Internet Affiliate Marketing is a lot of hard work. I haven’t posted to this blog in a long time due to the fact my focus has been getting my other sites up and running. I have tried various different techniques, read a million blogs and forums, posted content, social bookmarking, backlinking you name it. All in the name of neglecting this blog. I kept waiting for the right time to write something on this blog. I have decided that I need to update this blog on a daily basis, irregardless of any progress made on my other blogs.

Keywords can be considered as the fuel source for search engines.  Search engine spider crawlers, index and rank websites by using complex algorithms based on keywords.  In affiliate marketing, using the correct keywords, is the key “pardon the pun” to getting your page ranked high and driving traffic to your website.  You can’t make money if no one knows you exist.

One of the struggles as a newbie to internet marketing is figuring out which keywords to use for your website.  The biggest mistake one can make, “I made this mistake” when first starting is not doing keyword research prior to creating a website.  When I first started I was eager to find a host, grab a cool domain name, and start building.  It wasn’t until I had created my fifth website that it dawned on me that my approach wrong. I had created these nice websites; however, I was clueless as to how I was going to drive traffic to them.  After doing some research, I realized that I had made a big rookie mistake.  Fortunately for me, the damage was minimal because out of sheer naiveness, I created domain names that either had partial keywords in them. The problem I faced at this point was that I didn’t understand how to use keywords in my post, nor did I fully the understand the concept of creating a niche with keywords.

Niches in affiliate marketing in a nutshell are subsets in a supersets.  For example, if you go to google and put in the word “Car”, you are very likely to get millions of hits for that term.  If you put in the search term “Infinity G37 Car”, the number of hits decrease.  Taking things one step further, if you put in the search term “Infinity G37 Car Virginia”, the number of hits will decrease even more. The point I am trying to make is that a “Niche”  can be defined in affiliate marketing as a group of keywords representing a smaller number of hits return from a search engine that has been culled from a larger dataset.

This is why doing keyword research prior to creating a website is so important in affiliate marketing.  By doing keyword research first, you defined a targeted audience in which your website will be based upon.  You will use a top down approach in which your keywords will be included in your domain name, title and body content of your web page.  This will give yourself a better chance of discovering a niche that should be profitable to your website if you do the right things moving forward.

I am not at liberty to discuss the methods of finding the correct keywords to find a niche, I will leave that for the experts for now.  I am two months removed from starting to learn the affiliate marketing business myself.  I am currently trying several different approaches with limited success at the moment.  The key to being successful in affiliate marketing in my opinion is that you have passion, patience and most importantly of all persistence.  I would recommend that you go to Google and search for “niche marketing” and start building your knowledge from there.

WordPress, in a word is impressive. The best analogy I can think of is that WordPress is like instant oatmeal,  just add hot water and in two minutes you got a delicious, yummy meal.  WordPress is an instant website in a box, just add a topic for a blog.  WordPress takes a lot of the headache out  of putting a website together, and if you have a programming aptitude, customizing WordPress is fun.  Customizing WordPress can be done by using a theme. By using a theme, it allows you to give your website it’s own personality. There are thousands of free and paid themes available for use. If you don’t have the need for a lot of customization, many of the free themes available should fit the bill. If you are customization fanatic like myself, themes you pay money for like FlexSqueeze “built on the premise of niche blogs” and Thesis “the best theme available” is what you should you use. The flexibility offered by the themes mentioned is well worth the money spent.

As discussed in my previous blog, I decided to use “bloggerize” my niche websites. Changing my website to blog has given me the ability to add more content in hopes of ranking better and drawing more traffic to the sites.  This will allow my niche sites become more Google friendly and it gives me an opportunity to research, learn and write about the niches that I have chosen to create websites.  It is my hope to salvage my initial niche websites by at least making enough of them to cover the cost of setting them up.  I think that alone would be a small victory for me and a step in the right direction towards making a decent living doing Internet Affiliate Marketing.

Bass Akwards is how I have been working on this blog.  I have been so wrapped up in getting my other websites up and running, that I haven’t didn’t make the time to write entries into a blog that is supposed to be my personal journal about my ups and downs entering the cut throat world of Internet affiliate marketing.  As of this moment, I haven’t made a dime and the traffic to my site is close to none.  I have made several newbie mistakes; however, I am learning from them.   I figure the best way to to tell my story is to start from the beginning and share everything that I have learned up to this point by sprinkling breadcrumbs across a series of blog entries.

I have to give credit to my wife for getting me motivated “once I started to actually listen to her” to give this Internet affiliate marketing a try.  She had been downloading eBooks and subscribing to many different affiliate marketing sites for over a year.  She couldn’t understand why I wasn’t interested considering I am an Internet geek.  As usual with most things with me, if I am not motivated I don’t bother.  However, once I am motivated at a task, I am a obsessive  compulsive driven individual.  I decided that I wanted to start my venture by using Niche Review Templates from the monthly subscription my wife belonged to.  Niche Review Templates is promoted as the easiest way to earn cash.  They build the web pages, articles and keywords. From that point all you have to do is get a hosting site, register a domain name, get a ClickBank account and sit back and count your money.  The video how-to’s were very informative.

I initially create five websites from the niche review templates, without any regard to thinking about if the niche market was profitable, SEO, content, traffic and so forth.  While I was setting the websites up, I continued doing research on my own to get a better understanding about search engines, creating successful websites, and writing good content.  The beautiful thing about the internet is that you can always peek in on the individuals who are successful to figure out what you’re trying to do.  It was about three weeks ago that I came to the conclusion that the niche review templates that I used to create websites wasn’t going to get me very far.  This isn’t a direct knock against the guys who run the Niche Review Templates website. They do give you the tools to help you get 3/4 of the way; however, there were some missing pieces that needed filling in.

The first important missing piece to the puzzle is that I should have done research prior to selecting my domain names.  I came to this realization once I began to understand the importance of keywords and their purpose.  The second thing I figured out was that if I was going to make any kind of money off the niche review websites, I needed to turn them into blogs and figure out a way to get traffic to them.  This also meant that I needed to add a crash course in learning WordPress while continuing to research to get a better understanding of Internet affiliate marketing.  My next blog post will continue detailing my journey by discussing my thoughts on WordPress and why I can never look at the internet the same way every again.

There is so much information about WordPress, tweaks to WordPress, themes for WordPress, and WordPress Hacks — “I think you get the point” on the Internet, that it becomes a distraction.  I have been working this weekend on putting the final touches to my blog when another gazillion ideas for the appearance and content of the blog occurred to me while casually browsing the Internet.  I wish there was a way to turn off the Internet while working on the blog.  Unfortunately, since I am a newbie, I need the Internet to be turned on in order to find  answers when I get stuck.   I am learning that I will have to become more disciplined in my approach in order to make this a successful blog.

My desire to get this blog up and running so that I can return to developing my affiliate marketing pages, sometimes overwhelms my judgment, and takes me a little bit off course.  I get a bad case of tunnel vision, which is counterproductive to what I am trying to accomplish.  I decided to slow down a little bit and try to make sure I do things right, so I can minimize the need for having to go back and fix things later.  The affiliate marketing isn’t going anywhere, and it’s not like I have a job to go to at the moment that would impede me from accomplishing my goal.

I have been working on finishing the setup for this blog. Trying to put a decent blog online while learning WordPress and Thesis, and while researching affiliate marketing, has been a time-consuming process.  I am excited because I am starting to get a better feel of what I want to do and how I plan to go about it.

I am sure by now that anyone who has ever browsed the World Wide Interweb “Internet”, has seen an advertisement similar to the one in the heading.  It seems so easy, you sign up,  you do some simple tasks for a couple of hours a day, and miraculously fat checks start arriving at your doorstep.  Sounds to good to be true, right?  Such a system does not exist in the format that it is being advertised.    However, that doesn’t mean you can’t make money over the Internet.  There are ways to making money over the Internet, if you are willing to put in the time and use the resources available effectively.  I discovered this after having a personal talk with someone who has been doing affiliate marketing along with PPC for several years.  I must admit before I spoke with this person, I was somewhat of a skeptic.  It was a no BS discussion, I heard about his failures and successes, and a honest assessment of the financial gains he has made over the years.  He was kind enough to give me a blueprint for some of  the things I needed to research before making the decision to try it myself.

After talking with that individual, it made me realize how naive I was about the Internet and how it works.  The knowledge that was bestowed upon me, dramatically changed the way I look at the Internet from that point on.   There is a “hazy shade of gray” method to making honest money over the Internet.  I decided that I wanted to learn more and see if I can make enough money that I can leave the rat race for good.  This is a natural progression for me, considering I am an Internet junkie, connected 24/7 and enjoy reaching out to others.   I have several ideas that I am currently researching and developing.  Currently I am stepping my big toe into the world of Affiliate Marketing, which I will discuss in detail at some point real soon.  My days of endless surfing has ingrained in my noggin that the Internet is a virtual shark tank of folks selling “sunshine” and “snake oil.”  I will do my best not to get suckered, by spending the little bit of money I do have left on a useless money making system.

My original goal was to blog and setup my affiliate marketing simultaneously.  As it turns out, there is a considerable amount of research and work involved getting starting so I had to push the blog to the side.  Therefore some of things that I am sharing, I have already done.  As of this moment, I haven’t made one red cent, and I’m still very much unemployed.  I will end things on the note for those who may be curious or starting out like I am with this quote, “Information may be Power but Content is King”.

By unofficially retired, I mean that I am getting off the corporate treadmill.  I’d much rather blog from my laptop sitting in a bar enjoying a cold beer, than be a prairie dog, or monk stuck in a closet posing as an office.  I have had the misfortune of being laid off twice this year. In both cases, I showed up for work everyday, worked long hours, did all the tasks that I was asked to do.  However,  in the end, I became a casualty of the numbers game (twice).   This time around I decided to fight the instinct of sending hundreds of resumes and dealing with stupid recruiters  and career fairs to pursue a couple of things that I am really passionate about.  I’ve always wanted to try my hand at affiliate marketing “seriously stop laughing,” but never really had the time to research and see if I could make a sustainable income doing so and also start a successful blog.

There are thousands of websites showing individuals — showing the aftermath of their success.  Wads of cash, blurred checks, fancy homes,  and cars are common themes.  I decided I wanted to be different and write about my success or failure from day one.  I have set a goal that I will be one of those guys a year from now, with the cheesy landing page, promoting how I made it.  While deciding to start this blog, I realized that this blog can serve as a very important secondary function as well.  I want to use this blog as a place where other individuals who are going through similar life experiences can drop by to share, vent, and cuss.