in 24 Hrs ~ Why I Love Amazon Over Adsense

[cooler1]

Thanks for the info Ashera.

How much did it cost you to setup your private blog network and what are the monthly costs for running it? Also, where did you learn about how to go about setting it up?

[Ashera]

Originally Posted by Mosa

Nice job Ashera! We've been thinking about jumping into using amazon to supplement our adsense and your post was very inspiring. Do you have a blog?

Thanks - I don't have any internet marketing blog - besides my basic one on my website design/seo company site, and that's more or less just basic information.

I do intend to eventually package all the information I provided here into a simple PDF and will most likely just release it was a free package for all War Room members - but no time frame or estimate when that will happen.

Originally Posted by cooler1

Thanks for the info Ashera.

How much did it cost you to setup your private blog network and what are the monthly costs for running it? Also, where did you learn about how to go about setting it up?

No problem! It cost me around $800 for all the domains initially (but I bought these over time). It's around $500 each year to renew them. Hosting runs me quite a bit - I think its something like $300 a month combined. But because I am able to rank most of my sites so easily with it I feel it's completely worth it since I make it all back in a day or two.

I didn't learn anywhere specific. I've never actually purchased any WSO, besides software itself. Just from reading around, other peoples experiences, and Google. In my entire time of having my network I've only had ONE site de indexed and I still have no idea why.

[Mosa]

Do you utilize any tools like Chris Guthries easyazon plugin to help you with your amazon product posting?

[Ashera]

Originally Posted by Mosa

Do you utilize any tools like Chris Guthries easyazon plugin to help you with your amazon product posting?

Every site I make is done using the Weaver II Theme customized to my liking (free version in Wordpress theme directory works fine ), and the free plugin Amazon Product In a Post, with simple css customization to make it work for my needs.

I'm not familiar with that plugin, but what I use works perfectly if you are building these sites manually like they should be built.

[Mosa]

I noticed earlier you mentioned that you use your own private blog network. How big have you grown that network to? I've also been heavily considering doing this in the next month or so to help give all my sites that extra boost.

[MrLeaVelle]

Originally Posted by Ashera

Weird, my post was deleted. I can't use AdWords for my sites because they get rejected by linking directly to Amazon Referral from home page.

Damn... That sucks. So basically, if i created amazon sites, i wouldn't even be able to promote them with my current traffic method?

How lovely is that?

so is SEO your main traffic source?

[Ashera]

Originally Posted by Mosa

I noticed earlier you mentioned that you use your own private blog network. How big have you grown that network to? I've also been heavily considering doing this in the next month or so to help give all my sites that extra boost.

I think the exact number of domains in my network is 53 at the moment.

Though I do have access to a friends network of another 30 something domains as long as my sites fills some of the niche categories.

We both don't just throw random unrelated stuff on a page to protect the integrity of it, which is why I choose to focus on about 6 different niches, though I do expand occasionally out of my bubbles.

Originally Posted by MrLeaVelle

Damn... That sucks. So basically, if i created amazon sites, i wouldn't even be able to promote them with my current traffic method?

How lovely is that?

so is SEO your main traffic source?

I think you might be able to if you don't link to Amazon from the home page, but I'm not 100 percent sure. AdWords is not my forte.

Organic traffic accounts for 90 percent of my traffic while 10 percent comes in from videos, articles, and random places.

[Mosa]

Do you use some linking from one of your amazon sites to the next? Or are all 40 of your sites standalone and in completely different niches?

I know i'm asking a lot of questions, but you seem to be answering them so quickly

[MrLeaVelle]

Originally Posted by Ashera

I think the exact number of domains in my network is 53 at the moment.

Though I do have access to a friends network of another 30 something domains as long as my sites fills some of the niche categories.

We both don't just throw random unrelated stuff on a page to protect the integrity of it, which is why I choose to focus on about 6 different niches, though I do expand occasionally out of my bubbles.




I think you might be able to if you don't link to Amazon from the home page, but I'm not 100 percent sure. AdWords is not my forte.

Organic traffic accounts for 90 percent of my traffic while 10 percent comes in from videos, articles, and random places.

You mind sending me the link to one of your sites. I want to see if their any reason why adwords would disapprove the ad. you dont have to if you want to keep your niche secret. Id understand.

[Ashera]

Originally Posted by Mosa

Do you use some linking from one of your amazon sites to the next? Or are all 40 of your sites standalone and in completely different niches?

I know i'm asking a lot of questions, but you seem to be answering them so quickly

No problem, I don't mind. Don't have dinner plans for a couple hours.

I do link to a maximum of 3 random sites from each site, as long as they are in the same or similar general category. Obviously I wouldn't link to my vacuum site from my school supplies site - but I might link to my curtains site from my vacuum site, since they are both in the category of home improvement.

Originally Posted by MrLeaVelle

You mind sending me the link to one of your sites. I want to see if their any reason why adwords would disapprove the ad. you dont have to if you want to keep your niche secret. Id understand.

No reason to send a link, Google themselves told me why.

" As you know, we are deeply committed to providing a high-quality user experience for search results, both organic and paid. To that end, we regularly review sites and landing pages to ensure they adhere to our advertising policies.

We noticed that one of your URLs was recently flagged as against policy, and as a result we are not displaying ads for that site. Please note that the affected URL will not receive ad traffic and all new ads pointing to this URL will be disapproved.

The name of the policy is: Bridge page
More information about this policy, including how to correct problems: http://support.google.com/adwordspol...&answer=190435 "

What I find most interesting is that AdWords policies consider my site to be unuseful, yet I rank organically just fine.

[Mosa]

Yea, that makes sense. Well i'm really hoping to dive pretty deep into amazon and build my portfolio. So far we've been growing at a great rate with adsense. Our strengths have really been in keyword research so i'm thinking that it will all translate well into amazon. Right now were working with magic submitter to build links, and it seems to be doing it's job, but I'm sure that moving towards building some high pr blog networks would really top us off for some serious backlinking juice.

[Ashera]

Originally Posted by Mosa

Yea, that makes sense. Well i'm really hoping to dive pretty deep into amazon and build my portfolio. So far we've been growing at a great rate with adsense. Our strengths have really been in keyword research so i'm thinking that it will all translate well into amazon. Right now were working with magic submitter to build links, and it seems to be doing it's job, but I'm sure that moving towards building some high pr blog networks would really top us off for some serious backlinking juice.

I do think they do absolute wonders for SEO if done correctly. I know there are some WSO's about building one- find a trusted and reputable Warrior and grab one of them. It's a lot of work, but worth it.

[MrLeaVelle]

Originally Posted by Ashera

No problem, I don't mind. Don't have dinner plans for a couple hours.

I do link to a maximum of 3 random sites from each site, as long as they are in the same or similar general category. Obviously I wouldn't link to my vacuum site from my school supplies site - but I might link to my curtains site from my vacuum site, since they are both in the category of home improvement.




No reason to send a link, Google themselves told me why.

" As you know, we are deeply committed to providing a high-quality user experience for search results, both organic and paid. To that end, we regularly review sites and landing pages to ensure they adhere to our advertising policies.

We noticed that one of your URLs was recently flagged as against policy, and as a result we are not displaying ads for that site. Please note that the affected URL will not receive ad traffic and all new ads pointing to this URL will be disapproved.

The name of the policy is: Bridge page
More information about this policy, including how to correct problems: Bridge page - Advertising Policies Help "

What I find most interesting is that AdWords policies consider my site to be unuseful, yet I rank organically just fine.

Yeah... That same thing happened to me. I just wanted to see, because i wanted to avoid how the site was setup. But i think they just dont like to send traffic to sites that are monetized.

[paulgl]

Ashera, not bad. You do what works. Ditch one,
go for the other. I myself do both. Your post
certainly should certainly get some people off
their butts.

I do pretty good with amazon on squidoo. You may want to
try that.

But here is some reality for others. Many people that are
not successful with adsense try and do bad things.
You can't do that with amazon. That is, you
need traffic. Targeted traffic. That takes hard
work. And you cannot fake a sale. If you go into
amazon with some get-rich-adsense mentality, you
will fail.

And this thread is not about google. Or at least it should not
be. People need to know that amazon and google are
partners in more ways than one, from kindle to
blogspot, and all points in between.

I can't wait for the
Amazon is a monopoly and they are killing me! threads.

Paul

[Ashera]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Ashera, not bad. You do what works. Ditch one,
go for the other. I myself do both. Your post
certainly should certainly get some people off
their butts.

I do pretty good with amazon on squidoo. You may want to
try that.

But here is some reality for others. Many people that are
not successful with adsense try and do bad things.
You can't do that with amazon. That is, you
need traffic. Targeted traffic. That takes hard
work. And you cannot fake a sale. If you go into
amazon with some get-rich-adsense mentality, you
will fail.

And this thread is not about google. Or at least it should not
be. People need to know that amazon and google are
partners in more ways than one, from kindle to
blogspot, and all points in between.

I can't wait for the
Amazon is a monopoly and they are killing me! threads.

Paul

Thanks Paul - that comment is appreciated from you. I've never really tried to monetize my Squidoo's and used them more for back linking - but I do need to broaden my horizons because I know I rely way too much on Google for my traffic and revenue and that's a ripe setup for failure.

[nik0]

Very usefull thread, personally I'm a total noob with Amazon. I once purchased freshstorebuilder but it's so spammy that it just can't rank.

Couple questions:

• How do you present the Amazon products at your site?
• How many products/links per page?
• Do you copy reviews from Amazon to your site?

[giseo]

Focus on what works and scale it.

[Lyanna]

Thank you. That tip about Amazon Product in a Post plugin looks real good. I will try it.

[Ashera]

Originally Posted by Lyanna

Thank you. That tip about Amazon Product in a Post plugin looks real good. I will try it.

No problem! If you do use it - make sure to go to options, and once you've filled out all the info put a checkmark next to "Open Product Link in New Window?" and "Use My Custom Styles?:"

Add these two lines of CSS above all the CSS they have already there.


td.amazon-used { display: none !important; }

td.amazon-used-label { display: none !important; }


It get rids of the "used" pricing option which looks very tacky and confuses buyers in my opinion.

[johnnyflex]

Thanks Ashera. I think im gonna try amazon again. I used to have a medical sites which has amazon products but unfortunately, the site got slapped from the last 3 panda updates. I agree, amazon is good as i was earning that good before but now i went discourage after google slapped my site. By the way, how many links you do everyday for your sites to get that #1 spot?

[Ashera]

Originally Posted by johnnyflex

Thanks Ashera. I think im gonna try amazon again. I used to have a medical sites which has amazon products but unfortunately, the site got slapped from the last 3 panda updates. I agree, amazon is good as i was earning that good before but now i went discourage after google slapped my site. By the way, how many links you do everyday for your sites to get that #1 spot?

Do it! It's so exciting waking up to see the power of that "cookie." I think maybe 50 percent of the products I receive commission on are products that I've actually reviewed. The rest are just random products from people on my cookie who have clicked my link.

In regards to backlinks - very few to be honest. The majority of my sites have an average of 100-500 backlinks, but they are 80 percent really high quality. I honestly don't link build for weeks at a time for certain sites because my profile is so strong due to my blog network and manual web 2.0s.

[johnnyflex]

Originally Posted by Ashera

Do it! It's so exciting waking up to see the power of that "cookie." I think maybe 50 percent of the products I receive commission on are products that I've actually reviewed. The rest are just random products from people on my cookie who have clicked my link.

In regards to backlinks - very few to be honest. The majority of my sites have an average of 100-500 backlinks, but they are 80 percent really high quality. I honestly don't link build for weeks at a time for certain sites because my profile is so strong due to my blog network and manual web 2.0s.

By the way, in your blog network, what kind of links you put? is it a sitewide blogroll, or is it just in a post?

[Ashera]

Originally Posted by johnnyflex

By the way, in your blog network, what kind of links you put? is it a sitewide blogroll, or is it just in a post?

Most of them are contextual in posts - all unique content on every site. I talk more about it in some of my previous posts in this thread- I know it's all a lot of posts to go through. I do the occasional blogroll but I never use my main keyword as my anchor if I do.

[CatherineMay]

Ashera, thank you so much for this thread. I also have Amazon sites, but am just up to about $50-$90...per month. I have a long way to go to get to the level I want, which is that much per day. When I get to that point, then hopefully what you are making per day will not seem as out of reach as does a trip to Mars.

My question at this point is about leaving a footprint and hosting. Do you have a limit as to how many sites you have on one hosting account? Are the sites you have on your personal blog network on different IP addresses? I realize your friend helps you out, but what about the work you do yourself on your own computer?


Catherine

[Ashera]

Originally Posted by CatherineMay

Ashera, thank you so much for this thread. I also have Amazon sites, but am just up to about $50-$90...per month. I have a long way to go to get to the level I want, which is that much per day. When I get to that point, then hopefully what you are making per day will not seem as out of reach as does a trip to Mars.

My question at this point is about leaving a footprint and hosting. Do you have a limit as to how many sites you have on one hosting account? Are the sites you have on your personal blog network on different IP addresses? I realize your friend helps you out, but what about the work you do yourself on your own computer?


Catherine

Catherine - just stay at it, and stay motivated. This is over 2 years in the making.

In regards to your question- I have hosting spread across like 24 different hosting companies, and I think its almost 1 IP per domain. A few of them are on SEO hosting, but it's the higher end $6-8 per IP ones.

I manage my blog network through a large subscription to to ManageWP - a great resource.

The html sites I use HMA Pro VPN when uploading files via FTP. I'm very careful.

[visimedia]

It's a good posting dude. I think you target the right keyword for the amazon. I tried amazon once, and I will try it again after I read this. Keep it up, and wish you all the best !!

[shaunD]

Congrats ... ! What is ur conversion ratio with Amazon ?

[Ashera]

Originally Posted by shaunD

Congrats ... ! What is ur conversion ratio with Amazon ?

6.31% in the last month - but I get between 600-900 clicks every day.

[Rich Ray]

thanks for this report for inspire me about my blog.

[Bryan V]

Hey Ashera, nice share!

I just had some questions about how you set up your sites up.

Are you just targeting your root domain whether its 1KW or 2-5 KWs? and randomly deep linking for the sake of the link profile?

You mention you use about 100-500 links per site. When you do actually bump it up to 500, what kind of spread do you use in terms of link types? I would imagine the bulk to be web 2.0, but it still seems pretty steep in terms of costs.

I'm also curious to know what you took away from your biggest Amazon site failures.

thanks man

[Bryan V]

You seem to be downplaying (maybe not) the importance of the product reviews. Looks like your homepage has links to each review, then at the bottom there are some images + excerpts for maybe a few of the products only.

Have you any idea what % converts on the homepage vs. review pages?

[Ashera]

Originally Posted by Bryan V

Hey Ashera, nice share!

I just had some questions about how you set up your sites up.

Are you just targeting your root domain whether its 1KW or 2-5 KWs? and randomly deep linking for the sake of the link profile?

You mention you use about 100-500 links per site. When you do actually bump it up to 500, what kind of spread do you use in terms of link types? I would imagine the bulk to be web 2.0, but it still seems pretty steep in terms of costs.

I'm also curious to know what you took away from your biggest Amazon site failures.

thanks man

Hi Bryan - I do only target the root domain and randomly deep link just for the sake of link profile. I've never really had success in ranking product names, and I'm not the type of person who goes after 10-20 different keywords that each get 20-100 searches - though I know that practice does work.

When I do bump it up to 500 (which is only on my sites that I've had since the beginning) it's a variety of web 2.0 profiles, manual social bookmarks, manual blog comments, and some guest posting.

Your last question is a great one. Probably the most important thing I've learned is something I shared about in another post - just because I'm ranking doesn't mean I will have high conversions.

One of my sites in the beginning was getting something like 75 uniques a day - and only 1-2 clicks to Amazon. Why? My product reviews were boring, dull, and generic.

Nowadays my secret is this: I do is what I call taking on a "persona". I tell my writer what type of personality to take on.

For instance on my site that is focused mainly on vacuum cleaners I'm a mom with two kids and a dog. In the product reviews I will say things like "this is great for cleaning up those bowls of cereal and all that pet hair on the couch." or "this vacuum is so quiet I can use it in the same room when my infant is sleeping."

If I'm selling different types of tools, I would take on the role of a mechanic or something similar. I would say things like "this things great whether the wife wants me to fix our broken sink or if I'm working on my truck."

Adding personality and a human voice to the site and to the products increases my conversion tenfold.

[Chris-]

I find the same, Amazon affiliate work, if well done, can make more money for the same effort, compared to AdSense. BUT I'd also say that making money with AdSense is a lot easier, for newbies. Writing a really good Amazon product report is not as easy as writing a general article, and in terms of outsourcing good Amazon product reports would cost many times that of general articles which will make money from AdSense.

So, I'd personally advise a newbie to make some money with AdSense to start with, and learn some things about IM, then move on to Amazon a bit later, as it requires a bit more in terms of keyphrase research, and product report writing etc. Having said that, both approaches are certainly viable for a newbie who's willing to take the time to learn some details.

So, if you want the quickest and easiest way to get your first income from IM, I'd say AdSense is easiest (see my Sig for details!), and the initial experience of success in IM is a big boost so I'd say get to that initial success and some earnings, as quickly and easily as possible, then go for slightly more involved systems such as Amazon.

Chris

[Ashera]

Originally Posted by Chris-

I find the same, Amazon affiliate work, if well done, can make more money for the same effort, compared to AdSense. BUT I'd also say that making money with AdSense is a lot easier, for newbies. Writing a really good Amazon product report is not as easy as writing a general article, and in terms of outsourcing good Amazon product reports would cost many times that of general articles which will make money from AdSense.

So, I'd personally advise a newbie to make some money with AdSense to start with, and learn some things about IM, then move on to Amazon a bit later, as it requires a bit more in terms of keyphrase research, and product report writing etc. Having said that, both approaches are certainly viable for a newbie who's willing to take the time to learn some details.

So, if you want the quickest and easiest way to get your first income from IM, I'd say AdSense is easiest (see my Sig for details!), and the initial experience of success in IM is a big boost so I'd say get to that initial success and some earnings, as quickly and easily as possible, then go for slightly more involved systems such as Amazon.

Chris

Chris you make some good points - but in my opinion I don't see a huge difficulty difference between writing 600 words for an AdSense site (where you'll be researching something and putting it in your own words) or writing a 600 word Amazon Product review (where you'll be researching the Amazon page and other sites to write a product review in your own words).

That's just my opinion though. I've done both from the start - and before I outsourced my articles I wrote them all myself. I actually found writing compelling Amazon reviews easier than writing a boring 600 word rant on acne or the latest dental fad.

[Ashera]

Originally Posted by Bryan V

You seem to be downplaying (maybe not) the importance of the product reviews. Looks like your homepage has links to each review, then at the bottom there are some images + excerpts for maybe a few of the products only.

Have you any idea what % converts on the homepage vs. review pages?

Missed this post earlier - but looks like I happened to cover product reviews in your other question.

The home page has at least 6 product reviews (excerpts and images) on it after I have the links to read review - I think this helps my bounce rate stay around 35 percent and avg time on site above 4 minutes for nearly all my sites.

I really can't tell you the exact amount of percentages of converting on homepage vs review pages - if I were to guess I'd say 25-30 percent homepage - thats just based on a brief glance of my Piwik Analytics for one site.

[jodiesmitham]

Hi Ashera,

This thread has really motivated me and many others - thanks!

Can I ask how you choose images for your posts? Presumably you don't purchase every item you review, so do you simply use the photos shown on Amazon?

Also, do you capture email addresses on all your websites? If so, what do you send them? For example, if one of your websites is about nose hair trimming you could send them details of other grooming products, but you would also need to send free info in most of the other emails. Question is, you can't send email after email about nose hair trimming, so would you even bother building a list?

[Ashera]

Originally Posted by jodiesmitham

Hi Ashera,

This thread has really motivated me and many others - thanks!

Can I ask how you choose images for your posts? Presumably you don't purchase every item you review, so do you simply use the photos shown on Amazon?

Also, do you capture email addresses on all your websites? If so, what do you send them? For example, if one of your websites is about nose hair trimming you could send them details of other grooming products, but you would also need to send free info in most of the other emails. Question is, you can't send email after email about nose hair trimming, so would you even bother building a list?

Thanks Jodie, that's my entire goal. Get people motivated.

I do tend to take images off Amazon - I'm really not sure the legality of that to be honest but haven't had an issue as of yet.

I do not do any email marketing or list building on any of my sites - for that exact reason. Plus I don't the opt in rate would be anything above like .01 percent. Why would anyone who's looking to buy a vacuum cleaner want to get a mailing list? I know I wouldn't. What am I gona do, offer them a free ebook on best cleaning methods? Haha, I just don't see a way to make it work, though I'm sure a more creative mind than me could.

[jodiesmitham]

Originally Posted by Ashera

Why would anyone who's looking to buy a vacuum cleaner want to get a mailing list? I know I wouldn't. What am I gona do, offer them a free ebook on best cleaning methods?

This is the very problem I have struggled with (for niche markets) when told that list building is so important. After the first 20 or so emails, what on earth would you send them?

[pinterest01]

i would like to say congrats for ur success...

if i may asking you a question, when u join the amazon affiliate program, do u already setup a website with product review or an empty site?

hopefully you'll share your method here to make some people like me wants to jump into amazon.

[Duy Nguyen]

Max,

again, I have to say "WOOOOW" You've over-delivered with this thread man! I love the way you reply to people with details and in a fast manner.

And I see most of the questions I asked you with my previous pm were answered right here One thing I want to ask is about the WP theme you use. It seems like there is no way to adjust the posts on homepage to display just 150-200 words of the original content then I can use the "read more" link to lower my bounce rate like you said in your previous pm.

Is there any way to go around this? Does "WP Weaver" support that by default (sorry, I haven't tested it yet, just downloaded it a few minutes ago)?

One more thing is can you share how you structure your product reviews? I want to know it as I usually aim for more than 1k words with my reviews. But I have to write everything myself and to be honest, it's hard and frustrating to write about things I don't like much

And I really like your idea of documenting this thread into a handy PDF file. Too bad, you intended to give it to war room members only lol

Duy.

[Lares]

Well i had to do Sherlock Holmes stuff.

Hello Sarah!

[stevo235]

You put a "click here to read more" on each individual product on the homepage and that links directly to amazon from your homepage?

[retroslice]

Great thread thanks for sharing.

So you are basically picking keywords with low competition and between 1k-4k exact searches?

Do you check how many competing pages in google, or any other factors?

I choose a medium competition keyword for my first amazon site. Now it is a "high" one and with 6k local searches a month.

It is in bottom of page 2 right now but I am still getting around 5-10 uniques a day with maybe 5-10% clicks to the amazon page (no sales yet).

I just tried a bunch of amazon products in adwords and it seemed impossible to find low competition ones with 1k+!

[Ashera]

Originally Posted by pinterest01

i would like to say congrats for ur success...

if i may asking you a question, when u join the amazon affiliate program, do u already setup a website with product review or an empty site?

hopefully you'll share your method here to make some people like me wants to jump into amazon.

I had an empty site when I first registered with Amazon Affiliates and built the first one from there.

Originally Posted by Duy Nguyen

Max,

again, I have to say "WOOOOW" You've over-delivered with this thread man! I love the way you reply to people with details and in a fast manner.

And I see most of the questions I asked you with my previous pm were answered right here One thing I want to ask is about the WP theme you use. It seems like there is no way to adjust the posts on homepage to display just 150-200 words of the original content then I can use the "read more" link to lower my bounce rate like you said in your previous pm.

Is there any way to go around this? Does "WP Weaver" support that by default (sorry, I haven't tested it yet, just downloaded it a few minutes ago)?

One more thing is can you share how you structure your product reviews? I want to know it as I usually aim for more than 1k words with my reviews. But I have to write everything myself and to be honest, it's hard and frustrating to write about things I don't like much

And I really like your idea of documenting this thread into a handy PDF file. Too bad, you intended to give it to war room members only lol

Duy.

Hi Duy!

I'm so glad you find it helpful. I just noticed I had another PM from you that I didn't respond to, it must have gotten marked as read and I never saw it - I will check it in a minute and make sure if I haven't answered anything to respond to it.

Someone right before this post mentioned- you just use the read more button (which is to the left of the spell check button) and place it after the 150-200 words and it will automatically generate the excerpt on the home page.

My product reviews are usually structured like this:

• Intro to the product
• Description of product
• Benefits of product
• Comparison to other products I reviewed or other products in its niche
• More Features of product
• Call to action

If I do write something negative about it it's usually trivial. I'm not a fan of doing pros and cons- plus every product I choose to write about already has at least a 4 star review on Amazon so I let that do the selling for me!

Originally Posted by retroslice

Great thread thanks for sharing.

So you are basically picking keywords with low competition and between 1k-4k exact searches?

Do you check how many competing pages in google, or any other factors?

I choose a medium competition keyword for my first amazon site. Now it is a "high" one and with 6k local searches a month.

It is in bottom of page 2 right now but I am still getting around 5-10 uniques a day with maybe 5-10% clicks to the amazon page (no sales yet).

I just tried a bunch of amazon products in adwords and it seemed impossible to find low competition ones with 1k+!

Competing pages in Google means absolutely nothing to me. I've seen keywords with like 300k competing pages with absolutely difficult competition. All that matters to me is how difficult it is to get top 3.

I've never been able to use AdWords for my Amazon sites as they are all rejected for being bridge pages.

I personally don't bother with any high competition keywords because of the level of work needed to rank for top 3. With so many sites to take care of I need to be able to rank with the most minimal amount of work possible.

[cooler1]

Earlier you mentioned you use some quality wiki's to build backlinks. Do you use any software to post to the wiki's or do you do it manually?

Also, when you submit to web 2.0's to build a backlink, does the length of the article have a bearing on the amount of link juice you get? For example, would posting an article 800 words in length give you more link juice than submitting a 250 word article.

[alistair]

This is a good thread and thanks for sharing what works for you.

I have a couple questions to do with seo really.

I know by what you have said and the image above that you have a buy now button on your posts, but how many links per post on average do you have that point to Amazon and if so are they text links and do you link your images to Amazon as well?

Also do you cloak your links at all?

Thanks.

[ddwebx]

Sorry to bother you Ashera, But I do have another question. Do you usually get the EMD, let's say the .COM, .NET, .ORG version are already taken, would you go for a .WS or a .INFO or a country version domain? Or get use something close to an EMD ?

[BTbuzz]

Originally Posted by Ashera

Tier 1 links are the links that go directly to money site, Tier 2 links go to Tier 1.

My Web 2.0 topics would cover different concepts about cameras - I would cover things like the history of Canon Camera, history of Nikon, evolution of cameras, history of cameras themselves, and stuff like that.

Great info, will be saving this thread on more study on it.

[Nathan251]

great work Ashera and thank you for being so open with sharing information

I have 2 newbie type questions

1. why do you have so many hosting accounts? you are not doing anything black hat - why not have everything on one host, you'll save a lot of cash and organisational work

2. would you only recommend amazon affiliate marketing to people residing in the usa because amazon.com is by far the biggest market. If a spanish or german or english or irish person wanted to do amazon affiliate marketing am i correct in saying they would be restricted to amazon.de or amazon.es or amazon.co.uk? Or is it possible for them to direct their traffic to the amazon.com site too even if they are not a resident in the US?

[Ashera]

Originally Posted by cooler1

Earlier you mentioned you use some quality wiki's to build backlinks. Do you use any software to post to the wiki's or do you do it manually?

Also, when you submit to web 2.0's to build a backlink, does the length of the article have a bearing on the amount of link juice you get? For example, would posting an article 800 words in length give you more link juice than submitting a 250 word article.

I don't use any software for my tier 1 links. They are done manually, at least nowadays. Some of my older sites I did more automated SEO, but as things change so do I. I usually do 2-3 posts per Web 2.0 of 400-600 words each. At least 1 of them usually has no links at all.

Originally Posted by alistair

This is a good thread and thanks for sharing what works for you.

I have a couple questions to do with seo really.

I know by what you have said and the image above that you have a buy now button on your posts, but how many links per post on average do you have that point to Amazon and if so are they text links and do you link your images to Amazon as well?

Also do you cloak your links at all?

Thanks.

I have a total of two links that point to Amazon per post. My images are not linked to Amazon but self hosted and when clicked just enlarge using WP-JQuery plugin. The two links are the "Buy now" button and a call to action at the end, like "click to read more", or "find more info here".

I do not cloak any links.

Originally Posted by ddwebx

Sorry to bother you Ashera, But I do have another question. Do you usually get the EMD, let's say the .COM, .NET, .ORG version are already taken, would you go for a .WS or a .INFO or a country version domain? Or get use something close to an EMD ?

It depends. If the EMD is available I'll take it majority of the time, but I'm not stressed by having them. I never do anything but .com or .net. I don't like ranking .orgs, and would never even consider a .info or a country version - but that's just my opinion

Originally Posted by Lares

Well i had to do Sherlock Holmes stuff.

Hello Sarah!

Hi, strong detective skills That's a network of a few sites I've built recently that I'm actually testing different methods of SEO on - I'm using a few public blog networks and some more grey hat methods and seeing how they work. Actually decent so far - but I know it won't last.

Originally Posted by stevo235

You put a "click here to read more" on each individual product on the homepage and that links directly to amazon from your homepage?

The call to action is at the end of the post, show it doesn't show up on the homepage since I have excerpts.

Originally Posted by Nathan251

great work Ashera and thank you for being so open with sharing information

I have 2 newbie type questions

1. why do you have so many hosting accounts? you are not doing anything black hat - why not have everything on one host, you'll save a lot of cash and organisational work

2. would you only recommend amazon affiliate marketing to people residing in the usa because amazon.com is by far the biggest market. If a spanish or german or english or irish person wanted to do amazon affiliate marketing am i correct in saying they would be restricted to amazon.de or amazon.es or amazon.co.uk? Or is it possible for them to direct their traffic to the amazon.com site too even if they are not a resident in the US?

1. The blog network is on separate hosts in order to increase its value. 50 backlinks from 1 IP is nowhere near as powerful as 50 backlinks from 50 ips.

2. Don't take my word on this- but from what I understand people in other countries can use Amazon.com affiliates, with a few stipulations on payouts. Theres another guy on here who I think knows a bit more about technicalities of Amazon "Gaz Cooper" or something similar. Might want to find a post by him and send him a PM.