Launching Your First Affiliate Campaign in 24 Hours
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David
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September 5th, 2012
Making money online requires an action plan that you can put into place. One of the quickest ways to get started is through affiliate marketing. If you have the patience and can follow directions, this may be a simple plan that you can follow. If you are looking for a quick actionable blueprint for affiliate marketing, here is a 5 step plan that can get your first affiliate campaign launched in less than 24 hours.
Choosing a Niche
The first step is defining a niche. Defining a niche is all about picking a topic of interest to further explore. The best way to do this is to do a little bit of brainstorming. If you can't come up with a topic on your own, you can go to Amazon and go over their best sellers list. Try going to a Barnes & Noble and looking over their magazine section. If you notice a certain topic is being covered by several magazines, chances are that is a hot topic to further research.
Here's a point to always remember when you are picking a niche. Go after evergreen niches. They will always be around. Therefore the work you put in today will be paying you dividends tomorrow. Finding a niche should not be so stressful. Pick a few niches to start with and then move on.
Doing Keyword Research
This is phase two of internet marketing. You have chosen a niche, now it's time to do keyword research. Pull out your favorite keyword research tool. Think of all the related keywords that are tied in with your niche. Once you have your list, enter these keywords into your keyword research tool. As you begin to see the results, take note of how many searches are coming up. Look at the global and the local monthly searches that are coming up. Also pay attention to the cost per click. You want to find keywords that have a high enough search count, but have a low enough competition level. If you are monetizing with Google AdSense, you may want to make sure the cost per click is a little high also.
Generally you want high traffic keywords, but you can look at things from a more conservative level. Try picking 5-6 very low competition keywords that get very little traffic, but together they add up to a sizable amount of traffic. This method is often overlooked because people want to go for the home run right off the bat. As you gather the right keywords, you go on to the next phase of picking affiliate offers.
Picking affiliate offers
Picking affiliate offers is rather simple. You can join places like clickbank, amazon, commission junction, or even join separate private affiliate programs. What is important here is to be certain that the affiliate program pays its affiliates on time, and that the commissions are worth the hard work you will be putting into this venture. If your niche has affiliate offers that are worth promoting, you can then move on to the next phase.
Content creation
The internet is the king of content. Content is what makes the internet go around. This phase can be handled in one of two ways. You can either create the content yourself, or you can have the content created for you. If you are low on funds, I would suggest that you write the content yourself. If you have money to invest into your business, I would hire someone to write the content. Writing content is time consuming. If you have the funds and can outsource this part of the task, please do so. This will make your progress move along faster.
Your content should be written and focused around the keywords that you selected earlier. You can outsource the content from places like Odesk, Elance, Guru, and Iwriter. All of these services employ great writers. Just be sure that once you get the content back you submit it to copyscape. This process will make certain that the content is original. After you have your content ready to go, it's time to set up your website.
Building a Website
You have you content, now it's time to build your website. If you are trying to get this affiliate campaign off the ground fast, your best option would be to create a WordPress website. WordPress is a popular blogging platform. It's a content management system that works similar to a word processing program. This content management system is so powerful because you can publish content to the internet in record time. Once the website is setup, you can add your content to the site.
Congratulations, you have just set up your first affiliate campaign. You are now ready to start promoting your website. You are ready to start driving traffic and receiving commissions. Affiliate marketing is a great way to start earning money online without owning your own product. Pick a great niche, do your keyword research, create your content, build your website, and start promoting your website. Follow those simple steps as well as picking an evergreen niche and you will start to see your affiliate commissions roll in.