A Complete Beginners Wordpress Amazon Affiliate Journey

As somebody formerly involved in accountancy I sympathise and wish you well!

Where I believe your skills will really cross over is keyword research - the bedrock of any good affiliate website imho.

Today, I happened across a link (it aint mine, I saw in on Tung Tran's "Cloud Living" FB group) to get Sem Rush free for a month.

Here's the link

From there, you can whack in your competitor's website(s) and look for keywords they are ranking for but not necessarily targeting. Also, their newly released "SeoMagic" is pretty damn good and you'll get a big, CSV file of keywords with competition metrics.

I would suggest getting keysearch.io or keywordrevealer as I find SemRush's competition rating to be a bit hit and miss.

Best of luck to you and congrats on that first sale!
 
Advertise on BHW
How is your work flow? I find it difficult write on the editor, adding multiple tables, adding images side by side, adding affiliate links.
But at the end it looks satisfying. Wp is difficult to use compared to blogger. Wp is like owner of a hotel and blogger is like renting a room in that hotel.
 
pronstar said:
As a fellow noob you are doing fantastic.

I have been through the stages you are going through a dozen times now and failed every time,
but, I keep on getting closer and keep on learning as you will.

I have a few ideas for you. It's up to you if you want to investigate them.

When looking at Google results page for a keyword always check how many hits it has.
It's not a perfect solution to how competitive a kw is but will give you a rough idea.
For a non-authoritive\new site I target longtails with less than 500,000 hits.

If you want to dig deeper look at the da\pa of the top 10 (as you do)
but checking for hits first you can save a lot of time by discarding kws with 10s of millions of hits.
I learnt that the hard way on ,y latest site, I have loads of "low" comp longtails but nearly all had 10m+ hits
and I can't rank any of them but the one lucky one I did pick had 500k hits and its on page 1.

As for social media followers, what I am now doing and it's working is use Fan machine pro 2 (free download in downloads section)
I don't use it to auto comment (i deleted all the comments stuff ) but it posts auto on facebook from rss feeds
using your keywords, but more importantly it goes around liking similar posts for you automatically, its awesome,
my fan pages went from dead to several hundred followers in a week.

I keep an eye on the posts though and delete shit or irrelevant posts

I have a tip for getting more articles quicker.

Grab some really good articles in your niche and manually rewrite every line to make it your own.
Add some of your own lines and delete some lines.
Add your own twist to the article and sometimes I mix 2 or 3 of these articles together to make a big cool article
that is totally my own.

you are just using the original authors article framework and idea, change the title of course
and add your own keywords.

As a fellow noob these are a few of the things that seem to be work for me.

Regards and good luck with your journey.
Click to expand...

Hey, awesome knowledge there. Most of my keywords I am targeting are in the 20k - 150k hits range. Some of my larger search vol. keywords are in the millions (but I don't plan to rank these as easily).

That fan machine pro sounds awesome. I will look into it tonight. Did you find with facebook that you had to do much other than just post to get likes / shares?

In terms of spinning articles, at this stage I just research and am able to spit out my own content. I may spin a few smaller articles now that I have a decent bedrock of articles on my site.

Jesse Custer said:
As somebody formerly involved in accountancy I sympathise and wish you well!

Where I believe your skills will really cross over is keyword research - the bedrock of any good affiliate website imho.

Today, I happened across a link (it aint mine, I saw in on Tung Tran's "Cloud Living" FB group) to get Sem Rush free for a month.

Here's the link

From there, you can whack in your competitor's website(s) and look for keywords they are ranking for but not necessarily targeting. Also, their newly released "SeoMagic" is pretty damn good and you'll get a big, CSV file of keywords with competition metrics.

I would suggest getting keysearch.io or keywordrevealer as I find SemRush's competition rating to be a bit hit and miss.

Best of luck to you and congrats on that first sale!
Click to expand...

Hey cheers for the advice. I have been using the Semrush SEO magic tool for my keyword research. I just happened upon it a few days ago and saw it was free while in beta. Semrush is really good for analyzing competition I agree.

I will look into keyword.io and keywordrevealer tonight.

Cheers!

Samurai-champloo said:
How is your work flow? I find it difficult write on the editor, adding multiple tables, adding images side by side, adding affiliate links.
But at the end it looks satisfying. Wp is difficult to use compared to blogger. Wp is like owner of a hotel and blogger is like renting a room in that hotel.
Click to expand...

I have never used blogger so I guess my benchmark is WP. I don't find the editing too much of a hassle. As I am a perfectionist, some things take me ages to do and have to be just right... but a lot of that is just me editing my own images and tweeking my content as opposed to actually formatting it on WP.


I have a question for you guys that are experienced affiliate marketers. Do you rel="nofollow" your affiliate links? Does having a bunch of nofollow links in your posts affect the SERPs?
 
yes you should always nofollow affiliate links.
I've done experiments with articles with just 1 aff link and others with up to 50 aff links (a list of films with links to the amazon dvds)
and they both seem to rank ok, maybe as long as it is relevant and not just a bunch of adverts it could be ok.

I have read in plenty of places not to do too many, so be careful though.


re: fan machine. I just check in once a day to delete posts i don't like that FM has posted for me, I don't do any follows or likes or anything and the likes come raining down, shares and followers are steady but slow, if I did have the time to interact properly I'm sure it would go sky high quickly.

FM posts a few hundred posts a month for me and it's enough to keep users coming back. I also post my own articles of course and the occasional amazon aff advert.
 
Last edited:
I do have problem with indexing. My site's categories and tags indexed but not actual posts. Your posts indexed now?
 
pronstar said:
yes you should always nofollow affiliate links.
I've done experiments with articles with just 1 aff link and others with up to 50 aff links (a list of films with links to the amazon dvds)
and they both seem to rank ok, maybe as long as it is relevant and not just a bunch of adverts it could be ok.

I have read in plenty of places not to do too many, so be careful though.


re: fan machine. I just check in once a day to delete posts i don't like that FM has posted for me, I don't do any follows or likes or anything and the likes come raining down, shares and followers are steady but slow, if I did have the time to interact properly I'm sure it would go sky high quickly.

FM posts a few hundred posts a month for me and it's enough to keep users coming back. I also post my own articles of course and the occasional amazon aff advert.
Click to expand...

I only have up to 15 on any one page or post (photo url, text url and 'learn more' button for most products).

Right. I will go through and nofollow them.

mamadsouri said:
Good luck ! Man , Watching your posts.
Click to expand...

Cheers mate.

Samurai-champloo said:
I do have problem with indexing. My site's categories and tags indexed but not actual posts. Your posts indexed now?
Click to expand...

My indexed categories / tags haven't changed yet... but it's still early days (less than a week since I made my Yoast changes). Hopefully will change soon. Will keep you updated.
 
Hi Guys,

Sorry, I have not updated in a while. Work has been absolutely chaotic - 12 hour days... oh the life of an accountant. I have still found time (not as much as I'd like) to work on my website.

Sales

I have made 5 more sales on Amazon since my first sale at the end of August. Nothing major - but not bad for working on my site less than 1 hour per night. The bounce rate on my main pillar article is a steady 60%, time on page is averaging 4.5mins and average pages per visit is 2.75. Which are pretty good stats (although traffic isn't huge so I'm not putting too much faith into these just yet).

Slight Change In Strategy

I have found that I've been working way too hard trying to 'perfect' my content. Reading, re-reading, restructuring etc. However, my main pillar article is now over 6,000 words and I think it is one of the best / authoritative articles in my niche currently. My reviews also go very in depth and I have some pretty awesome sub-niche articles that are very informative now too.

I had a quick read through the RankXL course and have changed strategy slightly. My pillar article is now targeting a few very high competition keywords, plenty of moderate competition keywords and a massive amount of long tails (a total monthly search volume for all keywords of well over 300,000 for this article).

The new strategy is to try and get as much link juice as possible pointed at the pillar article in order to slowly build rank for these keywords and rank my other smaller posts with lower competition keywords by linking out to them from this main article.

I'm all about trying new things / learning as I go.

Having a decent amount of content now, I have also been able to apply and get accepted to the google AdSense programme. So I will be incorporating ads in my main pillar article and sidebar for some extra income.

Link Building

I always thought I would struggle with this part of SEO. I have been trying constantly to get links from other sites with decent enough DA (20+) and TF... but my response rate from these sites sucks.

I have tried different techniques:
  • The subtle soft sell outreach (1 email asking a question about an article on the site then a 2nd after a response asking for feedback about my pillar article and if they would be interested sharing it with their readers - only 10% of webmasters respond - if I'm lucky.)
  • Guest posting - I have tried asking if there is an article I could write for their readers (not much luck), I have tried attaching a 700-word article to my email as a sample... again the response rate is abysmal.
  • Broken link building - I have spent hours looking (maybe I am doing this wrong?) but the only sites I find with broken links in my niche are sites I wouldn't be putting my link anywhere near.
Now... don't get me wrong, I'm not going to let the above failures get me down (or stop me from continuing to seek good links). But I have decided to take a leap and buy the Hercules - Advanced Warrior SEO package from @Finn . We will see how this improves my ranking - I have faith.

Where to From Here?

Slow and steady. I plan to write a few more high-quality articles that have some low competition keywords (even if they target 10 - 50 searches a month).

I have a few scheduled to post over the next few days.

I am also going to continue to try link building - but may hold off while Finn works his magic.

There are also plans to write another 4000 - 6000-word pillar article.

Oh... I will also update my journey thread a bit more often (sorry).
 
Thanks a lot for doing this!

As a n00b myself this like an actual goldmine.

I have been trying to get some authority links myself with the methods you are using but i have had about the same results.
Recently i have been looking into expired web 2.0s to create some "authority" links myself.
These will probably not be as good as the links from a real authority site, but better than blog comments and forum post i guess.

Do you get most of you organic traffic to your root or some specific post?
Do you use a static front page or do you always have the latest post there?
I have not concluded myself on what is the best approach here but i would guess that using the pillar article is the way to go. (and this is a pure guess)

Anyway, keep up this awesome journey and thanks again for sharing.
 
Dan Hansen said:
Thanks a lot for doing this!

As a n00b myself this like an actual goldmine.

I have been trying to get some authority links myself with the methods you are using but i have had about the same results.
Recently i have been looking into expired web 2.0s to create some "authority" links myself.
These will probably not be as good as the links from a real authority site, but better than blog comments and forum post i guess.

Do you get most of you organic traffic to your root or some specific post?
Do you use a static front page or do you always have the latest post there?
I have not concluded myself on what is the best approach here but i would guess that using the pillar article is the way to go. (and this is a pure guess)

Anyway, keep up this awesome journey and thanks again for sharing.
Click to expand...

Hi man, thanks heaps for the kind words.

I have plenty of forum / blog posts etc. Which I really wasn't getting that much use out of. Sure I was getting initial traffic from the links but these had a really short life. Finding decent CF/TF do-follow blog comments is really tough too :/.

To be fair most of my organic traffic is currently going to my low competition keyword articles. Some of these are hovering on the first and second page for some really long tail keywords. The keywords in my pillar are a very long term project and are higher competition (if I can rank them eventually they will pay hard).

In terms of my front page, I leave it as a blog roll with my pillar post stickied at the top.

RankXL guide really sold me on the idea of pillar articles - using them as link powerhouses to then rank your side articles with DA and link juice alone. But... I am not experienced enough to comment as to whether this works yet or not.

I am slowly moving from the idea of a micro niche type site to more of an authority site. But will take everything one step at a time. Early days.
 
Aesteroth said:

In terms of my front page, I leave it as a blog roll with my pillar post stickied at the top.

RankXL guide really sold me on the idea of pillar articles - using them as link powerhouses to then rank your side articles with DA and link juice alone.
Click to expand...

Sounds good.

Would you then aim you incoming links towards the pillar post then or your root? Both would probably do the job as you keep your pillar stickied on your front page.

Also, thanks for the tip on canva. I have been looking for something like that for a while. Should be really useful.
 
Dan Hansen said:
Sounds good.

Would you then aim you incoming links towards the pillar post then or your root? Both would probably do the job as you keep your pillar stickied on your front page.

Also, thanks for the tip on canva. I have been looking for something like that for a while. Should be really useful.
Click to expand...

I get them pointed to the pillar article itself. Just for anchors etc. I plan to have 4 - 5 of these pillars eventually. They take me like 1 - 2 days to write.

You are welcome about Canva. I can't believe it's free. I use it for all my images. So easy.
 
Great journey thread! I used to have a couponing website so I have basically everything I need to do this. Your post has motivated me to just get on it and stop reading. Looking forward to reading more!
 
Aesteroth said:
I used 'site:mywebsite.com' in google to see which posts of mine have been indexed by google... and what I found was that google has only indexed my categories and tags pages. Which looks absolutely shit. None of my posts have been indexed.
Click to expand...

Is this relevant? Does having your categories and tags pages lead to any kind of disadvantage for the site? I would imagine that this has nothing to with your other posts not being indexed yet.
Are your other post starting to get indexed?
 
Advertise on BHW
You must log in or register to reply here.
Sign up now!

Main Menu

Home Main Forum List Black Hat SEO White Hat SEO BHW Newbie Guide Blogging Black Hat Tools Social Media Downloads

Marketplace

Account Selling Content / Copywriting EBooks / Methods Hosting Misc Proxies For Sale SEO - Link building SEO - Packages Social Media Social Media - Panels Web Design More

Making Money

Affiliate Programs Hire a Freelancer IM Journeys Making Money Pay Per Click Site Flipping Want to Buy

BlackHat World

Dispute Resolution Forum Suggestions & Feedback Introductions Lounge
Back
Top