Do Mini Sites Make You Money As An Affiliate?

What do you think about building a passive income in affiliate marketing building mini sites? Some people believe mini affiliate sites don't work like they used to work years ago. If you are one to believe this, I have news for you, mini sites still work. You just have to know how to make them work and you can build mini affiliate sites that will provide you with passive income that will pay a bill or two.

People are buying stuff all the time from the internet and as long as they continue, you can make money as an affiliate. Many people don't want to drive a few miles up the road going from store to store looking for goods anymore. More people are looking for convenient ways to shop and the internet is a huge mall that offers customers that.

I am going to talk about a few things you can do to build a profitable mini affiliate site that focuses on the product and keywords that will get you ranking in Google and other search engines.

Mini sites are great for affiliates because you as an affiliate are going to always provide more information than the merchant site will. See the merchant will never tell the customer everything they need to know about the product. There are so many choices and it can be hard for the customer to choose the best product. You, the affiliate, go above and beyond and do research on the product and provide that much need information and display it on your mini site in a way where the customer can easily make up their mind on which product to buy.

Merchants will never tell a customer if a competitor is selling a similar or the same product at a cheaper price. They will never tell the customer if their competitor offers a way better warranty. Your mini site will inform the customer of this and any valuable information they need to know before they make the purchase.

Many merchant sites only offer the features of the product and they spiff it up to entice the buyers to take out their credit card. Most people who earn commissions, affiliates included, will do anything to make a sell. They just take the information from the merchants site and copy it onto their site and expect to make commissions. They don't provide the important info needed either.

Think of typical car salesmen. What do they normally do? They try to hurry you along and do the fast talk to get their commissions. Some don't even consider the best interest of the customer. You got some that do care, but most don't. You have to ask for the car fax because most will not offer it and many won't tell you if the car is a lemon. They just want to sell car and that's it.

Most affiliates do the same and if you set yourself apart from these affiliates and provide the helpful information buyers need, you'll always make a passive income. So you do the research the customers don't have time to do, put it in front of the hungry crowd, and inform them which product is the best. It's that simple.

Simple steps on building mini affiliate sites.

First you need to find your product. Do keyword researches using the Google Keyword Tool. If you don't have a product in mind, use the keyword tool to help you. If you want to sell mixers, type in the word mixers in the keyword tool. After you're done, you will see keyword ideas. One of the first things that pops up is the keyword. "kitchenaid artisan mixer" and "dj mixers". Doing this will not only give you an idea for keywords, but ideas on choosing products to promote. KitchenAid is a good brand. QVC is constantly selling products by this brand. Plus they always "over" explain the value of using the product to their customers and show them the reviews of what others are saying about the products. They also do demonstrations and show people how the product work.

The orange circle is where you type in the product category. The blue rectangle is where you will see the top keyword ideas and it shows the brands of the mixers. Doing this will give you ideas and help you find products to promote on your mini affiliate sites.

If you have a product you love and it works like a charm, you can consider finding an affiliate program and promote it using YouTube as well as your mini affiliate site.

When people are typing in the name of a product and the color, or even the model, they are in buying mode. The actual name of the product and the color is called a buying keyword. You want to go after these people, not just people looking for basic information. Building a blog is great; having a website with lots of content is great too. But building mini affiliate sites with content is even greater because you are targeting the buyers not just the information seekers. Information seekers alone aren't gonna make you a dime. Just ask yourself this question: do you go to the library to buy something. No, you go for information only and many people use the internet just as they would use their local library.

You do have to provide information on you mini affiliate sites to rank fairly well on Google. Your main focus is going to be the product and the information the merchant didn't provide the customer.

You need to also consider finding weird and untapped niches where many people are not helping the customers. Most affiliates go after the highly popular stuff on Clickbank or Commission Junction. I'm not saying these are bad sites or anything, but you gotta go a different route than most affiliates Super affiliates know what they need to do the make money and they have hundreds of mini affiliate sites going after the untapped markets.

So the basic steps of building a mini affiliate site is find an untapped and/or weird niche, use the keyword tool and type in product categories (the example I used for the mixers), research and provide buyers with the untold information on your mini site, showcase the product on your mini site, and write a high quality article and place it on your mini site that relates to the product or services. You need to also link to high authority sites so Google will trust your site. This helps you rank higher in the search engines.

Another thing you need to consider if you are an Amazon Associate, the low commission rates. What I do is choose products that will pay me a higher commission. It takes the same amount of work to earn a ten cent commission as it does to earn a $20 or $30 dollar commission.

Bottom line today is mini affiliate sites work. I have a few and they're easy to make and easy to rank. You just need a good product to promote, the hidden stuff merchants don't explain, and high quality info.

Learn more about creating mini affiliate sites from this new free book Forever Affiliate Free Strategy Guide 2013

Related reading

5 Creative Traffic Building Ideas
How Buzz Marketing Can Increase Affiliate Sales
Use Semantic Keyword Research For Higher Affiliate Sales
Saturation in Affiliate Marketing...Is It a Problem?

Why Content Go Viral & How Yours Can Go Viral Too

All of us have seen content go viral on YouTube, Facebook, and everywhere else where you can post videos, pictures infographics, and more. Some people just know what to post and how to pick info that can push buttons, be controversial, funny, and spark a nerve.

Others don't know where to start. I'm here to tell you though that there is absolutely no way you can project or guesstimate when and if content will go viral, which can be in the form of pictures, video, or written content. You just can't figure that out because there are several deciding factors.

Even though you got a few things against you, there are things you can do the better your chances of posting and producing off the chain content. Beware and just remember this one thing: just because you produce really good content doesn't mean it will go viral.

Now why does content go viral? Again several factors play apart in making content go viral. Does the piece of content, let's say a picture, strike some sort of emotion? If so which emotion? I'm gonna get straight to the point on this; things that strike anger will more than likely get shared over something that is just plain cute or funny. If something is funny it can get shared to go viral, but it's gotta be the right type of funny if you know what I mean. If you take a look at the website Imgur, look at the pictures and you will see which ones got the most views and you will see they type of stuff that goes viral. This site will give you amazing ideas and be very helpful to view when you are trying to create viral content of your own.

When you visit this site, you will see words written on some of the content. Think back to the Superbowl, which commercials did you find appealing, funny, and interesting and why? Advertisers know how to stroke emotion in people and get them happy and in a good mood to make a purchase. Adding something comical to the advertisements is what they do and that's why these big companies drop millions for a good slot during this particular season.

Take a look at the pictures in this post:

Looking at these, which one is more interesting? The only way you're going to know is if you actually do a test on which one would get shared the most and viewed the most. You would have to share both with the same audience and witness the response. But there are still things you can do to make it go viral without testing it. The second picture for example can have a written statement on it that will go perfectly with the funny expression on his face and make it 10 times funnier than if you just show people a plain picture like the one above. The first picture you may not have to do a thing to. But you have to remember different people see different things and what's funny to some may not be funny to others. Also if you test something, don't rely on friends and family members' opinions because they could just tell you yes something's funny when it really isn't. So test it with your followers and the right audience.

You also have to look at the fact that what angers some people, may not anger other people. For example, if you have an animal website and you put a picture of an animal being abused or a picture of an animal with a strong controversial comment posted on it, you will get some views and you will see the comments below your article of the way people feel, whether good or bad.

You have to realize too that people actually like crazy pics. They love to share weird funny type of sayings, post, pictures, and videos. As far as the videos go, people will share all kinds of stuff from horrible videos of people murdering a hit song, to someone who is making senseless fun of someone in the video, and something that is controversial. People use YouTube to state their actual feelings about stuff on video and people do become famous because of it and it depends on what the video was about.

You have to also realize when people post saying or controversial blog post they are usually long, some terribly long. Folks will post comments all day long until the sun come up the next morning on controversial and funny, epic content. When I say controversial it don't have to be something that make a person mad or people hate you. It can be a topic that you shared from somewhere else and you can get others feelings on it without even telling them how you feel. Think of the site Sodahead.

Always remember sometimes people just come to the internet looking for a good heavy laugh. Why don't you be the one to evoke that emotion and bring them to that good belly laugh. Just entertain your audience.

But when you go to create content, try to stick mostly to things that provoke anger and the kind of stuff that causes people to say "awe". It's got to be the right type of anger and awe moments for people to share it. These get shared more frequently than other types of content. Don't make you readers angry at you, direct the anger in the topic or article and if you use pictures make it about the topic, not your feelings or thoughts because if you have customers you don't want to lose them because of a mishap or misunderstanding.

To ensure that your content has the best chance to go viral, share you links and encourage others to share with friends and followers. Tell them to share it. People do what you tell them to do when you put that call to action in you post. Also give them the proper channels to enable folks to share your work. Post to places where you have a chance to be on the first page of a popular site. Post things after 2 or 3 pm during the day. Four o clock may be your best time to post content because in the evening time most people are online. During the week may work better than weekends, although I had a good outcome on a Sunday posting content that got many views. Just try different things and see what happens. No one truly knows what will go viral until it's out there, and it doesn't matter how many studies have been conducted on the subject of viral content.

Saturation in Affiliate Marketing...Is It a Problem?

Many people are asking this question everyday "Is affiliate marketing over saturated". This is a concern for almost every beginner affiliate. But you know what, I had this same question when I took my first dip in the affiliate marketing pool. I overcame this concern very quickly. Why? Well everything you do in this life will involve some level of competition.

When people show their concerns about saturation in affiliate marketing and it is constantly running through their minds, they are really worried about the competition, not the saturation. It's really not about the saturation in affiliate marketing at all. For some it can simply just be an excuse to not try something new to make their lives better. If you’re not careful, you’ll talk yourself out of becoming an affiliate marketer and that’s what other affiliates hope you do. So don’t give your competitors what they want. Take a risk and try it.

Think about this; you go to a job fair hoping you land that job you've spend many years in college for, but when you get to the job fair, you see a lot of people ahead of you doing the same, trying to get that job. You leave there and go home and turn on the news and find out that 10,000 people showed up at the same job fair you went to and you hear that the company is having another job fair tomorrow and they are only going to hire 1000 people. That in it's self is competition, so why are you worried about saturation in affiliate marketing?

What are your odds of getting hired when you are against thousands of others applying to the same job? Setting yourself apart from others job applicants will help and showing the company why you are a good candidate will help you also if you know what you are doing. Well the same goes for affiliate marketing and anything else you decide you want to do in your life. Sure there are many affiliates out there in the pool, but saturation isn't the problem.

The real problem results when many affiliate marketers take their affiliate links and plaster them all over the web thinking they are going to cash in big. Too many affiliates are looking for that "instant success". Well I'm here to tell you there is no such thing as instant success. If any guru tells you that you can score big overnight, do yourself a favor and don't pay that B.S any kind of attention. In order for you to become a money making affiliate you will have to put in some work as you will with any other opportunity you choose to do.

So is there any saturation in affiliate marketing? As I said there's competition in everything. The competition is what will determine if there is money to be made in a niche. There are many sub-niches you can get into that will make you a decent income in affiliate marketing. The other day, I did a post called "Is Weight Loss a Good Niche For an Affiliate?" and I talked about how you can choose a sub niche within the weight loss niche. I also shared an article from a popular affiliate blog that talked about this subject. As I said in that post, too many people are trying to lose weight for an affiliate to not make any money. Plus there are many sub niches and many niches are being created daily as needs and demands continue to grow.

So one of the real problems affiliates have is they are trying to take on too much by focusing on the niche as a whole instead of picking a sub niche to focus on a particular problem. You can't try to solve everyone's problem for them in weight loss if the problem is not the same. For example, a woman who was pregnant and trying to lose baby fat is going to need to be helped in a different way than a man who is trying to lose weight. Men and women's bodies are different and everyone is having different issues. So you would have to focus on the problem of one particular group than trying to focus on helping everyone. Focusing on everyone and trying to solve the whole world's problem is a sure way to fail at affiliate marketing.

Competition can really be a good thing because as I said it is the competition in a niche that indicates that money is being made. Do you want to sell a product in a niche where the product is not in demand or is not making any money? You can just take a trip over to Amazon or Clickbank and look for products in the niche you are interested in a see if it is selling. Amazon will tell you the rank near the bottom of the page on books in kindle and hardback or paperback. You have to remember and always keep on your mind that competition is not all that bad.

If you go to a new restaurant or movie and have a good meal or you absolutely loved the movie, wouldn't you tell your friends and family how good it was? Sure you would. So in affiliate marketing that is what you are basically doing, telling and recommending products to others. If you use the product you are promoting that's a plus because you are sharing your results and recommending it from personal experience.

I highly recommend that an affiliate marketer use products before promoting them, because you become a better promoter in an instant since you know how the product works. You will actually beat out your competition because many affiliates don't use the product before they choose to promote it. You will always have a step over most of the competition recommending something you use. Plus you can gain an authority and become an instant expert if you play your cards right.

Another way you can stop worrying about competition or saturation in affiliate marketing is by getting the proper training you need as an affiliate. Most affiliates don't even know the basics of affiliate marketing. There is plenty of information on the internet about affiliate marketing. I suggest you read my blog to learn more about affiliate marketing and read other blogs that talk about this subject. If you want to learn the basics without doing a bunch of searching, you can purchase my book from Amazon called "Super Hot Affiliate Profits". If you are worrying about saturation in affiliate marketing, it is a sign that you need to learn more about it. You can't just simply jump in some money making opportunity or even a job/career without the proper training and knowledge. Colleges are gonna take more money from you in the long run to train for a career you still may not get into. It boils down to being better than the rest. So stop worrying about the saturation in affiliate marketing.

You have to absolutely have some training in order to make money as an affiliate. Also don't be scared to spend money on a product to try it out. Consider this an investment. If you are afraid to spend money, you might just need to sit home and do nothing. The same goes for training and gaining knowledge. If you don't want to invest time or money in learning the basics, don't expect to make any money from anything.

Everything you do will involve competition, including affiliate marketing. Practice makes perfect and you must invest time in this endeavor daily. You got to be consistent and be on the grind all the time. Don't let some person with an expensive product or software tell you there's an easier way because it really isn't.

You need to find a strategy that will work for you and stick to it. You have to provide free high quality information on a blog or website that you will use to promote your affiliate product. You have to pick a really good product that is helping people with their problems. You need to think about your readers and audience and supply them with the information they need and even direct them to other helpful sites, even if it means you make no money. You have to build a following and share your content with others. It needs to be great enough for others to want to share it.

The other thing you need to do is pick a niche that you have knowledge on. If you don't know a lot about the niche, you need to do some research and read about the niche you are going into. How can you sell something and promote something in a niche you have absolutely no knowledge about? You have to educate yourself first.

You can do this by subscribing to blogs related to the niche you are interested in. There are many popular blogs out there and you can read these blogs and get information on the niche you're in.

There will always be competition and "saturation"; the saturation of affiliates who have no knowledge about what it takes to be a successful affiliate marketer.

Many of the successful affiliates weren't always successful. We all had to start at the bottom; unless you got some money, which many affiliates don't have, when they first start out. There is also helpful free info on the web such as this website called The Smart Passive Income Blog by a guy name Pat that helps affiliates get started using mostly free and cheap methods that work and it is fit for the beginner affiliate marketer.

You have to learn how to be an affiliate the right way. Once you can master this, saturation in affiliate marketing will no longer bother you, neither will the competition, which in my opinion are both the same thing.

But one more thing you have to also remember that can occur with affiliate marketing is the ups and downs. One day you can make $1000 dollars and another day you can make $500 dollars or you can just have a day where you don't make a dime. This may not necessary be anything done wrong on your part, but you can improve your chances of making money everyday, and a steady income at that by following the advice in this blog post.

As I stated before, the product you choose to promote need to be something good. You need to avoid all the overly hyped affiliate products that make false promises and only promote the ones that are actually helping people. Do researches on the products and see what others are saying about them.

You don't want to associate yourself with products that are slipshod and full of fluff. You certainly don't want to become known as the affiliate who promotes bogus and worthless products. You want to be the affiliate that people will recommend others to. You want your blog and websites to be the go to source when it comes to valuable information and products. You also want to be recommended by the bigger websites who are already established in your field of interest.

So do yourself and your business a favor and get the education and knowledge you need before you sign up to any affiliate program. If you are already an affiliate, don’t go any further in your business until you get the proper training you need. No, you don't have to take an expensive class or buy anything if you don't want to. Just do some research and learn what you need to learn to be successful. There is tons of info out there that you can learn from. You don't have to know everything but you need to know something. Once again don't even think about the saturation because there is an opportunity for you if you will just learn what it takes to be a successful affiliate marketer and put in the work required. What are you thoughts about saturation in affiliate marketing? Leave a comment.

Recommend reading

Warning: Don’t Promote Hyped Up Affiliate Products
Disadvantages Of Using Affiliate Marketing Tools
Give Your Subscribers What They Want
Struggling Affiliate? Learn To Offer Quality To Your Visitors
Get Amazon's Customers to Buy Affiliate Products Through You
Is Weight Loss a Good Niche For An Affiliate?
Affiliate Marketing Tune Up: Affiliate Marketing Program Checklist
How to Select A Profitable Niche

Is Weight Loss a Good Niche For An Affiliate?

The health industry offers any affiliate the chance to make a huge amount of money. Acne, bad breath, and trying to get healthier is on the mind of many Americans right now as you are reading this post. One problem that's gonna always need attention is weight loss. The weight loss niche is huge because a lot of people in this country is overweight and many are obese. With McDonald's around the corner of most homes and the junk food industry plastering ads of food all over the place, people are gaining the pounds. People are also looking at the beautiful celebrities and models and want to get a body like them.

With that being said, affiliates can reel in the big bucks by promoting products in the weight loss niche. There are tons of products to choose from, gaining muscles to lose weight, men and women trying to lose weight, how to lose the baby or pregnancy weight, and too many more to name. People are always gonna wanna know how to lose the extra fat and flab, no matter what time of year it is.

The way we eat has changed and back years, even centuries ago, people didn't eat the way folks do it today. There wasn't a fast food restaurant sprouting around ever corner and traffic light. So the weight loss niche can be any affiliate's goldmine if done so correctly.

Let's see what the folks over at Affilorama had to say about this niche....

“Health is wealth” as the old adage goes. Lifestyles and eating habits have evolved rapidly as we progressed. We now have “fast food” (French fries anyone?). Eating is not so much as a need as it is a social activity. Losing weight is now a problem shared by everyone around the globe. All of us need to watch how much weight we put on as this is essential for a long, healthy life.

Wikipedia estimates that in the U.S. about USD$33 billion dollars is spent on weight loss products. The site notes that more or less 70% of Americans try to lose weight on their own through the use of various DVDs, crèmes, pills, supplements, etc. This is just in the US alone.

To meet this demand, we have hundreds of different weight loss websites out there that feature a whole slew of weight loss programs and methods. They're all about one thing: how to lose weight. But while the niche and the information on these weight loss websites are the same, the sites itself are not. This is because the weight loss niche has several different sub‐niches:

Women trying to lose weight
Men trying to lose weight
Weight loss for children
Weight loss programs for diabetics
Post–pregnancy weight loss
Lose weight and build muscles

Those are just some of the sub‐niches for weight loss that you can get into. Now, which sub‐niche? As a proud and busy mama of two little girls, I have found it difficult over the years to lose weight. It’s been close to three years now, and unfortunately, I have not lost the weight I gained during my last pregnancy. So, there’s my sub‐niche! :) Read more from Affilorama here

Wikipedia estimated $33 billion spend on weight loss products! Wow! No affiliate can say there's no money to be made in the weight loss niche. The best way to get started promoting weight loss affiliate products is to pick a sub niche instead of focusing on the weight loss niche as a whole. You gotta target one group of people who is having problems losing weight in a particular area. The article I shared with you from Affilorama gave you six sub niches to choose from.

If you focus on the sub niche, you'll make more money as an affiliate than you would if you had not chosen a sub niche. Too many people are trying to lose weight for an affiliate to not be making any money. Don't worry about the niches being over saturated because if you build your affiliate business right from the beginning, creating a content rich website or blog, and engaging your readers and followers, you won't have a problem at all. Don't forget, give your audience what they want, provide them helpful tips they can use to help them without making a purchase, and they will be more inclined to buy the product you are recommending.

Recommend Reading

How to Select A Profitable Niche
Struggling Affiliate? Learn To Offer Quality To Your Visitors
Warning: Don't Promote Hyped Up Affiliate Products
Disadvantages Of Using Affiliate Marketing Tools
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Does Your Blog Make You & Your Readers Sick?

Are you making your blog readers sick? If you are then chances are you are sick too because your readers had to avoid your virus and leave your blog.

One thing you have to realize is your blog readers get sick of seeing the same thing over and over again. They get sick of seeing ads and promotions all over your blog post. People also get sick of seeing mediocre content.

What you should do is look at magazines. Magazines showcase a variety of eye catching content. This is what the magazine industry have to do in order to get customers to pick up their magazine and buy it over the others. The magazine industry know they have to catch the customers eye in a few short seconds. This is the same thing you have to do to get people to click on your blog and stay on it. There has to be eye catching stuff all around your blog. Look at what this article says...........

The magazine industry can show you everything from killer headlines, compelling copywriting and even the perfect content strategy.

When you have nearly 1 million readers a year (who pay to read your content) you learn a lot about getting people’s attention (and more importantly, keeping it).

I combed through 4 magazines to see the different ways they presented tutorials, industry news and encouraged community participation. The result is the following 98 publishing styles.

Focus on just one of these methods once a week and you’ve got a variety of business blogging styles to last nearly 2 years.

First up, Britain’s Number 1 Women’s Magazine

Glamour

Do the headlines catch your eye? Can you steal any for your business blog?

See more from the article "98 Magazine Secrets for Keeping Your Blog and Content Marketing Fresh" ----->Here

Now take a look at the Glamour magazine picture and answer the questions in the caption. Your blog need to look like this so your readers will stay on your blog. This will help them to discover your other post that may not get read on a regular basis. Don't keep making your blog readers sick by feeding them garbage or recycled information from the web. Offer them value all the time and they will want more.

Look at it this way; you get sick from your favorite restaurant eating your favorite steak because it was under cooked and because of cross contamination. Will you go back? That's the point. So think about that next time you write a blog post and take some ideas from the Glamour magazine above so you will always attract readers and keep loyal subscribers.

Recommending reading

Attract Readers To Your Blog Like Perez Hilton Does
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Promote Your Website Using SlideShare - An SEO Strategy

All affiliate marketers need websites and all need traffic to those sites. Regular site owners need traffic to their sites also. And since Google is forever changing how sites rank, we need to be looking for ways to get traffic without relying on Google or any search engine. We need to focus more on using strategies that will always bring traffic our direction without the expensive advertising and paid link-building.

There is a strategy that's becoming so popular and you don't have to spend two cents on it and it is creating a PowerPoint. You're probably asking how. Well you can easily create them and promote them on a site called, SlideShare. This site is similar to YouTube but instead of publishing videos you publish PowerPoints.

You can use this site to your advantage and get more readers and insert a clickable link in your presentation. It's easy to do and doesn't require much time.

Take a look at this article from KissMetrics........

I want to show you a big opportunity that leads to other big opportunities. This “opportunity” gets 60 millions visitors per month and has an Alexa Rank of 174. You don’t want to miss out on it, do you?

The good news is that you can handle this. I’m not talking about writing an article for the New York Times. And, so far, there isn’t very much competition to face while taking advantage of this opportunity.

I’m talking about “The Quiet Giant of Content Marketing,” also known as SlideShare (a social media website where you can upload your presentations and show them to the world). SlideShare’s features make it the ideal tool to grow your business. It’s a crowded site with a highly targeted audience and low competition.

You can use SlideShare for many purposes. For instance, you can:

Get traffic
Rank better on Google
Grow your followers
Get email subscribers
Build your brand
Create your own uses

If you use SlideShare in the right way, you’ll find it’s a very powerful tool. See more from KissMetrics here

I love the fact that this site has an Alexa rank of 174. Just imagine how using a high ranking site like this can boost your rankings. As an affiliate, I definitely advise you to use this site because there is sooo much competition out there. As a regular entrepreneur or site owner you will benefit also. Before you create your first business PowerPoint, take a look at this presentation that will teach you how to correctly do one.........

2012 and We're STILL Using PowerPoint Wrong from The Presentation Designer

Now you can get started doing your PowerPoint. I know it's 2013 but it's still good info to see.

P.S Check out this helpful information 10 Most Popular SlideShare Blog Post of 2012
and Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz recommends including presentations in content marketing and SEO strategy