 positions. Don’t sweat it though, there are plenty of keywords that are there for the taking.
4. How many pages are actually targeting the keyword you are looking at ranking for? This is the old relevancy vs authority argument. Some sites will be ranking in the top 10 because they are targeting the keyword (relevancy), while others will be ranking there purely for being an authoritative site. A key example of this is Amazon, which is ranking for basically every product keyword on the sun (with a bit of preferential treatment from Google also), even though it is not aiming to rank for them necessarily. The good news is that they can easily beaten (because your page will be more relevant), but other such authority sites might be more difficult to beat. My experience is that tough authority sites are few and far between away from the tech and electronics niches (think CNET, TechCrunch, DPreview etc for example) but those that do exist are pretty easy to beat in general.
5. More of a follow on from point 4, but are the keywords in the title, meta description and H1 tag? This will tell you who and what you are up against, and let you spot an authority site ranking on that extra trust right away. Have a look at the Report function in Traffic Travis to see this.

Headphone seed keywords that I consider rankable

The good thing about Traffic Travis is that it enables you to sort the various parameters in ascending or descending order, so you can quickly get an idea of possible terms to target.

I generally start by sorting the list by Backlinks Page – Average and then going through and having at look at each Report diagram individually.

It just so happens that there are quite a few keywords in the headphones niche with a very low backlinks and average Page Rank, which is good of course!

Anyway, lets look at the keyword studio headphones. Note that I’m picking this keyword at random from the lower competition end of that list, I don’t really know if it is going to be profitable or not but the first box that needs to be ticked is competition before we look at anything else.

(Click image for larger view)

Would I target this keyword? The answer is yes, primarily because:

• The average Page Rank is very manageable, in this case it is 2.4 and there no sites in the top 3 which have outrageous PR like 5 or 6.
• The site with the highest number of backlinks to the page is 455.
• Interestingly a lot of the top 10 sites are actively targeting the keyword (lots of green ticks) but this can be beaten by the simple fact that we will be registering an exact match domain, or near enough to.
• I don’t really place much weight on Page Authority, but it is pleasing to see that every site is under 50, presumably on a scale where 100 is absolute authority and 0 is no authority.
• Sites like BestBuy.com and GuitarCenter.com might look scary, but these sort of e-commerce sites are easy to beat. What they do give you is a chance to look through the sub-niche of studio headphones and see what types of products you can promote. I’m no expert on headphones, but there looks to be more products here than you can poke a stick at.
• Each site has tens of thousands of links pointing to it overall but relevancy nearly always trumps site wide links and authority. These sort of numbers will scare a lot of people off, but please don’t be!

If I look at the other end of my list and deliberately pick a keyword that looks more difficult to rank I can see that noise reduction headphones might be the perfect candidate.

You can just tell that this is a great keyword with likely a large product list and many other informational type related keywords to base posts on.

Lets look at the competition though:

• Straight away you can see that there are lot of higher Page Rank domains in the top 10. The average PR is 3.5, which is not that bad as a solitary ranking factor but of course we never want to rely on only one factor alone. We need to look at the whole picture. Furthermore it’s also diluted a bit because of the PR 0 Amazon site which is ranking there because Google love them.
• CNET ranking in the #1 position. My experience is that they would be pretty tough to beat, even though they aren’t really targeting the exact keyword.
• Many of the sites have over 1,000 backlinks to the page.
• Lots of authority sites. HowStuffWorks.com, Bose.com, CNET.com, Amazon.com, Wikipedia.org. I know that I said you can beat authority sites most of the time, and for the seasoned internet marketer they might be able to get rankings for this keyword in 8-12 months, but there are just too many authority sites ranking here to be worth worrying about this keyword (especially when there are much easier keywords on offer).

Compiling your keyword list

I would go through and find around 5-10 potential seed keywords using the method above. The reason I say potential is that you need to check that there are products to promote once you potentially set up a site.

If personally I was going to go with the keyword studio headphones, ideally I’d want to do a bit of research on what studio headphones actually were and if any sorts of studio headphones are available on Amazon for sale.

Just by chucking studio headphones into the Google Keyword Tool and checking the box that says Only show ideas closely related to my search terms I can see that there are more than enough general keywords to promote in addition to the specific product keywords (which you’ll have to sort through manually of course).

If you are starting out then it would be good to find at least 9 additional keywords to target in addition to your seed (homepage) keyword. Maybe you might want to find 3 or 4 general, informational keywords (such as professional studio headphones from the list below) and 5 or 6 product-centric keywords (covered below).

Finding product keywords

Obviously I would then check through all the product keywords using the same above method, checking for competition while keeping the searches in the 100-1,000 searches per month if possible.

What I would do is go to Amazon and type in studio headphones and see what came up. Immediately I can see the Audio-Technica ATHM40FS Precision Studio Headphones.

Next I’ll paste that keyword into the Google Keyword Tool (usually a shorter variation because they get searched more – in this Audio-Technica ATHM40FS).

This is what I get:

So we can see that there are 2 keywords there that we can target in the same post and get 320 searches a month from. I’m willing to bet that these keywords have very little competition too. Try them yourself

However, I would not go for this particular model of headphones because the asking price is only around $50. Remember that in a previous post I talked about $100 being the absolute minimum.

I’m sure you get the idea now anyway. There does seem to be plenty of headphones over $100, it’s just a matter of going through them, and assessing them for:

• Competition
• Relevancy to the seed keyword,
• Asking price (minimum $100)
• US exact monthly search volume (100-1,000 searches a month is fine) but this is not restrictive. You can go higher if you see a good keyword with low competition, and sometimes you will.

Hopefully I have not forgotten to include anything  This post is approaching 2,500 words so it is probably time to wrap it up soon

Before going on to the next section you need to have the following things in order:

• At least 5-10 potential seed keywords, that you have researched for competition, profitability and expansion. That is, are there enough product and informational keywords on offer to at least build an eventual 10-20 page site?
• At least 3-4 information keywords to include on your site, related to the seed keyword. For the seed keyword studio headphones I might include on my site the keywords how to choose professional studio headphones, studio headphones for beginners or the cheapest studio headphones for example.
• At least 5-6 product-centric keywords. In this case they must actually be studio headphones obviously, not unrelated or belonging to some other category. Do your research and understand the niche. Examples I was able to locate from Amazon include Audio-Technica ATHM40FS and Behringer HPS3000.

Keyword research is like riding a bike

I’ve found that it is hard to explain keyword research to someone who has never done it before. It’s like riding a bike because the more you do it the better you get.

After you choose niches and become acquainted with them you will start to see patterns – specific sites will be ranking for specific sorts of queries and in different niches.

Once you have your own sites up and ranking you will be able to gather even more experience because you know what will sites are easy to outrank but also those that aren’t.

Learning definitely comes by doing, perhaps more so than any other part of internet marketing. So I encourage you to get your feet wet as soon as possible.

What next?

After you have done that you have a basic outline for a site, and you are ready to move on to the next section.

Please if you have enjoyed this post, tell your friends or share on Facebook and Twitter.

Any questions? Leave a comment below!

“Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation.”
– Robert H. Schuller – author, entrepreneur, minister.

Keyword research is vitally important to your overall chance of success. Get this step right and you are well on your way to getting the results you desire.

As the quote above suggests, there is nothing spectacular about it and for many, it is the most hated step of building niche websites. Personally, I love this step just about more than any, probably for the simple joy of discovering a nice keyword that no-one else has picked up on.

An example of keyword research – the headphones niche

In the last post regarding how to choose a profitable niche I stressed the need to find a market where there was money being spent and that had a bit of depth to it so that you could promote a number of different products.

Once I have seen something I like, I usually start off my own keyword research by typing a very general seed keyword into the Google Keyword tool and scrolling through the list to see what it brings up.

If I type headphones for example into the tool I get 761 results and right away I can tell that there is enough ‘substance’ in the headphone niche to build a site using the technique that we are using in this challenge.

It should be noted that the technique of finding very low competition, relatively low search keywords is central to this process and indeed what makes it unique. I hope in this way it can be slightly more unique than many of the make money with Amazon guides out there (that you have to pay for).

Anyway, with the core term of headphones receiving approximately 90,500 searches every month in the USA, you can be very confident that there are some juicy long tail keywords much further down the list.

What are exact match domains and why do you need them?

When I build sites I like to utilise the exact match domain (EMD). An example of an exact match domain is when you put the keyword you are trying to rank for in the domain name, in this case it might be bestjoggingheadphones.com for the keyword best jogging headphones.

The reason people do this is because they get a boost in terms of ranking power when Google is trying to determine where to rank them. Google works on the principle that because Apple.com would expect to rank #1 for the keyword Apple, in theory bestjoggingheadphones.com would expect to rank #1 for best jogging headphones also.

Of course, you could argue that this particular weight or favouritism towards exact match domains is flawed because not every site has the pedigree of Apple, or Amazon or the NY Times for that matter.

But, Google’s whole business model is based on that of relevancy and in some cases the most relevant result for a particular keyword is the site with that keyword in the domain.

It cannot forseeably get rid of this ranking factor because it might tar all EMD’s with the same brush and get rid of a lot of good sites from their well-earned positions within the top 10.

Until the Google algorithm which determines all search results can figure out how to determine a good EMD from a bad one, they will always get a boost in the search engines. However you don’t need to feel guilty about exploiting this if you are providing quality information and that is the sticker here.

Aside from that, it is the best way for a newbie to get some traction in the search results and see return for effort more quickly. Non exact-match domains can rank too but they take a lot longer and are more work as a result.

Choosing your domain (seed) keyword

When choosing this keyword it is vitally important that you:

• Make sure it has at least 500 exact US searches per month, and possibly even 1000 minimum if you can swing it. It is no good wasting the extra leg-up in the results by choosing a keyword that gets 91 searches a month. You could do it this way but domain purchases and renewals would get expensive very quickly, as would the amount of work required to get each site setup and ranked.
• Make sure it is relatively generic. Remember, this is for your homepage post. Bestjoggingheadphones.com gives us room to post individual product reviews whereas SennheiserIE8joggingheadphones.com doesn’t. We need to keep it tightly themed but expandable at the same time.
• Don’t get too concerned if the exact match domain.com/net/org are all registered. Simply by tacking on a suffix you can still get great results. For example Bestjoggingheadphoneshq.com or Bestjoggingheadphonesx.com or Bestjoggingheadphonesreviewed.com
• Make sure you avoid brand names. You can register them and run the gauntlet but you face possible legal action from the company for trademark infringement, especially if you start ranking ahead of them in the search results (though with the recent Google favouritism towards brand names, this would be even more difficult).
• Make sure that you can rank for it in the first place. This will be addressed in the next post, which I will link to when complete.

Choosing keywords for product pages

When choosing keywords, you want to stay as themed as possible. By that I mean if your site is about headphones then you don’t start diverging into earbuds, sound systems or music players. Google likes it better that way because they can crawl, categorize and rank your site with more accuracy and efficiency, or so they say.

Nick and I are making sites that are targeting mostly very low competition keywords with less than 1000 searches a month, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to build something we are proud of. We want to make our sites the one-stop-shop for our chosen niche or domain keyword, and if we come across a product keyword with more than 1000 searches a month we certainly wouldn’t pass it up, but this is quite rare for saturated niches.

Keeping with my example of jogging headphones, I would ensure that there were at least 5-10 individual jogging headphone products that I could post reviews on (that had good reviews on Amazon of course). I’d also be looking for some more informational (not targeted to a specific product) keywords too, like how to keep jogging headphones from falling off your head or what are the best jogging headphones under $100.

Please note that I don’t know if those are actual searched for keywords or not, but I’m trying to give you an example of some ‘problem-solving’ informational keywords that you should add in addition to to the more stock standard Sennheiser IE 8 review keyword which every man and his dog is probably going for.

Product comparison keywords work well too, such as Sennheiser IE 8 vs Sennheiser HD650 for example.

I believe that it just looks more authoritative to Google and lets them know that you aren’t just trying to review products to make money. You should endeavour with these sorts of keywords to at least make a few posts that are free from affiliate links. Your readers will appreciate not being sold to all the time and it only stands to make your site look more credible to Google too.

If you can’t find any of these keywords in the list I suggest you search for forums and see what problems people are having or talking about. If I was actually targeting the headphones niche I would have no problems with this because there are thousands of people talking about them and obsessing with them all over the net.

As a music lover I can feel their obsession with wanting the best headphones to enhance their music listening experience. I can also feel their frustration at having to choose from so many different models. Try and get inside the head of the people in your niche and address their concerns, fears and frustrations. That subject is probably for another post though.

Though, don’t try and be Mother Teresa here, my point is to pick a small sub-segment of the headphones niche and do all you can to help that segment only, for now anyway!

Choosing a seed keyword in the headphone niche

With the above in mind, you also want to base your seed keyword somewhere around 500-3,000 searches a month, with exact searches selected of course.

This is generally the sweet spot where keywords are not too difficult to rank on the high end but not a waste of time or thematically constrictive at the low end either.

Below is but a small segment of the 761 keywords I was returned for the term headphones.

As I look through the list I can see a number of great keywords – very general, with plenty of room for expansion. You would not have to know anything about headphones to realise that the keyword best running headphones would have several products to review, if not more.

Of course, they appear great on the surface but you need to make sure you have at least 5-10 products to promote and a good mix of what I call ‘informational’ keywords too.

The competition also needs to be assessed which I was going to cover in this post but I think I will split the keyword research section up into 2 parts because this post is getting lengthy as it is.

If you are following along with this challenge then I suggest you make a shortlist of 10 or so seed keywords in your own niche, or you could even use the headphones niche if you so desired. There is money to be made there.

You don’t have to pick the first 10 that come to you, just look around for something you might be interested in developing a site about where there is room to expand and products to promote.

In Amazon Assault 2012 Post 4b I will take 10 keywords from the list and assess them for competition, and make a final decision on which keyword I would choose and why.

I’ll also look at picking product keywords too, but the methods are much the same once you have determined that it is a worthy product to promote.

Stay tuned and please, if I have left anything out or you want to ask a question or comment, then I’d love for you to do so!

Thanks!

“When you do nothing, you feel overwhelmed and powerless. But when you get involved, you feel the sense of hope and accomplishment that comes from knowing you are working to make things better.

- Pauline R. Kezer – author.

First off, apologies to all of the cat lovers out there (I am one myself!).

Secondly, how on Earth do you choose a niche?

Your passions (a double-edged sword)

Most people will be inclined to tell you to go after your passions, but this is not always the right way to go.

Speaking from a purely personal point of view, I started a site in the photography niche because it was my main passion at the time.

I had a hard time making sales with that blog because there are a lot of established players in that market and even when I did make the odd sale, I was at the mercy of the flat 4% on commissions that Amazon offers on electronics.

Some of my other hobbies (cricket, barely even heard of in the USA) and storm chasing (a limited market with few marketable products) did not fit the ideal Amazon niche blueprint either.

Furthermore, not all products can be considered linked to hobbies, such as vacuum cleaners for example. There are just some products out there that you buy out of necessity rather than pure interest or passion, but you still want the best one for your needs of course.

Balancing your passions with profitability

The best way to find a niche that is going to be profitable for you in the long term is to find a niche market that you have some sort of interest in - where there is money being spent.

You don’t have to like every niche you go into, it isn’t a requirement. I couldn’t give two hoots about most of the niches I’m in, but I can put my interests aside if there is money to be made.

I do recommend that you have at least have 1 or 2 sites in your eventual portfolio where you can write regularly about a topic with flair and interest, and be able to write most of it from your head like I am doing now.

If you are following along with this challenge and haven’t ever built a site then I definitely recommend that you choose something you are going to be able to follow through with and not get bored, just to give you that little extra chance of success.

What makes a good niche?

The best niche always starts with a product. I always find a product first before finding the niche as I may not have known the niche existed before coming across the product.

I should also point out that you won’t really know how good a niche actually is until you start driving traffic to your site, but you can get a pretty good idea by considering the following:

1. Does the Amazon product have a high average review count? I usually go no lower than 4 stars.
2. Does the Amazon product have at least 10 reviews? You want to know that people are actually buying it and that the product has at least some degree of interest among consumers.
3. Is the product priced at $100 or over? The lower you go the less commission you make.
4. How many searches per month does the product receive? While the Amazon Assault 2012 challenge is about dominating keywords with a low search count, we still want to make sure that there are more than 28 people in the whole world searching for it. Anything over 500 searches a month I will seriously consider, and that is US, exact match, monthly searches.
5. Are people buying it from Amazon? If you look at the customer reviews under the product you will see Amazon Verified Purchase at the start of their review.  If you see a high proportion of these skimming through the reviews section you can be confident. The reason I check for this is that occasionally a rather party-pooping Amazon reviewer will tell everyone that the product can be found cheaper elsewhere or that Amazon don’t ship the right model or honour the warranty or whatever.
6. Are there related products that you can promote? You need to find a niche where there are plenty of other products from other manufacturers that you can compare, review and contrast on your blog. I don’t review one product per domain but rather a collection of the best performing products in a certain niche.
7. Avoid electronics and computers if you can, at least initially. The temptation might be to go where the high ticket items are but there are plenty, and I mean plenty, of good niches elsewhere.

Sell what people are buying – trends and seasonality

I always endeavour to pick products that are being bought all year round. I don’t promote Halloween costumes because they are only really being bought for a month or two of the year (also because I don’t celebrate Halloween here and the commissions on a $30 costume are low).

I also wouldn’t try and sell snow throwers during the American summer or pool related products during winter. Not all of the US has a harsh winter of course, and there is nothing inherently wrong with picking a seasonal niche, if you are prepared to go certain months of the year without much revenue.

To assess these trends go to Google Trends and bookmark it for future reference. Enter your keyword and see what comes up.

Have a look at what came up when I entered the terms “snow throwers” and “pool products“:

Both have clearly defined seasons. The red of pool products clearly peaks in the summer and conversely, snow throwers in blue has a very short season (around 3 months) during the winter months.

If we take a look at the keyword “home gym equipment” we can see a much more stable pattern throughout the year. Obviously there are defined troughs and peaks but the demand never dips away to close to zero. No doubt the marked rises after the new year are a result of the classic “I’m going to get fit this year” resolution.

As always, your decisions will be based on personal circumstance. If it were me I’d start off with a much more stable search base. I would hate to spend the whole winter getting a snow removal product blog ranked and only see it actually get to the #1 spot after winter was over.

Some examples of great niches

I don’t feel at all bad about giving out general niches, because there are so many searches and so many ways that you can muscle your way and take your slice of the pie. Good niches are generally those that have products which are required all year round or have a solid supporter base of enthusiast hobbyists.

Some of the niches that I have personally made money from are:

• Household items – vacuum cleaners, coffee machines, utensils, cookware, hair dryers.
• Sports items – tennis rackets, golf clubs and related accessories.
• Hobby items – radar detectors, photo scanners, power tools.
• Baby items – strollers, diapers, car seats, mattresses, etc.

What are you waiting for?

Hopefully this has given you enough information to get started on choosing your own niche. Just remember to keep the above factors in mind before going ahead and registering a domain name.

Don’t think too hard about selecting a niche. Find out where people are spending their money and get your offer infront of them. You probably have some idea of what sells and don’t even know it. Think about how much space is devoted to particular products in a department store.

Think about what people love to buy online because it is way cheaper and that they get to take advantage of free shipping.

What about the latest hot product (or series of)? A good way to find what is popular is by searching for related forums in Google. Just type in your keyword + forum and then click on the “more” tab on the left hand side and select “discussions”. Find out what people like and what they don’t like, and what they are buying.

I will go into keyword research in-depth at a later stage, probably in the next update, and there Nick and I will also reveal the general niches that we are in without revealing our actual sites.

I thought long and hard about revealing exact sites but I want this process to be as pure as possible without traffic being diluted or misrepresented by my fabulous blog readers

Also, I have seen what happens when sites are divulged on other blogs. You get a million copy-cat sites with exactly the same content which can lead to a penalty being slapped on all concerned, innocent or guilty.

Good luck, and as always, contact me if you have any queries.

“Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now.

With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.”

- Mark Victor Hansen

Hello again, I hope you are having a good day! In this post I wanted to point out the exact elements that I will be touching on in this challenge.

This particular Amazon challenge is going to take place more or less in real time. Nick and I have not built our sites already and we are not just simply going to provide income details or go on about how good we are.

Oh no, this series is not going to leave any stone unturned.

In fact all we have done so far is choose a niche and register a domain name (I will be detailing this in upcoming posts), as I thought actually getting a domain registered was important to get some age and trust accumulating for Google and speed the process along a bit.

How long will it run?

I expect that it will run indefinitely, certainly for the whole of this year and perhaps beyond. Anything less than 6-12 months would not be long enough to get an appreciation of affiliate marketing and truly experience the peaks and troughs that come with this industry

There will no doubt be challenges along the way but at least it can be a real account of making money on the internet and nothing like the embellished claims that some make about easy money with little work.

The methodology

Like a lot of things in life, you can look at internet marketing as a numbers game. You might end up asking yourself questions like:

• How long is it going to take me to rank for that keyword?
• How much money is it going to cost, and what is the return?
• Can I afford that backlinking tool this month?

Many of us when we are starting out do not have the financial resources to seriously invest in internet marketing tools. Of course, tools can be anything that saves us time or does a job for us, whether it be an automated backlinking software, a virtual assistant or someone to write out articles for us or to install WordPress.

Not only do a good percentage of new entrepreneurs to this game not have the money to spend, but those that do have money do not know where to spend it effectively. I wasted so much money on tools when I started out that I would hate to add it up and see how much went gurgling down the drain. I bought a lot of products and tools without researching them first which I would never do today.

The products themselves were fine, it’s just that I didn’t have the knowledge to use them effectively.

But I digress.

Internet marketing is hard work and many people give up before they give it a chance, but it doesn’t have to be as hard as many people make it out to be.

The core principles of Amazon Assault 2012

• Target low search number keywords. Keywords with under 500, even under 1000 searches per month get skipped over by many marketers because they don’t deem them to be profitable. I have an Adsense site that makes around $3000 per year and the domain name keyword only gets 590 searches a month according to the Google Keyword Tool. I’d have to have missed that in hindsight.
• These keywords usually have less competition as a result, meaning we can get good rankings faster, even with relatively new sites. In some cases we might be the only sites targeting these keywords!Less competition also means less backlinking necessary to rank these posts.
• That means less money spent on backlinking tools and more time spent on quality content that will rank more because it is actually good content and less because it is average content backed up by links.
• As I mentioned earlier, this is a numbers game in more ways than one. Say for example you targeted 5 keywords that had 1000 searches a month. Get them ranking at #1 and you have the potential to be seen by 5000 eyeballs per month. It may be that these keywords are quite difficult to rank for and it might require 6 months of work and maybe $500 worth of promotional costs.

Why not look at it like this?

Instead of 5 keywords @ 1000 searches per month, why not target 10 keywords @ 500 searches a month, or even 20 keywords @ 200 searches a month?

Each gives you a total of 5000 eyeballs per month, but I can almost guarantee that the 20 keywords @ 200 searches a month will take you half the time to get ranked than the 1000 searches a month keywords, on average.

There is just very little competition because people think they are a waste of time. On the contrary, these keywords are often the most lucrative because your offer is laser targeted to what the searcher wants.

Furthermore, you now have 20 pages on your site instead of 5 which has the potential to rank for even more keyword that you didn’t even target, just because you simply have more content on your site!

The only drawback, if you can call it that, is that if you pay someone to create content your costs may be a little higher, but if you write it yourself then there isn’t a problem.

Furthermore, you should see a quicker return on your investment (time or  money) which would in theory encourage you to keep working at it as opposed to working for months and months and seeing no results.

This is  a very general summary of how Nick and I intend to make money and how it is slightly different to the majority of guides about how to make money with Amazon out there.

What you can expect in future posts

Listed below are the things that I intend to cover in Amazon Assault 2012. It is of course subject to frequent change if I think of something else I want to include or the project is delayed or interrupted for any reason.

I can’t see how it would be though, Nick and I are both fully committed to helping you and sharing our methods with you and hopefully making a little bit of extra money for ourselves.

I will come back and link to the appropriate posts once they are live on the site, so it might be wise to bookmark this page if you want to follow along.

How to choose a niche that will make you money

• What are your passions?
• Sell stuff that people are already buying.
• Assessing trends and seasonality.
• Is the market large enough?

Keyword research – choosing your keywords & example niche

• Keyword research in an example niche.
• Choosing a seed (domain) keyword.
• Choosing product keywords.
• What are exact match domains and why are they effective?

Keyword research – assessing the competition

• How to accurately gauge keyword competition.
• Examples of low and medium to high competition keywords.
• Judging every keyword on a case by case basis.
• Gathering your final shortlist of site keywords.

Domains and hosting

• Choosing your domain name.
• Exact match domains and pseudo exact match domains.
• Where to buy your domain name and hosting (coupon included).
• Linking your domain with your hosting.

Getting your site ready for content

Writing Amazon product reviews

• How to write good, useful and detailed reviews.
• Using Amazon to your advantage.
• Touching on the pressure points in the niche and becoming at least a little acquainted with the ‘culture’ of the niche.
• Catering for all types of web browsers.

On-page SEO

Backlinks – my philosophy and where to get them

Quality over quantity
Link diversity
Link velocity
Article marketing – high quality directories
Web 2.0
Guest blogging
Blog commenting
High PR homepage networks
Low PR article networks
Social bookmarking
RSS
Press releases
Google alters
Reverse engineering competitor backlinks

Monitoring conversions

Assigning tracking Ids for Amazon
Using rank tracker
Installing analytics programs

Expanding and consolidating

The forgotten SILO structure
Internet marketing mindset and getting what you want
Finding other affiliate offers
Building a list and developing a presence in hungry niches
Using small sites to leverage your income
Buying aged domains

“Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.”
Greg Andersen – American best-selling author.

So it is now 2012 and I am going to be embarking on a new journey with a bloke I met on the WordPress Goldmine forum. It is going to be hard work but a lot of fun too.

At this point you are probably wondering..

What IS Amazon Assault 2012?

Aside from a lame title to dress up the journey of two guys trying to make money from Amazon, it is:

1. A complete A-to-Z process of how to make money online with affiliate marketing, specifically Amazon.
2. 100% newbie friendly. We will be starting from scratch and Nick (see details below) is a newbie himself as far as affiliate marketing is concerned. He is a machine at writing content though!
3. Utilizing the method mentioned in the previous post by Andrew Hansen, which you can read about here if interested.
4. Not time or income sensitive or dependent. The goal is to be making money and to achieve results through consistent action.

How will it work?

The blog will periodically be updated with each step of the process that I use on my own sites to make money from Amazon. Income and progress will be updated when necessary.

Nick and myself will each start with a new domain and build it out, targeting relatively low competition keywords that will be easy to rank for (in theory!).

Obviously we won’t be giving out our exact domain names initially, because there are many copycats and unscrupulous people out there who might jeopardize the sites by stealing content which would ruin the whole point of the exercise.

Sorry it has to be like that but that’s just the way it is.

Who are the participants?

Participant #1 – Nick

As I mentioned earlier, Nick is a guy that I met in the WordPress Goldmine forum who looked like he had the work ethic and strong desire to succeed in this business. I had been looking for someone to do some sort of challenge with in 2012 but definitely wanted to take my time and make sure I found someone who would stick it out for the long term.

Via email I asked Nick some questions (an interview I suppose) for the introductory post. Here is the exact correspondence and a picture thrown in for good measure too!

Yes... Nick is a real person!

What is your location?
I’m originally from England, but have lived in south-east France for the last 12 years.

What is your occupation?
I’m a teacher in the French school system. a job I alternately love and hate!

What do you do for fun?
Spend too much time on internet! Actually, a few things. I used to play golf when I was younger and started playing again last year. I like weight-training, although my body is starting to fall apart on me; I also read a huge amount, from fiction to biography to technical stuff, depending on mood. I am also a terrible guitarist, but I must have taken it out of the cupboard about twice in the last year:(
Probably my favourite thing currently is playing with my youngest daughter (15 months)

How did you stumble into the world of internet marketing?
That’s a tricky one. In many ways, I’m the typical person trying to make a buck on the net. I’ve played with everything from surveys to sports betting via pay-to-watch ads (anyone else remember studio traffic?). I have made a  very small amount of money here and there, but more like cents (or pennies) than dollars.

As far as IM is concerned, I got a guide a couple of years ago, but did nothing with it. My first serious effort was with article marketing perhaps  18 months or two years ago. It looked so easy, but it is demoralizing (and somewhat embarrassing) to have written hundreds of articles and sold absolutely nothing.

In the last couple of months I started working at it again, and finally felt like something was coming together. I sold a few articles on iwriter and paid for a forum subscription, where some great people (like Ben) started to finally get me going in the right direction.

What are your strengths and weaknesses?

Strengths:

• Eternal optimism. I have failed a lot of times on the net. I bounce back pretty well! I really feel like this is going to work.
• I usually understand stuff quite quickly (although judging by results so far, perhaps not quickly enough!)
• I work hard. Since discovering that I could make a little from article writing (which pays for expenses in this challenge), I have written probably 300 articles. with three kids and a full-time job, you need a certain amount of drive to get it done, especially when you would rather sit on the sofa and watch tv.

Weaknesses:

• Shiny thing syndrome. I am a dreamer. I have about a hundred different ideas in my head all the time, so it is a constant effort to keep focusing on the important stuff. Once again, for me having Ben here for this (and all the rest), is a Godsend.

Apart from that, I’m perfect

Where would you like to see yourself by the end of the year?
Again, this is a tricky one to put down on paper. I’m giving this 100% and I would really like the results to match this. However, for me it is a step into the unknown. what is realistic?

I don’t know, but I’ll stick my neck out:

I really enjoy the IM stuff. I would like to be in a position to dedicate more time to it (and hopefully get even better results). I would say that I would be satisfied with 1000 dollars a month in a year. Too much? Too little? I don’t know. If it is obvious that I’m aiming too high or too low, I’ll readjust my expectations.

I have a long term goal. I would like to be able to teach part-time for the pleasure and be able to use IM for income. Again, is this realistic? I think it is. I will be giving this everything I have this year and with Ben’s expertise, I can’t see any reason why it won’t work.

Participant #2 – Ben

The reason I am not simply coaching Nick and staying out of the challenge is because I desperately need to get back on the horse so to speak. I had a pretty disastrous last 7 weeks of 2011 (both personally and professionally) and didn’t get much done.

I’m ready to jump back into things with renewed enthusiasm, much of which I have gleaned from Nick who has that spirit that I used to have when I first started out. I’d love to discover that at some point, plus I’ve always wanted to test the method we are going to use as it looks to be a really good way of making some cash.

How you can benefit

The other main reason I am doing this challenge is to finally get some activity happening on this blog, and build some sort of devoted following (I hope!) of people who might like to check back on our progress on a regular basis.

For too long has my blog been neglected at the expense of my money sites, but I really want to start connecting with people, helping people and generally conversing with other people who share my passion about internet marketing.

It has always been a goal of mine and there is no better time to start now.

If you are someone who has been struggling to make any real progress in this business or just need a no BS straightforward guide (free of charge) then you will want to follow along with us as the weeks go by.

Anyway..

This post is getting a little long in the tooth now, so stay tuned for another update in a few days.

In it I will detail:

• The exact method that we are going to use.
• How you can follow along and get a slice of the action.
• A general timeline and schedule (very much subject to change).