[Build Great Backlinks] My Warrior Forum Trojan Horse & The World’s Worst Email List

Build Great Backlinks

Have you ever had that feeling when you’re making something and you’re really excited to keep going. Where you know the process is going to be as awesome as the end result? That’s how I feel about writing this post. I just want my fingers to keep moving, as there’s a lot of insights to come.

Before I do that, I want to do something I never do and that’s push a project or idea, but here we go: Sign-up to my email list at the bottom of this post or in the right sidebar here. Click through to ViperChill if you’re reading this elsewhere. The emails I have been sharing lately include information you won’t find on any other website (even here) mostly focused around unique SEO ideas. I actually have two more videos going live to the list this week.

I mention the list not only because I want you to subscribe, but I recently launched my Warrior Forum guide there. A quick background check for those of you who don’t know about Warrior, is that it’s basically a discussion board for internet marketers wanting to learn about internet marketing. It’s also huge with thousands of people logged in at any one time. My guide was about purchasing products there and reviewing whether they actually lived up to all of the hype.

Now, I’ve always known their WSO section (marketplace) to be a bit of a shady place. For the most part, it’s frequented by people who only make money by teaching other people how to make money. That’s easily 90% of the listings there. I’ve participated a little over the years (109 posts since Jan 2011) but generally kept out of the WSO area and just offered advice in other areas.

Until recently, when I went super-saiyan rage mode.

I’ve been doing so much SEO work lately with my links guy (to be revealed soon to those on my list) and having a ton of success. I decided I would check out one of the SEO guides on Warrior, just to see what people were talking about these days, as I haven’t been involved in reading others’ ideas much. Rather, I’ve been testing my own.

Needless to say, the first product I bought was terrible.

It happens, I can understand that. But what really got to me was how many excellent reviews this thing was getting, all clearly faked or influenced, and how many beginner marketers were getting scammed out of cash.

My research saw me purchasing 3 more of these products, each with the same, awful end-result. Again, there’s full details and screenshots of the actual products for those on my list. You’ll get the PDF instantly.

Glen get’s a little angry…

I left the first negative review on one product thread for an eBook I purchased. It was a guide teaching people how to make $350+ day from their email list, with a lot of guarantees. The short version of this is that the product was terrible and can be summed up with the phrase “give people free things so they like you”. It was also barely readable, and really just trying to sell you on other products through affiliate links.

My review received 13 thanks (the forum equivalent of likes) and hopefully stopped a few newbies from getting ripped off. I mean, the product owner couldn’t even give me one example of a $350 day. Never mind doing it on a daily basis.

What happened next? Well, he turned the entire sales page into giving away some other product for free. A small win on my part, right? Wrong!

He then had another thread going where he now decided to sell this same product (of course, which lacked my negative review) saying that now you’ll only make $250/day instead of $350. No update to product buyers and nothing mentioned on the other thread. Just an I-got-caught-out bait and switch.

I reported this multiple times over the period of a week. Nothing was done by the moderators there.

Glen needs to step away from the computer…

I have to admit, I was a bit pissed-off at this point. You might think I’m getting a little too emotional over bad products on a forum, but I remember in my teens how I was so caught up in buying money-making-idea after idea on websites like this. It can be really addictive. I see so many people caught up in that trap, and what they’re being sold is absolute garbage, to put it nicely.

I decided to create a thread about the marketplace section of the forum being shady, and how members (like the one who changed his entire thread) were scamming a lot of people there. Lots of people thanked me for the post and sent me private messages in agreement. Within an hour it was deleted. No PM, no message, nothing.

Please note that I’m not just some random member crying on the site. I paid for my account there and I’m 99% sure I have the highest post count to thanks (likes) ratio for any user on the entire forum.

Even more frustrating that my one-week reporting did nothing, but my thread could disappear in less than an hour.

Glen needs to get back on the computer and blog…

I purchased another product. Not out of wanting some secret idea, but I actually wanted to dislike it. I wanted it to be bad so I could be 100% guilt-free when telling people to stay away from that section of the website.

It was terrible. In this 30 minute video, which promised you would make $100 a day with 30 minutes work, you’re simply told to use ‘solo ads’ to build your email list. That was honestly all there was to the course.

Not what email service to use. Not what niche to choose. Not what kind of content to email people. Just “use solo ads”.

Yet, half of the reviews were amazing. I left a negative, but fair, review. Here’s what someone instantly posted on my Facebook page:

40 minutes later, it was deleted. A review of a product I’d paid money for.

I wrote it again, with a slightly nicer tone. Again, deleted within an hour.

Alan (thanks Alan!) prompted me to do a little research into his shady looking testimonials:

It turns out all you have to do is grow a network of people who will all do video testimonials for each other. That should be enough to convince the newbies in your thread – who don’t have too much spare time like I do – that you’re the real deal.

There were actually a lot more than this, but you should be starting to smell something fishy already.

Reviews: Deleted. Thread: Deleted. Here’s How I EVENTUALLY Got the Message Across

My initial idea was just to blog about it. I have a fairly large audience here and I know quite a few of you are active members on the site, meaning some Warriors would hear about it and hopefully be a bit wiser about what they purchase. That’s purely my aim. People are allowed to scam newbies on this forum, so I wanted to get the message across to them to be wiser about their purchases.

What you’re about to read was not done to seem cool, “hey look what I did and they didn’t notice”. I really don’t care about that. I highly recommend that anyone who doesn’t understand my frustrations go and buy a product from the site. More than likely it will be under $20, and you can choose from thousands. Then tell me if your product matches the hypes from the sale page. Hype is supposed to be hype, but it wont even be remotely close (unless you buy software, rather than an info-product).

Then go and tell me if it matches the glowing reviews, or the amazing testimonial videos. Then think about how many hours some people had to work just to get that product. Don’t think you’ll definitely get your refund either.

Also, if you’re reading this via RSS or in your inbox, please read my first comment at the bottom of this post.

Was there a better way than hearing about my blog randomly? Wouldn’t it be better if I could get in front of actual people who are stuck in this opt-in-for-everything and want to buy everything mode? But if my threads would be deleted within an hour (and myself possibly banned) and my reviews weren’t sticking (or if they were, the product owner just moved to a different thread), surely there was nothing else to do but blog?

Well, there was one thing: I could join these scammers in the WSO section, and sell to these people who are buying and opting in for everything myself. And that’s exactly what I did.

I didn’t really sell anything. I just promoted an eBook that has been on this website for over two years (though I did update it a fortnight ago). I sent people to an opt-in page where they could get it for free, here: http://www.viperchill.com/10000-subscribers/

Here’s my thread:

If I’m going to be paying $40 just to have a thread there, I may as well promote something.

Now I can hear you thinking “But Glen, what does this have to do with trying to get people to beware of scammers over there?”. Hold on young padawan, let’s look at one of the reviews:

Sorry if the text in that image isn’t entirely readable. My blog is only 600px wide. He’s basically thanking me for talking about garbage IM products on the internet and says he has been scammed many times before. It seems like a random review and totally off-topic. And it would be, if I was only giving away that 10K subscribers eBook.

Here’s the follow-up you’ll get as soon as you subscribe to my list:

As you can see, in the second eBook they are getting what they signed-up for, just with an added bonus as well. The first thing they’re getting is my Warrior guide, which shows my experience of buying multiple products from the site and then I reviewed them. TL;DR: They all had huge claims, but not one delivered.

I don’t really know if this would be a bannable offence on the site. I don’t see why it should be, but I guess it’s possible when simple product reviews are getting deleted. If I’m banned after this blog post, I’ll accept that, but it will only reinforce my beliefs about the best practices (or lack of) that happen over there.

More importantly, it worked: Over 200 Warriors have picked up the eBook so far. It would be nice if the number was higher, but that’s 200 people who actively spend time in the WSO section of the website, buying products and opting in for any freebies that they can get. Hopefully they’ll pass the message on to even more people.

I could have made the number much higher, but I’m at the point now where I have to keep bumping my thread ($40 each time) but then I’m financially supporting a business I don’t agree with. More importantly than my Warrior fate, is whether people got something from my guide:

To end this section, I want to say that I don’t believe every member or every product being sold there is bad. Not at all. But from my experience, the vast majority of products on the site are garbage and a waste of time. If you’re going to buy WSO’s, proceed with caution.

The World’s Worst Email List

I could have split this into two blog posts, but you know I love making people scroll .

I recently discovered the worst email list on the internet. It wasn’t something I happened to come across overnight, but something that became more clear to me as time went on over the last few months. Unsurprisingly, it was the list of an internet marketer. Not necessarily a slimy marketer, but a marketer nontheless.

That email list was mine.

• It wasn’t the worst because people would opt-in here and suddenly be redirected to Cloudniche.com – leaving them pretty confused
• It wasn’t the worst because some of the links in the eBook I was promoting had expired and didn’t exist
• It wasn’t the worst because some emails had cloud niche in the title and some had ViperChill
• It wasn’t the worst because some ideas were in a follow-up sequence and some were live, leaving people even more confused

Those things were pretty bad – and something I’m a little ashamed of after pushing email marketing so much on this site – but there was another issue…

Nobody took action.

I posed this question on Facebook at the end of March, and received a lot of interesting answers. Three people won the competition, and they all guessed zero.

Since then, someone actually has came to me with a beta version of a plugin they’ve built from one of my emails. It’s not quite finished, but they took action. Unless I’m mistaken (it’s possible after well over 1,000 replies) not one person (out of 20,000+) built a website around the ideas I sent.

And I don’t think it was because they’re bad emails. I literally have over 1,000 emails from people thanking me for the niches that I’m sending out:

If they’re thanking me and telling me they love the suggestions, why wouldn’t they do something about it?

A Lesson in Passion

The simple answer is that people generally don’t want to work on things they don’t care about. As much as I love marketing, SEO and so-forth, I hated my job in Africa at times where I was so limited by what I could do with clients. Here I was, working with some of the biggest companies in the world – my dream job – and they give me little more than a Wikipedia page and say, “go and promote this”. You can be sure that not every day in the office was very exciting for me.

Interestingly, I had people bugging me for more updates. “Hey Glen, when’s the next niche idea coming out”, “Why are you not sending more emails”. I have the ideas; just it feels such a waste to keep promoting them. Almost like I’m contributing to the opposite of what I preach. I’m encouraging people to go from project to project, rather than sticking to one thing and really dominating that industry.

Some of the most common emails I received (besides ‘thanks for the idea’) were people asking me questions on how to take the idea further. How do I build the site? How do I monetise it? Where should I get my theme from? Does X matter? I try to respond to as many as I can, but as one man I can only do so much. Another place where passion would come into play here is that most people tend to figure it out. If you care about the niche enough and want to make money, you will find answers to these questions.

Whether they’re from a person you email or forums and blog posts, you’ll do what you can to find a way. Giving people random niche ideas doesn’t seem to help that.

Losing 1,000+ Subscribers Overnight

I’ve known that I need to change my list for a long time, but it’s been running so smoothly (people have been thanking me, and unsubscribe rates are very low) that I’ve been waiting for a solid reason to take its place. With my focus the last few months more on building new websites for case studies and for rankings, I’ve found that my passion has come back 10-fold.

Now that results (traffic and earnings) are starting to come in for these new websites – in non-marketing industries – I’ve been creating more marketing content than ever (I have 4 more videos lined up for subscribers in just a week, and they’re all of a high quality).

Some people even started to notice:

However, I have a ton of new content that I want to share with my new-found motivation, so I took the decision to reset my list. This means that I deleted every single follow-up email in my sequence, and started again from scratch. This means no more cloud niche, and it also means a lot of confused subscribers.

Some people pointed out that the infrequency of my emails probably had an affect – and I’m sure it did – but no doubt the change in direction (which I explained in a follow-up video to my audience) and email titles caused a lot of confusion. There wasn’t really much I could do to mitigate that.

But here’s the thing: It’s a shame that some people won’t be getting my updates anymore, but it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. This new focus and content angle will not be for everyone. If you’re not interested, the last thing I want to do is take up space in your inbox.

I then went and rectified a few things:

• I fixed the broken links in the eBooks I was promoting (luckily I still had the OpenOffice files from years ago)
• I changed my ‘thank you page’ after someone opts-in so they actually stay on ViperChill
• I redesigned my confirmation page when they confirm their email address
• I gave the email list a brand (the gold VIP Email graphic) and use that on exclusive pages just for email subscribers
• I now have better content coming up on my email list than I do my blog (videos, guides, audio files, everything)

A lesson for those with a list: Don’t be afraid to change if your emails aren’t getting the desired result. You may lose subscribers, but it’s more important to build an audience who are passionate about the same things as you. If you’re not in it, they’ll know. All the praise in the world doesn’t mean anything if your emails are not doing what you intended them to do.

See you on the inside? As always, thanks for reading!

You may view the latest post at
http://www.viperchill.com/warrior-trojan/

Build Great Backlinks
Glen
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

[Build Great Backlinks] The Ultimate Guide to Making an Affiliate Income from Your Blog

Build Great Backlinks

A few years ago I wouldn’t have written a blog post about affiliate marketing. It all seemed too dirty. But that’s changing now thanks to a few animal updates from Google.

These days it’s all about trust and authority – you need your readers to see your blog as an authority and you need Google to trust your SEO strategy. That means it’s harder than ever to succeed but it also means that the people willing to work away at it for months and years are doing very well.

In this post I’m going to show you:

• My personal theory for this slow-to-grow strategy.
• Why multiple passive income streams are important to mitigate risks.
• How to choose the right affiliate program to promote.
• How to write an “ultimate article” that promotes your product.
• The content strategy that drives traffic and authority.

At the end of it all I’m going to show you an example of this being done extremely well by a very nerdy individual who really knows how to match his traffic to a non-sleazy sale.

This is a pretty long post (Glen doesn’t let me eat unless they are) so grab your caffeine source and dive in.

Note from Glen: The above is true. Also, the example at the end of this post is AWESOME. That is all…

My Personal Theory for this Passive Income Strategy

One of my main goals for exiting the “real world” and starting a blog was to create an income stream where I could work less and spend more time doing things I love and helping people that needed it. And one of the most powerful, sustainable and long-term methods is a trustworthy blog with carefully chosen affiliates.

Seeing as this strategy has worked well for me I thought I’d share the basic structure/idea so that others can hopefully make a bit of extra income.

How does it work?

You build a blog around a topic that you love or a keyword that you think might be profitable. Then you focus on creating quality evergreen content and a good social backing. You then create long-form articles with gently mentioned affiliates and funnel traffic towards them through useful and varied content on related sites.

If done right, this strategy can see you developing high converting articles that promote quality affiliates through top Google rankings for years to come.

How much can it earn?

I’m not a fan of going into detailed earnings predictions for this kind of post because then people tend to get upset when they don’t see the same results straight away. But for the sake of information I’ll say that I make enough to pay my rent and bills from this strategy and I know guys making upwards of $1000 a day.

Another note from Glen: I have a good blogging friend who is pulling in upwards of $10,000 a month from this strategy (no, not Pat) and you would never know it unless he told you.

Why you need to focus on more than one

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned online is that things don’t last. Even the biggest sites in the world eventually fail (remember MySpace?).

Google is constantly updating its policies and algorithms and you often find that one day something is going extremely well and the next you’re struggling to find lunch money.

When implementing a blogging strategy like this one you need to do two things:

• Protect your main assets
  If you have a “main” blog you need to make sure your don’t risk it by overdoing new strategies that you are really exciting about. This particular one I’m talking about today is 100% legit in the eyes of Google but there is a risk that people could take it too far and make problems for themselves.
• Protect yourself from failures
  If you do overcook something or something changes that you didn’t anticipate it’s a good idea to make sure you have two or three other things in the works. That means trying out multiple things at once or at least making sure you have a “ready to go” backup plan.

There is inherent risk in all business decisions but, if you can, you want to make sure that you are mitigating them as much as possible without talking yourself out of the race.

Now that the preliminary stuff is out of the way we can get into the three-staged process for getting this affiliate thing cranking.

Stage 1: How to choose the right affiliate program

Assuming you’re doing this my way, you’ve already got a blog built up (if not there’s a section for you down below) and that blog has a lot of earned authority. This authority comes in the form of quality distinctive content, an active Google+ account that is hooked up with Google Authorship, a strong and personal brand, a growing community, etc.

What this means is that you will need to select an affiliate program that:

• You have tested for yourself
  It’s a good idea to never promote an affiliate product unless I’ve used it yourself and know that it is a legitimate service that your readers will enjoy.
• You have enjoyed
  You need to make sure that you enjoyed the experience. Not only does a bad product damage your reputation it has financial implications as well: you don’t make money when people return the affiliate. That is a common occurrence when sleazy sales pages push ordinary products that aren’t as good as promised.
• You think fits your brand
  A big part of the “trust factor” is that you are pretty narrow in your niche. So if you have a blog about fitness you don’t promote credit cards or dog training. I can’t prove it but I think Google picks up on these elements.

If you take a look at Glen’s last two product releases, OptinSkin and PostSkin, you’ll notice that they have a very sharp and clean fit with his readership’s needs.

This most certainly was not an accident. They fit a very deliberate narrative in both this site’s journey and Glen’s own journey – those products are things he wanted to make for his own use as much as they were made for his readership and the wider blogging community. And because Glen is perceived as an authority in his niche the readers often purchase his products out of curiosity and a sense of not wanting to miss out.

It’s sometimes a tricky mix; you need to find something that you’ve used yourself but that also fits your readership. For example, you might use OptinSkin on your fashion blog but that doesn’t mean your fashion-interested readers will want to use it as well. The mix needs to be right from both a keyword and a reputation front.

Deciding before you start your blog

The reason I’ve put the “choosing your affiliate product” section before the “blog post writing and strategy” section is because it’s often really beneficial to know what affiliate keywords you’re going after before you start the blog. This gives you a good opportunity to craft the content and the tone of the discussion towards the promotion of the product in the reader’s “journey”.

If you are in this camp then Glen has done an amazing post on keyword research which is a really good place for you to start. The important thing to take note of there is the last part of the article that talks about things you are passionate about. Picking a niche or keyword set based solely on the idea of making quick cash is a really good way to lose interest.

After all of that is said and done, most of you already have a blog and will be looking to do this affiliate thing as an afterthought to the creation of the blog. That’s fine – you just need to take a little bit more time to craft a strategy that works for your readers as well as the search engines.

Where do I find the affiliate products?

The answer to this question totally depends on the type of blog that you are running because every affiliate goes through a different “broker”. The two best places to start are probably Commission Junction and Amazon Associates as they have a wide range of products from mostly quality sellers for you to look at.

The interesting thing to note, however, is that you can often go to the company that you’re interested in promoting directly and see if they have an affiliate program. OptinSkin is a good example – scroll down to the very bottom and you’ll find an invitation to become an affiliate.

In a recent post on blog hosting I decided to promote BlueHost as an affiliate as I had used them for years and felt comfortable talking about them to the hoards of readers asking me for recommendations. In the end I applied to the program through BlueHost itself and the stats, tracking and affiliate support offered has been much better as a result.

Lastly, I’ll show you an affiliate solution at the end of this post that is probably the most intelligent way to go about this part of the equation.

Stage 2: How to develop an “ultimate article” that soft-sells your affiliate

Okay this is where we start to get into the juicy bits. The idea now is to create an article that serves as the “final point” in the process before the reader buys the product.

It is not, however, a sales page. Sales pages don’t rank on Google as well as long form content that is informative and incredibly useful. So what you are trying to do is create a blog post that covers the topic and mentions the affiliate in a way that pikes interest and passes on your perceived authority to that product.

The best way I can think of to describe this vibe is to think about Roger Federer. This guy has never, ever told us to go out and buy Nike shoes or Wilson tennis rackets. But when I’m buying tennis gear that is always what I go to first because he is my favorite player and I somehow connect his success to the products that he uses.

Your blogging authority should work in a similar way. You aren’t necessarily telling them to go out and buy it but you’re setting up a situation where they want to check it out and potentially get involved because they trust you and what you do.

So when you are writing this article there are a few things you need to keep in mind:

• It needs to be distinctive
  Distinctiveness is one of the most important things in marketing. You don’t need to be original but you do need to be different. This can help push people over the edge if they weren’t sure about whether they needed to purchase or not and it helps you to stand out from the competition.
• It needs a unique angle for SEO
  This is probably going to be controversial but a few months ago I remember someone saying that Google is now putting more weight on blogs and websites that have a unique approach. This makes sense. They don’t want all the results on the homepage to be review sites! Since hearing about this and implementing it on a few of my blogs I’ve noticed quite nice results. If you can go one step further and create a unique tool or app to add to the page you’re laughing.
• It needs to be comprehensive
  The back button is your enemy here. If your article is not comprehensive enough to form the “final stage” in this person’s conscious or unconscious quest you are going to find them hitting the back button and not clicking your affiliate link as they don’t feel confident enough to proceed.
• It needs micro-authority
  Micro-authority is a term I use when talking to my readers and clients about all the little things you do on a page to show readers that you are legit and this product is right for them. For example, social proof that helps to remove fear of being alone is important for new readers as is things like money-back guarantees.
• It needs conversion-based design
  Your design matters. If you have amazing content but flashing red text on a black background or some other horrible design error you’ll find that conversions won’t improve. Make sure you use a clean and simple design that is focused on the content, decrease your page load time, break the content up with headers, use testimonials, etc.
• It needs to be SEO optimized
  You’ll be surprised at how often I see great articles with heaps of social love and back links but with terrible on-site SEO. Make sure your URL matches your target key phrase (whether it is root or long tail), make sure your title and header work and ensure you have a good balance of keywords throughout the article.
• It needs the right keywords
  We’re trying to get traffic and rankings for specific keywords and phrases here. Make sure you know what you want to rank for in the long term as well as the derivatives of that root phrase. Work them into your article, headers, title, tags and know whether you’re using plurals or not.
• It needs an evergreen flavor with a focus on beginners
  Lastly, and most importantly, this article needs to have an evergreen flavor that is focused on beginners. We’re not writing for experts – we’re writing for beginners who want to become experts. Why? Because they are the ones that are searching Google for solutions to problems.

So it doesn’t really matter whether you are telling a giant story, writing a comparative review post or reviewing a single product as long as you get the above elements right. That is what will make it an “ultimate article”.

Again, if you have authority and you do the next part right you’ll find that this long form article converts extremely well.

Stage 3: The funnel strategy that drives traffic, authority and sales

So we are on to stage three now – you’ve chosen your affiliate product, you’ve written your “ultimate article” and now you are going to start developing a funnel that sends you traffic, rankings and hopefully some long term buyers.

I have to emphasise at this point that this is not meant to be a short term thing. This strategy is intended to provide a boost to your ultimate article so you are actively promoting it in a way that is also beneficial to your trust and rankings.

The idea here is to create guest post, video and social networking content that is aimed at “pre-interested” people in your niche. You create this content around sub-topics that prime people for you main articles and include keyword appropriate links back to your ultimate article.

Let’s do an example:

Your blog – BonsaiGrowingHQ.com

Your ultimate article – The Beginner’s Guide to Growing a 100-Year-Old Bonsai

Your affiliate product(s) – a quality Bonsai training course, Bonsai tools and pots, etc.

Guest post one – The 50 Most Beautiful Bonsais of All Time

Guest post two – The Top 10 Trees for Growing a Bonsai

Video one – How to Correctly Trim a Bonsai’s Branches and Roots

Etc.

Each of these will be the same sort of quality as your ultimate article except instead of affiliate links you will make the main link at the top of the content a relevant link back to your big post. It’s important that you get this link at the top of the article and get the anchor text correct.

IMPORTANT: Since the latest Google update you have to be extra careful with your anchor text. If you just write “Bonsai growing” as the anchor text on every guest post you do it will look extremely unnatural and Google will likely penalize you. The SEO factor is only part of the reason you are writing these posts so don’t risk a penalty by being too aggressive.

Boosting your guest posts

The other interesting thing you can do with these guest posts is use them to build links to your other guest posts. This has the dual effect of protecting your ultimate article as well as giving it more link-juice and elevating the posts that link to that article.

For example, if you link to your ultimate article in a guest post called The 50 Most Beautiful Bonsais of All Time then in your next guest post on a different site make sure you also link to that guest post.

What you are very gently doing is increasing the number of avenues through which people will find your chosen affiliate program and be interested in purchasing it while simultaneously building trust with Google and hinting at them where you’d like to be indexed.

Choosing the guest posting sites and topics carefully

There are a few things you need to think about when you are looking for sites to guest post on as well as choosing the topics that you are going to write about.

• Is the blog keyword relevant?
  Seeing as this is partly about SEO strategy you want to make sure that the links you are building are coming from relevant sites. For example, if you want to rank for Bonsai keywords there is no point doing guest posts on a site about V8 cars. It looks unnatural from a linking perspective and will send pretty useless traffic.
• Do they have a receptive audience?
  The second thing you’ll want to consider is whether or not it is a receptive audience for both your message and the final sale. For example, doing a guest post on a site about Japanese culture might be a good idea for your Bonsai affiliate post even though the community might not be currently interested in Bonsai growing. Or you could go to a photography blog and do a link-bait post about beautiful Bonsai photographs. The site’s traffic might not buy from you but once the post gets indexed a lot of Bonsai-lovers will find it. Remember, these guest posts, videos, etc. should be sending relevant organic traffic that converts to sales over the coming months and years.
• Is there an active community?
  Some blogs boast of having 650 million subscribers but when a new post goes up everything is quiet. The more active the community the more likely you are to get Tweets, Facebook Likes and +1′s which, no matter what anyone says, have an impact on your short and long term rankings. Answering comments also give you a good opportunity to build trust with your new readers.
• Can you include links?
  There is nothing worse than writing 5,000 words of pure magic for a guest post only to find it gets published with your main link removed. Sure, it’s the owners prerogative to do that but it doesn’t feel great. Of course, those links need to be useful and relevant otherwise you’re no different to a spammer, but make sure the webmaster is happy for you to add one or two before you start.
• Does the post create a successful sales funnel?
  I always think about this process in terms of the sales funnel. You are writing posts and making videos that introduce people to a broader idea or subject and then using backlinks to filter them towards your affiliate program through your ultimate post. When creating this content you want to make sure you select either evergreen topics or link-bait style subjects that build social momentum and attract relevant traffic over time.

I don’t think you need to be too rigid with this strategy. As I said, it’s a long term game that you are creating gently over time. Just be sure not to overcook things by going too aggressive or making your anchor text too similar and you should start to see results fairly quickly.

An important note on anchor text

There are a lot of really smart people out there predicting that anchor text is on its way out. I’d like to join them. That way you’ll think I’m really smart when it happens.

In the old days of SEO you’d build backlinks using relevant anchor text. So, for example, if you wanted to rank for “bonsai trees” that would be the link text you’d use in your guest posts. And then the Panda update happened and Google took a swipe at unnatural link profiles which meant that SEOs started making their anchor text more natural (things like “click here to read the rest”).

My prediction is that the next big thing will be Google using the referring page to pick up keywords instead of the anchor text. Anchor text is too easy to game. There are already people saying that they are getting better results when a referrer links straight to their home page with their site name instead of any keywords. The keywords are now in the referring post.

Using this strategy for your mailing list

I should point out at this stage that I’ve used this strategy quite effectively to attract new email subscribers as opposed to just focusing on affiliate sales.

For example, for a long time I had a free eBook on Blog Tyrant called How to Increase Email Subscribers by 120% Overnight. I then went out and wrote guest posts about topics to do with growing a mailing list or the importance of having a large subscriber base in order to “plant the seed” for my eBook.

These guest posts converted extremely well for me when the posts went live – sometimes getting over 100 extra email subscribers from the article. By then building links to these guest posts I have found they get indexed quite well and continue to send me love.

An Extremely Nerdy (but Great!) Example

I wanted to end this post by giving you an example of how an excellent ultimate article on a site with a lot of trust can sell a crap-tonne of affiliate products if the right product is chosen.

Please note, however, that this person didn’t really build links to the post directly using the guest post strategy that I mentioned above. Rather, they focused on building authority by focusing on community, creating long-form content, etc. and then using a well ranked article to sell a product.

The message is spot on. If you can apply the lessons from this particular example to your own blog you will be on a winner.

Steve Kamb’s Paleo Diet article on Nerd Fitness

The example that I wanted to show you is an article written by Steve Kamb called The Beginner’s Guide to the Paleo Diet.

I first found out about this post when talking to Glen one day and then found out more when I interviewed Steve for a video series that I have coming out soon. Turns out this post is absolutely killing it.

Steve has very kindly agreed to share some stats about his Paleo Post.

Post description: 4,000+ words, 21 photos, one video.

Total page views: Over 3,000,000 since 2010.

Page views in the past 30 days: 275,000.

Total social reach: 700 comments, 17,000 Facebook Likes, 700 Tweets.

Panda update effects: Post went from 500 views per day to over 8,000 per day.

Google rankings: 3 to 6 for “paleo diet” behind Wikipedia and the diet’s official site.

Affiliate product: His own “Is it Paleo?” app.

Sales: Over 25,000 since December.

Steve told me during a recent email conversation (he knows I’m posting this!):

Thanks to NF’s growth and the popularity of my article on the Paleo Diet, this app continues to sell 100-200+ copies a day without a dollar spent on advertising. The number of downloads fluctuates depending on where we are ranking for “Paleo Diet” searches (I can pretty accurately predict app sales based on where the article is ranked on that day). Since launching the 99 cent app in December, it's already been downloaded over 25,000 times.

There are other apps that do similar things, but thanks to the size of NF and the ranking of that article, we outrank all of them in the app store and usually crack the top 25 for Health and Fitness every day. Also, thanks to the supportive NF community and a simple app that does what it’s supposed to, 98% of our reviews are 4 and 5 star reviews, which helps for people who have never heard of Nerd FItness and find us in the app store instead of through the article.

Steve has been extremely clever here because his affiliate product is completely owned by his company. This is the perfect example of matching an affiliate to a traffic stream. He wrote a high quality evergreen article that naturally developed trust due to his strong brand and large community and then developed the app to solve the problem of thousands of people asking him, “Dude, is that food Paleo?”

NOTE: Steve still loves to be asked whether certain foods are Paleo. Find him on Twitter.

Now, not everyone has the massive site architecture and authority behind them that Steve does. That is where the guest posting and related content strategy comes in. Essentially you are leverage the authority that your guest post sites have in order to rank and drive traffic to your ultimate article.

While writing this post I have wondered how much Steve could increase his sales by creating more brilliant Paleo content and publishing it around the beginner-web to tap into markets where people might not have yet thought to search for “Paleo Diet”.

Do you need any tips for your affiliate attempts?

To reward everyone who read to the end of the post (well done!) Glen and I are going to stick around for a while and answer any questions you might have about the affiliate set up on your own blog.

Do you have an “ultimate article” or a sales page that isn’t performing very well? Are you struggling with your affiliate product selection? Do you have your own product that isn’t getting traffic?

Drop a comment with the deets and we’ll see what we can do. Extra love if you share the post!

You may view the latest post at
http://www.viperchill.com/blog-aff-guide/

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Glen
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

[Build Great Backlinks] How to Get Your Ideal Lifestyle as an Entrepreneur

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I have a confession to make: I’ve never been particularly interested in founding the next big up start up. You’ll never see me on the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine. To me, earning vast wealth is only somewhat appealing.

I’m a lifestyle entrepreneur. I began pursuing this path so that I could live a modest life of my choosing. So far, I think I’m doing pretty well at that. I’ve started a video production business that lets me hone my craft and travel the world for free (more on that in a bit).

I’ve already talked about some of the benefits entrepreneurs enjoy in my post about the top 30 reasons to be an online entrepreneur. In this post, I want to talk a little bit more about how to develop your business in a way that allows you to achieve your ideal lifestyle.

 

Honing Your Craft

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.
- Hippocrates

Let me tell you a little bit more about my ideal lifestyle. As a kid, I always wanted to be a novelist or artist. When I got a little bit older, I added musician to the list of "dream jobs".

The problem with those professions, is that they’re not generally ones that you can make a living with right away. Stephen King worked as a high school janitor while trying to publish his first novel; Robert Frost used to change light bulb filaments for a living. In the arts, you should plan on honing your craft for years before earning a decent salary.

I understood this when I entered the job market three years ago and I chose to become an entrepreneur because I thought that it gave me the best opportunity to earn a living while developing the skills that I would need if I ever wanted to become a professional novelist, artist, or musician. I’ll explain…

How Entrepreneurship Lets Me to Hone My Craft

Entrepreneurs get to pick their own field of work and job description. If you do this right, you can essentially handcraft a job that allows you to practice your craft.

In my case, I knew that I wanted to work in an area that allowed me to (1) write, (2) practice visual design, and (3) learn about sound and audio. Video production was the perfect fit for me because it allows me to do all three of those things at once – while also providing value for other people and businesses.

In this way, with each video I produce I become a little bit better at my craft – and a little bit closer to becoming a professional novelist, artist, or musician.

How You Can Do It

The first step here is to understand what you really love and want to do. From there, you must find a way that you can provide value to others by doing something related.

This last point really can’t be emphasized enough. If you have a business, it isn’t enough to simply be passionate about it. The business must provide value to other people and businesses. So whatever your passion is, seek out ways that you can help others with that passion.

Photo Credit: Stephen A. Wolfe

 

Getting the Tools of the Trade

The mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools.

- Confucius

Every dream life requires a few accessories. If you want to be a Professional skateboarder, you’re going to need a skateboard, pads, and possibly a personal practice space. When the business that you start as an entrepreneur is aligned with your other dreams, it can be an avenue for you to acquire the tools necessary to reach those goals.

Let’s say that your dream is to become a comic book artist. If you start a business as a graphic designer, you’ll be able to invest some of your earnings into buying a digital drawing tablet, a scanner, an external hard drive, and maybe even a new computer.

Before long, you’ll have all of the tools of a professional comic book artist – and that’s a big step on the way to actually being a professional comic book artist. There’s also the added benefit that many of your business investments are likely tax deductible.

How Entrepreneurship Let Me Acquire Necessary Tools

In my case, the first thing I needed to get upon starting my video production business was an Adobe Creative Suite with Adobe Premiere video editing software. I’ve since purchased microphones, cables, and – most importantly – a Canon 60D camera.

Each of these tools has been a big investment in my business, but they’re also expanding my horizons for personal creativity. In a few weeks, a film that I shot will be showing at our local theater in Fort Collins, something that would have been impossible without the camera, the software, and the expertise that I’ve acquired through my company.

How You Can Do It

This is a pretty straightforward concept, so the challenging part is in the execution. First, you must pick a business that aligns well enough with your other interests so that they share the same tools of advancement.

Then, you must actually save up a portion of your earnings to invest back in the business. I find that it’s best to have a set system (me and my partner split our earnings evenly between the two of us and the business) so as to ensure that you’re consistently investing.

 

Travel

The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.

- St. Augustine

Travel is one of life’s great pleasures. Unfortunately, most career paths discourage travel by giving you a rigid schedule with limited vacation days per year.

Being an entrepreneur offers a different relationship with travel. In fact, I’ve traveled more in the last year than ever before in my life and I owe it all to my work as an entrepreneur.

How Entrepreneurship Allows Me to Travel the World

Last month, a company flew me out to Los Angeles, California to help them shoot video of a conference at the Anaheim Events Center. Two weeks before that, a different company flew me to New York City to shoot a Kickstarter video. I took the picture above while walking through Central Park at night.

For both trips, I asked for the return flight to be a few days later so that I could spend some extra time as a traveler. For me, it was a dream come true to be able to travel from one coast to the other for free.

If you want to learn more about how I got these jobs in the first place, you can read my article about how to attract leads and land clients online.

How You Can Do It

If you don’t provide an in-person service, then you’re probably thinking, "Well, that’s all good for him, but my clients/customers will never have any reason to fly me anywhere."

That may be so, but it doesn’t preclude you from traveling. Cody McKibben works totally remotely as a marketer and web developer – and that’s what allows him to be a ‘digital nomad’, living primarily in Thailand and always traveling the world.

If you make a substantial passive income online through websites like Michael Dunlop does, then there’s nothing stopping you from traveling anywhere in the world, whenever you choose.

 

What’s Your Ideal Lifestyle?

Lately, I’ve truly been feeling like I’m living the life of my dreams. My work is allowing me to travel, hone my craft, and it’s flexibility means that I can devote more time to my music, writing, and film.

This probably isn’t your ideal lifestyle — in fact, you might be working 60 hours a week developing the next big online startup right now and that might be perfect for you. If so, then keep at it.

Mostly, I just want you to truly consider the lifestyle you’re looking for as you work towards your entrepreneurial goals. Personally, I still don’t believe there’s any better vehicle for achieving the lifestyle of your dreams than becoming an entrepreneur.

The post How to Get Your Ideal Lifestyle as an Entrepreneur appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

You may view the latest post at
http://www.incomediary.com/how-to-get-your-ideal-lifestyle-as-an-entrepreneur

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Nick
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com