EzSEO Newsletter # 40
Andy Williams ez SEO
ezseonews.com
Hi again.This week we will continue with our mini-series showing exactly what you need to do to create a niche site that can make you money. First though, I want to mention something that should concern you if you are building affiliate sites.
This week:
1. Commission theft?
2. Creating a Niche Site - Part II
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1. Commission theft?
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Last week I suggested you visit my new site to see what criteria I look for in affiliate programs:
Affiliate Minder
Believe me, finding affiliate programs that meet those criteria is a tough job. In fact this week I was disappointed to find that one affiliate program I promote has just hired an affiliate manager and the first thing he did was put an affiliate sign up link on the sales page.
I can see my commissions for that merchant go downhill now, especially since the product is related to affiliate marketing and most people I send to this merchant are likely to sign up for the affiliate program just to get a discount on their purchase, robbing me of my rightful commission.
Like many merchants, he gets most of his traffic via affiliates, and most affiliates are totally unaware how much money they are losing by promoting merchants like this. I did a test when I brought out my first product and included an affiliate signup link on my sales page. About 80% of sales I made were not credited to the referring affiliate - that is 80% of your commissions being "stolen".
Since that early test I made it my own policy never to include an affiliate signup link on my sales pages, because my affiliates deserve to get the commissions on sales from people they send me - otherwise what is the point of an affiliate program? It seems more and more merchants are seeing affiliates as a source of free traffic and little else. I personally use an excellent script by Adrian Ling called ezClickmate which helps protect affiliate commissions. Do the merchants you promote care about YOUR affiliate commissions? If not, why do you continue to send them traffic?
Now, just before I get a rush of people wanting to sign up and promote my products ;o), my affiliate program is only open to those who purchase my stuff - sorry. I dont advertise my affiliate sign up page. I guess you can't have your cake and eat it.
Just while I am on the topic of commission theft, a friend of mine sent me some URLs of web pages describing an even bigger problem. Maybe we can discuss it sometime, but for now, here are the URLs describing one affiliate who may be stealing your commissions. The last URL is from the forum at Abestweb where one person has documented the over-writing of cookies by this affiliate:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/167416_180folo02.html
http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/180-affiliates/
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/166909_ads30.html
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/181601_linked10.html
http://www.mediapost.com/dtls_dsp_news.cfm?newsID=259401
http://abw.infopop.cc/eve/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=548608979&f=106607689&m=220101536
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2. Creating a Niche Site - Part II
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Have you found a reputable merchant yet? Difficult isn't it?
We will continue today by looking at the next step in the process of building a niche mini-site. This step is perhaps the most important because if you get this wrong, your site will fail to get visitors, and without visitors, you wont make money.
This step is KEYWORD RESEARCH.
Most of you have probably read my Niche within a Niche report by now:
In it I show how I found over 200 keywords with a KEI over 10 and less than 1000 competing sites. This really is the method I use to find keywords for my own niche sites, so do read the report if you have not already done so.
There is little point in me repeating everything in the report here, but there are a few things I should mention before we continue. One question I have been asked this week is this:
"Is there any point in targeting a keyword with only 2 or 3 searches a day at Google?".
This question arose because a lot of the niche keywords I found only had 2 or 3 searches a day. My answer to this question is quite long, but here are a few points to remember:
1. If you intend to build a small site then there is absolutely no point targeting keywords with only 2 or 3 searches a day. You wont get enough traffic to your site to make it profitable.
2. If you build a large site (100 pages or more), then these keywords can become very valuable to you, especially when used to write articles that can target 3 or 4 phrases per article. When you consider that most of these keywords have a very low number of competing web pages in Google, this idea becomes even more powerful. In fact, many of these low search phrases have 0 competing web pages in Google. That means you are almost guaranteed a #1 position in Google. Put 3 or four of these keywords onto a web page and you might get the top slot in Google for all of the phrases from a single web page! Multiply up the traffic and you can see that these phrases cannot be ignored.
3. Targeting phrases with higher competition means less likelihood of getting into the top 10 at Google. What is the point of building 50 pages around phrases with 50 or more daily searches if you don't get into the top 30 for any of these keywords?
When I received Michael Campbell's newsletter a couple of days ago I read about one of his niche sites on barbecues. Using Wordtracker and my KRA tool that is used in my niche within a niche report, I found 1989 phrases relating to barbecues. Of those 1989 phrases, 420 of them had a KEI greater than 10 and less than 100 competing web pages (no that is not a typo, 420 really did have less than one hundred competing web pages). How many keywords from that list do you think you could get into the top 10 at Google?
What if I tell you that 393 of those phrases have a KEI greater than 10 and less than TEN competing web pages in Google. How many phrases do you now think you can get into the top 10 at Google?
What if I tell you that, 240 of the phrases have only 1 or less competing web pages in Google?
Of those 240 phrases, 11 have 5 or more daily searches at Google. With no competition you could write a single web page including all 11 phrases and probably snag the # 1 spot at Google for all 11 phrases - ON A SINGLE PAGE. The combined number of daily searches for those 11 phrases is 62. That means a single page made up of these 11 phrases may get you 60 or so visitors a day from Google (and that is not even considering Yahoo or MSN). How many of your web pages get 60 visitors a day? Now can you see the value of using these lower competition phrases?
In case you think the BBQ example and the scrapbooking example in my report are just flukes and there are not many niches that you can apply my techniques to, I did a lot of research this week on niches. Every single one I did (16 niches in all) turned up similar untapped phrases. You see most people don't bother with them because they don't see them as valuable.
Other examples:
In 30 minutes I found 76 keywords related to haemorrhoids with KEI over 10 and less than 10 competing web pages in Google.
In another 30 minutes session I found 133 phrases related to remote controlled toys with KEI over 10 and less than 10 competing web pages.
KRA-WT made this research possible.
Next week, we will discuss how to design a site that can make use of low competition keywords to get big traffic to your site.
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