The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Special Report - Affiliate Marketing SIG Glen Staiger |
The Affiliate Marketing SIG meeting on 14 July 2007 was another action-packed meeting with lots of enthusiastic speakers.
Our first speaker, Geoff Hopkins gave us a very informative presentation called, The Rocky but Scenic Pathway towards an Elusive Internet Pot, about his experiences thus far with the Internet and with Web site development.
One of the most important questions for anyone looking to set up a Web site, is to decide what the Web site will be about. Some obvious topics such as gardening, music, or computers might spring to mind. But of course if you choose to setup a Web site on such popular topics, you will find it very hard to attract an audience because you will have to compete with hundred of thousands of other Web sites that already cover those topics! If you want to stand out from the crowd, it is often best to target a specific topic that has little competition. But how do you find those topics? Geoff explained some of the places we can look to find inspiration. These included:
- Index in the Yellow Pages;
- Yahoo Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool;
- Talk to friends and family about their interests, needs and problems;
- Go to the newsagent and flick through the magazines;
Observe the mundane things such as household items: tooth paste, kitchen utensils, consumables, etc;
Visit Board Tracker to identify popular forum topics http://www.boardtracker.com ;
Check out the LED Digest to get ideas from fellow Web site developers http://www.led-digest.com ;
Use keyword suggestions tools such as Word Tracker. There is a free trial available http://www.wordtracker.com ;
Consider subscription-based keyword search tools;
Browse through affiliate programs on offer leg. for a good list check out http://www.affiliateprograms.com ;
Keep an eye on new and emerging topics using tools such as:
- Google Zeitgeist
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
- Trend Watching http://www.trendwatching,com
- Yahoo Buzz
http://buzz.yahoo.com
Geoff stressed that, at the end of the day, you need to find topics where there is a passionate demand, minimal competition and of course a topic you want to write about! At next months meeting Geoff will provide us with the highly anticipated Part B of his presentation where he will explain how he actually brings all of these ideas together to make decisions on the best topics to pursue. This will be a presentation that you will not want to miss!
We next had a short presentation by Warwick Bone (Woz) who pointed us to some free keyword searching tools that are worth a look, and also provided some general information about designing Web pages to target popular search phrases that Web users might type into Search Engines. By targeting popular search phrases, you can increase your chances of people finding your Web pages.
Some of the keyword tools mentioned by Woz can be accessed at the following sites:
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com
http://www.keywordstation.com (note: expect some `junk' email if you subscribe to this service. We recommend you use a "throw-away" email address such as a free Hotmail or yahoo account to use for such purposes)
Our last speaker was George Skarbek who described his experiences with Adsense for Search. This is one of the advertising options provided by Google's Adsense advertising program. You can setup an account here - https://www.google.com/adsense/
You are given some code by Google which has to be pasted into your Web pages. The code generates a search box, which is much the same as the search box on the Google Search Web site http://www.google.com. If someone does a search in the box, they get a results page with some ads near the top. If someone clicks on those ads you are paid a small amount of money. George has been having some small success with Adsense for Search, but he has not yet been able to give up his day job!
Next month we will have another exciting meeting; come along and get a taste for Affiliate Marketing. In addition to the Part B presentation by Geoff Hopkins, I will be doing a short presentation on my experiences with Auction Ads http://www.auctionads.com. And we have another short presentation in the wings to complete the agenda so this meeting should be very informative. See you all there!
Reprinted from the August 2007 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
