Affiliate Marketing: Amazon Affiliate Marketing on Autopilot

Welcome to this course and congratulations on making this decision to invest in yourself.

This introductory lecture is going to share with you the outline structure and content of the course so that you fully grasp what is coming up and why it is important.  Do not skip this lecture.

We look at:

• Niches and Affiliate Programmes

• Keyword Research and SEO

• Setting up your Wordpress Niche Affiliate Site

• How to create automatic content campaigns

• How to connect to the Amazon Associates Programme

• Content Creation - Product Reviews

• Sales Tracking

• Link Cloaking

• Amazon Link management

• Organic Traffic Strategies

• Youtube and Video traffic strategies

• How to rank on Page 1 of Google with Medium.com

Enjoy the Course!

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download from the Resources Section of this lecture

Before you launch into building your Affiliate Marketing Business, lets establish why this is a good Digital Business to build by taking a careful look at the main advantages of Affiliate Marketing.  There are very few disadvantages.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to down load from the Resources Section of this lecture.

Before starting out to create an Affiliate business, you need to understand WHY people buy before you consider what you might offer to them.  This is not advanced psychology but it is the main point of reference when it comes to choosing products to promote and how you should go about promoting them.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to down load from the Resources Section of this lecture.

What does an Affiliate Marketing business look like?

This RoadMap will help you to understand the key components of the business you are going to build.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to down load from the Resources Section of this lecture.

How does affiliate marketing work?

Lets take a look at the bare bones of Affiliate Marketing:

• Niche

• Products

• Prices

• Branding

Its important that you understand how this business works and that you treat it as a long term business and not a hobby.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download from the Resources Section of this lecture.

There are two types of Affiliate Marketing sites you can build - Mini or Niche Sites and Authority Sites. This lecture explains the difference. We are building an Authority Site in this course.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download from the Resources Section of this lecture.

Lets take a closer look at Niches and how you can find them

Have discussed the Problem - Passion - Life-style approach

Need to focus down…If you are struggling to come up with ideas its easy to do your research and create a long list of niche ideas and that is what we are going to cover in this lecture.

A PDF of the Slide Deck may be downloaded from the Resources Section of this lecture.

Finding the right programme means finding the right niche as we have seen but it also means find the right programme for you to promote as well.  You have to factor in competition, pricing and commission levels.  We explore different places for finding programmes in this lecture and the factors you have to take into consideration when selecting the ones you want to promote.

A PDF of this Slide Deck is available to down load with this lecture.

We all make mistakes and the smartest thing you can do is to learn from mistakes made by other people and avoid making them yourself, so here are four for you to side step!  

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download from the Resources Section of this Lecture.

Selecting the right products for your business means that you need to be able to evaluate products using the Affiliate Marketing Metrics we discuss in this lecture. We also discuss some more subjective criteria for assessing affiliate product offerings which you need to factor in to your product selection process.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download from the Resources Section of this Lecture.

Good keyword research is an essential part of a successful affiliate marketing business.  Most of the tools for keyword research are paid but you can use Google Keyword Planner to a certain extent.  I use Market Samurai and will be working through this section with that tool.  This is not a recommendation necessarily, although I like the tool, but it is the one that I have and so it will form part of the teaching here.  The keyword research lessons are applicable to all keyword research and all keyword research tools.

A PDF of the Slide Deck can be downloaded from the Resources Section of this lecture. 

There are two aspects to Market Competition: the amount of competition, i.e. the number of sites competing for a particular keyword, and the strength of competition which reflects the strengths of the sites competing.  At this stage we are still focusing at quite a high level but this lecture shows you how to use Market Samurai to evaluable both variables.

A PDF of the Slide Deck can be downloaded from the Resources Section of this lecture

Now we turn our attention to the Commerciality of our keywords and discover that its is important to know how potentially profitable our keywords are, not just how much traffic they get or how much competition there is out there for them. This is the 4th Rule of Keyword research and you ignore it at your cost (quite literally).

A PDF of the Slide Deck can be downloaded from the Resources Section of this lecture

Before we move on, I thought it would be helpful to recap the Four Rules of Keyword research to make sure that you understand them and that they are firmly fixed in your mind.  This lecture walks you through them again and hopefully you can understand their mutual importance.

A PDF of the Slide Deck can be downloaded from the Resources Section of this lecture 

Now that we understand what is important in Keyword Research, we can work to see how we can do this work without investing in paid Keyword Research tools - although they will always save time. Fortunately, Google provide an excellent tool which, with a little process hacking - can provide much of the information we need. The hack is explained in this video.

A PDF of the Slide Deck can be downloaded from the Resources Section of this lecture.

You can use Google Keyword Planner to research the keywords for which competing websites are currently ranking. If we combine this data from Google Keyword Planner with our Keywords Everywhere hack, we can discover our competitors keywords with the highest commerciality.

A PDF of the Slide Deck can be downloaded from the Resources Section of this lecture. The Website Keywords spreadsheet is also available to down load.

Wouldn't it be great if you could find a list of keywords which comprise the most frequently asked questions about your seed topic?  Wouldn't it be better if it was free?  Well you can and it is.  All is explained in this lecture.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download from the Resources Section of this lecture.  I have also included the CSV download we created in making this lecture so you can see an example of the question dataset that is generated.

In this lecture I show you how to use a free Chrome Extension to evaluate the Google Results for a keyword and assess whether you stand a chance of out competing any of the search results for that keyword. 

At the end I also show you where you can access further free SEO tools as a little bonus and a lead in to the next lecture.

This Slide Deck is available to download as a PDF from the Resources Section of this lecture.

My favourite SEO Tool - Market Samurai is shortly to be retired.  Tools can help you with your SEO and save you time but most of them cost money.  This list is provided free of any sales pitch and certainly without affiliate links.  It will help you to find the best tools for you.  Bear in mind too that many of these tools offer some free functionality or trial periods.  I also share as a bonus some free Chrome Extensions which you might find useful too.

This Slide Deck is available to download as a PDF from the Resources Section of this lecture.

This is an update which has been requested by a number of students following the closure of Market Samurai.  I explain how to get the most out of the SEO tools out there, some tips on how to find affordable paid tools and the tool that I am now using as a replacement for Market Samurai!

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download from the Resources Section of this lecture.

If you are new to site building, this lecture will help you to plan your site and save you a lot of time. While you can just publish a blog, your site will be much more interesting and easy to navigate if you design structure into your content and we explain how you do this in this lecture.  We also explain the difference between Pages and Posts which is critical to your site design.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download from the Resources Section of this lecture.

This is the first of three videos which takes you through the main parts of the Niche Site Creation process. I want to make sure that you have an easy way to understand the structure of what we are going to create in this course.

In this video we cover:

• Introduction and Objective of the video

• Selecting your Website Niche

• Getting Started with Wordpress and Hosting

• Setting Up Affiliate Accounts

• Wordpress Plugins

• Store Categories

A PDF of the Slide Deck for all three parts can be downloaded with this video.

In Part 2, we continue the development of our Niche website and continue to walk you through, but not in too much detail, the key steps of creating your site. Remember we are going to go through this and much more later in the course.

In this video we cover

• Adding Content to Categories

• Creating the Navigation System

• Create Customised Store Headers

• Set Up Content Layout for Home Page

This is the final part of our Course Overview in which I take you through at a high level the key steps you need to be able to create your Niche Website.

In this video we cover:

• Customise Side Bars

• Google Search Console

• Install Google Analytics

• Social Media Integration

• Essential Site Pages

• Good to go...

The main way of organising the Posts on your Wordpress Website is using Categories

This means we need to be very systematic when we set these up. We discuss the right way to create these and give a really Top Tip on how you can get even more sales from Seasonal Categories.

A PDF of the Slide Deck for all three parts can be downloaded with this video.

It is important that you create some professional looking header images for your site. This video explains what you need to do and how to insert them into your Wordpress header, step by step.

The PDF of the slide deck is also available to help you to do this and you can download it from this video.

It is important that the content in your sidebar (which is offering opportunities to buy products on Amazon) ties in with the information you are offering on the pages which are publishing content from YouTube. This "congruence" will make it far more likely that your visitors to the site will see something that makes them want to click through to Amazon.

This video explains how to set this up step by step and includes a PDF of the slide deck which you can download to help you understand how to do this.

This is an important lecture as I explain the four pages that your site must have as a minimum. These are:

• About Page

• Privacy Policy Page

• Affiliate Disclaimer Page

• Contact Page

• 
  

I am providing an illustrative example of these in a PDF which you can download but I take no responsibility for your compliance with the law - you and you alone are responsible for your site and its compliance with any legal or regulatory requirements in your country and beyond.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is also available to download with this lecture

You cannot have too many Affiliate Disclaimers and this is a neat way of ensuring that you have an Affiliate Disclaimer on every post on your site. It takes minutes to set up and future proofs your site.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download with this lecture.

When setting up your campaigns to pull in content to your site, its important that you attract the RIGHT audience……not only the Right Audience but you need to present them with the content they need and want……both from Youtube and Amazon.

In this lecture we explain how to do this and how to set up your WP Automatic campaigns to ensure that your content is targetted at the right audience at the correct stage of the Customer Journey.

A PDF of the Slide Deck of this lecture are available to download from the Resources Section.

This lecture works through how you can research high buyer intent keywords using free tools and identify keywords which have good traffic, high buyer intent and relatively low competition. I have provided my spreadsheet with this lecture to help you going forward.

A PDF of the Slide Deck of this lecture are available to download from the Resources Section.

Before you get started using WP Automatic you will need to configure it correctly and this lecture walks you through the configuration of the parts of WP Automatic that we are going to be using for our site.

A PDF of the Slide Deck of this lecture are available to download from the Resources Section.

WP Automatic is the plugin we use to pull in content to our site from external sources

This means that much of the heavy lifting is done for you.

This is not to say that you cannot create your own content but the idea of this site is to make it easier for you to set up and run your own Amazon Affiliate Website.

A PDF of the Slide Deck for all three parts can be downloaded with this video.

We can use Google Keyword Planner to help us to find great keywords for our WP Automatic campaigns. We want our imported Youtube content to rank for high buying intent keywords which match the products we are promoting and this video shows you how to do this.

Note: The Peloton Treadmill is not available in the UK until Dec 2020.  This is a case study only.

A PDF of the Slide Deck and the two Spreadsheets can be downloaded with this video from the Resources Section of this lecture.

The importance of targeting buying intent rather than just informational keywords is demonstrated in this case study using one of my own niche sites. I explain where I went wrong and show you step by step how to put it right. In the following video we deal with matching the Buying Intent to Conversion with custom side bar Amazon content.

A PDF of the Slide Deck for all three parts can be downloaded with this video.

This step by step process shows you how to create Amazon Ads in your side bar that match the Review content that we set up in the previous video. It is also very handy if you do not have access to the Amazon API yet.

A PDF of the Slide Deck for all three parts can be downloaded with this video.

In this case study we are looking at a Christmas Store and what is particularly interesting is the store structure and categories. Consider too the balance of content between information, education and offers. I also make one or two technical observations on the store to help you with your store.

A PDF of the Slide Deck and a PNG file of the Store Structure Mind Map are available to down load from the Resources Section of this lecture.

This Christmas store provides a contrast to our first case study and shows how different people set up stores differently. I think that you can make your own mind up and take the best of both when you are building your store.

A PDF of the Slide Deck and a PNG file of the Store Structure Mind Map are available to down load from the Resources Section of this lecture.

This is my Recipe Store which I thought would be interesting for you to evaluate. I am not saying that its perfect but note that I have a wide range of categories but that they all match up in Recipes, Reviews and the Store.

A PDF of the Slide Deck and a PNG file of the Store Structure Mind Map are available to down load from the Resources Section of this lecture.

Robert's store is interesting. He mixes in some additional interesting content which should extend the time that people spend on his store. He also brings in higher value items not related to Coffee or Tea and makes good use of his widgets and banners.

A PDF of the Slide Deck and a PNG file of the Store Structure Mind Map are available to down load from the Resources Section of this lecture.

This Health and Fitness store makes excellent use of eZine articles and also has some additional high buying intent categories with high value.  Its again different to previous stores and shows how much opportunity and flexibility there is in creating niche sites.

A PDF of the Slide Deck and a PNG file of the Store Structure Mind Map are available to down load from the Resources Section of this lecture.

At some point you will turn to writing your own website blog content for your affiliate site so we are going to help you to get this right. Firstly you need to understand the three key criteria your content needs to meet to rank in the search engines. Secondly you need to understand the two different types of review articles and how to write them. I introduce them briefly here and we are going to discuss them in more detail later in this section.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download with this lecture

This lecture looks in depth at how to write single product reviews. Once you understand the key points that I set out here, you will be able to go to any single product review article and evaluate it for completeness and how you could write a better one.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download with this lecture

This lecture explains the structure and content of a multi product Roundup Review and how to write it. It is important to follow these guidelines and make sure that you create the highest quality article that you can. You want this article to be indexed and to out rank the best articles available to ensure that you get the organic traffic your hard work deserves.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download with this lecture

It is important that you know what content converts which means you need to be able to track your links. We explain Link Tracking IDs and how to use them. Link management goes beyond this however and we also introduce how to manage your links efficiently in this lecture.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download with this lecture.

It is important that you have a systematic way to measure the performance of your affiliate sales which does not need to be too complicated. I have created a spreadsheet for you, which is included with this lecture, to help you to set up a tracking tool. I have explained all the headings in this lecture and some of the ways you can interpret your results and use it to make decisions about future content and programme promotions.

A PDF of the Slide Deck and the Spreadsheet are available to download with this lecture.

Cloaking your affiliate links has a number of benefits which we explain in this video. I also recommend the two software tools that I use, Pretty Link and Thirsty Affiliates, both of which have free and paid versions.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download with this lecture.

If you have not used a link cloaking plugin before, this lecture will help you. I use Pretty Link all the time and this video shows you how to create a Pretty Link using the plugin. If you have done this before, you can skip this lecture, but if it is new to you, then definitely watch it and get familiar with how easy this is to do.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download with this lecture.

Despite the benefits of link cloaking for tracking, the one set of links you should not cloak are your Amazon Affiliate Links and I explain why here.

A PDF of the Slide Deck may be downloaded from the Resources Section of this lecture.

We are going to start with Thirsty Affiliates by showing you how to create a basic Amazon Affiliate Link. There are more advanced ways of doing this, in the PRO version, which I will subsequently explain to you. For the time being, you need to know how to find links in Amazon and bring them back into Thirsty Affiliates to create an Affiliate Link. This can be done, of course for any affiliate links.

A PDF of this slide deck is available to download for this lecture.

Before we start to import products to promote in our site, we need to set up the global settings for the Amazon Import function in Thirsty Affiliates. This video shows you exactly what you need to do.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download with this lecture.

Now that we have set up our global settings, we can begin to import products from Amazon to promote and attach site wide keyword which will automatically become clickable URLs. This makes it easy for you to add great functionality to your affiliate site and makes it easy for your audience to click across to Amazon and buy the products that they are looking for. We know from experience that this will increase your conversions and your profits at the same time.

A PDF of the slide deck is available to download with this lecture

Amazon Associates has a complex set of Terms and Conditions which you are expected to have read and conform to.  It is easy to make mistakes and get banned from Amazon Associates. To try to prevent that happening, this section, starting with this lecture, will guide you through some of the potential pitfalls and help you not to make these mistakes.

A link to the Amazon Associates Terms and Conditions Page is in the Resources of this lecture.  

A PDF of the slide deck is also available to download with this lecture.

This is closely related to Mistake No 1 but its very easy to do. Watch the lecture to find out what you should not do!

A PDF of the slide deck is available to download with this lecture.

Here we are talking (again) about not cloaking Amazon Affiliate links. This is so important and I make no apology for repeating the point. In addition, you must ensure that you have a suitable disclaimer on every page where you include an Amazon or any other affiliate link. We cover this point earlier in the course and I show you what you need to say in the Disclaimer in that part of the course.

A PDF of the slide deck is available to download with this lecture.

It may seem obvious that you should not use your own affiliate links to make purchases on Amazon, if its not, you have been told now. There is another related pitfall which we also cover in this lecture.

A PDF of the slide deck is available to download with this lecture.

Beware Social Media. Posting Amazon Affiliate links in Social Media is a mine field. Be very careful how and where you post. This lecture explains some of the major mistakes that will get your account banned by Amazon. There is also a very clear warning at the end about posting from explicit or violent sites. Don't do it.

A PDF of the slide deck is available to download with this lecture.

Amazon is very protective of its Trademarks - do not violate them. We explain in straightforward terms in this lecture what you should not do. We also explain one circumstance where it is OK to use Amazon trademarks. Don't get this one wrong.

A PDF of the slide deck is available to download with this lecture.

Amazon wants you to develop a quality site in which to include your Amazon Associate links. They are very clear about this when you sign up. We explain what you need to do in this lecture and what happens if your site does not meet Amazon's quality guidelines. Its common sense too. If your site does not have any informational or educational content your audience won't hang about!

A PDF of the slide deck is available to download with this lecture.

This is an easy mistake to make. You must not manually add Amazon prices to your posts and pages as they will be out of date almost as soon as you post them. We explain why and the right way to do it.

A PDF of the slide deck is available to download with this lecture.

Tutorials and Course can be a great way to benefit from Affiliate links. As a trusted instructor helping your student to master a project is very likely to motivate them to purchase the product through your Affiliate Link. We discuss this in some detail in this lecture.

A PDF of the slide deck is available to download with this lecture.

Including a Resources Page on your website and even on your Niche Website (keep it topical) is a great way to encourage further affiliate sales without selling. This is all explained in this lecture, as it the best way to set up your page.

A PDF of the slide deck is available to download with this lecture.

Reviews can be a great, non salesy way to promote and sell affiliate products but its really important that you do it in the right way. We explain this in this lecture.

A PDF of the slide deck is available to download with this lecture

Broadcast email is a great channel for promoting your affiliate products, particularly as you a speaking to a receptive audience who want to hear from you. I share three types of broadcast email you can send which makes the strategy very easy to understand and implement.

A PDF of the slide deck is available to download with this lecture.

A word on how to use Social Media to promote your affiliate links and the word that I want to emphasise is care. Many platforms do not allow affiliate links and the rules are constantly changing.

A PDF of the slide deck is available to download with this lecture.

We take a look at how you can use Pinterest to drive both direct and indirect traffic to your affiliate promotions. The pitfalls are highlighted in the lecture but given that the Pinterest audience has such high buying intent, this is a great potential source of traffic.

A PDF of the slide deck is available to download with this lecture.

This is one of my favourite ways of attracting traffic - and everyone loves talking about themselves. I explain the benefits of interviews, how to use the content and the key information to include! Simple

A PDF of the slide deck is available to download with this lecture.

When you are starting out with Affiliate Marketing, I believe that you should focus on free or organic traffic and not waste money on paid advertising until you are established and know how to create great content.  I explain this in more detail in this lecture.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download from the Resources Section of this lecture.

This is a key question that every new Affiliate Marketer asks sooner or later, so lets answer it for you.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download from the Resources Section of this lecture.

There is a direct correlation between your audience size and level of affiliate sales you can make so any new Affiliate Marketer needs to spend time and effort creating content to grow their audience.  This is discussed in some detail in this video.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download from the Resources Section of this lecture.

Every successful Affiliate Marketer needs strong channels to promote content and the affiliate products and services.  One of the best of these is Youtube and you must include this in your plans for your Affiliate Marketing business.  I explain why in this lecture.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download from the Resources Section of this lecture.

Creating videos to promote affiliate products can be very profitable but…

It's time consuming.

You may not have the right equipment, which is expensive

You may not want to appear on camera

So we need to find a solution which solves all those challenges.

The answer is to use software to create your videos for you automatically using image and video templates and your script.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download from the Resources Section of this lecture.

Medium.com is one of the highest ranking sites in the world and this lecture explains how you can use that ranking to your advantage. We explain how to select the right long tail keywords and then create an article on Medium that will enable you to rank on the 1st page of Google search for that keyword.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download from the Resources Section of this lecture.

This case study shows that if you follow the guidelines I have set out for you it is possible to rank on the first page of Google for your selected keyword very quickly. This shows how my medium article ranked for my chosen keywords just hours after I launched it.

A PDF of the Slide Deck is available to download from the Resources Section of this lecture.