The Free Micro Niche Finder Tutorial

Written by The Shops at 24Seven on Tuesday, November 10, 2009

It's been quite awhile since I've blogged, but I promise this will be worth your read.

You hear a lot from internet marketing gurus about creating niche websites. For example, it's better to create a website focused on baby blankets than it is on baby bedding in general. Mostly the reason this is suggested is because it's going to be very difficult for your website to rank on the search engines for baby bedding, but easier for baby blankets.

However, I know too many people who have dabbled with affiliate marketing only to give up because they didn't make any money. Yes, for a lot of them, they believed all the earnings lies you get in your inbox or read on those annoying pop-ups. Any affiliate worth their salt knows it's hard work. But for most of them, it's because they throw up their first website and while it's niche-based, it's still too broad. Beginner affiliates NEED to start out small. Micro-niche. I've been doing affiliate marketing on the side for years and I still go micro-niche.

I'm an Internet Marketing Manager by day, but I do have a sizable supplemental income from my personal affiliate marketing efforts by night. So, believe me, there is no get-rich-quick formula.

Let's take a look at Corner Stork Baby Gifts and the products it sells. You could look at any of our categories and make a niche website from them. But rather than create a website where it's focus is baby blankets, these micro-niche ideas would be even better.

• Pink Baby Blankets
• Blue Baby Blankets
• Chenille Baby Blankets
• Animal Baby Blankets
• Fleece Baby Blankets

Let's say that you created 5 different websites for the above 5 ideas. If you did your homework, worked hard and were able to do enough SEO (it wouldn't take much) to get all 5 of these websites to rank on the first page of Google. I know it would generate sales. No, not thousands per month, probably not even a hundred bucks per month. But, something. Enough to keep you motivated. Enough to where you've learned HOW to do it. You worked hard and now your seeing some of the payoff.

Now, here is why going smaller FIRST gives you a BIGGER advantage later. You've done the above and now you want to go after something more competitive. Since your a pro in the baby blanket industry now, why not build a site targeting the keyword 'baby blankets' or 'baby boy gifts'? No, that's not the BIG advantage. It's this. You now own 5 websites that you can instantly link to your new BIGGER website. All 5 websites are "trusted and relevant" in your niche. Google loves links from relevant websites...and you have control of 5 of them!

Don't miss my point. I share this with you to teach you how to think, not give you the perfect idea on which micro-niche to target. This strategy can work in almost any niche.

How to find your next micro-niche
There are all sorts of software you can buy to help you with this. Market Samurai is one. But, honestly, I don't use anything. I don't think it's that difficult. In closing, this is how I do it.

1. Go to a website you love or have an interest in referring their products
2. Pick a category from that website (they are usually along the left navigation)
3. Now study that category, and break a group of those products down into another level (color, size, price point, brand, model, common features).
4. That's it...build your website.

This is an example of how this looks on paper.

I picked TigerDirect.com.

Now I need to pick a category: Let's see...Camcorders!



Now, what should I use for my micro-niche website? Hmm...how can I group some of these products together? Ah, High Definition Canon Camcorders! Sweet!

I didn't even click through and view all of their camcorders. I know they have more than 3 HD camcorders and will also be releasing more. It's really that simple. Don't waste money on software.

When was the last time you cleaned up your reciprocal links?

Written by The Shops at 24Seven on Wednesday, April 08, 2009

I'm not going to get into if reciprocal linking still works and if there is any value in it. My opinion is that it can, if your very selective and work only with reputable websites whose link pages are actually indexed by Google.

Most of us already have a links page tucked down in our bottom navigation from when we first launched the site years ago. Back then we knew reciprocal linking worked. So, you just keep it down there and ignore it out of fear of losing the external links from those partners.

My Strategy

This week I was spending time looking over the sites we link to from these pages and cleaning them up. I'm noticing many of the sites no longer exist, so I kill those. Then a good amount you can tell have not been touched in years, more link brutality. I Google the links pages where are links show up to see if they are indexed. If not, kill them. What's the point of linking to them if Google never has found the link back to you?

Lastly, I killed some simply because I'm not comfortable with linking out to them. Call me paranoid but if Google views links as a recommendation, we need to be careful who we are recommending. I don't want to get labeled as a bad neighborhood. In high school, if you hung out with the wrong crowd, it was because you WERE the wrong crowd. That's my reciprocal link logic. So, spend some time in the next few weeks reviewing who you are recommending.

Seth Godin - 7 Tips for a Startup in a Recession

Written by The Shops at 24Seven on Thursday, February 05, 2009

Mashable, which I love to read, posted a video where Seth Godin gives some great advice on tips for growing your business in a recession. The basis for his advice is that with companies struggling right now, it leaves more room for entrepeneurs to fill in those gaps.

View the video below or click here.

Krispy Kreme and Spring Wedding Favors

Written by The Shops at 24Seven on Thursday, January 22, 2009

I'm a big fan of the donut, so when I hear "Hot Now", I immediately think of Krispy Kreme. Well, with wedding season starting to pick up, our Spring Wedding Favors are the hot items affiliates need to be promoting.


Using the Google Keyword Tool, we know that January and the beginning of February are the hot seasons that people are searching for spring wedding favors (see chart below).


Further, the search data on our own site, MyWeddingFavors.com, shows that people are searching for the word 'spring' twice as much as any other word right now. So, affiliates, this is the area to promote or if your not already, join us today.

Hubpages

Written by The Shops at 24Seven on Wednesday, January 14, 2009

I've mentioned Hubpages here before, but wanted to stress to make it part of your business plan. Last week the Google Pagerank for Hubpages went up to a 6, which means Google will like your site more if it has a link to it from Hubpages.

If you're not familiar yet, Hubpages allows you to create a hub about any topic. So if your website is about planning a baby shower, you will want to create a hub about that topic. Most importantly, be sure to link back to your website on your hub. I suggest only linking back to your site once per hub as doing it excessively will probably get you banned by Hubpages.

LeechBlock - FireFox Plugin to Keep You On Task

Written by The Shops at 24Seven on Monday, December 08, 2008

In a post from a few months ago titled, Start Working...Stop Checking Your Stats I talked about 7 time wasters that keep us from staying focused on growing our affiliate business. Most of the time it's our web surfing that keeps us off task.

If you use Firefox, I recently discovered a Plugin called LeechBlock. I'll let them explain what it is:

LeechBlock is a simple productivity tool designed to block those time-wasting sites that can suck the life out of your working day. All you need to do is specify which sites to block and when to block them.

Bottom line, if your one who is always wondering away from your work, you need this.

Frustrated with Affiliate Marketing?

Written by The Shops at 24Seven on Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Josh at ScrappyBusiness.com had a great post last week about being frustrated with affiliate marketing. I like his punch in the gut approach. To summarize in 2 words...work hard. I'm tired of the "get rich quick" lies around the web marketing world.

Josh outlines 11 princples to approach your affiliate marketing plan. I'll quickly summarize, but it'd be better to head over there and read it for yourself.

1. Write out your financial goals.
2. Write out a game plan.
3. Figure out what your good at and love to talk about.
4. Know what your plans of action are.
5. Know what your offers are.
6. Get your butt to work.
7. Manage your time properly.
8. Fail.
9. Set a goal with deadlines.
10. Optimize like crazy.
11. Keep educating yourself.

Facebook vs. MySpace

Written by The Shops at 24Seven on Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Using Google Trends you can see that Facebook (blue) continues to grow, leaving MySpace (red) in it's dust.

From an Internet Marketers perspective there are two things I want to share from this.

1. Did you know you can advertise on Facebook? I've heard some marketers that have had some nice success with it too. Since all the ads are behind a login and Facebook users basically share all kinds of information about themselves, you can create campaigns targeting by gender, age and location.
2. The constant growth of Facebook shows just how social the web has become. Is your website adjusting to this change? I discovered a great tool last week that allows your visitors to leave reviews (comments and ratings) for any page/product on you website. It's called JS-Kit and the best part is that it's completely free! I've tested it and love it. It adds a whole new social element to your site, giving your visitors a reason to come back.

The Art of a Targeted Click

Written by The Shops at 24Seven on Friday, October 03, 2008

A visitor to your site should be handled with care. Your visitors are busy people and they’ve trusted your site with their precious time. Ultimately, in our affiliate minds, we hope that visitor translates into either some sort of commission for you or becomes a repeat visitor. There is a wrong way and right way to handle your visitors.

When your visitors click on your affiliate link you want it to be as targeted and of the highest quality (best position to convert). Don’t make the mistake of quickly sending your visitors off to another site in hopes they convert. That’s the equivalent of crossing your fingers, hoping your business succeeds. I understand that many affiliates have the mentality of "if I can just get them to click on my affiliate links as much as possible, the sales will come." That is the wrong approach.

It is best to keep your visitors on your site if they are not going to convert. Why give away free clicks to a merchant so they can brand their sites name into the head of YOUR visitor? Foolishness! Your great content (which you do have, right?) is better used by branding that visitor with your site. You want visitors to return to your site in the future and if you just send them quickly off to an affiliate offer, your site is just a blur in their experience.

Are we clear? Now, here is want you want to do. On your product or money pages you want to qualify that click before sending them off. How is this done?

One of our affiliates, favorideas.com, is a pro at this. Take a look at this product page for one of our wedding favors.

http://www.favorideas.com/shopping/prod/BRLeaves.htm

See the button she uses? It says Buy Now. Not click here for more information, not shop now. She is telling the customer what to do. Want to buy this now? If so, this is what you need to click. They know the price and have seen the product. The obvious next step is to buy it. If the user is just browsing then they won’t click and will stay on her site. Again, you don’t want YOUR visitor browsing someone else’s site. Browsers don’t buy. Browsers build up ideas in their heads. If they find a good one, you want them to remember YOUR site so that they return later to buy it through you.

One last thing FavorIdeas.com does. When you click the Buy Now button is opens the site in a new window. This is also a great strategy because if the visitor doesn’t like what they see after the click, her site is still viewable. Yet, the affiliate cookie is still set so even if they do go back to the merchant's site, she will still get the commission.

Now go...and make your business better.

Using Your Keywords In Your Pagenames

Written by The Shops at 24Seven on Thursday, August 21, 2008

While at Affiliate Summit, one of the better sessions was by Wil Reynolds. Wil is an SEO guru and openly provides tips to better your search engine ranking. I HIGHLY recommend you watch his videos on YouTube. I've included a short one below where Wil talks about a strategy of naming your pages with the keywords you are trying to target.

We use this technique alot here. If you look at our domain names, our top keywords are in our domains.

MyWeddingFavors.com
CornerStorkBabyGifts.com

We do the same thing with our category pages. You'll see what our targeted keywords are for these pages.

myweddingfavors.com/bridal-shower-favors.html
cornerstorkbabygifts.com/baby-gift-baskets.aspx

Here is Wil's opinion on this technique.

Start Working...Stop Checking Your Stats

Written by The Shops at 24Seven on Thursday, July 31, 2008

This post was inspired by Zac Johnson who wrote a great post today on a similiar topic. To often we spend to much of our time logging into CJ, ShareASale and LinkShare seeing if we got any sales. Then you see that your balance went up and you check out where the sale came from. Now, off to see what other merchants generated a click yesterday. And we do this for all the affiliate networks we promote. Whew! An hour has gone by...

Now, don't get me wrong, reporting and analysis is critical in affiliate marketing, but...

too often we are wasting too much of our time logged into the network and not enough time working on projects.

Now, these next set of rules may seem a little hardcore for some, but I guarantee you, that if followed, you will get more work done and more commissions earned.

1. No TV watching. The biggest no-no in affiliate marketing. You will get distracted.
2. Turn off your IM. When your focused on a project, this is nothing but a distraction.
3. In line with #2, no replying to emails, especially that one from mom. Get to work, this isn't social hour!
4. No Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or other social time-waster. No matter how much you've convinced yourself that your "networking", they are called social tools for a reason. If you must be social go Digg, Stumble, Reddit, Mixx and Propel your money pages.
5. Close iTunes or at least start your play list and minimize it for the next few hours. I'll admit, I can throw on some tunes and get into a great work groove.
6. No Googling...unless it's essential to your project. Googling only leads to surfing unrelated to your project.
7. No phone calls. You have an answering machine right? You'll be OK, they can wait.

Don't get me wrong, some of the above activities are business related. But when your focused on getting a project done, they ARE distractions. You'll be amazed by how much you can get done in a few hours by minimizing distractions and focusing completely on your goal.

What Is EPC?

Written by The Shops at 24Seven on Friday, July 18, 2008

When evaluating an affiliate program it is always important to look at the merchants EPC. EPC in a nutshell is Earnings Per 100 Clicks. Here’s an example of what your EPC would be if you earned $150 in commissions off of 767 clicks.

EPC = (Commissions/Clicks) x 100

EPC = ($150/767) x 100

EPC = $19.56

What does an EPC of $20 tell you? Well, on average, affiliates earn $20 in commissions for every 100 clicks they send that merchant. If you divide this $20 EPC by 100 you’ll see that comes out to $.20 per click. This is a very helpful indicator to use when deciding whether to promote an affiliate program or run Google Adsense. Interestingly, many website owners think they are earning the most they can by just using Google Adsense. However, if they were to actually test Adsense next to a strong converting affiliate program, they would earn more by promoting the affiliate program.

I’ve found the main reason website owners like Google Adsense is because they make at least a little money every day, even if it’s $0.20. They tell me, they can count on it. Maybe so, but they are losing money. They can’t stomach not seeing any commissions for 10 days or sometimes more. We have one affiliate that was hesitant about promoting our program. They were using Adsense but agreed to test out one of our links also. For a month or so they didn’t see any sales come in. But they didn’t give up. Just a few weeks ago they generated a $632 sale for a commission of $102!

Why wouldn’t I just promote the programs with the highest EPC?

Great question. Too many times affiliates make the mistake of just promoting the programs with high EPCs. A high EPC usually means, the merchant pays well, but in a very competitive industry. The cost to promote their products is much higher than the programs with a lower EPC. Most of the programs with EPCs above $80 in Commission Junction fall into 2 categories. Web hosting and Insurance. Very competitive markets, very expensive to promote.

30-Day EPC vs. 7-Day EPC

What does this mean? It’s pretty simple. The 30-Day EPC is what affiliates average EPC is in the last 30 days. Therefore, the 7-Day EPC is what they average within the last week. Currently, in ShareASale the My Wedding Favors programs has a 30-Day EPC of $34.11 and 7-Day EPC of $38.55. Why the difference? It’s not always easy to say, but last week wedding season began its peak season.

EPCs Can Be Misleading

While an EPC is a good indication of a program, it is not a great indication. In some cases an EPC can be a skewed number. Here are some reasons:

1. A program can have an EPC of $5 (not too great). However, it could be low only because one of their affiliates is sending a bunch of garbage traffic to them. They could be launching that merchants site as a popunder. Those clicks would still be calculated in the overall EPC, even though all their other affiliates have an EPC around $15. But you’ll never see the $15 EPC, only the $5 EPC.
   
2. An EPC can also be inflated. A merchant can have a great affiliate who drives 80% of that merchants business. That particular affiliate could have an EPC of $50, while all the other affiliates are more in the range of $12. However, since most of the clicks are coming from this large affiliate, their EPC will be closer to $40.
   
3. Lastly, an EPC can be inaccurate, typically lower, only because they do not yet have many affiliates promoting them. And the ones that do, are not very good at it.

To Conclude

It’s always better to test for yourself. What converts on your site may not convert as well for someone else. EPC should only be used to eliminate a really weak candidate. If you want to promote wedding favors and the My Wedding Favors EPC is $14.72, while another WeddingFavorXYZ has an EPC of $1.50, that’s a no-brainer!

Affiliate Marketing Mistakes I Still Make

Written by The Shops at 24Seven on Friday, July 11, 2008

Paul Bourque at UberAffiliate had a good post recently titled, Affiliate Marketing Mistakes I Still Make that is worth the read and reminders. Paul has quickly become a young super affiliate at age 19! I suggest reading the full post, but here is a quick summary.

1. Getting distracted
2. Focusing on too many campaigns at once
3. Laziness
4. Not using Yahoo/MSN for PPC
5. Not split-testing

Free Affiliate Marketing Magazine

Written by The Shops at 24Seven on Friday, June 13, 2008

FeedFront is the newly released official magazine of Affiliate Summit. FeedFront is the work Shawn Collins of Affiliate Tip and Co-Editor Missy Ward. It is dedicated to bringing ideas, resources, and opinions from Internet marketing innovators to you before your next project or venture. The coolest part, right now you can get a free one-year subscription.

Can't wait to get your first issues in the mail? Click the cover below to download the PDF version.

ShoeMoney on Becoming A Super Affiliate

Written by The Shops at 24Seven on Thursday, June 12, 2008

I wanted to pass on this short video from Jeremy Schoemaker who gives some good advice on how to become a super affiliate. It's something you've probably heard, but it's a nice reminder and worth more to hear it from someone who actually IS a super affiliate.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC-yy_nSpH8

Balancing Life and Affiliate Marketing

Written by The Shops at 24Seven on Thursday, May 29, 2008

Most of us don’t have the luxury of working in our PJ’s on our affiliate marketing efforts. Usually, it is a side business that provides some nice supplemental income. Or in many cases, your working hard for very little. Whatever the case, it can be a challenge balancing your everyday life with affiliate marketing.

Though I am an Affiliate Manager by day, I dabble as an affiliate marketer by night. Here is what I do. I have a huge white board in my office with all of my current projects and tasks listed. I try to create one new site per month. For you, it may be one new site per quarter. My whiteboard currently has this written on it:

GetFootballHelmets.com – May Project

The entire month of May I am focused only on getting this site finished. Would I love to get more done? YES! But I’m married with 3 kids. At the end of the day it’s more important that I remain a good husband and father than it is getting one more website done. So, I set a reasonable goal I know I can accomplish.

Some months, my project will be to tweak all of my completed sites. By tweaking I mean making the sites better. Over time your site collects data that you need to be looking at. Does it convert well? If not, then tweak the design, layout, products offered, logo, etc…I also spending this time working on the SEO for each site. This is extremely important. If you not doing SEO, then you probably have no traffic. This is why every 3 or 4 months I just focus on “tweaking”. For more on this check out this post.

A few suggestions to keep the balance:

• Dedicate one hour per night to your site(s). Give it your full attention. Turn off the television, radio and iTunes.
  
• Dedicate one hour per week to educating yourself. Expand your knowledge, this industry is always changing. Read blogs, articles, books, etc…
  
• Keep to your time limits. It’s easy to get into a groove and lose track of time. I’m all for staying in a groove, just remember…balance. Sometimes staying in a groove too long will put you in the doghouse.
  
• Work smarter. An hour goes by fast. Don’t waste your time doing things that have no impact on finishing your project.
  
• Tunnel vision. Whatever your objective is for this month, work only on that. This is very hard to do. I always get caught up reading my e-mail or a blog too long.
  
• Keep your computer running fast. If your having to constantly wait for things to load, then you’re really only getting 45 minutes worth of work done in your hour.
  
• Plan a boot camp. These are weeks or nights when you commit your entire time to finishing up that project. Warn the family, stay up till 3am, whatever it takes! Then do the following.
  
• Take a break. Sometimes you just need to step away and refuel and unwind.

Balance is important. Affiliate marketing will always be there for you, your time with friends & family will not.

How To Get More Visitors To Your Website

Written by The Shops at 24Seven on Wednesday, May 21, 2008

If you’re a Shops at 24Seven affiliate I wanted to share with you a great idea. Recently, I shared with one of our affiliates, ForBrideandBaby.com, an easy way to grow their e-mail subscriber list. After they took my advice, within a few weeks she added over 1,000 new subscribers. Here is how you do it.

1. Run a sweepstakes. Give something away that a bride-to-be would want. It doesn’t have to be all that expensive, something like a $20 gift card.
   
2. Post your sweepstakes for free at Online-Sweepstakes.com. To enter your giveaway, users will need to signup for your newsletter/e-mail. You just got thousands of visitors to your website.
   
3. Because of the huge popularity of this site, you will get over 500 signups within a week or so. Offer something more attractive and you’ll get more signups.
   
4. It’s that simple. Don’t abuse the system. Make sure you post who your winners are, ship out your prizes, provide an opt-out, define eligibility requirements (US residents only) etc…
   
5. $20 = 500 signups. Hmmm. That’s $.04 per signup. Now you have 500+ people receiving e-mail from you (don't spam or they will opt-out) that you can use to promote our party favors, baby gifts and wedding favors.

Some may say that the quality of the signup is not that great. I would not agree with that. These people will be checking their e-mails to see if they have won anything so I’d guess your open rate would be pretty good. From my experience, I gave away 5 prizes using this method and all five of the winners responded within 2 hours from being notified.

The Bigger Picture: Now that they are a regular subscriber, you’ll want to e-mail them some coupon codes to My Wedding Favors or Favor Affair. You may even want to run a giveaway every few weeks or so and continue to post your sweepstakes on related websites.

How Do I Grow My Affiliate Marketing Business?

Written by The Shops at 24Seven on Wednesday, May 07, 2008

On Monday I had one of my posts featured on Jangro.com. While I was writing it, I had all of our Shops at 24Seven affiliates in mind. Please read.

Using Squidoo for Affiliate Marketing

Written by The Shops at 24Seven on Thursday, April 24, 2008

Do you Squidoo?

If you’re not already aware, Squidoo can be used as a great affiliate marketing tool. Squidoo users create what they call a lens (clever word for web-page) about a particular topic. A Squidoo lens is usually about a very specific topic such as funky laptop bags or Monty Python. One MyWeddingFavors.com affiliate has a great Squidoo lens on Beach Weddings.

The cool thing for you, the affiliate, is they allow you to link over to related offers using your affiliate links. Before you jump over and start creating your first lens, read these tips.

• Don’t spam. We all hate it and your visitors will too. Create a lens that is first, informative and engaging. Now, compliment it with a few (did you get that? A FEW) strategic affiliate links. Don’t be a SquidSpammer.
• Be specific. Don’t create a lens on weddings. Their is probably already thousands of those already. You can build hundreds of lenses so create a few that are targeted. My suggestions…create one about twin babies, baby shower cakes or spring weddings.
• A Squidoo lens can get great search engine ranking. A google search for cool laptop bags will find a Squidoo lens in the # 1 spot. So, when creating your lens, do it in a way that optimizes it best for the search engines. Remember to link to your lenses from your website.
• Have fun and be realistic! Creating a successful Squidoo lens isn’t going to allow you to quit your day job. However, over time a constant stream of lens can compliment your overall business income nicely. And remember, link back to your website from within your lens.

Still confused? No worries. Squidoo has a learning center that walks you through the whole process, SquidU.

-Jason Forthofer

Subtle Sells

Written by The Shops at 24Seven on Wednesday, April 23, 2008

What is the definition of subtle? According to answers.com here are a few:

1. So slight as to be difficult to detect or describe; elusive:
2. Characterized by skill or ingenuity;

Many times I hear potential affiliates say, “I don’t do affiliate programs because I don’t want to fill my blog or website with ads.” I couldn’t agree more with them. I own a few sites myself and feel a site with banner ads all over is just too loud. However, I think staying away from affiliate programs all together for that reason is a mistake. Why? One reason. Text links.

Banner ads come off as advertising (imagine that), while text links more of a recommendation. Thus…SUBTLE SELLS (unless you write it in all caps). If your site is content rich, try finding keywords in your articles that you can link to relevant affiliate products. See how that’s done:-) A visitor that is taking the time to read an article on your site is displaying a trust in you. How? Well, they are displaying enought trust in you by the fact that they are going to spend 5-10 minutes of their time reading your article(s). A subtle and strategically placed affiliate link can convert as well and many times better than a loud banner ad.