Make Money Online Through Affiliate Marketing

2. Make Money Online Through Affiliate Marketing: The Road To Passive Income Statement Of Material Gain Introduction About This E-Book What Is Affiliate Marketing? What Is A Niche And Why It Is Important Finding Your Niche List Method The 7s Method Uber Suggest Guide Amazon Niche Method ClickBank Niche Vetting A Niche What Does The Competition Look Like? Can I Make Money With This Niche? Can I Write 30 To 40 Articles On This Topic? Making A Hit List And Finding Keywords Picking The Best Keywords For Your Hit List Setting Up Your Site Working On Your Hit List Writing Content That Ranks Google Snippet One Last Tip SEO Guide How To Monetize Your Efforts Legal Requirements One Authoritative Site VS Multiple Small Niche Sites Drive Traffic To Your Site Quora Medium Pinterest Guest Post Commenting Forums Youtube Finding Success Fear Of Failure Fear Of Success Procrastination Niche Hunting Short Guide 4 4 4 5 6 6 7 7 8 9 13 15 19 19 19 19 19 24 25 27 27 29 29 30 31 33 33 34 34 34 35 35 35 35 35 36 36 38 38 39 1

3. List Method 7s Method Amazon Method Guide Clickbank Short Guide Keyword Short Guide ABC’s Method Glossary Method Wordpress Tips Short Guide Updating Everything Plugins Categories Themes Analytics Writing A Post Creating A Link Categories When You Are Done Pictures For Articles Short Guide Google Free Paid Sites Take Your Own Best Affiliate Programs Clickbank CJ Affiliate Formerly Commission Junction Offervault Others Very Important Note: Direct Linking Email Auto Responders Ad Servicers How To Use Jaaxy For Research And Making A Hit List Why I Choose Wealthy Affiliate And Have Been With Them Since 2016 What Is Wealthy Affiliate What They Offer The Pros The Cons Conclusion Contact Me 39 39 40 45 51 51 52 53 53 53 56 57 57 57 61 62 64 64 64 65 65 65 65 65 65 65 66 66 66 67 68 74 74 75 76 76 77 77 2

4. Copyright © 2021 Rick Davis All rights reserved. 3

5. Make Money Online Through Affiliate Marketing: The Road To Passive Income Statement Of Material Gain There are links in this document to products and services that offer a commission for sending prospective buyers their way. This in no way will cost you anything extra for clicking on my links in this document. I only provide links to products that I believe will help you. You do not have to use any of the products I suggest to make this strategy work. They will help you in your journey but are in no way necessary for your success. These links will be denoted as (Affiliate Link) in the text. Introduction This is a complete guide on how to start an affiliate marketing business online. This is not a get rich quick scheme as in making a ton of money in the next month. This guide will teach you how to build an affiliate business from the ground up and over time you will start making money. There are ways I will discuss later to speed this up, but to get truly passive income it will take a little time. This is a passive income strategy which to me is one of the best ways to make money. So while it will take a lot of work in the beginning, that work will carry you through for many years after with minimal effort. With passive income you can go live your life while your business makes money for you. This is opposed to active income strategies where it is input in and money out all the time until you reach retirement age. I like passive income the most because I mainly hate having a boss. I can’t tell you how many corrupt and degenerate bosses I have had. All of them holding my future in their less than clean hands all while lording their power over me. So one day I got sick of it and said screw it. I put in my two weeks and said I will find a way to work online even if it kills me. So I had my wife put in at the same time and both of us started working from home. So why choose affiliate marketing over other passive strategies. Well for me affiliate marketing is one of the better passive incomes because it is low maintenance after you have built your site and filled it with content. It isn’t the fastest way to make money but it does offer some benefits. Dropshipping is a major headache and only gets off the ground with ad spend. If you want it to grow organically then you are putting in the same work you would for a blog and hoping the product you picked will bring in high enough margins to make all the time invested worthwhile. Not to mention that you are the customer service. If your shipping is late it falls on you, not your shipper. If the quality is poor it is your fault. I don’t want that kind of a headache. 4

6. Amazon FBA (Fulfilled By Amazon) is another gamble and not just the “will it sell” problem but also in regards to thieves. You have to worry constantly about people stealing the buy box by adding a product just like yours in your listing but with a reduced price thereby being the first offer people see. You also have to worry about people making duplicate products using your name brand but making a worse version. The worst of it is Amazon itself. If they sniff that you have a winning product then they will just copy it and sell their own version for cheaper than you can afford. Not to mention their terms of service being draconian and very easy to break unknowingly. I almost just recently had my store pulled down for not changing the name of a product (having copy and pasted a similar product) and listing it with the wrong name. They sent me an email telling me if I did this again I would have my store closed for good. Granted this is the Amazon Merch side of things but I am sure they are just as heavy handed with their other business models. Affiliate marketing has none of these problems, it just takes longer normally than the other methods to make money. I will cover ways in this ebook to speed things up, but to get organic traffic it takes a while. What it does offer is a very passive income once it has started. You send the person who reads your blog to another company and they have to deal with customer service problems. You don’t have to worry about anyone stealing your product because it is someone elses or your own personal information product you are selling on your own site. One very important note is unlike most other methods you are not counting on someone else's platform to produce an income. If Amazon changes their terms of service for selling and it kills your business then you have to start back from scratch. This has happened many times before and has ruined people's livelihoods. You step out of line and they nuke your business from orbit. The business I am offering is more like owning a store front you can carry any product in it you wish. If Amazon decreases commissions again and makes it harder to earn you just change your affiliate links to another more friendly business and keep going. The website you make is yours and your traffic is yours you just choose to direct that traffic to an offer that you find favorable for both you and your readership. Just like a storefront you can pivot and change easily and still keep getting people visiting your site. You can’t do this so easily with other methods so owning your own site is ideal. About This E-Book I have read many guides and ebooks on making money online. One thing that kills me is trying to find important information in the book later on that is buried somewhere in the book so I have set this book up to have the best of both worlds. In the text I will cover most of what you need to know, but I will have separate dedicated headings for very important information you will need when going through this journey. They will be at the end of the ebook and they will cover many topics in depth. They will also be linked via the table of contents so you can just click to them. 5

7. What Is Affiliate Marketing? Affiliate marketing is simply providing a platform for advertising someone else's product and them giving you a commission for your efforts. This can be a blog or a forum or even a Youtube Channel where you share your affiliate link. This link contains a cookie that can last as short of a period as 24 hours or a lifetime. (A cookie is a web browser term for a code that sites insert into your web browser so websites know who you are. This is how your cart is saved if you close a tab and how a site can keep you logged in.) In that time if a person buys the product or sometimes if they purchase anything on the site you get a certain percentage of that purchase at no extra cost to the customer. The way I am going to teach you, in great detail, is how to make a blog with evergreen content that will last you a long time, but will be slow to start. Like I said before there are quicker ways to go about this but they will cost more time or money than this method. I opt for the slow and steady method myself. This method will bring in some money, though whether it is life changing is all up to a few factors. So here is the method for doing it right and bringing in money for the long term. One more caveat and that is if you do not put in the work you will not get the reward, so remember that when you only have 3 articles on a site and are wondering why no one is visiting your site. What Is A Niche And Why It Is Important A Niche is the topic of your blog. It can be something simple like golf, or fishing, or your favorite hobby. Just some focus point for the entire blog. It is better to be very precise in this and not be too broad. Take pets, you could have a site dedicated to pets, though everyone and their dog has done this. Or you can have a site about bearded dragons and their care. This has way less competition and gives you a far better chance for success. I mentioned evergreen content. This is also important. Evergreen content is content that has a long life. If you dedicate a blog to the latest model of I-Phone that content is only as valid as long as there isn’t a new model coming out then your traffic will drop drastically. So pick something that doesn’t change too fast and you should be better off in the long run for getting visitors to your site. One tip, sometimes combining niches works amazingly, two things that can be related but there is no site about it. Like spirit animal meditation or yoga you can do with your dog. Just spitballing here, but you get the point. I like many, I am sure, have stalled at this point. I worried about finding the right niche and whether it was a money maker. I waffled for months on this one thing, finding a niche. To be honest if I had started and just stuck with it then I would have found money way sooner, right niche or not. So I guess the lesson here is, it is better to start something the wrong way then to never start anything at all. 6

8. There are two schools of thought on niche selection one is go where the money is and the other is go where your passions lie. Go where the money is has some foundation in logic. If you cannot make money then you will lose passion for working on your blog and you will give up and move on. Following your passions has a similar idea and that is if you are uninterested in your topic then you will not enjoy writing about it and you will quit because this feels like work and not something you enjoy. I lie in the middle and that is to do both and if the two intersect then great. My suggested method is to write smaller blogs say 30 to 40 articles then move to another topic. This goes against some other ideas where they suggest only one site with a ton of articles on one niche. The niche sites vs authoritative sites debate. Where my method differs is to make multiple 30 to 40 article blogs then see what your top performers are and fill them out into authoritative sites either by producing the content yourself or hiring writers to get it done quicker. Finding Your Niche So if you are like me, finding the first niche is tough let alone the second, third, and fourth. So here are ways to find niches. This part is just finding ideas for sites. Later we will address how to narrow down a niche and decide what to go forward with. With these methods narrow down the ideas to a small number like 10 then continue on to vetting a niche. List Method The first method I will cover is a simple one. It is just listing out what you know. The first question you should ask yourself is what have you bought. This can be any physical good, service or digital product. List out everything you have bought and look at the list because you could create a site about all these different items if they are related. I really like kitchen gadgets and older cooking items like cast iron cookware. So I could create a site about the old ways and their benefits, all the while selling items that are similar to some older kitchen gadgets. The next question you should ask yourself is what skills have you learned, are learning or want to learn. My wife wanted to learn beading so she subscribed to this woman's Patreon and paid $10 a month to have access to this girl's training. This girl learned a skill then monetized it. You can do the same create a website about a certain topic then sell on that site a complete guide Important Note: You do not have to be an expert to teach. You know more about a topic than a large portion of the population so you can make a training bringing people up to your skill level. 7

9. So list all the things you know and could teach even if you don’t think it is a skill you are proficient in. Remember you can always write content and a guide while learning a skill too. Save your notes and revelations and then turn that into a guide or course. This is how Pat Flynn got his start: he had a site about the LEED exam. The site was just a place for him to keep his notes but he found so many people loved his content he created a guide, sold it and people purchased it because they wanted a condensed version of his info and were willing to get a more succinct version to help them study. Have you achieved a desirable result others may want? Lost weight, improved your credit, made money using a certain method, etc. People will pay you to learn how you did it. Think outside of the box here you have achieved way more than you think. It could be as simple as a great resume template to how to pass nursing school. What have you done? Look back at your experiences and list them and you may find a niche that you could talk about that people may want to emulate or live vicariously through you. This can be travel, parasailing, getting top rank on some game, etc. Some people have found success just showing how to be better at Fortnite. Then they sell merchandise with their logo on it and get sponsorships from companies. No experience or product is too small for this stage. Remember you can always niche up from it and create a blog around that niche. Take cast iron cookware again you could make an entire site on cast iron and its maintenance and how to re-season it. Or you could niche up and make an old ways cooking site about all the old gadgets people used and how they may be better than today’s. The 7s Method The 7s method, this is not my method, it was devised by Pat Flynn in his first Niche Site Duel. Sadly the notes for it have been taken down. The 7s method, you get 3 categories, your passions, your fears and your problems. This method was devised because he won $1,024 from a Blazing 7s slot machine. So you write down 7 of your problems, 7 of your fears and 7 of your passions then you cull that list to 10 ideas you will do further research on. He used a keyword tool for this but you can use Google and other tools for this as well, it just takes a little longer. If you are interested I use Jaaxy connected through Wealthy Affiliate (Affiliate Link). A keyword tool will speed up the process by showing you the relevant data like how much the term is searched, how many other sites are competing and most importantly other related keywords that could be used and their competition. Just for clarification a keyword is a term people use to search, there are keywords then there are long tail keywords. The difference mainly is length: a regular keyword is one to two words whereas a long tail keyword is multiple words normally forming a query. Example of a keyword is “graphics card”, a long tail keyword would be “what graphics card should I buy on a budget.” The long tail keyword will have less people looking for it, but also the people typing in the long 8

10. tail keyword are looking for a specific answer for their problem whereas the people typing “graphics card” are not. While the search volume will be lower you will find it much easier to rank for the long tail keyword than the short keyword. I will show you how to use Jaaxy at the end of this document. For now here is the free method. Uber Suggest Guide The free method is using tools like Neil Patel's Uber Suggest. This gives you similar information and helps you find related keywords but you only get 3 searches daily. Now this can be gotten past by using a VPN and just bouncing your locations and using incognito tabs on your browser. It is a headache but for free you normally have to do a little extra. (A VPN is a software you subscribe to that masks your internet activity to everyone including your internet service provider. It also hides your IP address and uses a fake IP address while you are online. It can even make it look like you are in a different country unlocking region locked content like Netflix shows only available in certain countries. To bounce your location just choose a different country to have your VPN say you are from. Not all VPNs 9

11. are equal, make sure the one you look in to has a no log policy and good speeds some can slow your internet down to a crawl and some are government run so that they can charge you for spying on you. Do not go with a free VPN whatever you do if something is free you are the product and your internet activity is definitely not safe.) (An incognito tab or private tab prevents your web browser from saving cookies, browsing history and search records. It can be very useful if you want a clean Google un-influenced by your previous search history and also to prevent certain sites from knowing you already visited them. This is not perfect though because most sites now log your IP address so a VPN is essential for real private browsing. Using both is ideal and being OK with sites not remembering who you are and always having to type in your passwords.) The first important metric is the SEO difficulty on a scale from 1-100 with 100 being near impossible. It will tell you how difficult it will be to get to the first page on Google with that keyword. The second most important factor is the search volume; this is how often the term is searched per month. The higher the better. Couple a high search volume with a low SEO difficulty then you have a winner of a niche. Do this for a couple of keywords in your niche and you know if it is easy to rank for or not. Also use the Glossary Method to find less competitive keywords and see if that would make it easier to rank for. (Glossary Method: type in Google your niche then glossary. This will bring up glossaries of your niche and help you find words only used by people in that niche.) 10

12. This shows the suggested keywords in the same niche that can help you build your hit list and also let you know if there are other terms that would be easier to rank for. 11

13. This last part of Ubersuggest shows you articles that are already ranking for this keyword and you can view them and see if you can compete with their content. Jaaxy has more information provided but you have to pay for it either with a subscription or a membership through Wealthy Affiliate (Affiliate Link). Now this is just the initial part where you are trying to find a niche you are looking at competition and seeing some of the other related keywords. This is just to find a niche you want to start in. Using data like how much competition and looking at the competing sites you can determine if the niche you have is a winner or may be a dud. Now most niches you can make fly, there are tons of unanswered questions out there, you just have to find them. There are also tons of questions that can be expanded upon immensely and you could be the person to fill that gap. I will go over how to find these good keywords a little later in this guide. Now if the 7s method is not helpful in finding a niche then there are other methods too, not trying to weigh you down but knowledge is power. If you have no idea where to start or what to look at then you can use the Amazon method for finding solid goods. 12

14. Amazon Niche Method Go to amazon then hit the category selection button next to the search bar. Select a category like beauty and personal care, any will do. Then hit the spyglass, do not type anything in just leave it blank this will take you to the main page of the category and you can see what other suggestions it has for you. Select another category on the side or the top and this will just take you deeper into Amazon’s suggested categories. With this method you can find things you never knew existed like potting benches, an expensive item that I never knew I needed until today. 13

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16. Found this using the same process but with gardening. ClickBank Niche You can do something similar with Clickbank where you join as a marketer then go to the market place and just look around for digital products that you would like to sell and the digital products that would best serve your reader base. Click on Marketplace when you get into clickbank. 15

17. On the side you will find categories, click on the arrow in a category to expand it. 16

18. Then click on a subset of the category like in this example I selected Graphics and got these products as a result. 17

19. I got a product that teaches you how to do graphics design, a product that teaches you how to improve your presentation abilities and last a product that teaches you about web design. Some of these I knew about but the way to improve your presentation skills one really surprised me. Go through Clickbank and explore. You may find a niche you never knew existed and one that really fascinates you at the same time. Not to mention most Clickbank products offer 70% commissions so you can make a good living off of just selling Clickbank products. 18

20. I suggest you find multiple Niches that you would like to work on then build one 30 to 40 article site at a time around each niche. Vetting A Niche When vetting a niche you need to ask yourself some questions. These questions are not absolute but for your first site you should adhere to them. What Does The Competition Look Like? For this question just do a little digging either with a keyword tool that will show you your competition or Google some of the keywords of your niche and see if large publications are in competition with you. You can find a way into any niche. There are unanswered questions everywhere they just may be a little harder to find. Can I Make Money With This Niche? A good niche is one with multiple products you can sell that are high ticket and low ticket. Take a quick look at the products you can sell on Amazon, B & H, Ebay Market, Etsy, Clickbank, Offervault (warning may have explicit offers), CJ Affiliate, and any manufacturer who may give you a better commission. A good example is golfing. You can sell expensive clubs through the manufacturer, a Clickbank guide on how to golf, and on Amazon sell balls and gloves. You have multiple sources of income, not just one and you have high and low ticket offers. Can I Write 30 To 40 Articles On This Topic? This is more for the hit list section but it is important if you can only find 5 articles you could write then this is a bad niche to dive into for now. Making A Hit List And Finding Keywords It is not easy to build something if you are flying by the seat of your pants and have no plan. This is where a hit list comes in. It is important for you to build a hit list at the start of your niche site by finding good keywords that will become informative and very helpful posts later on. Here I will teach you how to find keywords that are low competition and will get you high rankings. Now I suggested Jaaxy and it is a good tool. Most people have found great success by using Jaaxy and its metrics. It is a good short cut and will save you some time, but sometimes you 19

21. should use the tool that is going to be deciding your fate and that is Google. They know their metrics better than any tool so at least for a few keywords you should use this method. So Google auto suggests questions in its search bar. These are not there by accident; they are the most searched terms in that category and they have a high search volume automatically. How much, well it varies. A keyword tool will tell you exactly how well one keyword does but it can't do the subtle nuance that Google employs. You see Google is smart, almost too smart these days, it will not just show you what you typed in but everything that is related to it. Google tries to find you words that are similar or just alternate words related to your query. So I am going to teach you the Alphabet Soup method for finding great long tail keywords in your selected niche. Jaaxy is a quicker way to do this since it has the feature built in. One important note when trying to find keywords through Google is to use an incognito tab or a different web browser. The reason is Google remembers everything you type into it and this may color the results for you giving you false positives because you searched this topic before. Also if you have researched a topic in the past you can look at your own searches and see if these questions would be a good topic to write on, especially if there were gaps in the knowledge you could fill. The first part of this method is just using a search string and then marching up the alphabet looking at all the suggestions. Don’t worry I will show examples to help. Take the search string “What Fishing Rod…” you type in “What Fishing Rod a” then you type in “What Fishing Rod b” and so on seeing what the suggestions are, writing all the interesting ones down for further research later on. This is the method most people will teach but there is a more complex method to using this and it will find you more competitive keywords. 20

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23. This method fills in the middle and not the end of a keyword. Take the exact same example of “What Fishing Rod…” instead of typing an a, b, c… at the end you have a way to type in the middle so here is how it goes. “What* ... Fishing Rod” so you type in “What* a Fishing Rod”, “What* b Fishing Rod” this will find you different keywords and help in finding low competition keywords. The asterisk connected to the word who, what, when, where, why, and how tells Googe you want it to fill in the middle and not the end giving you more novel and interesting long tail keywords to work with. 22

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25. Some very important tools in helping with this are Answer The Public, Soovie, and Answer Socrates. These will help you find other questions that you probably didn’t think of. Some only allow so many uses per day but once again you can use a VPN and get past this. Picking The Best Keywords For Your Hit List Now that you have a list of potential keywords it is time to look at the competition. We do this to find keywords that will be easy to rank for and will provide our site with traffic that can show the search engines our site is helpful. You can do this with a keyword tool, but I prefer the hands on method. So type in the keyword you are looking at and hit search then you look at the first 3 results. If they are forum answers 24

26. and not a blog or a business then go for that keyword it should be on the top of your priorities. If top 3 are big businesses then maybe move on. Unless they have not answered the question. If the top three are blogs then click into their answers. This is where you do some research and first see how old the post is. If it is 5 years or older then your new content probably will have an easier time to out rank it. The other thing to look at is its length and quality. If it is short, like 300 words, then go for it. If it is poorly formatted and hard to read then go for it too. If it is a well researched informative masterpiece then move on. Save these keywords you are passing on for now and see if you can rephrase them and get better results later, always worth a try. Build up a hit list of 30 to 40 keywords that are low competition that make sense as a question. No caveman questions here. These keywords will be the title and the focal point of each of your blogs articles. Once you have the 30 to 40 keywords then move on to the next step which is setting up your site. There are always more gaps than answers. There are infinite questions being asked and very little content that answers what people are really looking for. Setting Up Your Site Now I am not going to go into how to install wordpress, every hosting service is different in this regard. I am going to cover other more important topics like picking a website name and the like. (Wordpress is what allows most people to build a website without using HTML code. It makes everything much easier by allowing you to change tons of features with just the click of a button and allows the addition of features through plugins and themes.) (A theme is easily described like this. Lets say your website is a store on a street Wordpress is the foundation under your store unseen but oh so important, while a theme is the rest of the store, the front sign, the fixtures holding your content, and the appearance of your store. Themes determine how your site will look and act when a person interacts with it. Certain themes are very bare bones just providing you with a store front and that is about it. While others come with a lot of functionality to the point of absurdity at times. Though for those you need to pay a lot for them.) (Plugins add new features and functionality to your site.) Now for web hosting I highly suggest Wealthy Affiliate (Affiliate Link) or Hostgator (Affiliate Link), I use Wealthy Affiliate exclusively mainly because they have one of the best customer services in the field and their down times are incredibly low. I have seen them have their servers go down, like almost all web services do, and the owner of the company is on the chat immediately telling everyone what is going on and how soon they can expect the problem to be fixed. Not to 25

27. mention they do everything for you with installing Wordpress and all, you don’t have to do much. It is easy to use and work with even getting a domain name, and their security is top notch. (Domain name is the web address for your site like amazon.com or wikipedia.org it is the complete name including the .net .com .org .gov etc. Once you register your domain name and buy it it is yours and much like owning land it is yours to do with as you will and is a source of income if you build it right.) I also like them because they were designed for everyone. You do not have to know anything about websites to make one through Wealthy Affiliate. They designed their hosting for everyone so everything is done for you that includes security and installation of all the plugins you should need. You can just start writing your articles and not even worry about the back end stuff until you are ready. I used to go through HostGator and they were great, but I am far happier with Wealthy Affiliate now that I switched. One thing though if you are looking for cheap then go Hostgator (Affiliate Link). They have some of the best prices for hosting online. They also have some of the best customer service and very short down times. Wealthy Affiliate is more than a webservice so their price reflects that. An important note and that is upsells, every web hosting will try and convince you you need this and that, raising the price to absurdity very quickly. You could be signing up for a cheap $10 a month plan but at the end they could be billing you hundreds of dollars if you select all of their suggested products. For your first site just go with the basic plan and then consider the extras later on. You don’t have to worry about much just starting out. Look into some good security plugins by typing into Google “what are some good security plugins for wordpress” and then download one through your site not your web browser I will show you later how to download plugins on your site. Picking a site domain name. This is where a lot of people stall because they want to have the perfect name. To be honest it doesn’t matter as much as you think. The most important thing is length and whether it is a .com or not. Almost always go for a .com if you can, it doesn't matter if you have to use dashes or something else. This will take you some time. The amount of .coms available are not as many and varied as others but these ones are the most taken seriously by Google and by most people. Some people suggest .net as a worthy alternative. I mainly stick to .com no matter what even if I have to get tricky about the name. Another thing with your website name is do not copy other peoples names for sites. This can lead you down a bad road of litigation and such so do a little research and if your name doesn’t work don’t be that person who adds a word like “the” to get the name you want. Let me give an example to clarify. Let's say you have a blog idea about cooking pasta. So you want the name pastaprincess.com but it is taken, don't make a site called thepastaprincess.com this could lead to some legal trouble later on and isn’t worth the perfect name since you might be stealing someone else's branding. 26

28. A lot of domain registrars have great suggestions for alternatives to your site name if yours doesn’t work. Now the name of your site doesn’t matter as much as you think. I have seen sites succeed who have names that do not even match the content on the site. Most people are going to find you through the search results anyway and Google doesn’t care what your domain name is, just what your content is covering, so don’t stress too much over it. Find something short and simple and easy to remember and you should be good. Second part of building a site is the theme. Some people really stress about this aspect as well and once again it doesn’t matter most free themes are great and have a ton of functionality just find a simple clean theme that is easy for you to work with and worry about aesthetics later. The most important thing is getting your articles up and ranking as soon as possible. For reference I use Income School’s Acabado theme (not a paid link, I just really like it) it is $179 for a lifetime on as many sites as you want. I love it but any free theme will do. Working On Your Hit List This can be the hardest part of the whole process, changing your routine to incorporate working on something that will get you returns in the future, but will take time now to build. This is where getting into a routine will help. I suggest parsing out 1 hour a day to work on your hit list it doesn’t amount to much time out of your day but soon you will be able to turn out an article in an hour or so and in a little over a month you can create a fully flushed out niche site and let it sit and start ranking. Then you can move on to the next niche site and get it going, if you stick to this for 6 months you can get at least 5 niche sites to over 30 articles and in a year or so you will start to see a return on each, with the first starting to probably see some money coming in at the 6th month mark. If you did this for a year you would have over 10 sites active and working towards making you passive income, and all it took was 1 hour out of your day every day for a year. Writing Content That Ranks With a hit list now just start working on the easiest to rank content first. Now your content can be really broken down into two different types of articles: the first is just an answer post. Why write a novel when 500 words will do pretty much. This is a post that covers a very short topic and really shouldn’t be expanded since it is so simple of a topic. You researched questions that were poorly answered or not answered and you just cover what the question is really asking and you don’t really expand upon it. The second form of article is the informational post where you pour your heart and soul into the research and the writing. This is where you go an inch wide but a mile deep. Every possible related question is covered in your article take concealed carry as an example you could just say what states have it and what don’t, or you could write out a mini article about each state 27

29. getting interview questions from each state office and really go deep on this and when someone comes to this post it is so rich with information and more importantly related keywords that it has to be in the top three search results just for the fact that no where else has such an in depth treasure trove of knowledge. The first post type the short answer post is for simple questions that really don’t warrant a well researched article, but also are not answered or poorly answered on the Google results. This post type is important to get you ranking fast and effectively. If people find your answer and read it all the way through then Google will recognize you as an authority in this niche and will float more of your content to see how it does. So these posts should be what you work on first. The second type of content is important because these long well researched articles will become your number one traffic source if you are the only game in town who did the research and are answering a very well searched question then you will get first rank just because your content is the best out there. So if you feel like a question warrants a very well planned out and researched article then don’t hesitate to be the one to make it. You will find that your work most of the time will pay off just because people love to get the most information about a topic they are interested in. Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. Let's take the question “what is the weight of a bus.” You could just answer the average weight of a bus is this and have a short answer, but this doesn’t answer most people's real question. So a better way to make an informational post is to break it down into its different components. You can say how much a typical Greyhound bus weighs, then a yellow school bus. Then you can talk about how much weight would be added if you were to kit it out as a camper. You could cover shorter busses and their weight and what is the largest bus. You could then talk about what states require for you to have such a bus and if you need anything extra to drive it. You could also cover if certain busses need less credentials to drive than others related to weight. Make sure your headings are very descriptive and your article flows in a coherent manner, this will help your readers. This content gives the reader much to consider and also helps them learn the different ins and outs of their query. They will keep reading mainly because all they ever wanted to know about busses is in your post or other linked posts. You will find most people will not dive this deep in most topics so your content will stand out and give you an edge like nothing else. It is ok to turn a short answer into a long informational post if it starts to rank. This will improve your search results and also help your readership. Another key to help you rank is to include pictures. Make sure that you have a right to post the image. Go to Google images and under tools switch the usage rights selected to creative commons license and you should be golden. Free image sites are https://www.pexels.com and https://pixabay.com, I use pexels myself. If you cannot find good images then you can 28

30. subscribe to image services, they tend to be expensive but they have amazing images to use in your article. Make sure to change your image file name to something related to your article but is also descriptive of the image. Then in the article add a note, if you want, about what the image is. Google Snippet Now One very important thing is the Google Snippet and how to dominate this. You know this, in a Google search you have asked a question and in the search results is the answer to your question. You don’t even have to enter a website. The answer is right there. If you dominate the Google Snippet you will win the search results war. How you dominate the Google snippet is to write a stand alone answer to the main question your article is covering. Pretty much don’t bury the lead, give the simple no frills answer in a paragraph or the common answer like the average of things. Make it simple and most importantly stand alone where if someone were to read that one paragraph they would not need the surrounding paragraphs to understand it. You can also do this with tables and lists if this would better serve to get the important information across that is in your post. My suggestion is to start asking Google questions and see what snippets pop up and copy what is successful. Look at their article and see how they framed the snippet and since it worked for them it should work for you. Just know that this works and is very effective at getting you higher rankings.. One Last Tip The last tip for writing amazing content is to not be afraid to refine your content. If you have an article that is rocking the result page then go back to it and make it better, add better research, make it easier to read, add some affiliate links if they would fit. The most important factor in writing content that ranks is being of service and not being scammy or spammy. Make sure you are helping the people who come to your site. This is super important because it will help your ranking when people stay on your site because they love the 29

31. way you address an issue and provide help for them. The inverse is true, if you just are writing to sell them they will leave your site in a heartbeat and thereby tanking your rankings into the dark nether regions of the Google search results. SEO Guide There is a lot of emphasis on good SEO as if you find the right formula and you will win the search results in Google’s algorithm. This is not so much anymore. Google has changed their algorithm so immensely that there is not one method to winning the search results these days. It used to be that you could spam keywords and win the search results. These days their AI has gotten a lot smarter and a lot harder to spoof. The key to good SEO is not Keyword stuffing like the old days. It literally used to be so easy all you had to do was have the background of your site white and the keywords white and have them hidden in the background of your site and Google would say hey they have a ton of this keyword let's give them the top rank. Not any more now the AI will see if you are stuffing your keywords. This doesn’t mean you should worry about the AI punishing you for using the keyword more than once, but you should vary your language especially just to capture more keywords that can help you rank. The first part of good SEO is your Title, and your title should be your keyword from your hit list with some added text if you want, like say your keyword was “what cures kidney disease” Your title can be something like “What Cures Kidney Disease? The Answer May Surprise you.” Something that has the keyword in it but also can interest your readers to click on it. The second part of SEO is quality content. The AI of Google is amazing now in seeing what your post is about and it will see if you are just writing fluff or writing content that can be helpful to your readership. Another part of good SEO is paragraph length. This is not so much for Google but for your readership. If your reader sees a great wall of text they will be more than likely to skip your article. This will hit your SEO if most people skip off of your site as soon as they see your great wall of text. This to Google is a sign your article does not help the reader and after so many visitors leaving so soon after entering, it will lower your rank. Cut your paragraphs down to 4 to 5 sentences. Small digestible blocks that readers won't be overwhelmed with. To help in your ranking it is good to have smaller parts with multiple headings. Break your article up into coherent parts with appropriate headings. The headings will also really help with your SEO as well, telling Google more of what your article is about. This also gives you a way to add more keywords in an organic manner that are related to your main keyword. 30

32. The main point of all of this is to write organically as if you were telling a friend about the topic. Google will give your articles a chance in the rankings, something of a trial period. If it does well then they will float it more and give you a chance to get more people to read your article. One important note is internal links. If you have one article that references information in another article, provide a link to that article. Internal links tell Google your content is linked in a way. Make sure though that the link creates a new tab this way the reader has more chances to engage with your content, and they won’t leave the current article they are on. Do this with all external links as well. Now some people emphasize getting backlinks from more authoritative sites. This tends to be way more work than it is worth and doesn’t really hold much water with Google anymore. Just keep writing informative articles and keep adding content and Google will give your site a chance as long as you produce content. The reason I told you to make 30-40 articles is because Google tends to take a site seriously after there are about 30 articles. This will help your rankings if you have 30 or more. As far as SEO goes these days there isn’t much you can do to cheat the system. You just have to be helpful and Google will give you a chance to shine. The other important thing is, if you do spoof their system when they catch on, and they will, your rankings will be hit hard and you may never recover, so make sure to go the legit way, this way there is no reason to punish you. How To Monetize Your Efforts This is the most important part of the whole formula of making money for your efforts. There are many ways to make money with a blog, some more lucrative than others. I will outline the most common ones in this section. Now remember this will take some time to see any income but if you are patient you will see money start to come in. One important note, as stated before, any link you have on your site should open another tab going to that link. This way the reader is more prone to stay on your site and boost your rankings, not to mention give them more chances to see other links you have. Another important note is affiliate link to everything you can, even to products you didn’t like in a review. Otherwise you are leaving money on the table. Be honest in your review but if they want to buy the product even after you told them not to, then you might as well make money off of it. The main way you will make money is through affiliate programs. Almost any business has an affiliate program, some are just hidden and need to be inquired about. Most people start with the Amazon affiliate program. I suggest you sign up for it too but not immediately. You see you need to make one sale in your first 90 days of being in the program to stay in it, so this is more of a later idea when you start getting consistent traffic to your site. Now Amazon used to be the best affiliate program on the planet but they keep changing the commissions or bounties they give. Their most recent change cut the already low affiliate 31

33. commissions in half, and it seems to be a trend of theirs. Their bounties were amazing just a few years ago whereas now they are incredibly low. Their main appeal is getting commission on everything that the customer buys, not just the product you suggest. They are not unique in this anymore and you may be better served using a different company. One very important note and that is do not have your friends or family buy from your links it is a breach of their terms of service and if they find out they will cancel your membership to their program. They also have many ways of seeing who you are linked to in life so don’t risk it. As a start Amazon is not bad, it is easy to sign up and they don’t care what your traffic is. Once you start making money and you get good traffic I really suggest you branch out even contacting specific companies to get better commissions. Most companies are very open to a new customer base and you can maybe negotiate for direct coupons and such. Later I will have a list of great affiliate programs and Other places to find better programs. The other affiliate source I suggest is Clickbank. They have amazing commission rates like 70% or more. You get really good commissions and you make good money. If you can incorporate a Clickbank product in your blog I highly suggest it. Another thing is if there is a hole for your particular niche, think about making your own Clickbank product and have it on your site and on Clickbank to make more money. This brings me to the main way to make money on your site is having your own information product. You get 100% of the sales and you have a dedicated and captive audience. This is not for the starting out blogger but more for an established site with a really good traffic profile. You can start out with a Clickbank product then transition to your own product. The best way to do this is to ask your audience what they want in an information product and cater to that. Which brings me to the next method and that is building an email list. This is essential in making money and should be something you start building as soon as possible. With a simple auto-responder you can push emails and products to your readership that will help them and get you money. As with all of this make sure to provide great value in your emails and your blog and people will be more than happy to put forth their hard earned money to buy the products you suggest because they trust you. The last method of making money is running ads on your site. For just starting out Google Adsense is ok, because they have very low traffic standards, but I really suggest if you have any amount of traffic you move on to better ad networks. They will match your content better with ads that are relevant and they will also give you a better commission with every ad click. There are tons of different ad networks, some great for beginning blogs and others great for established blogs that have a high traffic volume. I will suggest a few, but this industry changes so quickly I suggest you research the best ad network for the current stage of your blog. 32

34. For just starting and established blogs there is Ezoic they are great to work with and don’t have too many hurdles for you to jump through to get qualified. They do require at least 10k unique visitors a month but this is not as bad as others. You also have to be in good standing with Google Adsense and their policies. The other networks I suggest are Mediavine and Adthrive. These networks have a very stringent application process also needing over 30k unique visits a month and a bulk majority of that coming from the U.S.A. These networks can get you much better money than Google Adsense but like I said they have very stringent traffic demands for you to work with them. Legal Requirements One last important note and that is the law involved in affiliate marketing and ads. You must state on your site in plain sight that you get money from affiliate links and ads. I suggest just having it in the sidebar this way it is on every page and you don’t have to write it for every post. Here is an example you can use, very simple, but gets the point across. [Website Name] is owned and operated by [Your Name Or Business]. I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, Clickbank and Google Adsense. These affiliate advertising and ad servicing programs are designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com, Clickbank Products and Google ads. I am compensated for referring traffic and business to these companies. Make sure to include all the companies you are working with in this little blurb and you will be fine with the law. Also if you are in the health niche, which is not always recommended, make sure to note that you are not a Doctor and your advice does not count as medical advice. This is all to save you from litigation. One Authoritative Site VS Multiple Small Niche Sites Now at first I suggest you work on multiple little niche sites at the start. This for one is to diversify your future income, it is also to see what will make more money. If you have a site that with 30 articles starts getting tons of traffic this is the site you need to invest more time in making it an authoritative site. The reason for this is because authoritative sites make significantly more money in the long run than small niche sites. So you have one site that is going gangbusters with traffic and sales. You need to look at your analytics and see what posts are doing well and tweek the ones that are doing well to be better. Do this by adding more authoritative sources. Adding more specific information that could help the reader, and adding in more quick access information like tables and lists. 33

35. Then make content that is related to your top earners and add more articles that will entice a person interested in staying on your site. Then find a way to make an information product that is related to the topic at hand so you can better monetize your site and have a more consistent income stream. If you put in the effort you will make money. How much I can’t say most sites make somewhere between 500 a month all the way up to 20k a month it is up to you and your niche, and how much effort you put in. I have mentioned them before and I highly suggest Wealthy Affiliate (Affiliate Link), they have amazing training that will speed you along your path with very actionable goals. They offer amazing web services that you don’t have to pay extra for. Not to mention the user created content that the users produce that will cover any questions you may have, and access to coaches including me and others through their community. Drive Traffic To Your Site As I stated it takes time to get Google to notice you. You can drive traffic to your site but it is very temporary and once you stop bringing in this traffic your traffic numbers will drop. I don’t think this will hurt your Google journey, but it wont help it either. Quora You can get traffic very, very fast to your site using this. I had tons of traffic with my first site doing this. Granted it was the wrong traffic no one bought anything, but it was traffic nonetheless. This can be a double edged sword if people enter your site only to bounce it can damage your site as well. Make sure to be helpful with your post and do not spam your links everywhere you kind of have to play by some interesting rules, provide more than you get that kind of a thing. Not all of your answers should link back to your site. Just answer questions just to get your name out there. Quora has gotten very strict about some things so make sure to be very polite, helpful and not spammy and you should be fine. Medium Medium is what Quora used to be before they got greedy. They would be my first choice today. Sign up and be helpful and provide a link to your site. Make sure to not be spammy and follow their rules. Always give lots of good informative content and they will thank you for enriching their platform. 34

36. Pinterest Pinterest is considered one of the largest search engines out there. And the chance to go viral is huge. So make some informational pins directing back to your site and then start building a following and you can get quick traffic to your site in no time. Guest Post This seems counterintuitive but it works oh so well. The sites that cover similar information as you want content as well. So you find where their site has a gap in knowledge and you offer to fill that gap for the meager price of providing a link back to your site so their audience can see your site. Take for example you have a crochet site. You find another site but they don’t have any articles about a certain complex stitch. So you go to them and offer to write an exclusive article for their site about this stitch and all you want is for them to provide links to your site at the end of the article. They win by now providing knowledge to their readership they otherwise would not have had and you win by getting access to their audience. Commenting What better way to get traffic than to borrow someone else's. You can comment on a person's blog or youtube channel and as long as you provide value you will not be flagged. Remember though most blogs vet all comments so make sure it is something they will want to post on their article. Forums This is kind of a two for one special. Join a forum on the topic you want to write on and join in on the discussions. Add good comments linking back to your site for more information. The best part of this is it will also give you a direct insight into the mind of your audience. What they are concerned about, what questions they have that they cannot find the answers to. You could find mountains of content by just frequenting the forums on your topic. Youtube The second most used search engine on the planet is Youtube, and the bonus is it is far less competitive than Google search is. Most people who post content find they rank fast and can drive that traffic to their site and their links. The best news is you don’t even have to do much more work than you did for your articles. You can pretty much just put the content you have on your site on your Youtube channel with no changes necessary. The keyword research you did for the article works perfectly for the Youtube video, in fact even better because there is not as much competition. You don't even have to show your face, just do a voice over and what you're talking about and you can use the power of Youtube to boost your ranking fast and get money coming even faster. 35

37. Reviews and unboxings work great as well. Just add in the description ad links to buy the product and links to your site and you should see money and traffic come very fast. Finding Success A statistic thrown around all the time is that 98% of businesses fail. I don’t believe that has to be the case. You see, my first passion before making money online was psychology. I have a degree in it, not to mention all my extra personal study of it. I also worked with children in a mental institution for 6 years. Why do I mention this, you may ask? It is because most businesses don’t fail, instead the person working on them gives up, moves on or never starts. If you put in the work you will see some money come in trust me. I have a site where I did everything wrong. I wrote fun articles that had no SEO, I wrote articles that had very little research for keywords. I even did a poor job of monetizing it. I even entered into a highly competitive niche, and my articles were all over the place in topics. That website has consistent traffic after not being touched for a couple of years, and brings in a little money. I just cashed a payout for it of $70 on Amazon associates just from people purchasing some of the things I have linked to on it. Not to mention the growing Google ads revenue it is accruing. Remember I did everything wrong, no keyword research, no title optimization, nothing. I just wrote what I wanted and it took off. Not great but it is not a net loss at all. So if a site that was done entirely wrong can make you money imagine if you do a little right. So why is it said that 98% of businesses fail then? Well it all comes down to limiting beliefs and bad habits. Fear Of Failure A lot of us have this little voice in our head telling us we will fail. What is worse is that we find ways to validate this voice. We recount every time we have “Failed” in our lives like a repeating reel of our past sadistically put on repeat to drive home our belief that all we are is a failure. We get to the point where we do not want to give that voice more fuel for the fire, so to speak, so we stop trying, we squelch our dreams and stay in our lane. One more failure becomes too much to bear so we stop trying. This can lead to always looking for the new thing. Called shiny object syndrome. If we just start things but never get too invested, we can feel like we are moving forward, but don’t have to fear failure at the same time. I have done this myself. I have bounced from one business idea to another never sticking with one long enough to even see if it would work all the way, burning up my life on dreams that I never had any intention of fulfilling. 36

38. We all know this in ourselves and in other people. I can’t tell you how many people I know who are writing the great American novel and have been doing so for years, but only have one or two chapters written. Now that I have really described the problem let's discuss the solutions. First thing is recognizing the source of the fear of failure. When we were children we were explorers we tried everything we never had a fear of failure it was learned or taught to us from others. I knew a girl who was deathly afraid of heights she wouldn’t even get near a guard rail of a balcony. Her fear was that great. She had never fallen or had any cause to legitimately fear falling or heights; it was her mothers fear of heights that she had adopted and amplified. She will probably transfer this fear to her children as well. This can be translated into other things as well. Some people have a fear of doing things that are not the norm so they squash that inclination in their children. Stick to what works, color inside the lines. This was a valid survival strategy back in the day because if you had a child who didn't want to tend the field or hunt then they may starve later on. So society is designed to reign in the dreamers and risk takers. Overcoming a fear of failure is not easy but doable. The first is to see the small successes in your actions. Yeah your business may not have taken off like you thought. Instead focus on the successes you had. You learned a new skill, you discovered what didn’t work and can make a better business later on. The most important thing is to recognize the success you have had and not focus on what goals were not achieved. This is why smaller goals are better. Instead of saying I will make a million dollars by next week which is not entirely possible for most. Choose small goals to feel proud about like: setting up your site, writing a post a day, doing keyword research. The most important thing is cut yourself some slack and forgive yourself when you do not do what you demand of yourself. It takes time to change a habit, as long as there is some forward movement, that is a very positive thing and you should acknowledge that and praise yourself. An example for clarity's sake. Let's say you want to start out the gate and you are going to write 5 articles a day. Insead though you only write 3 articles by the end of the week. I do this. I set impossible goals then beat myself up for not succeeding in them. The first part is to acknowledge that you may have been too ambitious and had too high of expectations for yourself. Also congratulate yourself you wrote 3 articles in the week something you never have done before. Aim to match or beat this next week and keep up with it. Once again if you falter forgive yourself and work on your goals even if it is a very little a day. 37

39. Fear Of Success Why would I be afraid of success you may ask. It is pretty simple but one thing a lot of people overlook. You see we are not just ourselves we are our social network as well. One big fear is out stripping that network, by becoming more successful. This happens many times in history a person will crack the code and make tons of money, but their social group will start ostracizing them because they shine a light on their inadequacies and so normally the person either ditches their social group or ditches the money and goes back to the ways things were. The worst of this is parents. Your parents have dreams too but they may not have explored them for fear. Your success may shine a bright light on their life and their thoughts of failure so if you try and venture out from their life path they may try to reign you in. This doesn’t make them evil, just scared. This is a harder one to overcome because you will face opposition all around sometimes even from your spouse. This happens a lot with weight loss where one person tries to make better choices and their wife or husband tries to tempt them back into the old ways. Once again not because they are evil but because of fear. Their fear of you out growing them, and their fear of failure if they try to follow you. The best advice I can give is to open up the lines of communication with those around you and reassure them that you will always love them and that you are doing this not to be better than them but to improve your life. Another thing is enlist them as an ally and have them help you both succeed and support each other. Procrastination I think I would be the king of procrastination town if I ever took the time to create it. I have spent many nights the day before a due date up until 4am writing a paper that should have taken me weeks to write. To be honest I have opted to clean my entire house before sitting down to write a chapter of this book just to put it off and not have to do it. So why do we do this? It is so stressful and never turns out well. There are two things at play here. The first is our fear of failure. We feel like failure is a forgone conclusion so why even try so we put it off and never work on our dreams because we figure why bother. The second factor is not liking being told what to do. Too often we treat ourselves as if we are slaves to our own ambitions. We demand so much of ourselves, but offer no rewards in return. We have to bargain with ourselves because treating ourselves like slaves only makes us more prone to fight back. 38

40. So make a deal with yourself if you do this then you get this reward like playing video games or a piece of chocolate. Remember everything in moderation but make a deal with yourself and make rewards for achieving them. The second part of overcoming procrastination is at the beginning of the day ask yourself “what would a great day look like?” A day you do not have to feel ashamed of, one you can look back on and say that was a day I am proud of. Ask yourself this every morning and then endeavor to make that day a reality. At the end of the day take time to reflect on your successes for that day and what needs to be improved. Don’t be too harsh, but also recognize what would have made that day better and one you could be proud of. If you make this a habit daily then your days should start to look more like what you want and less than what you dread or fear or are bored of. Remember this, we feel at our most alive when we are testing our boundaries and achieving our dreams. Niche Hunting Short Guide List Method What have you bought? What skills do you have or can learn? Have you achieved a desirable result others may want? What have you done that others may find interesting? List all of these out and then cut it down to about 10 to look into. 7s Method 7 problems, 7 passions, 7 fears Problems - This can be things you have solved like how to install a closet safe, or how to fix a hole in drywall. It can also be something more pressing like how to fix bad acne, or severe back pain. Passion - This is what you love doing or want to learn to do. Like painting miniatures or working in a machine shop. Fear - This is what you fear most, it can be spiders, health related like genetic issues your family has had. These are less problems but could be potential problems later on. Cut the list down to 10 then research the competition to see which one you will move forward on. 39

41. Amazon Method Guide Go to Amazon click in the search box on the left are the categories where it says all Click All then select a category I will select gardening and outdoor. Then after selecting gardening and outdoor just hit the spyglass nothing more. Now you are in the gardening and outdoor section. 40

42. Now you can niche down further. I chose gardening. 41

43. Then I selected gardening tools. 42

44. In the next window it changes and now the categories are on the slide. This is where the real niche search begins, it will show you things related but quite different from what you are normally thinking. 43

45. Like bonsai tools never would have thought about that. On this slide I want you to see two things, one is the price of the kit you could affiliate for and two is another sub niche to this one, Bonsai Cutters. Let's see what it finds. 44

46. It finds more tools and these are far more expensive. Clickbank Short Guide This will be a combined niche hunting guide slash how to use Clickbank. 45

47. Click on the marketplace to find a product to sell. 46

48. You can search or if you want to find a product but don’t know what product you want yet then click on the little arrow next to the category. I chose E-Business & E-Marketing. 47

49. You will find many more subcategories. I chose Email Marketing. 48

50. This screen has a lot on it. The first thing I will address is the Avg $/conversion underlined in red. This is how much you could expect normally if you sold this item. On the left are sliders to determine what criteria you want to narrow the results down to. Up top is the “Sort Results By” drop down menu. Most people select Gravity. I will discuss this in the next slide. 49