EzSEO Newsletter # 131
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EzSEO Newsletter # 131
Andy Williams
“Creating Fat Affiliate Sites”
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This week:
1. Michael Campbell retires his eBooks.
2. Great fr-ee editor.
3. Using prompts to write content.
4. Fed up with SEO?
5. Other Stuff.
Hi again.
Hope you are enjoying your summer, wherever you may be in the world. Here in the North of Tenerife the weather is very changeable (unlike the south which is always hot), and it can change dramatically within a few kilometres. Last week we drove to Santa Cruz (about 30km away), and the temperature there was 36C, at home when we left it was 24C. Quite amazing how this island has these microclimates.
Anyway, enough talk about the weather, let’s get on.
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1. Michael Campbell retires his eBooks.
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Michael Campbell has decided to remove his eBooks from sale to concentrate more on his affiliate websites.
His eBooks include “Revenge of the Mininets” (a revolutionary strategy for creating affiliate sites), and “Clicking it Rich” (his guide to affiliate marketing).
I can certainly understand Michael’s point of view here. Every day (7 days a week), my day starts by answering emails, and supporting my own products. It usually takes around 2 hours, and that is 2 hours that could better be spent writing an article, or submitting one of my sites to some more directories. Just think, 2 hours per day is equivalent to one month a year, just answering emails. I could build a whole new site in that time!
Some of you may know that I started online because of Michael Campbell. I was in a low paying teaching job in Madrid, and wanted to move back to Tenerife with my wife (who is from Tenerife) and dogs. However, the only job I was qualified for in Tenerife was teaching, and over here, they paid even less than Madrid.
I wanted to look at the internet for an online business solution. I seemed to get hundreds of emails telling me I could make m0ney online, but had a feeling they might all be scams (they probably were).
I did a lot of research, and it was eventually Michael Campbell’s eBook “Nothing But Net” that persuaded me that an online business could be a reality.
The rest is history.
If Michael is withdrawing his books from sale, and obviously doesn’t want to release any new products, does that mean we wont be able to learn from this affiliate marketing veteran? Not at all. Michael will now be publishing his research, his results and his methods in his newsletter instead.
You can find his sign up page here.
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2. Great fr-ee editor.
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If you have ever tried to do anything complicated with Windows Notepad, you will probably have failed. Notepad is a lightweight editor that really isn’t up to much more than simple text editing.
An fr-ee alternative is Notepad++.
While I use it for general text editing and formatting on my desktop computer, it does support various syntax highlighting, so it works well as a programming editor (including HTML).
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3. Using prompts to write content.
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Writing articles for your website can often be a hair-pulling experience. You might have a title for your article, and even the keywords you want to target, but where do you start?
My advice here is to use prompts. Write down a series of questions which you can use to “build” your article. Here is an example:
1. Enter a title for your article.
2. Introduce the problems, issues or topic this article addresses.
3. Enter the top 3 facts that this article explores (one per line as these will form bullet points).
4. Write a few sentences on fact #1.
5. Write a few sentences on fact #2.
6. Write a few sentences on fact #3.
7. Summarize the main points of the article in a closing paragraph.
8. Call to action.
When you want to write an article, just answer the questions in order, and your article pretty much writes itself.
You can create your own lists of questions for different types of article - one for product reviews, another for merchant reviews, one for general information articles, and yet another for articles comparing products etc etc. Then you can simply pull your list out for a particular article, and write the article by answering the questions.
The best way to write these question lists is to use quality articles as a guide. Read through the article, and formulate your questions based on the structure of the article. It might sound like a lot of work, but once your lists are written, you’ll never wonder where to start again.
BTW, if you write any of these lists (maximum of 10 prompts), I would love to see them. With your permission I could reprint them in this newsletter.
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4. Fed up with SEO?
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A couple of years ago, I got a phone call out of the blue from Colin McDougall. Back then, he was trying to figure out what was going on with Google. The sites that had been making him a lot (and I mean a lot) of m0ney were slipping, and he was obviously worried about it.
We chatted about our strategies, and it became very clear to me that Colin and I had very similar ideas to creating affiliate sites that the search engines would rank well, though I think Colin had done a lot more thinking about it than I had.
The central concept we agreed on was that web sites should be built for visitors, not search engines.
Now I didn’t think too much more about that conversation until earlier this year (or was it the end of last year?). Colin had written an eBook and asked for my opinions on it. It was a little rough around the edges, but the central concept was to build for visitors. After some polishing, he released the book. I was very quick to endorse it, as it was fresh and laid down guidelines to building quality sites.
A lot of my subscribers bought the book, but the feedback I received was very mixed. People either loved or hated the “VEO Report“. One of the complaints I received was that a book like this, which was radically different from what SEO gurus were telling us, needed proof that it worked. People were not about to change their site building tactics without proof.
Well, on the 27th December last year, Colin registered a new domain name. His aim was to prove that the strategies described in the VEO Report really did work. He needed to create a site in a high competition area, and get it to the top of the search engines. He chose credit cards.
Despite being less than 7 months old, that site is now ranking well on Google for a number of credit card related terms. Search Google for credit card reviews (without quotes). Colin’s site (crediteria.com) is currently #9 in Google here in Spain.
Colin has shared with me some of his other sites. Whatever niche he chooses, his sites seem to float to the top of the search engine results. When the VEO Report first came out, I was impressed by it. Recently, Colin updated the report, and now it is even better.
If you were only going to buy one “SEO” guide this year, I would recommend you get Colin’s VEO Report. It’s now bigger and better:
It works!
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5. Other Stuff.
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In the last few days, the July Niche Blueprint was released.
The niche of this blueprint is related to online education.
There are over 3000 phrases altogether, and this blueprint identifies 1229 keywords that have bid prices of between $1 and $15 on Overture. If a keyword has a high bid price on Overture, chances are it does too on Google Adwords.
Google’s Adword tool estimate the average cost per clicks on Adwords for some phrases in this niche up to $20.
This niche is also a great one for affiliate programs with many high paying programs to choose from.
At Commission Junction, there are two merchants with 3 month EPCs of nearly $100 in this niche (that is the average commission earned by affiliates per 100 visitors they send the merchant).
So how competitive are the keywords in this Niche Blueprint? Well, of the 3462 phrases:
1194 - have 1000 or fewer competing page, and 5 or more daily searches
776 - have 100 or fewer competing page, and 5 or more daily searches
321 - have 10 or fewer competing page, and 5 or more daily searches
93 - have 1 or fewer competing page, and 5 or more daily searches
As always, only 100 blueprints will be sold.
To buy your copy, go to
and click on the link in the top right to the July 2006 Blueprint.
Well, that’s it for another issue. If you want to read the recent issues of this newsletter, you can read them online at my blog:
http://ezseonews.com/blog/index.php
For older newsletters, you will need to visit the old archives at:
http://ezseonews.com/archives
Have a great week!
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The contents of this newsletter is copyright 2006 Andrew Williams. If you want to republish any of the articles, you must get permission from the author.
This newsletter disclaims all responsibility for the advertising copy or the product advertised. You cannot rely on the fact that the newsletter has examined the product or recommends or endorses the product, unless it clearly says that it has, when you make your decision whether or not to purchase the product or interact with the advertiser. You are advised to do your own investigation before buying. Additionally, this newsletter may accept articles that we do not write or investigate the accuracy of and for which we may receive direct or indirect benefit or compensation. We specifically disclaim any responsibility for the content of such copy.
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