Warcraft Affiliates

September 5, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing by MatthewDC

Hey everyone. I was sitting around thinking today about what I could put out to offer up some fresh and FREE reading for our new marketers out there. I don’t want to just continuously pimp expensive, moderately useful, secret formula type stuff as most internet marketers do! As I was thinking about it, I was doing my usual rounds of my favorite SEO blogs and that’s when I realized it. Most of the new guys probably don’t even know these awesome blogs exist! So I have decided to put together a list of my Top 5 favorite SEO blogs in order to help the new guys find some expert topics to read up on.

If you want to make it in the world of SEO, you should be reading these blogs ALL THE TIME!

(These are in no particular order)

1. Search Engine Land

2. SEO Book (This is a link to their Blog, they also have a paid service, just read the blog, it rocks)

3. SEOMoz (My personal favorite along with the next one)

4. Stuntdubl (Some really great free stuff here on traffic generation)

5. Graywolf’s SEO

I was going to write a description and information about each one, but the truth is, you would be wasting time that could be used reading the actual blogs. So this is going to be a short post. Go now. Start reading. Reading blogs like these is exactly how I learned SEO. Well that and several thousand dollars in training products (which is what we are trying to avoid on this site).

Enjoy!

- Matthew DC

September 2, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing by MatthewDC

It is taking me longer than expected to work on the ebook and several other things (including videos) for the site. The whole product creation cycle is a long one. So in the meantime, I would like to offer up some action plan items and advice for our newer members and people who are just getting started in Affiliate Marketing.

The first thing that is most important is keyword research. There are tons of keywords and I cover it a little bit in the training currently up on the site. I am going to have a huge section about keyword research, to include videos when all is said and done. But once you have your keywords, there are some really easy steps you can take to see real results, basically without fail.

The goal is to first get a website up and established. There are tons of free sites to do this, but I hate building up Pagerank and establishing someone elses site, so if you can afford the $10 domain and $10 or so a month in hosting, I recommend you go to Namecheap or Godaddy and get a domain. Then get hosting with hostgator, they are easy to use. Once your hosting is set up, install wordpress using their fantastico module. You can find tutorials on installation through hostgator.

Once the site is built up, write 5 articles about whatever topic you are trying to rank for and list them as the pages on your site. Throw a quick page widget in your sidebar. Also write an about us, contact us, and privacy policy page (for whatever reason, most people believe Google loves this).

Once the articles are up as sub pages, post up a banner for your favorite guide or post an adsense module on the sub pages. Then make your main page. The main page should be your review page and should be the one that you want to make most of the sales. You are going to write a simple review for whatever product you want to sell. Once the review is written and posted and all of the pages are completed and ready to go, you can start building traffic.

This is a lot easier than most will have you believe. There are 100s of pieces of software on the market for anywhere from $30 to $200 a month that will help you, but YOU DONT NEED ANY OF THOSE! Yes, I use some of them to make life easier, but they are NOT necessary. Building traffic is as easy as 1-2-3.Here is the process:

1. Write a 400-500 word article about your topic.

2. Write a resource block with 2 backlinks to your site. This is the important part, make sure the anchor text for those links is the same as the keywords you have chosen to rank for. So if you want to rank for “WoW Mining Guide”, that phrase should be the anchor text for your link. Make sure you have at least 4 or 5 different semantic (related) keywords to help you rank better.

3. Submit the articles to directories like GoArticles, EzineArticles, Etc.

That process works and it works every time. The number of articles it takes depends on the competition, but it works, period. So those are the basics of making and ranking an affiliate site. Literally, while this is a basic method, it really works and will get results. If you are building your first site, it is the best place to start.So here is your action plan.

1. Find Keywords

2. Buy a domain (keyword as the domain)

3. Buy hosting and setup wordpress

4. Build a 9 page site (5 articles, Home (review), About, Contact, Privacy).

5. Write 400-500 word articles

6. Submit to Directories

Then rinse and repeat. If you have any questions on exactly how to do any of these steps, feel free to leave a comment and I will try to answer it. I just wanted to give all of the newer visitors something to run with while you all wait for me to get everything written or recorded. I hope this helps.

Thanks for stopping by!

Matthew DC

September 1, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing by MatthewDC

Sorry I haven’t been as active as of late. My attention has all been pulled into testing out Brute Force SEO (BFSEO) and it’s new Linking Loophole (LL) module. Let me start by saying, this thing isn’t cheap. It’s actually a really expensive piece of software. But man, does it ever make SEO easy.

The main and most important aspect of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is off site link building. That means getting other sites to point to your site with the proper anchor text in order to show google that your site is not only popular, but that your site is an authority in it’s given field. Building these links will either cost you a LOT of money in outsourcing (I have SEO friends who charge upwards of $3000 a month), or a TON of time and effort in going out and building links.

That’s where BFSEO comes in. Somehow, Peter Drew has managed to create software that automatically goes out and creates blogger blogs and 6 or so other blogs, interlinks them, posts the RSS feeds to 40 aggregators, social bookmarks them all, and submits articles automatically, and all you have to do it put in your info and hit start. It’s crazy to be honest. I’ve been testing it for a week or so now and the results have been very encouraging.

Plus he is about to release BFSEO Evo II, a new, more sophisticated version. Did I mention it even figures out the captcha’s automatically? It’s nuts.

You can get more info and try out a $1, 7 day trial version using my special offer. So go check out the site and see what you think, but I gotta be honest, I am absolutely LOVING this thing so far.

Brute Force SEO $1, 7 Day Trial Offer!

August 20, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing by MatthewDC

I’m Still Alive!

First off, for all of our new visitors, Welcome to Warcraft Affiliates! I just wanted to let everyone know that I am still alive. I know I haven’t added any new training in a bit, but that is because I am working on some exciting developments. I am working on my first ever Ebook as well as a Video Series to add to Warcraft Affiliates. I am going to be recording videos of just about everything I can think of related to internet marketing and affiliate marketing.

What to Expect

I am not a professional video editor or professional writer. So, you can expect about the same as I have put out up to this point. Straight up information written just how I would tell it to you if you were sitting in my house. The best part is, once I start the videos, I can actually just TELL it to you! I am really excited to get started on these videos. I have my copy of camtasia in hand and will start recording this weekend.

Please Be Patient!

I know that everyone is eager to learn. It’s hard to come by quality free content about affiliate marketing. I just recently monitored the launch of Affiliate Classroom V2.0. I am not going to post an affiliate link and I WOULD NOT recommend that you go buy it. It is $97 a month and basically throws so much information at you that you’d never get anything done. Not only that but the layout and format of their new training, imo, sucks. If you really want to get more information faster than I can get it to you, sign up for the free affilorama basic account (not the premium one, it cost money and the free one has TONS of free stuff), or get PotPieGirls ebook that I have linked on the site (yes, you have to buy it, and yes i’m using an affiliate link to sell it, I gotta make money somehow). But, it really is a great place to start because she lays everything out and gives you a blueprint.

That being said, if you can wait for me to get more updated content, you will be able to get a lot of it here as well. Anyways, back to my point. Please be patient with me. I have a full time job on active duty in the Air Force that I have to share my time with, so some days I only get an hour or two to work on business stuff, and a lot of that has to go to my affiliate sites (that’s where i make my money!).

In Conclusion

Please be patient, stick around, build up a squidoo lens or a blogger blog and start writing some articles. Or, if you can afford it, pick up a domain and some hosting. I hate to see people build backlinks for a free site they can’t really control. I know however that some people can’t afford it. Ok, I am rambling again, back on track. Please stick around, my point of all of this was to tell you that we have some REALLY exciting stuff coming soon. I’m here, i’m working, but getting stuff out for free can’t always get as much time as the rest of my duties, since the others pay a LOT more. Sorry, but I gotta be honest. Have a nice day and thanks for stopping by!

August 5, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Article Marketing, Basics, Free Training, Guides, Modules by MatthewDC

In our last module, we learned how you can use article marketing to garner some serious traffic. Now we are going to focus on a method that I believe should always go hand in hand with your article marketing efforts. That method is Social Bookmarking. Social Bookmarking revolves around sites like Digg, Reddit, De.lici.ous, and other various sites that allow you to post virtual bookmarks to your website. I am going to try to explain how they work, why they work, and then offer some advice on what you should be doing with them.

How Does Social Bookmarking Work?

We will use Digg as an example since I think they are one of the most often used Social Bookmarking sites. Everyone reading this probably has bookmarks in their firefox or internet explorer that they have saved from all over the internet. These are your favorite sites and ones that you want to go back to constantly for updates and whatever else they might offer. Social Bookmarking sites allow you to do the exact same thing, only the bookmarks are stored on the web where millions of others can find them through a searchable database. Basically what you are doing is adding your website to another search engine that gets TONS of traffic every day. Not only that, but if you are the first one to submit your site, you get to fill out the description box that everyone will see when they visit. Sound nice? Yeah, it is.

Why Do Social Bookmarking Sites Work?

The answer to that is a fairly simple one. They work because the sites are popular with Google. Digg bookmarks get listed in Google very fast and also get ranked fairly high for low competition search terms. The problem is, the listing won’t last long. That is ok however, because the real goal is to use these social bookmarking sites to get your site noticed and indexed in Google faster. Sites like Digg are so successfully not only because they get Google love, but also because of their millions of visitors each day. They are basically offering their own search engine when you get down to it. Your site gets indexed in their system and if someone searches for your key terms, your site might come up. They also have top lists for new sites, popular sites, etc.

So How Should I Use Social Bookmarking with My Sites?

Social Bookmarking is going to become an integral part of your campaigns. Basically every site, every blog, every squidoo lens, and every article you post anywhere on the internet, needs to get bookmarked. It sounds like a lot of work, but once you get the hang of it the time consumption will go down drastically. You can also find services on the internet that will submit your site for you, or you could outsource and hire someone to do it for you. The key thing to remember is that it is free exposure, free traffic, and a great boost to getting indexed in Google and improving your SEO.

So right now, our steps should look something like this when creating a new site :

1. Make a Squidoo Lens.
2. Social Bookmark the Squidoo Lens.
3. Write 1 Article per day and submit to the top Article Directories with a link to your Squidoo Lens.
4. Once the article gets published, Social Bookmark the Article.

If you are following these steps, you may already be getting some traffic to your lens. The more traffic your lens gets, the higher it will get listed within it’s category in Squidoo. If you can make the top 20 or so, your lens is going to get much more natural exposure from searches within Squidoo and their featured listings. So the goal right now is to drive traffic to your lens with your affiliate link on it, get it bookmarked for a little extra traffic and exposure, then hammer the articles like theres no tomorrow.

Recommended Reading :

• PotPieGirl’s FREE 52 Page Step by Step Squidoo Guide
• Use Bookmarking Demon to automate Social Bookmarking

August 4, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Article Marketing, Basics, Free Training, Guides by MatthewDC

Step 1. Article Marketing

Article Marketing in my mind is the most important part of traffic building. It can get you sustainable, long term traffic, for a very small up front workload. For the basics of what article marketing is, check out my SEO & Article Marketing 101 article. Basically what your going to do is write 500 – 700 word articles based around the keyword of your choosing, post them to various article directories, and then wait and watch the traffic build. A lot of people will try to sell you a “secret formula” to use article marketing to “dominate any niche”. Ignore all of that hype. The one thing you HAVE to understand about article marketing is that it works very well, but it takes a LOT of ACTUAL WORK on your behalf. If you have the money you can outsource, but for the purposes of this training, I am going to keep it as cheap as possible.

The process basically works like this. You always have to start with Keyword Research. You want to find a keyword that meets our criteria to where we think we can get a first page listing on Google. Once your keyword is selected, you really have to focus and make yourself do some manual labor. I try to do at least 1 article per day for at least the first 2 months of any new campaign. It sounds like a lot of work, I know, but that is because it is. We aren’t talking about easy money, or free money here, we are talking about a real business. Real business requires blood, sweat, and tears.

Writing the Articles

When you write your article, make sure that your keyword is in the title and somewhere in the first paragraph. After that, I don’t care how many more times it shows up. You will hear tons of experts tell you that you should have X amount of keywords or Y percent density. Forget all of that. Make sure it’s in the beginning of the article and then don’t worry about it. Just write an article that people will want to read and that will entice people to check out your other articles. This is how you build real, lasting traffic.

Let me get this off my chest before we move on. A lot of people will tell you to do re-writes of your articles rather than write completely new articles every time. To just change some paragraphs around or a few words so that ezinearticles will accept it as a new article. Whether you want to do this or not is up to you, but I refuse to use this tactic. Let me explain why. I am trying to build a legitimate business. One that people trust, will come back to again, and believe is worth their time. If they start re-reading the same article, do you think they are going to trust you? It’s ok to write 2 articles on the same topic, as long as they take a new angle, or address some new aspect, but please don’t just move some paragraphs around. Yes that will work and get you in Ezine. Yes that will probably get you decent traffic. But honestly, it tarnishes your name and we want to build a brand with legs. Ok, now that I feel better, we can move on.

This isn’t going to be a workshop on how to write great articles. I might cover that in a later article or module, but for now, we are going to focus on the traffic generation part and the process we will use. Once your article is written, you need to do 2 things. First you need to make a squidoo lens that contains the article itself, along with an affiliate link to a product of your choosing, as well as a link back to your main squidoo lens (that’s the one we made in module 6). Once that is set up, you need to submit the article to article directories. I have a list of the Top Article Directories here on the site you can use to start out. This can also be outsourced but since your just starting, I recommend doing it yourself.

The Resource Box

The key to building traffic from these articles is by properly utilizing the resource box. The resource box is where most sites will allow you to post your links back to your site. We will use EzineArticles as an example because they are the largest and most well known article directory. EzineArticles will allow you to post 2 links in the resource box of your article. We want to use these 2 links for specific purposes. First we want to make a link that reads something like this “For the original article, visit Your Keyword Title Here”. In this link, Your Keyword Title Here would link back to your new squidoo lens of the same name. This will be the one that you just made containing your article. For the second link, we are going to link back to our main lens (the one from module 6), with something like this, “For more articles like this one, visit Main Site Keyword Title”. That is all their is to it!

Most of the sites will take up to a week to list your article, so the traffic is going to take a while to show up. Be patient and you will see a steady increase once the articles start going live. Like I said previously, I try to do an article a day for almost 2 months when I first start out with a new site. I might miss a day here or there, but the important part is getting those articles out there. Give it a shot and see what you can come up with.

Our next module is Module 7.2 – Traffic Generation with Social Bookmarking

in Affiliate Marketing, Article Marketing, Basics, Free Training, Guides, Modules, PPC by MatthewDC

If you’ve read all of the modules up to this point, congratulations. You are already on your way to starting your own affiliate marketing business. You understand the basics of affiliate marketing, you should have a clickbank account, and you even set up your first squidoo lens. The only problem now is, noone is looking at it. But don’t worry, we are going to cover all of the basic traffic methods I use, right here in module 7 and it’s sub-modules!

Traffic generation is a funny business. Much like all areas of affiliate marketing, everyone has their own take on what you should and should not be doing to build traffic. The methods I am going to share with you are all methods I have personally used and found to work for me. If you do them aggressively, you WILL get traffic to your site as well as increase your Google Pagerank and backlinks at the same time. All of these things will help you get to your ultimate goal, whether it be $1000 a month or $500 a day.

Due to the importance of this topic and the number of methods you can use, I am going to break this module down into sub-modules as follows:

• 7.1 : Traffic Generation with Article Marketing
• 7.2 : Social Bookmarking
• 7.3 : Forum Participation
• 7.4 : Pay Per Click (PPC)
• 7.5 : Outsourcing Everything

All of these methods go hand in hand to create a complete traffic building system. One method alone probably won’t be enough to get you serious visitors to your site. That being said, combining article marketing with social bookmarking is a very powerful traffic building system. If you have the right keywords, you can make some serious sales after about a month. So go check  out the sub-modules, learn everything you can, and then get to work writing your articles. Your almost ready to start cashing those checks!

Our next module is Module 8 : Scaling Your Campaigns

August 3, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Article Marketing, Basics, Free Training, Guides, PPC by MatthewDC

Keyword Research is so important that I couldn’t really figure out how to fit it into the modules. In most cases it will be the very first thing you do when starting a campaign or a new site. The problem is, in doing our training, we are starting from scratch and keyword research is much too advanced a topic for a beginning Affiliate Marketer. That being said, I felt like we needed to cover how to properly research keywords to use for naming your sites, article writing and marketing, and link building. Somewhere along the line I will implement a keyword module, but for now, this supplement will have to do.

I have seen countless affiliate marketers take on the subject of keyword research and it seems like every single one of us has our own unique spin on things. One thing everyone has in common however, is where we all start. Everyone you meet that does keyword research, starts with Googles keyword tool. So let’s go ahead and open up the keyword tool and take it for a spin. You should see a box that says enter a keyword or phrase. This is where we are going to type in the general idea of what we want our campaign to be about. Since this site specifically revolves around World of Warcraft, we are going to use that. I personally like selling leveling guides, so I am going to narrow down my search even more.

This is one area where I am going to be somewhat different than other marketers. When I do a keyword search, I already have my specific term that I want, so I am going to uncheck the box to use synonyms. I am going to type in leveling guide and click get keyword ideas. So your screen should look something like this when you are ready to submit.

Once you hit “Get Keyword Ideas”, you will get a series of results. We want to sort this list by clicking on “Global Monthly Search Volume”. This will rank the terms by the number of searches on average each month. By looking at these results we can see the average Cost Per Click (CPC) for the specific term, the search volume, and the competition for each phrase. I am not too overly concerned with the competition meter at this point because it is only showing the PPC competition levels, and we are going to be aiming for organic traffic, or traffic from search rankings.

Basically what we are looking for are keywords with a search volume of anywhere from 300 to about 10,000. This range should hopefully give us some terms that we can rank competitively for without having to do too much link building and article marketing. Once I find a term that I like, I am going to take that term and put it into Google. When I do this, I am going to put quotations “” around the term. This is going to give me a more accurate idea of the competition level for that term. Ultimately when I do this, I want to see 10,000 results or less. There are times however when I would accept a higher number.

For instance, if I see an ezinearticles.com listing, or a squidoo, hubpages, or other article site on the first page, that tells me that the competition is fairly limited. I can build a site of my own and do a couple weeks of article work and more than likely make the first page. I usually keep going through this process until I find anywhere from 10-25 keywords to use for my article marketing campaigns. So let’s recap what we are looking for.

• Global Monthly Search of 300 to 8000
• Search results of Less Than 10,000 with “Quotations”
• EzineArticles or Squidoo listed on the 1st page
• Keywords that seem relevant to our overall site topic

That’s really all there is to it. You will hear all kinds of different theories and practices from various internet marketers, but if your terms meet those criteria, you can probably make the first page of Google. The number of search results will determine how hard it will be and how much work you will need to put in to get that ranking, but even with search results upwards of 30,000, you can still get to the top over time, you just have to be resolved in doing so.

August 2, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Article Marketing, Basics, Free Training, Guides, World of Warcraft by MatthewDC

Search engine optimization is the key to getting targeted traffic to your website. Targeted traffic is important because you want the traffic coming to your site to be interested and ready for the content you are going to provide them. If your new to the Affiliate Marketing business, search engine optimization is the practice of trying to get your website ranked as highly as possible in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and now Bing. We do this by using a process we call Article Marketing.

Article Marketing is the #1 method of building targeted traffic to your website. It builds backlinks to your site, it generates traffic from article directores, and it can even get your content distributed to other sites, which in turn builds more links and targeted traffic. The concept is fairly simple and can be broken down into 3 step process.

Step 1. Write an interesting article.

This sounds like common sense but a lot of people are confused on exactly what an article should consist of. Many of you may have read in various places on the internet that you need a certain keyword density, or that your keyword needs to appear in particular parts of your article. I don’t hold to these myths. When writing an article for distribution, have the keyword in your title (which it should be because that is what the article is going to be about), and then focus on writing a good quality article that someone might actually want to read.

If you focus on writing quality content about the topic of your choosing, then everything else will work itself out. There is no magic percentage or number of times you should use your keyword. There is no magic formula to creating articles that will make you sales. Simply write articles that you yourself would want to read and you will be well on your way to building traffic.

Step 2. Market the Articles.

Now that you have your article written, you need to get it out there. We do this by submitting our article to various article submission sites. If you are having trouble finding sites to submit your article, just do a Google search for article submission, you should find plenty of results. One thing to remember when submitting the article is to read all of the policies for the particular site you are going to use. Every site is different in regards to how many links they will allow, if any, as well as what kinds of topics they will accept. Most sites will allow links only in the resource block.

It is important that your resource block be used properly in order to make article marketing successful. As I said previously, most sites will allow two links within the resource or author bio box. These two links should be very specific. You want one link to lead back to the main page of your website and the other to lead back to the original source of the article your posting, in other words, the specific URL for that article on your website. This will build you the most consistent and targeted traffic in the long run.

Step 3. Utilize the Traffic

This step isn’t really a part of the article marketing process, but it is important to note. It seems like article marketing is becoming more popular and many people are utilizing it to build traffic, but I am amazed at how many people improperly utilize the traffic they are building. You still need a quality landing page for the traffic you are building. If they read your article, enjoy the content, and visit your site, but the site is a one column black and white mess of words with thirty affiliate links and banners thrown everywhere, that user is going to jump immediately to the back button on their browser. In other words, build a legitimate site, with valuable content so that you can build trust and maybe even capture an email address. This is the best way to utilize the traffic from article marketing.

To sum it all up, article marketing is an easy process. The only catch is that it is time consuming and requires that you be diligent and focused. I can gurantee you however, that if you follow through with this method, it WILL build you targeted traffic that converts. It has worked wonders for countless of my campaigns.

If you think it is too much work and would like an easier solution, you can outsource the creation and marketing of articles. The following are website I recommend you check out :

• SubmitEdge
• Elance
• Mass Article Control (Awesome Software)

August 1, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Basics, Free Training, Guides, Modules, Squidoo, World of Warcraft by MatthewDC

In the last module, we covered the importance of of having a site and the difference between Landing Pages and what I am calling “Mini-sites”. In this module, we will discuss the process of getting your first website published to the web. We are going to start with a simple landing page using Squidoo to set it up.

Squidoo is a very popular site in the internet marketing world. They allow you to create one page websites, post any content you would like (for the most part), and they also allow you to put whatever links you would like. They also allow you to do it all for FREE. Sounds good right? This module is going to walk you through setting up your first Squidoo site (what they call a “Lens”). We like Squidoo because it allows you to get your affiliate link on the web for free so that you can start building traffic and we also like Squidoo because Google likes Squidoo.

I originally had a whole article written about how to set up a squidoo lens. It was very basic and only covered a few simple steps and really didn’t go in depth into squidoo. I wasn’t happy with the level of training that it offered so I went on a hunt to find a better, more developed squidoo training guide.

That is when I found PotPieGirls FREE 52 Page Squidoo Training Guide. This thing is awesome. It’s step by step with full color screenshots for every single step. I don’t have permission to give it to you but if you head over to her site and sign up for her mailing list, she will email you the PDF. I cannot stress enough how much you need to read this guide. So get it, read it, and then move on to the next module.

Our next module is Module 7 : How to Build Traffic to Your Website

Recommended Reading :

• Get a FREE 52 page illustrated, step by step squidoo guide from potpiegirl. did I mention it’s FREE?
• If you are looking for more in depth lens making tactics and tips, Squidoo has a lens for that.