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You've probably
heard before a lot of hype about how much money
you can make with affiliate programs. Maybe you've
even set up a site yourself, only to find that
after buying the domain, a few bucks a month in
hosting, software or a web designer to design
your site, etc., that the piddle affiliate fees
hardly even covered your cost. Well, here's the
hype-free way to really make money with an Amazon.
COM affiliate site. And it'll only take a day
to make the site.
The secret? Low
cost, low effort.
1.
If you don't already know it, learn some basic
HTML. You have to do this to keep your costs down
and still get what you want. Even if the site
is basically laid out for you, you're going to
need to know how to insert images, create hyperlinks,
and do some basic text formatting. Our HTML Guide
offers a free 10-week HTML class and a great collection
of beginning HTML tutorials. Get over any anxiety
you have about this. Just do it. You'll thank
me for it later.
2. Decide on your topic. You're going to be doing
product reviews and recommendations, so pick a
topic that you enjoy and know something about.
If you can't stay passionate about the topic,
that will show, and it also won't hold your interest.
Choose a narrow enough niche to be distinctive,
e.g., bands from your city, left-handed guitarists,
music for a certain kind of dancing, authors of
a certain religion, books about arts & crafts,
etc.
3. Choose your domain name. Make it keyword-rich,
not clever. Think how people will find your site
in the search engines. Here are some ideas (all
available when I first wrote this, though a cfew
have been snatched up): Music: BandsFromTexas.com,
BandOutOfBoston.com, SouthpawGuitarists.com, ClassicPsychedelia.com,
Non-Stop-Hip-Hop.com, Merengue-Music.com Books:
Mormon-Authors.com, Arts-and-Crafts-Books.com,
Books-by-Stephen-King.com, ClassicBusinessBooks.com
Others: Best-Baby-Toys.com, MomsMags.com, FelliniMovies.com
4. Register your domain name. If you're not technically
inclined at all, register your domain wherever
you set up your hosting in step 5. Otherwise,
you can save a few bucks by choosing a lower-cost
provider. Not a big deal for one or two sites,
but it can be for ten or twenty. I use GoDaddy,
who have great domain management tools and are
less than $10 a year. The least expensive I've
found from a reputable source is 1&1, whose
price is around $7 a year last I checked.
5. Set up your web hosting. This is where most
people get burned. For this kind of site, you
do not need $10 a month web hosting! Our Online
Business Guide has a list of Cheap Web Hosting
for Under $10. Some are as little as $4 a month,
with unlimited domains, i.e., you can run several
sites like this on the same hosting package.
6. Install blog software. "Blog, you say?"
Yes. It will give your site all the structure
you need, plus make it easy to quickly post new
content. My pick is WordPress, which is open source
(i.e., free), easy to install and use, and yet
very powerful. Many hosts have a one-step installation
process for it, or you can download it and follow
their installation instructions.
7. Make it pretty. One of the great things about
WordPress is the huge variety of templates available
for it -- they can completely change the look-and-feel.
Our Weblogs Guide has a list of 5 Sites for Free
Wordpress Themes, where you can find hundreds
of free WordPress themes.
8. Set up categories. Most blog software allows
you to create sub-categories to help organize
your entries. This will help visitors narrow in
even more specifically on their interests. For
example, BandsFromTexas.com might have one group
of categories for genre — rock, country, blues,
etc. — and another for city of origin — Austin,
Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, etc.
9. Sign up as an Amazon Associate. It's simple
and free. Just visit Amazon and click on the Join
Associates link at the bottom of the page (here's
a direct link for your convenience). Your site
should already have at least the basic setup done,
even if you don't have any content there yet,
as they'll review the site manually before approval.
10. Create your blog posting bookmarks/links.
There are two links that are going to be essential
for you to make this easy. First is the blog posting
link. In your blog software, on the posting page
(see their instructions), at the bottom of the
page there should be a "bookmarklet".
Click on the link (and hold the mouse) and drag
it up to your Links toolbar in your browser (assuming
Internet Explorer), or your Favorites menu. This
will allow you to blog a product with one mouse
click.
11. Create your Amazon Build-A-Link bookmark/link.
This will make it easy to build the link with
your affiliate ID built in. Log in to Associates
Central, look in the left navigation sidebar,
go to Build-A-Link, and under Static Links, find
Individual Items. Click and drag this onto your
Links toolbar or Favorites menu.
12. Build your first link. Go to Amazon and log
in with your Associates account. Find the product
you want to review and use the Site Stripe (gray
stripe at the top of the screen that you'll see
when logged in as an Associate) to get your personalized
link to the item. They also offer a variety of
other options for creating links and banners.
13. Blog your review. Now click on your blog posting
link (Press It! by default in WordPress). If you're
using WordPress, you should now see two pieces
of link code in your posting form, the first one
ending with "Associates Build-A-Link ><
/a >". Delete through that point. The
second part is a link to the product with your
Amazon Associate ID built in. Now just write your
product review, choose the appropriate categories
for it, and hit Publish.
14. Build out your site. Before you promote your
site, you want to have some substantial content
there. Write several product reviews. Have at
least 2-3 in each category you've created. You
may also want to make a categories for articles,
news, and commentary about your topic. The more
content your site has, the better. And the great
thing is that while you're writing all this, the
search engines are getting notified automatically,
assuming you turned on the notifications mentioned
in step 6.
15. Promote your site. The best free way to do
this is to communicate with other bloggers writing
about similar topics, and to participate in online
communities where your topic is discussed. See
the Online Business Networking category for ideas,
as well as the Internet Marketing category.
Tips:
1. You have to learn some basic HTML and basic
concepts about running a web site. It's just not
that hard. If you have to rely on purchased software,
you won't be able to get exactly what you want,
you won't know what to do when things go wrong,
and you'll end up spending money you don't need
to. Spend the time to learn it. It will be well
worth the investment.
2. I slightly recommend music over books and other
products, mainly because you can listen to the
clips of an entire album in about 10 minutes and
get a good enough feel for it (without buying
it) to do a short review. If you have another
topic that you're passionate about, great, but
make sure you have a unique angle on the topic.
People can get reviews about a lot of those consumer
products anywhere. You need to give them a reason
to come to your site.
3. To pick up some extra pennies, sign up for
Google AdSense. It probably won't generate a lot
of revenue, but it's free to sign up and completely
effortless to maintain.
4. Set reasonable expectations for earnings. You've
only invested $20. You're going to make 5% on
most products. That means that you need to sell
$400 worth of stuff to make back your investment.
To make $20 an hour, what you write must generate
$400 worth of purchases. You get credit for other
purchases customers you send make while at Amazon
besides just the product you linked to, so it's
not as hard as it may sound. It won't make you
rich, but it's not hard to be profitable, and
it builds over time.
What You Need:
• A credit card with about $20 available
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