Affiliate Marketing … The Quickest Way To Make Money Online?
I get a lot of questions from readers, and the most common one is from people who want to make money online as quickly as possible …. preferably yesterday!
The truth is, if you want to build a business online, that is going to take time.
BUT …
It *is* also possible to find some ways to create some quick cash through affiliate marketing.
With this post I’m going to give you a plan that ANYONE should be able to follow, time and time again, to generate some affiliate commissions, without spending a single penny.
Step #1 - Choose Your Product To Promote
The easiest way to do this is to go to Clickbank.com and sign up for a free account.
Look in the “Marketplace” for different products. It’s divided into 9 categories and 94 sub-categories.
Go through and pick out a product that you want to promote.
(HINT: I usually find the further you dig down into the categories, the less competition there is to promote it online!)
Example: It’s now coming close to the holiday season so people are going to be cooking/baking a lot. I found a “Cooking And Recipes” category in the “Home And Family” section of the marketplace. There are several products here to promote.
I look at the $/sale and %/sale amounts to decide which one to choose. (The higher the values, the better)
I find one product on “restaurant recipes” that is #1 in that category, with a reasonable $/sale amount of $20.
Step #2 - Find Some Good Keywords To Target
We’re going to create some content to submit online as a way to drive free traffic to our affiliate link. But to do so, we want to focus on keyword search phrases that will be easy to rank for in the search engines.
To do this, I use a free keyword tool which you can get at the link below:
http://www.trafficuncut.com/keywordtool.exe
1) I input the main keyword “recipes” and hit “Gather Keyword”. This gives me a list of related keywords and the number of daily searches for that term.
2) Clicking the “Gather Data” button returns the number of competing pages in Google, Yahoo and MSN for each of the keywords.
3) My goal is to pick out keywords that have high search volume (minimum of 20 daily searches) and low competition (less than 20,000 competing pages is good as a rough guide)
I find one keyword “Olive Garden Recipe” that looks good with 2,000+ daily searches and only 16,000 competing pages
TIP: If you find a good keyword, try making that your new MAIN keyword and performing the search again …
This gives many more related phrases with even less competition e.g.:
Olive Garden Soup Recipe
Olive Garden Salad Recipe
Olive Garden Bruschetta Recipe
Step #3 - Create The Content
Now you need to create an article or review based around your chosen keyword(s)
Your article should have the keyword in the title, in the first and last sentences, and at least once in every paragraph.
If you sign up to the affiliate program for the chosen product, they will usually have sample articles you can use for ideas.
If you’re really stuck for ideas, you can even go to sites like EzineArticles.com, type in your keyword and see what other people have already written about.
Once you have created your article, use it to create a “lens” (i.e. webpage) at Squidoo.com
At the end of your article on the Squidoo page, place your affiliate link to the product you are promoting.
Step #4 - Submit The Content Everywhere!
Take your article and also submit it to sites like:
EzineArticles.com
GoArticles.com
Buzzle.com
iSnare.com
HubPages.com
Weebly.com
USFreeAds.com
WetPaint.com
Blogger.com
Wordpress.com
At the end of each article, make sure to place a link back to your original Squidoo article/review page.
This is so that when people read your article they will click through to your Squidoo page and then through to your affiliate link.
Step #5 - Bookmark Your Content
Social Bookmarking is a great way to get your content indexed by the search engines quickly and can help it rank higher - therefore giving you more chance of people seeing it.
The site I recommend using is:
SocialMarker.com
Use this site to bookmark your Squidoo page and one or two of the other pages where you submitted your content.
The combination of submitting content, plus bookmarking it can bring you a lot of free traffic - particularly if you picked the low competition keywords.
Once you start getting traffic to your affiliate link, the sales should follow soon!
Step #6 - Rinse And Repeat!
Once you’ve finished with your first keyword, take a new one and create some new content based around that and repeat the process over again!
You can do this for as many products, in as many markets as you like.
So What Are You Waiting For?
This is possibly one of the quickest, easiest and definitely cheapest ways of making money online.
It does take some investment in time and energy to create the articles and submit them, but there is NO such thing as “free money” online.
Anything you do will require an investment of either time or money.
The good thing about this is that once you start seeing results and generating income, you can re-invest your profits (getting content created and submitted for you etc…) so that you spend less of your own time doing it.
So there you have it - a step-by-step plan for quick affiliate marketing.
All you need to do now is take action!
To YOUR Success,
Excellent and comprehensive advice - you’ve excelled yourself this time, Richard, well done!
Thanks for the info Rich,
That’s about as simple an explanation that I have seen so for.
Very concise simple instructions - you’ve thrown down the gauntlet there, Richard.
I have been struggling with creating a website for affilate marketing (not my strong suit - when I can find my cPanel, it seems mysteriously ungovernable and densely un-navigable - but I can make a squidoo lens, and I can write articles. So why struggle on my first venture?
Keep it simple, as they say.
Thanks!
@ Anne - I couldn’t agree more.
So many times I see people get overwhelmed and confused by trying to do too many different things all at once.
Stick to one plan of action at a time and work through it to the end. I guarantee you’ll have much better success.
Even if it doesn’t work all the time, it’ll be much better than getting nothing accomplished at all because you tried to do too much.
Richard
Hey Richard, Great post! You should do this for a living(just kiddin)
I love the double dippin keyword part,very ingenious! I haven’t tried the
Squidoo part yet but I will be there in a couple more clicks. Thanks for the
great info, Timothy Millar “The Leprechaun”
P.S. My blog hits 300 visitors today and you are a big reason for that,
Thanks again! Keep rockin’
Thanks for the info Rich
Thanks Richard. You have again risen to the call for great simple, and concise information on ways to make money online.
You packed more usable inofrmation into this blog post than many do in a report or ebook which they charge for.
Again, Thanks.
Thank You,
Finally someone gives out a great actionable plan that I can follow. I will let you know how it goes.
Nice work, Richard - it doesn’t get any clearer than that!
Hi Richard,
Hope you are having great time with Adam, I am really excited to see how you have simplified affiliate marketing step by step without making any spending and earn some money online. I have not yet started earning in affiliate marketing though I am affiliate for many programs since I did not do any step mentioned in your quick affiliate marketing tips. I am going to follow the steps you have mentioned and start my earning online.
Thanks Richard for your great tips,
Kind Regards,
N.Vaidyanathan
Thanks for that Richard, I have had my laptop stolen with 18 months
of work on my mobile harddrive,my mobile broadband went with it.
So i am starting from scratch again.William
Very well done, Richard.
At last, instructions that are easy to understand.
Thank you very much.
Well done Richard.
As online marketer these step are a must in my daily online activities.
Thanks for sharing this.
Be happy….
Hi Richard,
this is fantastic advice in the shortest possible form!
One question though, which seems to come up again and again: You say submit the article everywhere, and then you list a few really good sites. Isn’t there the problem with duplicate content if you submit the same article again and again (yeah, that one had to come up!)? What is your view on that?
@ Petra - If you were creating your own content site and trying to rank it high in the search engines then I would definitely suggest making some of your content more unique.
However, the purpose of this exercise was to try and generate some quick affiliate commissions with as little work as possible.
From my experience, you can still easily get great results submitting the same piece of content to ~10 different sites.
If you start submitting to hundreds of sites then you will definitely want to change up the articles a bit.
Richard
Hey this sounds like something to definitely try out. You have provided some very good tips. Thanks.
Thanks for the great article I know this will work but I can not get squidoo to work for me I don’t know how to link in squidoo maybe I can if I try a little longer Thanks again Henry
Very nice, systematic approach to promote an affiliate product. I have been doing the IM thing for almost a year now and like most of us I was jumping from one biz to another. I finally settled on one major product and finally learned the importance of “keywords”. Presently, I am applying this to my new business and slowly getting great results. Thanks a lot for your help Richard.
I am having difficulty wiht keywordtool. It will not let me. It will not let me get the main key word and seaches. It is asking for a password. Asking for a security image, with no image. Steph
@ Steph -
What happens is that the tool gathers data from an online keyword research database, and sometimes you need to enter a “captcha” code to show that you are a real person.
This is something that is on the database site, so it’s not related to the software itself - it’s something they’ve added on their end.
It should show up in the box, but for some reason it is showing up blank for you.
Try this instead …
Here is the database where the tool gets the information from:
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
Try going to that page first and performing a search. If you get the “captcha” code come up, fill it in on that page.
That should then allow the keyword tool software to work when you retry it.
Hope this helps,
Richard
Thanks for the post and your useful suggestions for the comments. I would agree with your strategy for using keywords to boost the affiliate marketing business. I have tried it and I would like to say that its very beneficial.
Hi Richard,
Thanks for this good advice. Pretty straight forward. I will get onto it asap, like before tomorrow.
Hopefully earn some bucks while I get my new site (from you) up and running.
Thanks again,
Jack.
Excellent article, very helpful, simple and easy to understand, i love it. Will start implimenting it now, thanks a lot.
Thanks Richard
I need to concentrate and stop chasing each “new” release
Tony
Hi Richard,
Thank you. Your content is very valuable.
I have one question. I would like to capture visitors name and email address within this process so I can put them on the separate list in my autoresponder. Is that wise to do in this case when I am acting as an affiliate?
Thanks.
Gordan
Hi Richard,
This is a really useful content but click bank does not allow signups from Nigeria am still trying to figure out a way of registering it.
I thought Ezine articles wouldn’t accept articles that they find elsewhere. They rejected one of my firend’s because it was on her blog a few weeks prior.
It is one of the simpliest methods that i experienced after years of struggling.
Thank Rich.
this is an easy startup for newbies
Mr. Legg,
Thank you for being a breath of fresh air, especially to people such as myself ( a beginner of about 4 years, with still to make my first dollar online. I will do it!).
Your blog post makes it very simple to understand, as thankfully, you still speak a language suitable for beginners.
I have been on your lists and have bought various (recommended or your own)products.
Please keep up the “Fresh Approach” work
Regards Harry Deitch (Sydney, Australia).
Thanks for the great tips - very valuable!
from an ex-chemist
Lisle (rhymes with smile)
Been in your list and i am staying.Have had some ebooks to explain in 52 pages what you’ve just did in one mini page.I loved your style since i watched your video, great and right to the point but the price is out of my range for now..,
looks like a power version of Bum Marketing.
Thanks
Alex
Good stuff Richard, should we be concerned about protecting our affiliate ID at this point? Can this be achieved by just using a site like TinyURL or Cli.gs or do we need to explore a software solution instead?
I also appreciate how you explain your keyword research. I didn’t think about running the good keyword a second time for additional variants - great stuff!
Again Valuable advice and tips here, I seem to be going around in circles trying to publish articles! admittedly I use free article s and try to ’spin’ them but never are good enough for EzineArticles.com!
I really should try to have confidence in writing some of my own, but as you say it just takes a little effort and you will be selling products almost on autopilot with constant traffic from organic (read FREE!) search results!
Now must go and find a suitable niche…
Hasta pronto
David
I still have a hard time getting my site seen!
It seems that all I can find is, “Do this and Do That”! And when I do, I get thing’s messed up!
I have only been on the computer two years.
I just need to find a way to advertise
that wont cost much.”Say around $60.00″.
Do any of you know any way?
3 basic strategies to start an online business:
1. Product
2. Website
3. Traffic
To Your Success,
Bryan Hee
Great stuff. A few clarifications:
1. You post an article on Squidoo and post the exact same article on 10 directories? Doesn’t it annoy people when you post a link from one article to an exact same article at a Squidoo lens? Do you link your lens at all to the article directories?
2. I did a similar thing, but submitted 1 article to over 200 article directories (same article) and had them pointing to a Blogger blog (which had a link to my affiliate product). Does having the SAME article on so many sites dilute it’s effect? Why use Squidoo (better rank in search engines)?
Thanks a lot.
Also, how long does it take for this strategy to work? I did it for one product and have not seen any sales yet (been a few days).
Since most of the sites are high PR and provide permanent backlinks to the Squidoo lens, I would say it should give your lens high rankings quickly.
Excellent post Richard.
You’ve managed to focus it all down into simple steps that anyone can follow.
There’ll be a lot of people reading this information who are just starting out and can really benefit from the no-nonsense approach.
I wish I knew this process when I first got started online. Would have saved me a lot of time and energy.
Thank you for your great tips, Richard.
You are a real master in sharing valuable content.
(Are you busy? Remember: enjoy your happy days with your wife and son!)
nice day!
Leo S.
Is it the SAME article submitted to the article directories as on the Squidoo lens?
Doesn’t make sense to me. You link from an article to a Squidoo lens (containing the same article) which has the affiliate link.
So you make someone read the same article twice before they (hopefully) click your link?
Am I missing something here?
With a Squidoo lens (and HubPages page) you have much more freedom over how you design the page.
With an article you can only have a link at the very bottom of the page.
When creating the squidoo lens, you can use the same article (or even a re-written version) as the content “bait” for the search engines … but you’re also free to add information, images, links etc to the very top of the page so you can direct people wherever you want to go.
So with a squidoo lens, you can put the links FIRST and funnel people to your money page … and at the same time, the article content (which can be lower down the page) still helps keep the page optimized to help it rank better in the search engines.
If you want, you can also create a separate piece of content just for these pages. There’s no reason that you have to use the same article, but the goal with this post was to show people how to make the most of the content they have and keep the workload to a minimum.
Hope this makes sense
Richard
Richard,Ive been following you for sometime now all the info you pass my way has been very much appreciated and very helpful. Thanx again for your ongoing support of the common newbie/wannabe marketeer
Richard,
I’ve been looking for this information for a long time. Thank you very much for this comprehensive report on money making. The hard part is to implement it, but I plan to do that. Thanks again and keep your work coming. Also I appreciate you answering my email queries I’ve submitted on occasion.
Tom Morris
Thanks Richard for the great info. I have one lens created and 2 more under construction. I do know that when you get your lenses up then you should link them together. I have 5 more lenses in a different niche waiting to be published but on a topic that Squidoo considers to be a “junk” topic.There are several topics that they won’t allow anymore. I just have to move the content to another site. Your best advice “take action”.
Thanks Richard for this step by step easy to follow method of generating quick cash.
Will
Richard,
excellent information!
The only thing that I might add is that Squidoo has changed their policies, so you need to be very vigilant with the content so that the spam filters do not kick it out….Otherwise, I have had page one results for high competition keywords with this method.
Tim
Thanks Richard,
Hope you had a great vacation in Irland visiting family and friends
//Pat
Thank you Richard.
You give awesome content.
Robert
Richard,
Thank you once again for real ways to become a success online at low or no cost.
It is one of the reasons I consider your emails so valuable. If it has your name it gets priority.
Regards,
Jim
A very good recap, many good tips.
I did not know about Squidoo.
Thanks a lot!
Kudos, Richard!!! Put very simply and readably. I felt that you were literally taking me by the hand and that I could do it. First time I’ve really had that feeling in my search for ways to earn money on the internet. Thank you, Richard. Hope your baby girl is doing well.
Richard,
Thank you for your great effort to share with everybody especially for newbies.
regards
anis
Ireland, eh? We had hoped to sail there and then on to Sweden thru the Dunellen Canal(?).
However, we never made it. I hope you had a wonderful and dry visit.
Thanks for all the useful information. I always check your e-mails because of the useful information you send.
Thanks so much,
Nancy
I tried for 2 days to get the info you provided in less than an hour! I had no idea of how to setup an optin link. All the other information kept repeating how necessary a squeeze page is.
thanks, keep me on your list,
Al
Thanks Richard for the great tips. I Have been learning I.M for 1 year and I have articles on Squidoo, Hubpages,I tried ezines but it is so hard to get approved. i had given up. I am happy to know i can use the same Articles on different sites, because writing content is hard.On my Squidoo lens I have about 5 different affiliate co.Is that o.k? Thankyou
Richard:
I have read some other posts about the subject you are writing about. But I must say yours is no doubt the more crystal clear and easy to understand. Besides, it’s an invitation to act right away.
Thank you
Jesus
Hi Richard,
I have received a heap of stuff from you over the past year or so and respect what you’re trying to do on the net. I still have to make a start, just too busy with other things. Anyway the above website is my g/friends site and she is very passionate about the subject matter. Mate if you have 5 minutes to check it out (may be of interest to you since you have a small child), make suggestions on improving her site and how to promote it to the max, I would appreciate your feedback.
Regards,
Nick
Hi Richard,
At last, an article written in ‘plain’ English. Easy to understand and implement. Excellent information, clearly explained. I will be taking your advice & acting today.
Look forward to more articles from you.
Regards
Arthur
Hey Richard, I going to try this. I will keep you posted. I do not like to promote something I have not tried. Once this is a success I will spread the your method like water. Me, I never give up so I know it will be a success. If you believe anything is possible. So far I love your strategy and thank you for sharing it.
Tammay313
Richard thanks to you iam on my way now and thiers no holding me back.Thank god for your advise and wisedom the way you can explain thigs is excellent and so easy to fellow. Your pal chuck in TEXAS god bless and keep up the great work.
Richard:
This is awsome and easy to understand. Thank you for the great hints.
Is there any chance you can go over Private Sale Rights and how to use the links?? and where to paste them??
Thanks again and have a great weekend!!!
Eugenia
great blog Richard! finally an easy strategy that a beginner can actually grasp - and do!
I have looked at many sites and not come across such a site as yours that tells everyone everything they need to know. I have added you to my bookmarks, can anyone else suggest other related topics that I can search for to find out more information?
I tried to sign up for your succeed in 30 days and was told I was already in your database. Period. That was it. I have no idea how to get into what I am already (evidently) a member of. This is a poor design and has left me frustrated.
Reply from Richard: Sorry for any frustration caused.
If you already signed up to the site, you can use the “login” link on the main homepage to login with the email address and password you chose when you signed up.
Just what I need.
Thanks Richard, as usual you are helpful and to the point.
this is going to accelerate my blogging efforts
all the best to you and
you’re family