First here’s the question:

Raymond, Thanks for the suggestion . Have marked a timeline to complete the trainings on CWS and start off with launching a review site.

However I am a bit overwhelmed since most of the markets look attractive (baby products, smart phones, home decor etc) and I am trying to identify profitable markets. From your review I guess you tried CWS from a review point of view (and it’s as good as you mentioned especially getting the perspective right for beginners). Additionally, if you could share a tip or two on identifying good markets (helpful tools/sites to find out what’s selling hot) and prioritizing them, either on a reply to this mail or your newsletter that would be great.

BTW I couldn’t locate a link to subscribe to newsletters on your site. Did i miss it ?

How Do We Find Profitable Markets?

Just to be clear (and because I have serious OCD when it comes to terminologies. hahaha), when you say market, this refers to a huge group of people. In the question, you gave some really good examples of some markets (baby products, smart phones, home decor) and that’s fine. But what you want to look for is a sub market under that huge market.

This is what you call a niche. Basically you drill down even further until you can find a sub market (niche) that you can potentially break through when it comes to ranking in the search engines and obviously the niche should have enough search volume for its keywords.

Let’s Drill Down The Baby Products Market

For this example we’re going to drill down the baby products niche and I’m going to use the Amazon marketplace. I have to say that I’m head over heels in love with Amazon’s affiliate program. If you’re still not seeing any results with promoting those acne guides and ‘how to cure *insert obscure disease here* materials in Clickbank then I strongly suggest you try out Amazon.

When you go to the Baby section (market) you will find a lot of sub markets. I can see strollers, car seats, nursery, feeding, swings, potty training, etc. You can classify these as niches but you can even drill down further to find more targeted and more specific niches.

Let’s choose safety gates.

I want to browse products that have a price tag of over $100 so you have to check that option in the left hand side. If you’re following me (and I suggest you do. hahaha) you’re going to see a lot of products that are over $100 and have acquired a lot of consumer reviews.

At this point I’m going to plug in the keyword ‘safety gates’ into the Wealthy Affiliate keyword tool (or the free Google keyword tool) and check out what keywords I can target and build a site from (I also like to target brand name keywords). The minimum exact monthly searches that I’m looking for is 500 and above.

My Suggested Gameplan For You

Suppose you’re going to work out a ‘safety gates’ campaign, I would advise you to build a general safety gates review site. Have a mix of both review articles and information articles. And rank the review articles in the search engines.

For example your domain would be… safetygatesreviews.com and one of your posts would be ‘kidco configure gate’ which is one of the many brands that distributes safety gates. Then you will work on building links so you’ll be able to rank the homepage for ‘safety gates reviews’ and the inside review page for ‘kidco configure gate’.

If you want a clear cut and simple guide into building Amazon mini sites that earns $50 or more per month, then I strongly recommend that you check out this Amazon WSO course.

How Do You Find Hot Products?

I don’t really have a surefire formula for this but watching some news and browsing the forums of your targeted audience can provide you a ton of ideas. I spend a great deal amount of time in Amazon and sometimes I would spot a product that got a lot of reviews just a couple of months ago and I classify this as a hot one. hehehe. If you have some ideas on how to spot hot Amazon products, I would appreciate it if you can share some of your strategies in the comments below.

What’s important for me is that the keywords have monthly searches and that I can penetrate the first page and eventually take over the top spot. And the good thing about Amazon is that there’s almost no second guessing if you’re going to be profitable or not. If you get ranked on the first page for a specific product name (eg. XYZ Sweep And Steam or XYZ Sweep And Steam review/s), it’s highly likely that you’re going to see sales.

I hope that you’ve found this answer to be helpful and I will try to add my RSS feed in the sidebar. hehehe. For now I will update you when I have a new post through my email list so make sure you’re subscribed. If you have some questions then feel free to send it in and I might write a blog post about it.

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Hi Raymond,

Your blog was the first access I had to SEO in January and I’ve been following faithfully ever since. I started very positive but made a couple of bad keyword choices that left me frustrated. I also got frustrated when all the backlinks I put in were not coming up. I ended up cancelling the products I bought and gave up for a couple of months. However I kept receiving your blog.

The turning point came when you put me onto FastAttack SEO and the warrior Forum. That really helped me get my head around SEO. I also found a great source for backlinks which really helped me out.

The final thing that fell into place was the keyword suggestions you gave a month or so back. I had a look at a few and with a bit more research found a beauty.

After a week I was halfway on page 2 just through the power of my url being the keyword. 4 weeks & 3 more articles later plus some great PR6 backlinks later and I went to no.4 on the 1st page. I got back from work to discover my first sale today.

I am so excited about where the site is going to go and inspired to create some more. My next challenge is finding killer content that will increase the sales. Any advice would be good.

Thanks for the great blog and I hope it goes onto inspire others.

yours very gratefully
Del
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I mean everywhere you look, you could find a physical product that you can promote. That’s actually a curse that you’ll get when you get really deep into Internet marketing. Your life will never be the same again because everything that you’ll see is a potential niche. hahaha

Now the reason why I’m writing this post is I’m just excited with the latest campaign that I’ve been working on. You see when it comes to physical products, there will be all sorts of keywords that you can come up with especially if you’re targeting huge brand names.

In my case, I decided to plugin a certain brand name in the Google Keyword tool (which I suggest you also do) and saw that ‘brand name complaints’ gets over 5,000 monthly searches. This is a physical product that can be found in your home and they have their private affiliate program.

The thing is that I’m promoting one of their competitors and an average commission per sale is around $100-$300. Wait… I didn’t tell you the best part yet… the competition for this keyword which gets 5K monthly searches is next to nothing! hahaha

Let’s do some computation here and I’m going to be conservative here… When I get no.1 rankings, let’s say that 2,000 visitors will go to my site. Out of the 2K visitors, only 1% of them will click through and buy the product that I’m promoting. So when we do our computation, this campaign will generate at least 20 x $100 = $2,000 a month!

Anyway that’s all I have to share for now and I’m afraid I won’t be able to share my income results. However, I will definitely update this blog and share what happened so you’ll know if this particular technique worked. Wish me luck and if there’s anything you want to ask please send it in the comments.

WARNING: There’s some potty-mouthing in the video and some disturbing heavy panting! hahaha

Click here to visit the original post

Anyway, I’m glad the check arrived (I always give the mailman a little reward for bringing my checks) and I’m not going to save it.

That’s right… I’m not going to save it for the rainy days because I’m going to REINVEST most of my earnings to grow my online business. I’ve been reinvesting for some time now but I think it’s time to take it up a notch.

All my life I’ve been conditioned to save money because most of us have been living with the employee mindset or maybe our parents told us that saving is good. Don’t get me wrong, saving some money is really beneficial but when you’re building a business, saving and being tight with money won’t take you that far. At first it’s going to be hard and there’s the temptation to buy the latest gadgets or whatever but you have to take it one step at a time.

Anyway, today is Monday and I better start working. See you later!

This time around my campaigns, both physical and information, are really performing all too well! I know January is going to be a great month because people are getting back to their normal lives after the holidays and this is also the time when they make their resolutions.

Here’s some of my updates:

Physical Product for Pets

I have an SEO campaign where I promote a physical product for pets. I got my first sale last December 29 and I got a whopping $79 commission from it. My jaw dropped after seeing that commission because it was only from a single purchase.

That sale got me really excited so I decided to setup a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign using Yahoo/Bing to get some quick traffic. I also wanted to check if there’s a good number of searches for the keywords that I’m targeting.

The good news is that I managed to get some more sales and right now I already have $135 in commissions. But I have a little problem because I’m not really sure whether the sales are coming from my website or from the PPC campaign which I’m just direct linking. I just emailed my affiliate manager asking how to setup some tracking for the links.

But I have a good hunch that the sales are coming from PPC because I’m getting a good number of impressions and clicks from it. What’s even more exciting is that my ad spend in only $3! So overall, my total profit is $132. These results are really encouraging and I plan to continue on adding some keyword groups to bring in more sales.

I Sold a Freakin’ Juicer!

I built a website that promotes a certain brand of juicer using techniques I’ve learned from the Deadbeat Super Affiliate course. I started this campaign around mid November and I really thought that this campaign was a dud. I was surprised because I only discovered yesterday that I sold a $200 juicer and my commission was $11.

Amazon commissions are generally low so it’s advisable to promote a product that’s over $100. Don’t be put off by the low commissions because there are a lot of upsides when it comes to promoting Amazon products like getting commissions from products that you’re not promoting, high conversions, tons of products with low competition. Seriously, all you need to do is just send Amazon some traffic and they will do the rest.

I already have my goals for 2011 and I’m going to work hard to achieve them all. I’ve been continuously learning and failing but you know what? I’m enjoying every minute of it.

I want you to take something from what I’ve been experiencing and take an honest look at your efforts.

I’ve actually felt this way many times before when my online income was really at a slow climb. You probably also feel the same when your efforts are not matching up your results right? Well from time to time I get into what I believe is the burnout phase.

One major reason why I’m not really feeling that energized is because I feel that my physical product campaigns are not doing well. I already made my first Amazon sale a few days ago but I didn’t know what campaign produced that sale. To date my Amazon earnings is just over $3. I have around 10 websites that I built to promote different physical products and I have $3 to show for it. Hahaha.

But I found out why they’re not performing really well and it’s actually been my fault all along.

First I’ve been building websites left and right that I wasn’t spending enough time on building backlinks to boost their search engine rankings. As a result, many of my campaigns are not reaching the top rankings for the keywords that I’m targeting.

This is really challenging especially if you’re doing this all by yourself. I have my loving girlfriend to help me with some article writing and spinning but somehow I’m still all over the place.

By the way it’s a tremendous help if you have someone that you can talk to whenever you’re feeling this way. I really can’t imagine going through this phase and not having someone to act as my shrink. Hahaha. That’s why I suggest that you explain to your spouse, family or a friend what you’re trying to do so more or less you can have someone to talk to.

Anyway the simple solution that I would apply is to take it slowly and put a more solid system in place. I haven’t exactly outlined it yet but I’m going to make sure that I put in enough attention into promoting the sites that I’m building.

Another reason why I’m feeling this way is seeing my fellow Wealthy Affiliate members who are doing really well. This is actually not good because you shouldn’t be comparing yourself to others because we are all different.

But when I take a close look at their efforts I realized that my efforts were really mediocre. Honestly I’m embarrassed and I shouldn’t have the right to be given the results that I want because my efforts don’t really match it.

Overall, I’ve been really hard on myself and this is what I’m saying to bring my energy back:

• I’m thankful for the freedom and the time flexibility
• I’m thankful for being able to do what I want to do
• I’m thankful for my online earnings because I can’t earn that amount even if I work here in the Philippines for 10 years.
• I’m thankful because I can write my own paycheck without slaving for someone else or going overseas.
• I’m thankful for the lifestyle that I’m living right now
• I’m thankful because I can design my own life

How about you? I’m sure you have some frustrations of your own. What do you do to get back up on your feet?

I hope that my experience will help some of you. 2011 is fast approaching and I wish that you have a good health, tremendous wealth and extreme happiness!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

This is only my earnings from Clickbank and right now I’m adding streams of income from Amazon and from some private affiliate programs. I’m writing this post because I’ve reached a goal that I’ve been working on since I started on July 2009.

And that goal is to eliminate the zero dollar days in my CB sales account. There’s even a couple of close calls on Nov. 29 and Dec. 08. hahaha. Here’s a screenshot:

I Love Passive Income!

The wonderful thing about my income is that I don’t need to actively work on it. Don’t get me wrong because there’s going to be work involved at the start. But once I set up a website and got it ranking in the search engines then I just leave it and start another.

Rinse and repeat until I reach my next target income goal. This is definitely a million and trillion times better than slaving for someone else and all the other “perks” included with having a day job. Plus Internet marketing is something that I WANT to do and not something that I HAVE to do. Remember what I’ve always been saying… if you can earn a single dollar online then you have the power to write your own paycheck.

Freedom or Security?

One of the reasons why people stick to their day jobs is because of the security pleasure it creates. When I had my day job, I was also thinking this way but the thought of not having the freedom and pursuing my passion is definitely much more painful. Thank goodness right now, it’s just an amazing feeling to have total control of your time and doing whatever it is that you want. I feel like Neo that’s been unplugged from the Matrix! hahaha!

Thank You So Much Wealthy Affiliate!

I want to take this opportunity to give a HUGE THANK YOU to Kyle & Carson and the rest of the Wealthy Affiliate community. If it wasn’t for WA, I would still be imprisoned and not being able to pursue my dreams of becoming a professional drummer.

How about you… do you have any dreams that you want to pursue? Just take action and go get it!

I struggled with promoting CB products when I started (even until now) but in that process, I’ve developed the tenacity to succeed in the affiliate marketing game. I have learned how to compete in search engine rankings and convert the traffic into buyers.

But we all know that there’s a life outside of Clickbank and that there are tons of other products and services that we can promote.

Right now I’m going through a phase where I’m slowly focusing on promoting physical products from Amazon and other affiliate networks. Sometimes I still browse the Clickbank marketplace and check out if there’s any new product that I can promote. It’s really hard to ignore CB when it’s been my main source of income since I’ve started out (those Clickbank bars are so addicting!).

Right now it’s 3AM here and I just saw a potential product that I can promote. It’s a camera but I’m still not sure if I’m going to build a campaign out of it. I still have a site that’s promoting a product in the pet niche and a site that promotes a specific brand of juicer. No sales yet but I’m seeing some positive movements in the pet niche site.

Now many of you may think that the commissions from Amazon are too low and it’s only a waste of time. I also said that and now I’m swallowing my words!

There’s actually some criteria that you have to look out for when choosing physical products. Even though the concept of promoting is still the same, I still needed to learn from the best. So I’ve recently bought a course from a deadbeat guy who makes over $10,000 per month promoting physical products. I’ve learned a ton and it’s just a matter of time before I see some success.

Right now I’m really excited because I can already see the huge payouts in the next couple of months from all of the efforts that I’ve been putting for the past few weeks. Honestly, I’m not really working that hard enough but I’m trying my best to cross out my daily to-do list to keep on moving forward (my girlfriend is also helping me with some article writing and spinning).

So let’s take a look at the things that I’ve done in this campaign and hopefully you’ll be motivated to work on your business after reading this.

The Entrepreneur Website

I actually started this campaign back in February 2010 and I was promoting a high priced product (almost $200) that’s really unique. At that time, it was the only product that’s available and that’s why I had no choice but to promote it. I got some sales and the commissions were really nice but I noticed that some of the buyers were asking for refunds.

I’m sure the product is good (I only promote quality stuff) but I guess some of them wanted to see some quick ROI and felt that the product is too expensive. So I had to pull the product out and replaced it with some Amazon products. I really thought that this campaign was not heading in the right direction and I was ready to pull the plug on it.

But I decided to browse the Clickbank marketplace again and that’s when I found a newly released similar product that’s exactly targeted to my niche! The price was reasonably cheaper than the first product I promoted and I knew that this campaign is going to kick some ass!

I started to get some sales around August 2010 and currently this website is now averaging over $350 per month! And the best part is that I can just leave this site alone and it will continue to generate income… SAHWEET! As long as my site sits on top of Google’s first page rankings, I’ll be great. Back when I had a day job, I was earning less than $300 per month while working 10.5 hours. hahaha!

What Do You Do When You Have a Profitable Website?

There are many things that you can do to maximize your profits but my plan for this campaign is to just build another website. I already know that people in this niche are hungry buyers and I also have an idea on what keywords they’re using to get to my website. So all I have to do now is target another major related keyword by building another website and get it on top of Google.

This is exciting stuff because it feels like I’m opening up another branch and expanding my business to reach my customers. hahaha. This is another good example that an Internet marketing business is almost the same with an offline brick and mortar business that you can find in your local area.

Here’s a very good question… “if you can build a website that earns over $350 per month, then how many would you build?”

I started the 2nd website 20 days ago and I’m expecting another $350 per month when it reaches top first page rankings. I already managed to get first page ranking and the site Google danced a bit and now it sits firmly on the 2nd page. Hopefully in the next few days it will jump on top.

The Moral

The big lesson here is to never give up on your campaigns and always think positive. I know you’ve heard that a million times already but it all starts with your mindset. Life is going to give you some roadblocks and you just have to work your way around them. That’s it for now and I’ll update this campaign’s progress in the following days.