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How To Create Content Series – Part I

I have fought with content for a long time online. It is hard to come up with content. And writing it is a weird thing. When you are in the groove, you can do a lot. However, one day you stop, and then it is hard to get things started again.

I have tried many tools to help me jumpstart the process but tools aren’ writing. And here are times when writing just does not work. So what other options do you have for content at these times?

One type of content you can use is free reprint articles. The only problem with this plan is that everybody and his brother knows about using freely available articles. Which meansthat the same article that you post to your site or blog could be posted on hundreds of other sites across the internet and search engines don’t like duplicate content.

If you were a company expected to provide perfect results for millions of searchs a day, would you? Think of it. Why be bombarded with he same article for pages and pages of results? Instead Google and others use an algorithm to determine which of those articles will continue to be in the search engine results and which will just never make it.

So whatever time you saved using a free reprint article is mainly wasted because your chance of getting your article indexed is lowered. So essentially, we are back at square one again, writing your own articles, at least using a free route to content.

The thing about duplicate content is that is taken as a whole. It’s a percentage. I am not going to give you an exact number but if your article is above a certain percentage different than other similar articles online, then Google let’s you in and counts your content as unique. The exact percentage is unknown, but I have heard anything from 40% to 60%. And that gives you another, let’s call it a loophole.

But written content is only one type of content. There are videos, images, audio and various subtypes like PDF’s, slide shows, etc.

I hope to make this article first in a series of articles on content because links are great and have written a lot about them, but for the most part, once you learn the concept of link building and social media optimization, you pretty much get it all. However, you have to have something on your site when they get there.

And I am assuming that most of you are an army of one, which makes content hard to come by. Well, let’s explore that aspect of affiliate marketing, shall we. And by the way, I am not quite sure how many parts there will be in this series. That part I’m playing by ear.

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ClickBank is excited to announce the ClickBank HopAds Builder, a powerful new way for affiliates to promote ClickBank products. The HopAds Builder allows affiliates who own Web sites or blogs to easily create fully customizable ad boxes. This tool allows affiliates to customize both the look and content of ads to match their site.

The HopAds Builder is entirely free to use, and HopAds pay out the same affiliate commissions as Hoplinks created through the Marketplace. HopAds use ad text created by ClickBank publishers to appeal directly to consumers, and all ads are screened by ClickBank for content and quality. To start creating HopAds to display on your site, click here.

When CPA is used, sometimes it is referring to pay per lead programs. No taking out the credit card. Not even getting a free trial that is billed monthly in 30 days, although some can be. Just get the lead and get paid.

When you sign up for a CPA program, you are signing up for half the job you do as an affiliate marketer. You don’t have to close the sale. You only have to lead customers to the people that will. And you get paid for that lead. I’d say that’s a deal.

Some combinations of info your visitors may have to fill out for you to get credited with a lead:

• Just an email address.
• Name and address and phone #
• Name, address, phone # and email
• All info plus a credit card

And on the whole, the more info requested, the more you get paid. You could be looking at $30 or more to get someone’s credit card for a 30 day free trial of Acai Berry

But, of course, where the money is easier, it’s not really easier. There is competition. There is a lot of competition for easy money. But it is possible to make money this way. I have used both Adwords advertising and banners on my own sites to generate paid leads and it has worked. And since you are dealing with $1, $5 and $10 increments, you can track your results quickly. You will know if a campaign is working early. Whereas you might let a product with a $75 commission ride a bit before you cut it and have the potential of losing a lot more money if you are not used to using PPC.

Some Pay Per Lead Affiliate Programs

• Maxbounty
• ShareASale
• FineClicks
• ClixGalore
• LeadPile

You can find a lot more just by searching Google for “pay per lead” programs. But these have been around for a while and I have made money from the programs listed above.

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Data. What is data? Anything on the internet for the most part. As soon as you post an article to your blog, it becomes data. I know. I know. You wrote it. It’s the result of your work. But once it hits the internet, it becomes data. What else is data? The Clickbank marketplace XML. Affiliate datafeeds. Your bookmarks. The list goes on.

I am a blogger. I am an affiliate marketer. I do use PPC. But data is what got me as far as I have. It is a big piece of the puzzle. I write software also. But the software’s purpose: to manipulate, present and transfer data.

There was a time when I was looking for the killer app or trying to come up with the code to create it. This app would handle everything I do online to make money, from brainstorming a post to submitting it to various sites. Great idea and still on backburner.

But the data behind such a tool is basically the same data I have now. What if I took out the killer app and worked with just the data? That would give me more options. I could use the tool suited to each specific job and then move the data between them.

So that’s where I have been. On a software hunt. It takes me away from my normal schedule, but in the end, it is worth it. I always find something new and useful that speeds up one process or another. Well here is what I found this time:

Screen Scrapers

Not necessarily black hat. Sometimes you just need information, whether it be from Wikipedia or elsewhere. Or maybe just to check your rank in various search engines.

• screen scraper – The basic version is free and will give you a CSV file. This is the one I settled on.
• php screen scraping class with caching – For doing things on the fly without a database
• OutWit – A firefox plugin that does some data scraping
• Iopus Internet Macros – Another free Firefox plugin that you can automate browsing and scrape sites with.
• phpquery – A php class for scraping. Uses DOM.
• Web-Harvest
• IRobot
• SIMILE – A whole slew of screen scrapers from MIT.

Affiliate Datafeeds

Datafeeds help you to move the data for your affiliate program fast. About 90% of the money I have made through affiliate marketing has come through affiliate programs that supply datafeeds.

• Clickbank
• PayDotCom
• ShareASale – from Cubrowski.com
  
• Regnow

And what the hell, here is more from Cubrowski.

Tools for Moving and Transforming Data

These are relatively new. Take any data source format at any location, local, remote or secure and move and transform it into any other data source.

• Jitterbit – The one I am using and it is working out very well. This one will move data fast.
• XAware
• Talend
• Apatar
• SnapLogic

Working with MySql

Here are some tools that make working with MySql easier. There are many more out there. Or you can use PHPmyadmin.

• SqlYog
• SQL Excel

Importing Csv Files Into WordPress

For the longest time, there were only paid versions of plugins that would do this. I am sure I will be modifying one of these so that it can import pages and not just posts.

• Import CSV – There is a pay version of this plugin that does more like integrate with All-In-One SEO.
• Convert CSV Datafeeds to WordPress Posts – Not actually a plugin, in that you have to navigate to the tool manually in WordPress, but it will also do the job.

Now this may be the boring part of the job, working with data. But eventually, you may learn it’s power. If you could divide the internet into three parts, those parts would be people, data and algorithms. There is a motherload of tools in this post. Some I wish I had earlier. Some I never thought existed. So if you don’t need them now, if you stay in this business for any length of time, you might want to bookmark this post for later. Or just wait. I may give an example of their usage here. Forget paying for a bans system. You can do it better with these tools for free.

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One is to go through your interests and what you want to learn and pick something. Then find some affiliate products that compliment that interest. Then start writing. If you are interested, than it should be easy to come up with content. This is probably the best way. Readers will notice your passion and your stake in what you have to say. You can’t go wrong with this route.

Another way is to play affiliate programs like they are the stock market. And I will have to admit, I have done this one too. Commission Junction, Clickbank and various other affiliate programs give you stats on where the most money is to be made and which products are the most popular.

With Clickbank, you can use sales rank, gravity and referred. Of course other factors may influence your choice such as whether the product has a subscription (subscriptions rule) or the actual commission you get on the product (not wasting your time promoting a product).

Sales rank on Clickbank is a aggregate number. It is calculate based on the other sales numbers as Clickbank. It’s as mysterious to Clickbank affiliates as PageRank is to SEO’s. They don’t know the exact algorithm, but they can guess. And for the most part, what you need to look for in the sales rank is the movement. Did a product just jump from #50 to #30 in a couple of days? Did a product come out of nowhere and hit the top 5 in it’s category? Or did it’s popularity go down? What caused this: hype or organic growth?

Gravity indicates how many affiliates are actively promoting the product. The number does not tell you exactly how many affiliates are promoting the product. It also is a calculated number giving present sales more weight than past sales. But it does give you and indication of the competition. And when you line it up against rank, you begin to notice discrepancies. If you sort Clickbank products by the rank and notice that the gravity dips for a product or two, those may be products you want to check out. That means the sales are in line with the rank, but there happens to be a few less affiliates promoting that product.

Referred gives you an exact number. This is the percentage of sales that come from affiliates. Most are high in Clickbank, in the 90% range. If you find a higher ranking product where the referred number is low, like 60% that means that the bulk of the sales resulting in that high rank is coming directly from a vendor. And this might indicate to you that you can take a little bit of that pie. Another tip. When this happens, it can also indicate pretty good branding on the vendor’s part (i.e. the product has a distinctive name and the vendor is most likely ranking #1 for that name).

Sometimes tools help with this process. There are a few tools that will help:

• CBengine
• CBTrends
• Clickbank Advantage
• CB Analytics
• CB Affiliate Revenue
• Clickbank Elite

The problem is with the options. There are just too many. If you look at the post I wrote just the other day, you will see why. I listed over a hundred ways to promote your blog. Do they all work? Yes. To some extent. But when you are faced with a list like that, at least when I am, I freeze. Too many options gives you no clear place to start. And I promise, that list is only a start. I have used some of the methods and know what has worked for me. And some of the methods are based on your blog as a whole while others focus on posts. And some methods are good to use when you start a blog and others will only work after your blog has at least a little bit of a presence online.

But that is just promotion methods. Have you chosen a niche yet? How about an affiliate program or products to promote? Add these two variables to the mix and you have even a bigger mess. How do you solve this?

First you need to know what you want to write about. Can you write about it? Are you an expert? Do you have enough material for the niche? Now you don’t have to be an expert. I happen to think that one of the best times to start a blog is when you are learning something new.

If you are learning SEO, keep a blog about what you have learned each day. Try some SEO software. Write about it too. Not one post. Try to find out everything it can do and start listing things. If each item on your list can be it’s own article, then write an article about each topic. Take screenshots and use them in your post (and upload the photos you use to flickr instead of your own server. It can only help spread your network further). Take screencasts of you using the software for one post and then post your video wherever you can. Even simple niches can contain lot’s of material for posts.

That didn’t help much either. I just made every option a little more tempting. If any niche is worthy of creating a blog about, there is no narrowing down with that last paragraph. I am no help. You see, I look wide and far for options, techniques and methods. The problem with that: eventually you have to chart your course and actually do the work.

Just do it. Okay, I lifted that from Nike. But it applies to so many things including affiliate marketing. You know what you can write about whether you admit it to yourself or not. Don’t worry about products to promote. They are out there. Just choose your topic.

And I will let you in on a little secret about the methods you use to promote your niche blog. Gurus and experts play favorites. They also have comfort zones. They also are prejudiced. I have lurked and traveled in a lot of marketing niches online. For the most part, the email newsletter expert knows nothing about Adwords, the pay-per-click expert knows nothing about SEO and the article marketing expert knows nothing about social media marketing. And when someone doesn’t know how to do something, they tend to devalue it’s worth. Now I am not talking about all the experts or any specific experts. I am speaking generally. But just take everything you hear and read with a grain of salt, including this post.

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30 Internet Marketing Blogs You Must Know

In order to prevent information overload I selected 30 marketing blogs I am convinced everybody serious about online marketing success for his blog, website or ecommerce site should at least know.

I am looking to expand the blogs I get information from, so if you know about more affiliate marketing, internet marketing blogs I should subscribe to, please leave a comment.

But these do have a way of jamming a feed reader full of crap and making this look like a splog.

So, if any of you like them, I will start the posts up again. If not, I will leave them off.

I plan to making all of this one daily digest, instead of multiple posts, with the newest Clickbank products listed, news in affiliate marketing and news about Clickbank using more than just Twitter searches. But that’s going to be a while.

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