On one of our blog posts recently a reader left a question wanting to know how many product reviews we had to write before we started to see any measurable success. I started to write a response to him but it became so long that I knew that I had to write a blog post about it. It’s a question that just can’t be answered in a few words and the reason for that is that the number of product reviews made no difference to our level of success at all.
That may be surprising to some but really we could have kept on writing hundreds of reviews without making any substantial difference to our income. And in fact, we did just that sometime back when we added 8 posts a day to our blog. It was a great tactic and brought in traffic and it did increase sales but the amount of effort we had to expend to get that increase just wasn’t worth it in the end. If we had kept at it, we would probably be stressed and strung out by now and still not making the same amount of money we are today.
You really don’t need to create hundreds of reviews to make a good income online – you don’t even need 20 or 10 or even 5. You actually only need one review to make a full-time income. We have a few reviews that are doing just that. However, we’re not advocating that you should only write one review – diversity is the key as you never know what could happen in this business. That page could suddenly disappear from Google for instance.
The problem most people have with affiliate marketing is that they think they need to write hundreds of product reviews or build a multitude of websites in order to be successful. It really isn’t necessary and in fact it can be detrimental. The more you have to work on, the more you spread yourself thin. What this means is that nothing gets the attention it deserves and nothing really works.
We did exactly the same thing when we were working on all our 20 websites at the one time. We never got anywhere and we only started seeing success when we focused on just one website. And then when we focused in even more by working on only a few pages we did even better.
It all comes down to quality vs quantity. Once you grasp this concept, it’s then and only then that you will start to see real success online.
So this is what we suggest for anyone trying to make money online with Amazon products although this will work with any products really.
1. Choose 5 products from Amazon to promote
Choose products that are getting good reviews and those with a price tag over $150. We recommend choosing 5 products because you never know if one product is going to do better than another.
2. Write a good quality review for each of those products
Your reviews need to be unique and provide a lot of detail. Our best reviews are over 1000 words and we find they convert so much better. Just think about what you would want to see in a review if you were looking to buy a particular product. Don’t spend too much time on writing the review – just do your best and get it up there. You can tweak it later once you start getting traffic. Just keep in mind that it is the quality of the review that converts.
3. Get as much traffic to those reviews as possible
This is the most important step and is often missed by most. If someone says to me that they aren’t making money online, this is usually the reason. The industry average for affiliate sales is thought to be around 1 in 100 clicks through to the merchant. In other words you have to send 100 people through to Amazon in order to achieve 1 sale. Now I know from experience that we get a better conversion rate than that with the way we write up our reviews and Amazon itself converts better than 1 in 100 but this gives you a general idea.
So if you only receive 100 visitors to your product review page per week and out of those 100 visitors only 10 click through to Amazon then you are only going to achieve about 1 sale every 10 weeks. Doesn’t sound so good does it? This is why getting traffic to your site is absolutely critical.
We recommend spending 80% of your time working on getting traffic.
4. Create content that links back to those product reviews
While you are working on generating traffic, spend some time writing up some articles for your blog. These articles won’t be product reviews but instead short information type articles. They only need to be around 400 words each but in some way related to the product you are promoting. So for instance, say you have written a product review for a gold diamond ring. You then write a 400 word article on how to clean a diamond ring. You upload that article to your site and add a link in that article back to your gold diamond ring product review. This helps to boost that product review and also helps to boost your site.
If you can do one of these articles per week for each product review (ie. 5 articles in total per week if you have written 5 product reviews) then that is excellent. But if you are strapped for time then even one or two articles per month per product review is still good. If you’d rather not write the articles yourself and have a bit of cash to spare then you should be able to get a well written 400 word article written up by writers in Elance for around $5 each.
So what is the answer to making a decent living from Affiliate Marketing?…in our opinion it is definitely quality content and high traffic volumes.
Tagged with: amazon affiliates • Blogging • product reviews
Filed under: Amazon • Blogging
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Hi,
I can just agree with your post – quality is always much more important than quantity. A well written post drives traffic in. But I thought of another thing – what about keeping people there? Make them sign up for your Newsletter and generate a much longer income from them? I think a blog with just 5 articles looks a little empty and most probably won´t people get to sign up for your newsletter or rss feed. So I think we simply need some time, a topic where we addicted to and for sure some well written content
Having only 5 reviews on a website really isn’t an issue.
I see it like this. There are two types of websites. The website you are reading now is one where I would like to keep people and I would want them to sign up to my newsletter. It’s a place where I want people to keep coming back to you.
My product review sites are a different story. We’ve found that people don’t come back to a product review site on a regular basis. They only come back when they are ready to buy a product. So a site like that doesn’t have a community feel about it like this blog does. So having 5 reviews on that type of site is really not a big deal. The reader doesn’t even know that the site has only 5 reviews because they are only interested in the actual product they just searched for. They don’t care about the other content on the site.
Also, as I said in Step 4 above, you still need to add content to that site to build it up a little and to provide internal links back to your product pages. So over time, more content is added anyway.
Thanks Paula,
just read your answer. I see your point – so if I understand this correctly: there are review sites on the one hand and blogs with a community feeling on the other?
I was wondering about this for longer. For example: I am member of the WA University and met Potpiegirl there who promotes articles on Squidoo. So actually Squidoo is a site consisting just of reviews, as the user I have just one site which generates my income. So if I understand this correctly – I just want to make the sale the moment people come to my lens but I don´t count on them coming back?
On the other hand – what when you have a blog which includes reviews and you have loyal readers. Aren´t they more likely to click your link than on Squidoo. Sorry for throwing this example in – I just did because I´m a bit disappointed – I created two lenses, one about the Kindle from Amazon which I consider about well known – and still have also after 2 weeks of publishing not one single view.
This is why I wondered if review sites without community work and especially what is the secret there
Monja’s last post…A university which tells you how to make money?!
Writing product reviews can work on Squidoo. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t. The problem with your Squidoo lens at this point in time is that it has only been two weeks. You really aren’t giving it much time. It can take 2 months or even longer before you start seeing decent traffic come through to a new page of content like that.
What have you done to get traffic to that Squidoo lens? Have you worked on getting backlinks? Squidoo works fairly well because it does rank quite well. Not as good as it used to but it still does okay. But it won’t work on its own. You need to work just as hard at getting traffic to that Squidoo lens as you would with any page on your own website.
Also the Kindle is quite a competitive term so you are going to have to work even harder to rank.
This business takes work and most of that work is tied up in working on traffic generation. If you don’t get that part right then nothing will work for you.
Hello, Hello,
I am very new to this business mostly because I just got laid off but I have a question about Amazon. How do I sell products that are already on Amazon?? I can’t seem to figure that out so any help you ladies could offer would be very much appreciated.
Cheers,
Tom
You need to sign up to their affiliate program. You can do that here – https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/
Once signed up, you will be able to add affiliate links to your website that link through to Amazon.
Great advice. It is so easy to spread yourself to thin – a trap most of us fall into. I like your idea of concentrating not only on one site for awhile but just a few pages within that site. I intend to try this for myself.
Dawn’s last post…Constipation – Causes and Cures
It really does work Dawn – at least it did for us. If you already have a few pages on your site that are making money, even just a few dollars now and then, then these are the ones to go with. All it takes then is getting more traffic to those pages to increase the income.
Thanks for the great article. Can you please tell me if using those automated Amazon plugins hurt your rankings at all? I was thinking of using one to build up my content. A week ago I managed to get my site to position one for my keyword. This was great because I got 23 sales. However since then it has dropped to position 3 and now my site is only making 1 or 2 sales per day. The product is also way below that of $150! Whoops……
I was going to use the plugin to try and extend the products on my site into more expensive items.
My other question is, do you get most of your traffic from Google for being in the top position or it is mostly self promoted. Trying to maintain and stay in position one whilst great, is going to give me a heart attack lol.
Thanks for your help ladies, well done on your success
Take Care
Norma
I can’t give you a definite answer on whether these plugins will affect your rankings – it’s impossible to tell what Google is thinking. All I can say is that we use these plugins on some of our sites and haven’t noticed any difference in ranking because of it.
If you are going to use an Amazon plugin then the best way to do it is to change the content that comes over from Amazon. If you keep the same content then you are competing with hundreds of other websites doing the exact same thing and you are also competing with Amazon itself.
We get most of our traffic from Google for a variety of different keywords.
Thank you Paula it just seems I am working long hours for very little return. Thanks for the advice with the Plugin
If you are working long hours without much to show for it, then you need to stop and reassess what you are doing.
Most people who aren’t making it online are spreading themselves too thin by working on too many things at once. They are also focusing on the wrong things.
You are a little different to most because you are obviously already doing something right since you got to number 1 on Google and made 23 sales. That is an amazing achievement and something to be really proud of.
You know already that getting to number 1 on Google means more traffic so your goal should be to get back to being number 1. You’ve done it already so you know it can be done so make this your ultimate goal.
Spend at least 80% of your time getting that page back to number 1 on Google. Then spend the other 20% of your time on other things. Once that page is back to number 1 then work on another page and get that to number 1.
Focus on only a few pages at a time and you will succeed.
Great post, as usual. Definitely reaffirms what I’m seeing in my own site building. There are blogging/IM friends of mine online that have pretty extensive networks, and a lot of them have been hit with the recent “Mayday Update” at Google. Lots of speculation going on about why (does LSI play a role, etc.) – and mostly the approach has been to cast a wider net…
With everything else being equal, however, I’m much better at the one-thing-done-well approach. Just from a personality “glitch” or what not (I never could seem to conduct the research for all the different niches in time anyway). If I changed my tactic and just ran w/the sites that are making the most money, I’m sure things would go very well.
I have one site that nets $300-$800+ a month, thru another affiliate network (CJ), and I’ve been torn about circling back to build more landing pages/product reviews OR do I go build more sites, different niches, etc.
After reading this, I’m going with my gut check: build the 1-2 sites that are doing well, market them more, then move on. Thanks for the insight.
JamestheJust on Elance’s last post…Off The Wall – Aaron Wall Of SEOBook Grants The Average Genius An Interview
Go with just the 1 site if you can James. I know it’s hard to do that. We still find it difficult not to want to work on other sites we have when we know we need to focus on just the one.
I would be working on that site that already makes the money. If it makes some money, then it can make more money. All it needs is more traffic. And I bet on that site, only one or two pages are actually making that money. If that’s the case, just focus on those pages and do everything you possibly can to get backlinks and build traffic to those pages.
Can I also suggest trying out Amazon on those pages instead of using CJ merchants. Of course it will depend on your product but if Amazon have those products then give them a go. When we did that on one of our sites the sales just exploded and we have never looked back since then.
Actually I am an Amazon affiliate — but here’s the “secret”: I have only ever tried to generate traffic from article marketing (esp. w/UAW, EZA and a few other high PR article directories). In other words: you’re right. Just one page that’s a “landing page.”
The site was primarily monetized for AdSense, and still is a top earner as far as micro-niche AdSense sites go. It wasn’t designed for affiliate mktg, you might know the green/black/yellow template from John XFactor?
In any case…now I think I’ll take you up on the tip and see how Amazon does. I’ve been unimpressed w/Amazon…but it’s an unfair evaluation on my end. I’ve made a passive income (about $2k from Jan until now, still making sales), from one product, on one page — and it’s the *only one* I’ve ever marketed or done a review for.
Go figure! Thanks for the tip, will have to get back to you and let you know how the experiment goes.
JamestheJust on Elance’s last post…Off The Wall – Aaron Wall Of SEOBook Grants The Average Genius An Interview
Yes please get back to us. I’d love to know how it all goes.
Forgot to add: great tip about the ONE site!
Write review/plug affiliate product/backlink.
What are your favorite ways to backlink? When you have an Amazon site, do you favor one method over the other (I’m almost 100% article marketing, with a few social bookmarks/RSS feeds…)?
JamestheJust on Elance’s last post…Off The Wall – Aaron Wall Of SEOBook Grants The Average Genius An Interview
We mostly use article marketing but we prefer to give articles to other bloggers and websites rather than place them on article directories. It takes a lot more work though because you have to email each site to see if they will take an article but it is worth it as the backlinks are a lot stronger.
Hi Paula,
I found a directory of both publishers looking for sites to publish articles for and websites looking for content in several niches.
I am working with two high ranking health websites and now have articles published on both websites.
The nice thing is now that they know the quality of my content, I send them each unique articles, and they get published.
Initially I had to email them to see if they were interested, and once they were…it is easy to get content published and build back links.
As I want to add more sites to publish, I can contact site owners looking for content and show them my published work on the network, which takes the hard work out of finding interested websites.
Ken Weiss’s last post…By- health insurance companies in
Hi Paula,
I just discovered your blog today through a link on an Internet Marketing forum and have already picked up a few great pointers from you. I completely agree with your statement about focusing on one thing, it makes all the difference. I’m looking forward to becoming a regular reader of yours.
Thanks for visiting Will. Hope we can provide even more pointers for you in the future.
Hi Paula,
Can’t thank you enough for taking the time to answer my question. Things are pretty clear now.
By the way, I have made 12 sales in the last 10 days with around 11.5% conversion rate.
Kudos to you babes for the motivation
Wow, that’s great Dave! You are definitely on your way now.
I really hope so Paula. I want adsense and this to be full time income for me.
Amazing information Paula.
I was just about to start my first amazon review website and I was wondering how many articles to put it. I am ready to go now I think. Thanks a bunch!
Happy I could help!
Hi Paula. I enjoyed your post. I had a question though. When you suggest picking 5 Amazon products and promoting them are you talking about promoting all 5 on a single blog? Or taking more of a microniche approach and creating 5 separate blogs.?
So you might have a blog on 1 particular gas grill instead of Gas Grills as a niche. Or 1 particular digital camera -Pentax xxxx instead of digital cameras as a group ? (Long tail approach)
Thanks,
Sandy
You don’t have to put them on the one blog. They can be anywhere and be totally different products. We are currently in the process of getting traffic to another 5 reviews we just added and those reviews are all on different blogs.
Thanks Paula
Sandy
This article really hits home for me as I have created over 50 sites that sell Amazon products and they are not terrible looking but certainly lack quality reviews and content. I have made some sales, but the maintenance of the sites has spiraled out of control and I lost track of which sites I have worked on. Just one question: Do you put your product reviews and A site specifically dedicated to that product or just on a general blog site?
Thank you and keep up the great work – I have subscribed to your newsletter =)
We have a variety of blogs and reviews on all sorts of different products. We have niche blogs and also a general shopping blog. The site doesn’t matter so much – it’s the actual review page that is important.
If I were you, I would find 5 reviews on your 50 blogs that are already getting traffic and/or sales and focus on those. Rework the reviews so they are long and detailed and then work on the traffic.
I’m already working on it – thanks again!
Hi Paula,
I am so excited to find your blog! I have about 100 Amazon micro niche websites that average about $1000/month in commissions. They are the opposite of your sites. Mine are thin, created with autoposter software, and devoid of unique content. They work, but are not nearly reaching their potential. Since reading your blog post, I have picked out 2 sites with the most potential and I am going to rewrite unique product reviews for each of the dozen or so products on each site. The one good thing about these sites … they do generate enough unit sales that I consistently reach 7% commissions, and I think I’m going to hit 7.5% this month because of some seasonal product niches. So I’ll keep them going to increase my sales figures while I work on optimizing my 2 best sites. I’ve signed up for your newsletter and can’t wait to learn more! Thanks so much. Barb
Barb @ homebuying 101′s last post…Do I Qualify For A Mortgage?
That’s spot on Barb. That’s exactly what I’d be doing if I were in your position.
I’d love to know how you go with it so keep us updated if you can.
I’m just wondering…You do your article marketing by giving articles to other blogs. Isn’t that hard when you are writing about products?
For example, 2 of my sites that I have done fairly well with Amazon focus on garden furniture. How would I write articles about that and what kind of sites would even want them?
Cathy’s last post…I Found a Cool Free Productivity Tool
Yes we do offer articles to other bloggers and also regular websites. That is a great way of getting good backlinks and traffic.
If my site was about garden furniture I would be contacting gardening blogs – there are thousands of them on the net. And I would be giving them information type articles like:
1. How to Choose the Right Garden Furniture for Your Outdoor Area
2. Different Types of Garden Furniture
3. Top 7 Tips for Choosing Garden Furniture
Thanks Paula. That makes sense.
Cathy’s last post…I Found a Cool Free Productivity Tool
Hi Paula.
Great information on the article. I have been in Affiliate Marketing for about six months now. My niche is Natural Men’s Health.
I has taken me a while, but I now have a handful of subscribers to my newsletter and a free health e-book one of my affiliate managers sent to me. I am listed as the author and it has several products with my affiliate links embedded…pretty cool
My posts include links to the product landing pages, but I am going to go through them and add links to my product review page.
Thanks for the help.
Ken
If you have a lot of pages to add internal links to try using the Internal Link Building WordPress plugin. You can quickly create links to your prodcut review pages from your other posts using this and its free.
You can download it here:
http://seoroi.com/specialty-services/new-seo-plugin-for-wordpress-internal-link-building/
Hi Paula,
As always, thanks for the tip on the plugin. I will add this to 20 plugins from your recent post to get installed today.
You and Wanda have quickly become a trusted and reliable source for help and guidance for us newbie affiliate marketers.
Thanks again, Ken
That’s really nice Ken – thanks for your kind words.
You ladies are awesome! I just found this blog today from someone else and I realized I came across one of your affiliate blogs around a month ago. That affiliate blog is really good and I can see how you ladies make great money. So I just subscribed and will be definitely taking your advice and putting it to use right away.
I have soooo suffered from working on too many things at once so I will be doing what you have explained in this post right away. Thank you for the useful tips!!
You will notice a difference when you start focusing on only a few things. Glad we could help Lisa.
I am looking forward to seeing the results!
Question – do you recommend doing what you did when you took massive action and wrote 8 post per day? I am wondering if I should write up 5-10 reviews across several blogs that I have AND take one of the blogs and pump out as many posts as I can for a few months. Or if I should just focus on building backlinks to my reviews?
I only have roughly 2 hrs per day to work on this so I want to make sure I am focusing on the right things. Thanks again!
Hi Paula. I had another question. I apologize in advance for not reading your entire blog yet. I just recently found you through the WF. My question is: Are your blogs all Amazon blogs?
Thanks!
Sandy
We use Amazon affiliate links on most of our blogs but we also use affiliate links from other merchants so they are not purely Amazon blogs. Amazon converts better than any of the others though which is why we use them 90% of the time.
I have been going through Amazon tonight, looking for good candidates to promote that are over $150 & something that I can actually write about.
The problem I’m running into is every time I find a possible product, when I google it, Amazon already has all the top positions.
How do you compete with Amazon?
Cathy’s last post…I Found a Cool Free Productivity Tool
Amazon are actually quite easy to beat for individual product pages. We don’t mind seeing Amazon in the top search results for any products we promote.
Even if you have trouble beating Amazon, being second is just as good when you do a product review, especially if in your title tag you include the word ‘review’. People will see that and completely skip Amazon as they will want to read a good review before making a commitment.
That’s good to know. I just assumed I wouldn’t have a chance against Amazon.
Cathy’s last post…I Found a Cool Free Productivity Tool
This advise will surely make life easier.
There are so many ways to promote products that sometimes can be overwhelming.
And, sometimes we perform one method too often that we miss other promotional opportunities. I also make the mistake. Thanks for this advice Wanda & Paula.
Menandro’s last post…Passive and Residual Income, PIncPassion’s Distinction
Internet marketing is becoming quite overwhelming. When we started it was very basic really. Get your website up, put some affiliate links on it and get lots of reciprocal links. Now it is quite complex with video marketing, cell phone marketing and a myriad of ways to get traffic to your site. It also doesn’t help that Google keeps changing their algorithm. This is why it is even more important to stay focused these days.
We can say that the constant changing of Google’s algorithm is just one of those “It’s just the way it is” things. We are fortunate to have other means to establish ourselves on the net. Have a great day Paula!
This post is exactly what I need to know right now! Thank you. I came across your site a few weeks ago, and then was reminded by your email that arrived in my inbox today – see there’s something to be said for building a list and emailing ;0). I’m realising that I’ve been doing exactly what you are talking about and spreading myself to thin. I lost my job a couple of months ago and have been spending almost all my waking hours on my websites (about 30 of them). I earnings have gone up a lot from what they were as a percentage, but still pocket change at this point. Making a few sales in Amazon and Adsense earnings but not much. I’ll be taking your advice. Thanks again!
Sue’s last post…Revitol Cream – Is it brilliant or is it bogus?
That’s pretty much what we were doing Sue. All our waking hours were spent on our online business. When you are working that long and hard and the income doesn’t increase substantially then somethings not right.
For some reason, as soon as we focused on less and worked less hours, the income increased.
I’m glad I got your email today and even happier I stopped by. I know I can do this! I love Amazon as a customer and an affiliate. Taking your advice, I need to make my posts longer, more focused and find that traffic! Thanks for nudging me to read your great ideas!
No problem Shari – hope it helps. Just keep thinking how you can help your readers whilst you are writing the review. Focus on your readers first always.
I have just started concentrating on higher value products (after spending a lot of time on lower priced stuff, which I was shifting in decent quantities, but not making enough from each sale to add up to decent profits).
What I am finding though is that it’s a lot more work to rank well because the competition is that much keener. Sometimes I feel like I’ve run out of places to find new backlinks.
Question: when you do your guest posting – do you find blogs that have a similar subject to the site you are trying to promote, or do you go for general blogs to post your articles on?
We mostly go for sites that are similar in subject. They are more likely to take an article if they know it relates in some way to their website.
Hi Paula
Another great post!
I am working on a total of 5 product pages but I have one product page (PR3) with several keywords on Google Page 1.
I have been really focusing on this particular page. I’m still building backlinks to it. I have a few articles out on other sites that I am sure that I haven’t had any credit for yet from google as 4 of the articles have been posted within the last month. I am hoping it will take my keywords to position #1 or at least #2.
Keywords for my other product pages are not showing up yet (at least not in the first 10 pages)as I have been spreading the rest of my focus between the 4 Product pages.
I have another product page (PR3) it’s been up for quite a while but is not ranking for any keywords yet. My affiliate for this page is Shareasale. I am considering changing to Amazon for this product- do you think it will make any difference to the ranking and do you think it’s a good idea? Further if you make a number of changes on a product page that is ranking should it make any difference?
Sorry it’s so long…
Thanks Shirley
Shirley’s last post…Billiards for Beginners
Definitely keep building those backlinks Shirley. You are so close if you are already on that front page of Google.
Changing to an Amazon product (ie. changing affiliate links only) won’t make any difference to your ranking.
Changing the content however could make a difference. It depends on what you change. If you completely change the content on the page then the keywords may change and therefore your ranking for those keywords may change also. Having said that however, we have made changes to high ranking pages on our sites and haven’t had a problem with losing rankings.
I am not sure of which page you are referring to but if you have written about a particular product and not mentioned the merchant then you should be able to just change the affiliate links so they go to Amazon instead of your current merchant. Amazon sell just about everything so you should be able to find that product on Amazon.
If you want me to take a closer look so I can provide a better answer, just email me.
Thanks a lot Paula.
I will email you.
Shirley
Shirley’s last post…Billiards for Beginners
Shirley,
Dont worry about that shareasale review article. If you have built link,s then it will rank. Remember Google (loosely) assigns a tim period for each site(after it gets lot of backlinks), so you will rank someday.
I have pages for which I built backlinks 1.5 years back. I had even forgot about them. And suddenly since last month I am seeing many of them have started ranking 4,5,2,3 on page 1 of Google and this has caused a very nice spike in traffic.
So keep working.
Thanks Dave I appreciate your input. I could certainly do with a lot more traffic. My site is about 8-9 months old.
Shirley’s last post…Billiards for Beginners
You mentioned in #4 of your post… “While you are working on generating traffic, spend some time writing up some articles for your blog.”
If your blog is on the same domain as your product reviews, but just under a different page, for example: http://www.mydomain.com is where I have some product reviews, and I write blog post at http://www.mydomain.com/blog, then I can write articles on my blog, link them to the product review on the same domain, and it will still help the review with backlinks? I didn’t realize you could build backlinks from within your own domain.
Yes, you can write blog posts on your blog and link them back to your review pages. Internal links do help although they are not as strong as external links.
Hi Paula,
This is only the 2nd time I visit your site and each time I feel inspired.
I just like to know how you would write a review of a product which you haven’t owned or used. I have been wondering about it for quite some time now. Rather than just saying… “Most customers who bought this product find it…” how would you structure it.
In another of your post, you mentioned adding your own story as the introduction to make your review more interesting. But that will be quite difficult if you haven’t used the product yourself. Any advice would be most helpful.
Greg
This is a really good question and requires quite a long answer so I will write up a blog post for this one. I’ll try and get it posted in the next few days.
Hey Paula,
Thanks for the reply. I am sure your post will be keenly awaited by all readers here.
And thanks for the privilege of being on your subscribers’ list.
Greg
Hi Greg
Here’s the post all done. We have only answered your first question in this post but will get to your second question asap.
http://www.affiliateblogonline.com/2010/06/22/how-to-write-a-product-review-when-you-dont-own-the-product/
Thanks for this post! I have 11 blogs that I am currently working on and I am spreading myself thin. I think that I should limit myself to one or two and then move on once I am satisfied. The problem is, I can’t figure out when that point will be…once I make X dollars per month or have x amount of traffic? Not sure.
That depends on you Jen. For us, it was when the site was making enough that we could give up our day jobs.
Stumbled across your blog by accident. It’s full of great advice and very intelligent comments offered by your subscribers. Most of the advice om making money online centres on reviewing Clickbank products. promoting Amazon ones is a great idea.
It also provides a bit of diversity if you are only promoting Clickbank products.
Hav you tried promoting your review pages using PPC (adwords and others)?
It’s much less work and much faster results than SEO.
By the way, how lonf thats it take (average) for you review pages to get indexed?
sorry I meant ‘how long does it take’
We’ve tried PPC in the past but haven’t had much success. I’d love to be able to do it properly but I would want someone standing over my shoulder telling me what to do. There is too much money to lose. I prefer SEO as it is free for the most part and the results can be more long term than PPC.
Our review pages pretty much get indexed straight away. Google loves WordPress so when we post the reviews they are usually up on Google within half an hour or so.
It’s funny cos I’m more into PPC and find SEO less long term and more complicated. But I have to admit PPC is a hard bone.
I will look into your SEO suggestions and try to implementing into my sites.
I’m also looking into SEO software like SEnuke and others.
Can you advise? Would it work to have just one website/blog – with a suitable name/umbrella term – and to then cherrypick products and review them, also adding informational content?
Most definitely David. Our Amazonian Profit Plan works with both niche and broad sites. And it will work with just one website. There is no need to keep building more and more websites. Just one site with well written reviews and quality information is all you need.
We have a gift site that allows us to add a variety of product reviews. Because the URL is broad, it is not limiting to what reviews we can add.
I think you’re methodology makes tremendous sense. I do have two related questions though. If you’re building a site/blog for a single product do you try to register an exact KW domain (or available variation of) based on one the top-related keywords for that product? And, conversely what domain keywords would you use for a site with multiple related products? Thanks in advance for your reply.
We actually don’t build sites for a single product. That’s not to say you can’t do it but we don’t only because if the product is no longer available (for whatever reason) then the site is wasted.
In terms of domain names we try and get the main keyword. For instance if our site is about cordless drills we will try and get the word “cordless drill” into the domain name somehow. However, we don’t worry if we can’t. We might instead choose a keyword with the word “power tools” or something similar.
Hi Paula,
Thanks for this write up. It’s really informative but i’m wondering what’s the best way to get traffic to those reviews? Is it similar to seo techniques? I look forward to your response.
Thanks
You might want to take a look at our blog post here. This is the primary method we use for getting backlinks and traffic.
http://www.affiliateblogonline.com/2011/03/30/the-most-powerful-backlinking-method-there-is/
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