I recently saw this question on an internet marketing forum. The writer was specifically looking for responses from ‘successful internet marketers and veterans’ to see what they would do if they had to start out from scratch again. I thought it was a really good question for a newbie to ask.

Most people spend years becoming truly successful online and most will have made every mistake known to man to get there so asking them what they would do if they had to start again from scratch is an ideal question.

Interestingly enough, all of the responses were different. So what does that say?…well, to me it simply says that there are plenty of ways to make money online. How wonderful is that?! You don’t need to worry if it will work or not because once you find a system or method that suits you; it WILL work if you keep at it. Persistence is the key with this business but most people don’t have it in them to keep at it until they do eventually succeed. And they keep buying the next “big thing’ hoping it will help them make money overnight, and of course that doesn’t work for them either because they don’t put the time in.

So let’s look at some of the responses to that post to see what some of the ‘successful’ internet marketers would do:

1. ‘Create your own product’– in other words, write your own ebook, create a membership site, create and sell your own WordPress theme, build a plugin etc. Now prior to us releasing our ebook we wouldn’t have put much stock into this one but I can say with hand on heart that this is one that I would recommend, to someone with experience on the web. However, for someone new to it all, it’s not an easy one to start with and personally I wouldn’t suggest it to someone brand new on the internet. Others may disagree on that one but I really think you need to know the basics on how to build a website and how to market a product on the internet before you get into something like this.

2. ‘Give value in everything you do’ – now I love that response because that has become our philosophy. If I were starting again I would make certain that I have that line floating around in my head instead of ‘How can I make money online’.

3. ‘Approach article marketing differently’ – basically this poster said that he wouldn’t have wasted his time posting to Ezine etc and instead would have created a relationship with a couple of authority sites and submitted his articles to them exclusively. Personally I wouldn’t just stick to one or two but the basic idea is there. If you can get your articles on authority sites or blogs that relate to your niche then you will be streets ahead of the rest of those who simply submit to article directories.

4. ‘Create an email list’ – this one was a common response. This is the one thing we have been a bit slow to take on although that is changing now. If you have a nice list of people who follow the same things you follow then you can promote products to the list and make money that way. One of the main advantages of a list is if your websites suddenly disappeared overnight then you will still have a following of people and it won’t take long to get back up and running.

5. ‘Create a plan’ – as the poster said, most newbies don’t have a plan or a set of goals – all they think about is the money. Setting goals is extremely important. We have a roll of butchers’ paper that we roll out and write our plans, ideas, and goals. And we do this at the very least once a week. Its not set in concrete, we can make adjustments to suit what is happening but by doing this we always know exactly what we need to do in the coming days, weeks and months.

6. And finally my response to the question was that if I were starting out again I would create only one website instead of many and would create 5 really good product reviews for that site using Amazon products. I would then spend 80% working on getting traffic and backlinks to those 5 pages and the other 20% of my time writing informational type articles to add to the site. That’s all I would do. Nice and simple and this is the one method that I know absolutely works.

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This is a post that we actually send out to one of our email lists but we thought it was worth while posting to our blog here as well as it is a question we get asked regularly. Our answer to that question is always the same: NO. Actually we say it a lot nicer than that but that in essence is our response.

Why?…well for a couple of reasons actually. The first is the age old problem of people copying the site. We’ve had the experience of people not only copying individual pages but also in some instances copying the whole site. And although the old adage says ‘being copied is the greatest form of flattery’ when it comes to the internet, this doesn’t hold true. Copying our site doesn’t help anyone and no one benefits, not the person copying our site and certainly not us.

The other reason is that we have made so many mistakes in the past that giving someone one of our websites to look at will only result in them making the same mistakes we did. I have already read reviews from people who have obviously copied the format of some of our reviews. Unfortunately the particular format they copied didn’t work for us and I know it won’t work for them either.

Then there are others that attempt to follow our site structure because they found one of our websites and think they should structure it the same way. They are wasting their time because the site structure has very little to do with our success. We have sites structured in all sorts of different ways and the reviews still work regardless of how the site is structured.

And one more reason that we don’t give out our websites is that we are forever testing different things. We might try an Amazon plugin out for example. And because we are trying it out, it doesn’t mean that it is actually working for us, but people who visit the site may assume that because we are using that plugin then they should do the same.

What made this all work for us in the end wasn’t how our sites were structured or the plugins we used, the niche we chose,  or whether we used a blog or a html site – what worked was creating quality reviews and working our butts off getting traffic to those reviews.

We want you to be thinking in the same way. Just create a fantastic content for your site and spend the rest of your time getting traffic/backlinks to that content. That should be your primary goal. You don’t need to see our websites for this to work. You don’t need to see anyone’s website for this to work. You simply need to focus on your website, provide value and work on getting traffic.

We have a number of affiliate marketing websites. These are a hangover from when we first came into affiliate marketing when we felt that having more websites meant making more money. If we were starting out now we would only have a couple as it is so much more manageable. But having lots of websites means we have lots of product reviews and we realized early on that if we were going to keep track of where sales were coming from that we needed to start using Amazon tracking ids.

If you have begun to add product reviews to your own website and are using Amazon then you should really be doing the same thing. This will make it so much easier to check your sales on Amazon as you will be able to see exactly from which pages on your website the sales came from.

Choose Your Tracking IDs Carefully

Be very selective in how you want your tracking ID’s to look as you cannot delete or change them once they have been approved by Amazon. Bummer I know.

We found this out the hard way, we had started using a set of ID’s and then found it didn’t really help us when we came to determining which products were performing the best and we had to start over, but the original ID’s could not be deleted or changed, and keep in mind that you can only have 100 tracking ID’s per account. This may sound a lot but once you get started you will find it doesn’t take long to start using up your quota.  Having said that, we haven’t used ours up yet but that is because we track a mix of websites and products.  So we only bother about tracking products that meet our product review criteria.

We use one tracking ID per product review page so it will be used for both the images and the text links on that page. However, if you want to go even deeper and see which individual links are performing the best, you can use a tracking id for each individual link. So you might have a tracking id for the image link, a different tracking id for the first link in your product review, a different tracking id for the second link and so on. But as we said previously, you only ever get 100 tracking ids per Amazon account so doing it this way will mean that you have the potential for running out of tracking ids fairly quickly.

So how do you Create a Tracking ID in Amazon?

1. Sign into your Amazon Associates account.

2. Click on Account Settings in the top right hand corner of your screen.

3. In the Account Information Section find the bullet point “Manage your tracking IDs” and click on it.

4. Click the Add Tracking ID button and you will be presented with a page where you can add a tracking ID (see image below). Add the tracking ID that you have decided to use for a particular product or website in the blank box. We usually type in a word that relates to the product we are promoting. So for instance, say that we have written a product review for the iPod Touch. If we wanted to create a tracking ID for that page we might enter the words “ipod-touch” into that tracking ID field. So the tracking ID would look like this - ipod-touch-20 (Note that Amazon IDs end in ’20′ in North America).

5. Click the search button and Amazon will do a search to make sure the Tracking ID is unique. Amazon will let you know straight away whether the ID is available and if it is you can start using it on your product review page.

How to Add the Tracking ID to the Product Review

1. Open your product review post in WordPress. Also open your Amazon Product page in a new tab or window, whichever suits the way you work with multiple internet windows.

2. On the top line of the product page in Amazon you will find the words “Link to this page”. Click on that link. This will open the ‘Customize and Get HTML’ pop-up.

3.You will see two drop-down boxes – one says “Signed in as” and the other says “Tracking ID” Click the down arrow and select the Tracking ID for the product review you just created (see image below). Amazon will automatically change the code in the HTML code box so that it now includes your tracking ID.

4. Now, you can simply grab the code and add it to either your image or text links as you would normally do and the tracking id will be included. (For instructions on adding Amazon links to images click here.)

So there you have it a quick and easy way to keep track of where your clicks and conversions are coming from as your Tracking ID will show in your Amazon Tracking ID Summary report.

You will be able to see at a glance, how many clicks, items ordered, items shipped, shipped item revenue and commissions or Advertising Fees each product is producing.

Continuing on from our last blog post, today we are going to go through how to include a story in your product reviews. The reason we add a story is that it makes the story more interesting and entices the reader to continue reading. Let’s put it this way, which version do you find more interesting?

This one:

“Today I am going to review the iPod Touch. This has just been released by Apple and is the equivalent of the iPhone without the phone. This makes it perfect for those who don’t need another phone or want to sign up to a phone plan.  The features of this great little device are extensive and I will be going through each of them today.”

Or this one:

” When Wanda and I were in the US attending a conference, we happened upon the Apple Store in New York. If you’ve ever been there you’ll know what an experience that is, but we happened to be there the day after the iPhone was released to the world, actually we were on a hop on hop off tourist bus and when the guide pointed out the iPod store – we hopped off. Well, what can I say, we were hooked, but unfortunately we couldn’t buy one because they wouldn’t have worked back home in Australia. It was only later when the iPod Touch was released that we ended up buying one of those instead and we are so glad we did.”

The first one is okay but I much prefer the second one. I know I would keep reading to see what happens next.

Weaving a story into a product review lightens up the post and makes it more readable. It also lets the reader know that you are a real person and most people love reviews written by real people.

But what do you do if you don’t have a story?

First of all, you don’t need to have a story for every single product review you write. We have hundreds of reviews online and believe me, they don’t all have a story. But when we do have the opportunity we use a story. And that means when we have a real life story to use.

So we don’t recommend you making one up. You want your readers to trust you. If they see a whole lot of different stories on different reviews on your website they are going to start to get a little suspicious and the trust factor will disappear in a flash.

The story about me and Wanda in New York was 100% accurate. We did get off the bus to check out the Apple store as we really wanted to see the iPhone and we did end up buying an iPod Touch when they were eventually released in Australia.

But let’s assume that didn’t happen and I don’t own an iPod Touch. What I would do is try and create a story out of my personal feelings for the product or those of family and friends.

For instance:

• my opinion of the iPod Touch before I purchased it was that it looked like a lot of fun and I really had to have one
• a work mate at my last full time job loves gadgets and discussed this product with me a few times
• I know my niece would love one of these if she saw it in action

So that’s just three simple (truthful) statements that relate to me and family and friends. Now I take those statements and see if I can create a story from one or all of them. Just remember that a story doesn’t mean making something up – it simply means making the product review more personal.

So my opening paragraph for my review might sound like this:

“My nieces birthday is coming up and I have been thinking about what to get her. I am a real fan of gadgets and I know she is too so I thought that perhaps an iPod Touch might be a good choice. I personally want one of these myself so may just end up buying two but either way I think it might be a great gift. So because I never buy anything without doing the research, I’ve spent a considerably amount of time checking them out to see if they are actually worth the money. Here’s what I found out…”

You can see how I took something as simple as one statement about a family member and created a story from it.  It’s only a couple of sentences of personal stuff but it gets the reader in and interested in what I have to day.

Here’s another version:

“In my last job, I had a work mate who loved gadgets. Since I am the gadget queen we would speak extensively about the latest devices and gizmos. One gadget that came up often in our discussions was the iPod Touch.  This is one amazing little device. Some call it the iPhone without a phone and that is essentially what it is. It can pretty much do everything the iPhone can do except make a phone call or take photos. This means the iPod Touch is cheaper and you don’t have to sign up to any lengthy phone plans. I like that!”

For the rest of your review you can just get on and talk about the product and its benefits and if you like throw in a few personal touches as you go. For instance:

• “I really like this feature”
• “I really like how the iPod Touch has a wifi function so you can connect to the internet and email when you are out and about.”
• “This isn’t a feature I would use but I know others would find it super convenient”
• “When my friend spoke about this, he mentioned that…”

Making your reviews more personal really does improve conversion rates so take a little extra time if you can to come up with something to suit your product review.

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.

Lately we’ve been working on new ways to generate traffic to our blogs and are starting to try online services that can generate backlinks through placing articles on other sites. You’ve probably seen some of these sites or even tried them – sites like 1WayLinks, Unique Article Wizard, Free Traffic System and so on. We will do a blog post on the various backlinking services available at a later date..

As part of these services you can submit what is called a donor blog to the system. What this means is that you create a blog (or use one you already have), submit it to the backlinking site and once it has been approved, content is automatically submitted to your blog on a regular basis. In some cases you can receive up to 10 articles a day on your blog. The articles are just drip fed to your blog and you often don’t need to do anything but watch the content go up.

This was the case with us and we now, after a couple of months, already have a blog with close to 400 articles on all sorts of subjects ranging from dog training right through to insurance, ps3 gaming, crafts, hobbies and more…with more coming in on a regular basis. So what do you do with a blog like this with such a diverse range of topics? We could just as easily leave it as is since it’s not like we need to do anything to maintain it.

But then we had a thought that maybe we could turn it into an article directory. Nice idea in theory but in practice it really looked like a lot of hard work. I could just imagine the time it would take to find an article directory script and set it all up and then somehow transfer 400 articles over. It just seemed like too much to do on top of our already full schedule.

But then a thought came to me…I wonder if there is a WordPress plugin that can turn a WordPress blog into an article directory. It only took me a few minutes of searching and I came up with a couple of possibilities…and both of them free! And in fact, I never got around to trying the second one because the first one did the job beautifully….and by the time I was done, I had turned that blog into a professional looking article directory in well under 30 minutes.

So if you have a blog with lots of diverse topics then this might work for you too.

Steps to Creating Your Own Article Directory

Step 1: Download the following files – these are all free by the way:

1. Article Directory Plugin – More info for this plugin can be found here
2. Article Directory Theme – More info for this theme can be found here
3. Role Manager Plugin – More info for this plugin can be found here
4. Post Corrector WordPress Plugin – this one is optional – it allows you to add categories quickly and easily and this is the sample file of categories which you can use with this plugin. More info for this plugin can be found here

Step 2: Upload the Article Directory Plugin and Activate It

The plugin is easy to upload and activate and it includes various options which you can change in the WordPress dashboard such as excluding certain categories from displaying and whether or not to show empty categories.

Step 3: Upload the Article Directory Theme and Activate It

Note that you don’t have to use this theme. You can use your own but I can’t provide instructions on what to do if you use your own. I just know that when using their theme it all works perfectly and the theme is quite clean and ready to use. If you need more info on using the Article Directory plugin with your own theme then check out the creators website  – Articlesss.com

Step 4: Add Categories

If you already have an existing blog then you won’t need to add any categories as you will have most likely added categories in the past. But if your blog is new then you can either manually add categories or use the Post Corrector WordPress plugin from Step 1 above. This will allow you to quickly add categories and subcategories especially if you use it in conjunction with the sample file of categories. This will create categories similar to EzineArticles.com.

Step 5: Upload the Role Manager Plugin and Activate It

To be quite honest we never got around to uploading this one. The articles we receive come straight from 1WayLinks and are automatically added to the one user account in WordPress. I think however that if you are wanting to get serious with your Article Directory then you really need to use this type of plugin so that you can better manage users wanting to submit articles to your directory.

Step 6: Your Done!

Your Article Directory should be up and running at this point. Your only job now is to adjust the sidebar widgets, header and footer to make it suit your blog.