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My first plan for affiliate marketing am I on the right track?

by MrCmarketing
6 replies
Ok ive been researching and learning as much as I could the last couple of months, I have free time in abundance and ive crafted a first plan to get started learning some vital skills in internet marketing.

I will state that I do not have thousands to get started, I do not plan to outsource content or web page design (I bought a huge book on word-press and im pretty savvy with computers, I have word-press running on Xampp already). the only thing I plan to outsource is graphics and I have a casual graphic designer on hand (and his work is brilliant) to do headers, images and banners.

Well, im trying to treat this like an apprenticeship, I figured a good place to start would be to create a squidoo lens, logially speaking; im not interested in making thousands from it but its merely a method of testing keywords and phrases I have picked (My research on keywords needs improving still), to hone my skills on writing articles (Ive read various warriors slag squidoo off for removing content, my logic dictates that good SEO starts with content and the only lens I have had un-ranked was thin on content, I have affiliate links on all four that I have made) and to try to get a lens to rank for selected keyword on google.

I have a niche area (its pretty small but in health, google states my main key phrase has approx 35k searches a month)

I have just built a lens and am looking into fiverr gigs to get a small number of social media links,
I have been using SquidUtils - Utilities and Tools for Squidoo Lensmasters to check and improve on page SEO
I have been using Ping-o-Matic! to ping my lens
and I have been using SERP Checker to check my progress.

I have 3 affiliate links to related products from click bank on my lens (I chose click bank because I am a newbie, I dont want to strut around trying to get accepted into programs when I am very inexperienced and lacking knowledge!)

I plan to learn how to get this lens indexed on page one for my main key phrase.

Am I right in assuming the SEO skills required to rank a lens on google are simplified variants of ranking a full site?

I plan to build a related site with mailing list, forums would be ideal for this niche as would a few product reviews and short helpful articles. I plan to enhance my SEO skills on this page and attempt to get it ranked for the main key phrase.

I plan to convert the squidoo lens (providing the traffic is good) to a feeder site for my main page, get as much in the way of social media feeding in as I can and reinvest any money Im making into relevant PPC

and I plan to do all this on under $100

So that is my plan, I have not done this before and I learn at my best by doing something and experimenting with trial and error. I expect to make nothing for a while but to me this is an apprenticeship (well you spend thousands learning a degree and make nothing, this is a lot cheaper!)

Does it look like I am on the right track guys and girls?

Have I covered all the basics of learning the affiliate side of IM in my plan?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
#affiliate #marketing #plan #track
  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by MrCmarketing View Post

    Does it look like I am on the right track guys and girls?
    If you'll excuse what might look at first like a "strange answer", I'm going to offer you four recent threads to read, each of which relates very closely to what you've said above. Possibly you might like to take a look at them (maybe even a long, slow, careful look?) and then think about whether using Squidoo lenses (even as a "feeder" for a "main site") is a sensible way forward for your business. And I wish you well, whatever your conclusions about that ...

    Squidoo pros and cons
    Is posting on Squidoo a waste of time?
    What now? Woke this morning to find my squidoo empire has been locked!
    Squidoo Empire, A Really Big Empire Gone in Seconds

    Personally, as an affiliate marketer, myself, I'd advise you not to put too much of your time and effort into trying to attract SEO traffic, for two main reasons: first, it's very precarious and makes your business Google-dependent, and any business that's Google-dependent is no more than one algorithm-change away from a potential accident (or even a potential disaster), as so many Warriors have been finding out over the last year or two, some of them to their very great cost; secondly, for me, search engine traffic has been uniformly the worst-converting traffic out of everything I've ever tried - search engine visitors to all my websites typically stay the least time, view the fewest pages, opt in the least often and actually buy anything by far the least often. I admit I do get tons of search engine traffic to all my main sites (because high rankings for multiple keywords happen to be a minor side-benefit of the main targeted traffic-generation method I use) but I'd hate to have to build my business much, let alone make a living, just from that traffic.
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    • Profile picture of the author MrCmarketing
      Thanks Alexa, I have researched a few other ways to get targeted traffic to a site. Ill throw a bit more research into it reading from the feedback you gave. I am a newbie and still trying to overcome the "mind-onslaught" this occupation throws at you. There seems to be a million ways to do the same thing multiplied by a million opinions on which way is best, its quite a challenge!
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  • Profile picture of the author MktCoach
    Naturally, everyone's perspective will be different. My one is that squidoo or hubpages have only a limited chance of working - particularly when using them on their own. I've used those as "feeders" for a while with mixed (rather poor) results. But it's possible that I could have done something "better" than I did.

    This said, the same techniques worked great on my own sites, typically self-hosted Wordpress.

    An thus my advice for you would be to set up your own domain, build a great WP blog, and follow the best SEO recommendations for it.

    And yes, it can easily be done for under $100 - but it will also take you longer that way. But then again, it will all be part of a learning experience on which you will eventually build your empire!
    Signature
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  • Profile picture of the author butters
    I think this post may help a little in regards to squidoo and SEO, wrote it a little bit ago now: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ne-basket.html

    Build your business on YOUR site! There is no reason why you shouldn't be publising your content on your own domain first and getting it indexed first. Also to start your own site costs you so little, you say you have thousands so invest in a domain and hosting. Namecheap for a domain, hostgator for hosting, total cost, maybe 15 bucks?
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  • Profile picture of the author CS7
    When I first started about 3 months ago I had a plan quite similar to yours, I used squidoo lenses and whatnot but to be honest it didn't work out at all. I think because squidoo lenses are not that great of a source for traffic.

    I started my own personal website about 2 weeks ago and have been having more success with that, building up your own site or blog is deffinately the way to go as once you have lots of traffic you can direct it elsewhere.

    All the best
    Chris.
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    • Profile picture of the author DeePower
      Use your own domain for your affiliate sales. Namecheap is, I think $7 a month and $10 to register a domain and Hostgator is a bit more. Squidoo has locked lenses, changed their tos and killed off revenue producing lenses on topics they now considered forbidden. They have the right to do that it's their company.

      I'd hate to put all that work into getting a lenses ranked and it's gone.

      Dee
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