In his articles Mr Allan Gardyne stated that : Before we make a firm decision on a topic for our site, we'll need to do research to see if there are suitable affiliate products which match our topic.
We want affiliate merchants that have excellent products, excellent reputations and sites that look as though they're good at selling.However, affiliate marketers don't need to sell, that's the upside of this kind of marketing. They have to learn how to presell, or, warm customers up to buying.
To maximize your affiliate income, every page on your website should be written with a particular product or service in mind, but you don't need to mention the product or service by name. Remember what your primary goal is as an affiliate marketer with a content website? You got it, writing fresh, unique, interesting, helpful, useful content that presells.
Your content will build your reputation and earn your readers' trust and belief in you.
Every page on your site should also have a link to a page that presells an affiliate product of particular use or interest to the person using the product.
In plain English, this means you have some pages that are general information pages, without any mention of your products by name. However, if you are selling widgets, then somewhere on every page you have the word "widget" as a hyperlink to another page that specifically talks about widgets.
This page may be a widget comparison page, or a page about widgets in general. It can even mention your particular affiliate products by name. On this page, you can link to your particular product page, and also to the merchant page.
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You're going to build a site the search engines love, so you also want to find key phrases that many people are typing into search engines. You don't rely on guesswork.
You must do this keyword research BEFORE you start building your web site. That's critically important.
Find out how much advertisers are willing to pay for the keywords or key phrases you're interested in. Here's how.
Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and play around with the free Keyword Tool.
For example, try putting in a keyword or phrase, such as "recipe" and click on "Get More Keywords". Pretend you're willing to pay the maximum per click the tool allows - 100. (You can choose any currency. I choose US.)
Over on the right side of the page, make sure that "Cost and position estimates" is selected.
The tool will calculate for you the estimated average CPC (cost per click) for a whole lot of words and phrases.
Try entering a different word, say "debt" or "free", click on "Re-calculate" and watch how the CPC changes.
You don't HAVE to choose a topic which has expensive keywords. Often topics that have expensive keywords are very competitive. You may do better choosing a less competitive niche with cheaper keywords.
In July 2008, Google improved its free keyword tool, making it much more useful. It now shows you the approximate number of monthly searches done at Google for any keywords you type in. So you can now do some fast, reliable keyword research there free. So this is a very good place to start your keyword research, using real search numbers from Google.
If you use Site Build It to build your site, you'll find the brainstorming tool in it awesome to help you come up with ideas and phrases you wouldn't have thought of without it.
Beware: If you choose certain topics, Google will not allow you to place AdSense ads on your site and you'll miss out on a very lucrative opportunity.
Such topics include gambling, firearms, ammunition, balisongs, butterfly knives, and brass knuckles; beer or alcohol; tobacco or tobacco-related products; and prescription drugs.
For a full list of topics you may wish to avoid see https://www.google.com/adsense/policy
Advertisers can choose to have their ads displayed only on Google or also on a large network of sites. Will AdSense ads you see on Google appear on your pages? To get an idea, find web pages that have material similar to the content you're planning to create and look at their AdSense ads.
For more accurate research, you can also use the free AdSense preview tool to see which ads are being displayed to people in different countries.Even if you've already chosen a niche, I urge you to read the Affiliate Masters Course. It might make you change your mind.
You can follow your passion or chase the money. With luck - and a bit of keyword research - you may be able to do both.
Examine your potential competitors
If you're considering building a site about hiking boots, type "hiking boots" (using quotation marks) into Google and Yahoo! and carefully examine the top 10 sites which appear in the search results.
Let's say the top 3 sites in Google are PageRank 8, 7 and 6. If so, you'll probably have to work hard for a couple of years or more to outrank them. I'm not saying it cannot be done, but it will require either a great deal of work, or a very innovative, eye-catching approach.
You can quickly check the PageRank of your potential competitors by using Seochat's free online tool - http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-search/Do those sites all have the phrase in the title? (The title is the words that appear at the very top of your screen when you visit a site.) If not, you may be able to beat them.
How many links do your potential competitors have?
Type the URL of the site you want to explore.
Click on "Explore URL".
Click on "Inlinks".
Modify your search to make it more useful. Select the options to show Inlinks "except from this domain" and "entire site". This will exclude internal links and show you all external links that Yahoo! knows about to ANY page of the website.
If your potential sites have thousands of links to them, they're likely to be very tough competitors.
Don't decide definitely on a niche topic until you've taken the next two steps...
