Keyword Research - Amazon Affiliate

The first step in this whole process is the keyword research phase. Without properly researched keywords you're entire venture will fall flat on its face, you'll get frustrated and give up calling the whole 'make money online' thing a scam. So. Lets get this right eh :)

For our keyword research were going to use a tool that Google makes available for free called, interestingly enough, the Keyword Tool. Our goal using this tool is to come up with a nice list of keywords that we can potentially build profitable websites around. In this phase we're not going for the one golden keyword, we're just compiling a big list of keywords that we'll qualify in the next few lessons.

Ok so we need to start brainstorming ideas to plug into the keyword tool. I like to go to eBay's categories to get ideas of niches that I can research because they cover just about every tangible product. So head over to eBay and plug in one of the categories.



I decided to go with "water sports" so I pasted that into the search field, entered the captcha and clicked on "get keyword ideas". Then it brings up a big table of data. I wont go into everything about the tool here, we just need to focus on a few things. Set your match type to "exact" and in the "choose columns to display" drop down menu make sure you're showing local searches and trends. Now sort the table by local searches from most to least.



Before we dig into these numbers we need to set some parameters to look for so were not completely lost and we can start building list of keywords that have an adequate amount of searches and hopefully an upward trend. I make sure the keywords I choose have at least 1000 searches (per month) and there are at least 3 words in the phrase.

We go with at least 1000 searches per month because any less than that simply wouldn't be worth it. You need enough people coming to your site so that you can make regular sales. We want to go with at least 3 words in the phrase because the longer key phrases will have less competition than one or two word keywords.

After doing a search for "water sports" and sorting by local, exact searches I only have 2 keywords over 1000 searches per month. "water sports" gets 27,100 searches which is a ton. I'm going to just pass on that because I know the competition will be very tough for that phrase because of the search count and the fact that's its only 2 words. However the second phrase "water sports equipment" has a lot more potential. with 1600 searches and 3 words it fits our parameters perfectly.

One more thing to look at is the trend. It looks like this keyword hits its peak in the summer which makes sense:) If you were looking to make quick sales this might not be the keyword for you but I'm going to keep it because it would be a good keyword to develop a site around in preparation for next summer. It will give me time to get it built up. I'm going to copy that and paste it into a spreadsheet for future research.

Now its just rinse and repeat. After you've compiled at least 20 keywords that fit those parameters go ahead and move on to the next lesson.

Amazon Affiliate Program - Market Reseach

Doing market research before starting a business is like having an accurate flight plan before you go on a trip. If you don't have anything planned out there are a whole slew of hazards that can endanger your flight, make it failure and take you somewhere you don't want to go. Imagine an eager young pilot who wants to get out and be free like the birds but who has no plan. He gets up in the air and immediately has a rush of adrenaline. He's away from civilization doing his own thing.

However that rush soon fades and He finds himself a little lost. He frantically searches for landmarks or cues that will show him where he is. Instead He decides to just keep going in the same direction because he figures he find some city or airport. Unfortunately His freedom is taken right back and he is a slave to his aircraft. He soon begins to run out of fuel and has to make a crash landing. If only he had made a flight plan he could have traveled somewhere exciting. Instead he was just thrilled to be up in the air.

So it is with business. Eager young entrepreneurs romanticize about owning their own business so they rush in and find out quickly enough that they're lost and too far invested to just stop. With a business if you're just winging it even if by some slim chance you turn a profit you will most certainly end up in a place you dont want to be. You may even need to make a crash landing by filing bankruptcy. If only you had made a flight plan. If only you had done thorough market research.

In this Course we're going to review the elements of market research as it pertains to creating and profiting from websites based on Amazons Associate program. With proper, in depth research you'll discover niches that will make you consistent money by selling Amazons products.

1. Keyword research
2. Product research
3. Competition research
4. Domain name research

Before we go in depth into the "how" and "what" of each element we will discuss the "WHY". Understanding why will give you the motivation and big picture perspective necessary to really make this course successful for you and will help you realize your personal financial goals. This is going to be specific stuff that will really help you in the long run and many of this can be applied to a lot of different business models as well.

1. Why Keyword Research?

Simple. People use search engines to find what they're looking for on the internet. Search engines use keywords to organize the results they deliver to their user. Some keywords are used more than others and therefore it would be very profitable to convince the search engine that you're worthy to be served up as a website for the higher volume keywords. Why keyword research? If you choose the wrong keywords you wont get any traffic to your website. And in this game traffic=money.


2. Why Product Research?

After some keyword research lets say you come across the keyword "chocolate candy bar". The next step would be to check out what products would be relevant. Obviously chocolate candy bars would be a good thing to sell if that was your chosen keyword, however people don't buy candy bars on the internet. Not only that but candy bars are very inexpensive so even if you were able to sell any each sale would amount to pennies. This is why you do product research. You need to find products that will pay well and that people will buy online.


3. Why Competition Research?

If you were to pit a mouse and a rottweiler against each other who would you bet on? The obvious choice is the dog. He far out matches the mouse. In one swing the dog could break the mouses neck. When you're just starting out you want to choose small niches where you'll be able to reasonably compete. Don't go after the electronics industry. You'll go up against behemoths like best buy, circuit city and Walmart. The more narrow your niche market the less competition there will be and because you're just starting out you'll want to go small.

4. Why Domain Name Research?

This is what your website will be known by. You want to make sure you can get a reputable domain extension and a reasonable keyword rich name. Doing proper research on potential domain names can dramatically effect how soon you start to see sales.

Start Small, Dream Big

Its good to be ambitious in business. You're rewarded handsomely for it however you must have the right perspective if you're actually going to realize your ambitions. Thrive Learning Institute provides the experience and knowledge to focus those ambitions into simple, actionable tasks.

When starting an online business its never a good idea to target the broad, general terms like “health care”, or “Beauty”. There's way too much competition and unless you can wait around for 10 years all the while posting amazing content daily you will never get ranked in the search engines. You must start small if you're going to see any degree of success within a reasonable amount of time.

Select a low competition, usually long-tail, keyword phrase within the subject you want your niche in and then work to get to the top of the search engine. The process of getting to the top of the search results is pretty long and involved. Thrive can walk you through the detailed, step by step process of discovering capitalizing on, and ranking first for these keywords.

Once you've achieved the top ranking for your first keyword, choose a related keyword with the same level of competition and difficulty and repeat. Now you have two strong holds in a niche. Keep repeating the process and you'll eventually be able to start competing for those highly competitive keywords. You'll begin to dominate the market and when you dominate a market you have a fat wallet.

An example:

recently, after doing some research, found a potentially profitable keyword, “DJ speakers”. So I decided to throw up a niche site all about how to find the right DJ speakers, with videos and other related material all optimized for DJ speakers. Soon enough I'll be in the top spot when people search for that keyword and I'm already set up to begin optimizing for other keywords with related pages in my site. The next step might be “how to become a DJ” or maybe I'll just expand into the broader “DJ equipment.

So remember start small, be patient and in time you'll get that authority site you've dreamed of. Milk before meat my friends, milk before meat. Thrive Learning Institute will help you get the meat faster:)

Tip of the Week: Search Engine Optimization

When it comes to SEO, keep your expectations realistic. One expectation that is initially set too high by many companies is the SEO time frame. Please realize that, realistically your SEO efforts could take months or even a year to see big rewards from your efforts. You also need to make sure that the people you work with understand how much improvements mean in SEO. Since it's a never-ending battle to stay in the top of the search engines, it's important to always be involved.

Once you have realistic expectations, you can start to examine and determine the real results of your SEO efforts. A couple main ways of examining where you stand with various search engines are to search for yourself, and to analyze the statistics on the web through programs like Google Analytics. It is very easy to see the initial rankings of your SEO efforts. Simply go to Google.com, for example, and type in your company's name. Where do you fall? An additional way to scope out where you stand apposed to the competition is to seek out web statistics which will benefit your company and give you a realistic sampling of where you stand as a company.