Associate Programs Newsletter #332
Rob Benwell has come a long way in the past year or so, as he reveals in his new book.
You'll find Blogging to the Bank 2 quite a lot different from his first book.
For a 22-year-old, he's also remarkably successful - with the help of his "secret weapon."
CONTENTS:
1. Rob Benwell cleans up his act
2. Rob Benwell's "secret weapon"
3. Flickr images on Yahoo Image Search
4. Try affiliate training membership for $1
5. Thought for today: A true friend
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1. Rob Benwell cleans up his act
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After Rob Benwell's Blogging to the Bank book came out early in 2006, I warned you that although his tactics were working very well, some of them looked awfully risky.
What I liked about Rob's first book was that he wasn't just regurgitating other people's stuff. He does his own experiments and tells you what works for him.
He's so successful at generating revenue from blogs that Yanik Silver invited him to speak at one of his Underground Seminars. You have to be REALLY good at what you do to speak at one of those.
A year and a bit down the track, Rob has continued experimenting and has now brought out Blogging to the Bank 2, which is a totally rewritten version.
In it, he describes how he makes up to $34,000 a month - more than $1,000 a day - from his blogs.
It's obvious that he has learned from his mistakes. There are no black hat, risky tactics in this book.
In 61, no-fluff pages, he provides a step-by-step blueprint for highly profitable, long-term, niche blogs. He's describing tactics that he uses, stuff he's experimented with.
The book tells you...
* How to identify a "winning market" for each blog.
* Which reliable web host to use.
* Which blogging platform (it's not Blogger any more) to use.
* 4 recommended ways to get content for your blogs. Rob uses all 4, including what he calls his "secret weapon".
* 3 ways to optimize your blog.
* A very costly mistake Rob made in his early blogging days.
* How to make affiliate programs more cost effective than AdSense.
* How to decide which affiliate products to promote - crucially important.
* How to monetize your blogs.
* Ways to get links to your blog
* 4 Web 2.0 tactics to attract traffic, including a Digg tip I hadn't read anywhere else.
Rob's book is written in a very simple, easy-to-understand style. He uses several screenshots to help you see at a glance what he's discussing.
The book is suitable for beginners and also for more experienced bloggers. If you're not as successful as Rob, you can more than likely get very useful tips from this book.
It's good value. Check it out here...
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/blogging
[UPDATE, 2008: Professional blogger Yaro Starak doesn't just "blog for money". He has cleverly combined a blog, email and automation to create a 6-figure business. He describes exactly how he does it in his Blog Mastermind coaching. For details, see my Blog Mastermind review.]
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2. Rob Benwell's "secret weapon"
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In Blogging to Bank 2, Rob Benwell describes four different ways he gets content for his blogs, but one of them is so good he calls it his "secret weapon".
His secret weapon is private label rights PLR articles from PLRPro - http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/plr
Purely by coincidence, I had lunch with Daniel Turner of PLRPro the other day. (He's an Australian and lives near me.)
One of the things Daniel and I have been discussing lately is content for websites. He's an expert on this. Daniel and his business partner Marc run a really impressive PLR service, so I wasn't surprised to see that their service is the only one Rob recommends.
Daniel and Marc work incredibly hard to provide top-notch content. Also, with about 1,000 webmasters using their service and a private forum where they share tips, they're in a perfect position to know what works and what doesn't. When I get a tip from Daniel, I know I'm getting the inside story.
Is content still king for long-term success? Yes. Well, actually, that should be "Content that benefits the user is king".
The challenge, though, is that creating content that both users and search engines like is either very time consuming (if you're doing it yourself) or very expensive (if you're paying someone else to do it).
Unless you're just starting out, and are on a really tight budget, I wouldn't recommend you write it all yourself, purely because it just takes so much time.
If you want to outsource your content creation, head over to somewhere like www.rentacoder.com or www.elance.com and post a project there.
You can get articles written for about $3 to $4 apiece, but you may be hiring someone who doesn't have English as their first language, and will probably provide work that you won't be very proud of putting on your site. Unless you're really lucky, you'll need to improve the articles you buy this way.
Your cost for decent articles will run to $10 to $12, and upwards of about $20 for a 400 to 700 word article for something you can be happy putting on your site.
Remember, when you're posting your project, make sure you're as detailed as possible - you don't want to leave anything out.
As Rob Benwell has proved, a very good way to get content is still using PLR articles. Providing you go to the right place, you will get those high quality articles for only 20 to 25 cents each.
You really have to be careful where you go to get your PLR content though. I can't stress this enough. PLRPro is my preferred place, but in case you're hesitant, do your own research.
I'll be totally upfront - I recommend that you rewrite your PLR content. Why? Because even if you're a power user (you use a LOT of content) you can get those same articles 100% rewritten for $4 (check it through www.dupefreepro.com or www.dupecop.com ) which means if you want to totally outsource your content, you can use PLR totally original for about a third the cost.
If you're on a limited budget, but have time, you can rewrite those articles yourself in about 10 to 15 minutes each (as opposed to writing one from scratch and taking an hour ro more to do it).
Finally, if you're limited in time and budget, you can do a very short rewrite (take 5 or so minutes, change the title, first paragraph and last paragraph), and use those. This may work today, but will it work tomorrow? That's the risk you run if you do this.
While you can use PLR articles straight out of the box, I don't recommend it.
The PLR content provider I like best is PLRPro - http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/plr
Last time I told you about PLRPro, all they really did was the content and a few other things. I asked Daniel for a full list of what they do now, and I kind of regret it because it's a long list, so I apologize for the extra length here, but it just goes to show how much value these guys provide.
They now provide:
Content (each group gets 40 articles in 11 niches for a total of 440 articles each month)
Graphics
Affiliate programs (specific to each niche)
Full keyword research
Multiple languages
Multiple formats (TXT, HTML, DOC)
Access to small packs of 25 articles each
Access to order original content (members only)
Training in (written by them - no resell rights here folks):
Personal development
Building niche adsense/affiliate sites
Ninetydaychallenge.net
Search engine optimization (about 2 hours of videos plus guide)
Pay per click marketing/AdWords
Long tail keywords
Software (coded by their team):
HTML Builder
Wordpress Auto Installer
(other software related to building sites)
Templates in:
Portal Feeder
XSitePro
WordPress
HTML Builder
Website Article Wizard
HyperVRE
Free hosting
50 PR4 Blog Network for linking/indexing
Discounts (They don't take affiliate commissions. They negotiate discounts for you.)
Access to their private forum
If this isn't enough to get you building your AdSense/affiliate income, I really don't know what else is out there for you!
Check them out at...
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/plr
You won't be disappointed.
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3. Flickr images on Yahoo Image Search
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Yahoo! has integrated Flickr images into Yahoo Image Search via live feeds from Flickr.
Unlike Google, which indexes Flickr content and can display deadlinks to images which have been removed, Yahoo's image results happen in realtime.
When I did a search today at http://images.search.yahoo.com/ for Rainbow Bay (without quotation marks) I was surprised to see that a photo I'd uploaded to Flickr was No.1. A few minutes later, it ranked at No.3. Your results may vary.
What surprised me was that the photo of the view from our apartment was outranking photos which had the keyword in the domain name and in the file name. Your results may vary.
If you target an obscure phrase, use keywords in the title at Flickr.com, and link to your Flickr pages, you may be able to rank well in Yahoo Image Search. Whether that does you any good or not is another matter.
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4. Try affiliate training membership for $1
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Anik Singal has done a major revamp and is making big improvements to his Affiliate Classroom membership site.
There's a wealth of information in this site. Here are just a few examples...
* The May affiliate case study describes how to use Squidoo to get high PageRank backlinks. There's a step-by-step guide including screenshots plus some little-known tips for monetizing your Squidoo lens.
* The March affiliate case study shows you several highly effective ways to optimize your newsletter sign-up process. Even some of the gurus miss these methods.
* In a February interview, super affiliate Rosalind Gardner, an acknowledged expert on getting high conversion rates, describes how to write content - including articles, product reviews, and pre-sales copy - that leads to conversions.
Affiliate Classroom has step-by-step guides, short tutorials, a marketing library of useful articles... a private forum where you can ask questions... all sorts of helpful stuff.
Right now you can get inside and try Affiliate Classroom for 14 days for only $1 (that's not a misprint).
If you can't get $1 in value out of this I'll be totally amazed. About 75% of members surveyed say that they don't need any other resource for their affiliate training.
Will you find everything you need here? Probably not. Will you find fantastic value? Absolutely.
Check it out here...
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/aff-classroom
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5. Thought for today: A true friend
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"A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked." - Bernard Meltzer.
All the best
Allan Gardyne
