The Hidden Power Of Amazon. Hands Down The Easiest Affiliate Marketing Around. A Blueprint For You
I ran across this article on the Warrior Forum and I was quite impressed. I was doing a search for the most popular posts. This one came up on the first page. Over 20,000 views. The article is by Daniel Brock a brilliant young entrepreneur who has mastered marketing through the Amazon.com affiliate program. This is basically what Craig Kaye is teaching in his Info Product Killer 2010 course. See my review here. Daniel was gracious enough to allow me to republish his article here. By the way, I did not realize it until I saw his video. He looks like he is about 16! Amazing the talent that is out there. Here is the article:
“The problem a lot of newbies have with making money online is that they undoubtedly start out with CB like so many gurus suggest…
I was there myself.
The problem is, that Clickbank has hundreds of newbie affiliates joining everyday. It takes some real skill to be able to be successful with CB nowadays, so if you are new, I would highly recommend you resist the temptation that all of the Gurus out there have put in front of you.
Instead, I like to go for the easier jobs…And that is Amazon affiliate marketing selling physical products.
Let Me Explain to You Why Amazon Is So Awesome…
Simply put, Amazon IS the easiest way to make money online
* There are literally 10s of thousands of products on Amazon.
* I spent over 40 hours niche researching all of Amazon products and I still find new products to promote all the time.
* People have no suspicion about buying a physical product like they do a digital ebook – therefor no need to go through the long pre-selling process.
* Amazon is unsaturated(99% of the niches are still low competition)
* People are addicted to Amazons sales process and end up spending more than they originally plan to. A $10 purchase can turn into a $100 purchase in a blink of an eye.
* All you have to do is send traffic to Amazon to make a sale. For example, the other day I sold a $1500 playset and I dont have a single website that sells playsets. Someone just browsed through my link and decided they want to buy a playset at the time.
But Dan…I can make more money off digital product commissions!!
Yes, you can make more money selling higher commission goods like ebooks and what not. But the difference here is the amount of work you need to put in on those digital goods sites.
On all of my Amazon sites, I haven’t touched them in over 6 months now and they still earn for my like they did from the beginning. In fact, last month was my highest earning month ever at $1,200 in commissions.
With digital product sites, you have to continually work on rankings, add content, add links, etc. just to keep the same level of income.
They are not as set and forget as Amazon sites can be.
And the reason for this is because there is virtually no competition in most of the Amazon niches.
The First Thing You Need to Do Is Find a Product to Promote
There are two types of products you should promote in a 90/10% fashion.
* 90% high ticket items above $100. That gives you around $5 of commission per sale. A $300 item sale gives you about $20 in commission.
* 10% low end products to inflate your commission percent. At the beginning of the month they drop you down to 4.00% commission, so its important to sell 20 items ASAP to get it up to 6.5%
So all you do is go through each category in Amazon until you find products that fit the following criteria(for high ticket items):
* $100 or more
* 10+ reviews(This is a really good indicator whether or not the product is popular and selling)
* A star rating above 3 (no sense in promoting a crappy product)
* Has 5 or more similar products to promote(this way we can create a whole website around one type of product)
Let Me Give You a List of Products NOT to Promote
One of the most common mistakes people make when starting out with Amazon is picking the wrong niches. EVERYBODY tries the following niches when they get into Amazon affiliate marketing:
1. LCD TVs
2. Digital Cameras/camcorders
3. Luxury Watches
4. Laptops
5. Computers
6. Cell phones like iphone, blackberrys, palms, etc.
7. Any product that is easily purchasable at stores like Walmart, Target, etc. A niche like that is vacuum cleaners. Every store around has a vacuum cleaner department, so most of people buy at stores for this type of product than they do online.
The problem with these niches is everyone and their mother has a website on these items. These are the first things they think of that are high ticket items they can get a lot of commission.
What that means for you is MASSIVE competition…which is bad.
So try to find more obscure niches like:
* Grills
* Lawnmowers
* Womens Boots
Confirm The Products Are Actually Getting Searched For
All you do is run the root product name through the google adwords keyword tool.
So if we have a grill called the coleman x50 gas grill(im making this name up), run the keyword ‘coleman x50’ and ‘coleman x50 gas grill’ through the keyword tool to see the search results.
If a product has about 4000+ searches each month, I will consider writing an article on it.
Once you find 1 product that fits, go back to Amazon and try and find at least 4 more related products that also have 4000+ searches. So for our gas grill example, we would go back and make sure there are 4 other popular gas grills.
Now Create Some Articles On These 5 Products
The easiest way to do this is to summarize what is already provided to you from Amazon. They give you practically all the info you need in 99% of the products out there.
I myself outsource all of my articles to www.textbroker.com.
They are perfect for this application.
I generally like have my articles in the 300 word range.
Whether you write the articles yourself or have someone else do it, you want to include the following information:
* The Who – Who the item is for. For example, your gas grill would be for outdoor enthusiasts looking for a quick way to grill up meat patties for parties. When someone is searching for a product review, they want to make sure it’s for them. So by addressing their situation, it helps confirm it for them(which means they are ready to buy and click your affiliate link)
* The What – Basically this is the outstanding features of the product.
* The Why -You are answering why they should buy the particular product compared to something similar. You would say something like ‘this gas grill is one of the easiest to start because of its auto-start feature. Stop wasting half the day trying to get those other gas grills started’
Post the first article, and add the rest on drip feed(wordpress) so that they get posted automatically over a period of 2 months or more.
This helps keep your site active over periods of time which is great for search rankings.
A quick note about auto-generated blogs. For this method to really be effective, you need to use unique content for each article that you post. I’m sure you could make some money with this method auto-blogging, but it wont be anywhere as near as successful.
A note on how to drive traffic to Amazon.com
I have found that simple text links within the body of your article convert the highest. I havent had much luck with image ads to be quite honest with you.
For a text link, I would do something like:
“If you want to buy this grill, I highly recommend you purchase online through Amazon at this link. It’s currently on sale for 21% off only through Amazon.
Let Me Give You An Example Product Review
Here is a quick mock write up of an acceptable review.
Whether you are looking for a gift for that special grilling enthusiast, or just want it to for yourself to fulfill your own primal grilling urges, the Coleman x50 Gas Grill[affiliate link] is the perfect solution to the problem.
One of the best features of this grill is not the actual grill itself, but in the flavors of the meat it grills. Because it is an all gas grill, you never have to worry about your meat tasting like burnt charcoal. Instead, the only thing you will taste is the pure juiciness of perfectly grilled meat.
Let’s take a look at some of the features:
* Feature 1
* Feature 2
* Feature 3
* Feature 4
* Feature 5
* Feature 6
* If you are interested in buying the Coleman x50, you can get it cheap online through Amazon at this link here. They usually have it on sale there.
Compared to other gas grills in this price range, I really don’t think you will find a better piece of grilling equipment. Considering that it comes with a set of grilling utensils with purchase, the deal is even sweeter!
Another outstanding trait this grill has over others is its one of the easiest to start because of its auto-start feature. Stop wasting half the day trying to get those other gas grills started
Let me show you some reviews from current owners:
Jim Bob,
I bought this grill and it really rocks. I will never buy another gas grill again……..View the full review here: (insert link to persons review page on Amazon)
Sam J,
This grill is absolutely amazing. Nothing comes close…..View the full review here: (insert link to persons review page on Amazon)
Now Go Social Bookmark Your Main Domain
Once your first article is posted, you will want to go post it on some social bookmarking sites to help get your site indexed.
I like to use onlywire to speed up the process.
Next SLOWLY Build Links To Your Website and Internal Pages
A lot of people will tell you to build a ton of links all at once. I don’t like this idea because I like to be extremely paranoid when it comes to search engines.
I BELIEVE that they can flag your site if it just starts and gets hundreds of links within the first month.
I like to build NO MORE than 1 to 2 links per week to my main domain and internal pages.
It’s also important to rotate your anchor text as much as possible.
Here are the various linking sources I use:
* Profile Packets
* Social Bookmarks
* Blog commenting
* RSS feed submission
* RSS feed to Ping.fm <- a nice way to get some backlinks automatically as each of your articles drip feed
* Web 2.0 Articles <- just one unique article linked to an article on your site holds some really heave ranking power(just remember to bookmark your web 2.0 property to increase its ranking power and help get it indexed)
SLOW AND STEADY...SLOW AND STEADY...
Duplicate and Work On Products That Sell Well
I have learned that you are better off just focusing on one niche that you find profitable.
For awhile there I was making sites to ‘explore’ niches.
I left a lot of money on the table at first because I wasn’t improving the sites that were working, nor was I duplicating those sites.
When you find a winner, STICK WITH IT AND DUPLICATE. Create another site on the same exact niche using unique articles and just repeat the entire process.
The same goes with individual products. You will find on your niche sites that 1 or 2 products sell better than the rest of them. It makes sense to work on these ones.
Focus your link building on it and work on conversion rates for that product.
It’s about working smart.
Most Importantly….
Like all other affiliate marketing, the key is to stick with it. I can tell you right now that not all of your Amazon niche sites are going to work out for you.
I can also tell you that it’s going to get REALLY boring making these Amazon sites after you build a couple. It’s not fun…but it definitely works well, so stick with it and push through the boring times.
That’s the basics behind Amazon.com affiliate marketing. There are a lot of other clever tricks you can do to boost your conversions and traffic, but I’ll save those for another post.
I hope you all enjoyed my free little guide here.
Feel free to ask me any questions, I am more than willing to help!
Regards,
Daniel Brock ”
