In our last lesson we talked about finding subjects for your articles. How to find out what people are interested in and what answers they are searching for. Todays lesson may start out a bit puzzling for you. You may think that I’m approaching things bass-ackwards, so to speak, and you’d be right.
You’ve heard the song, “Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start,” where you continue on to learn your musical scales with the singing nun. Article Marketing is just the opposite.. the very best place to start is at the end.
There’s really a very logical reason. If we’re going to invest our time writing articles, we want to make sure that we have a reason for writing them other then just satisfying the curiousity of our readers. You may have discovered last week, after reading lesson one, that there were a good number of people looking for the answer to ‘how to remove permanent red marker from a white dress shirt’. Specific.. targeted market.. good article, right?
Only if you can give them a solution.
You may have found low competition for this targeted market for the simple reason that there is no way to remove permanent red marker from a white dress shirt.
Now before you begin emailing me your laundry tips, let me just say that is only an example. My laundry talents stop at sorting darks from the whites and dumping in some Oxy Miracle cuz Billy Mays told me to but I think you get my point. You can write the best article in the world but if it doesn’t ultimately lead to $$ in your pocket.. why do it?
So today we’re going to take that huge list of article possibilities that you made last time and find some products or affiliate programs that will solve the problems or answer the questions those articles present.
Most people find the simplest way to find great products is through Clickbank. If you’ve been involved in online marketing of any kind for even a brief period, you’ve seen products and affiliate programs marketed through Clickbank whether you knew it or not. They are the Internet’s top resource for buyers and sellers of every kind of electronic information, not just Internet Marketing.
If you are not a member of Clickbank, you can join free at http://www.clickbank.com
Once you’ve signed in, navigate your way to the Marketplace. Any product offered here, you can promote and sell with article marketing. Clickbank even provided you with stats on the products so that you know how well they sell.
For example, lets choose the catagory Home and Family and then the sub-catagory of Cooking and Recipes. Click go and you’ll get a list of all the products/programs that you can sell through Clickbank that pertain to cooking and recipes.
Let’s take the first one on the list and look at the product stats..
$/sale: $19.19 | Future $: – | Total $/sale: $19.19 | %/sale: 75.0% | %refd: 84.0% | grav: 51.21
Looks confusing, but there isn’t really when you know what each stat represents.
1. $/Sale: In this case $19.19 is what you as an affiliate will make from the sale of this product, which happens to be a cookbook.
2. %/Sale: This is the commmission percentage earned from each sale. Usually anything about 50% is a good thing.. say if a product sold for $30 with a 50% commission you would earn $15. ( see I told you this wasn’t hard)
3. Gravity: This is probably the most important stat. This is basically figured by a clickbank formula based on how many affiliate sales there have been for the product in the recent past. It is a formula no one but clickbank knows but in general the higher the gravity, the better selling the product.
So using the catagories, bring up the list of products/services that compliment your article topics and check their stats.. looking at amount and percentage earned and how popular the product has been.
While Clickbank is a great place to start, it isn’t the only fish in the sea. Places such as Commission Junction are free to join and offer many ways to link to affiliate products. AssociatePrograms.com is a very well organized ranked system of affiliate progams that you can join. Lifetime Commissions is another one.
You’ll find many resources as you continue writing articles, but for now my suggestion is to start with Clickbank.
Of course if you have your own product or website, that would be where you would want to send your readers. Even a blog can serve as your website where you can offer your newsletter and insights on your niche. More will be discussed at a later date on where your readers should be sent after reading your article.
Okay, after today’s lesson you should:
A. Have your list of possible topics from Lesson One and
B. Have that list narrowed down to topics that have a product(s) to market.
This list will be the list that we continue with when we talk about keyword research next time.
