Let’s talk about content. Yeah “content is king”. Everyone has heard that, but no one listens to it either. I was like that when I started out, myself. Then I came to realize that every page with content is a Landing Page!

Okay, but what is a landing page?

A Landing Page is a page that is targeted by the search engines and thus, visitors “land” when they click-through to your site from the search engine result pages (SERPs).

Types of content, formatting and elements

Let’s get back to the content thing we were talking about. If we have to classify content by types and effectivness it should look something like that (1-best; 5-worse):

1. Formatted original and useful content with stock images in it
2. Plain text original content
3. Pre-written content with stock images
4. Pre-written content
5. Copied content (equals ban from search engines)

Before we discuss the types of content any further, let’s have a look at the page elements we can use to add a more interactive look to our content. Such page elements are:

• Videos
• Images
• Flash objects (embedded mp3 players, slideshows, etc.)

Those three are the “heavy artillery” of article publishing. Use them wisely and you will not regret it. Confused where to put them? Why don’t you get yourself a newspaper and see how it’s done. Your readers will always appreciate a well formated and entertaining piece of content.

[note: if you are planning to use such page elements on an affiliate article check first what resources you have been provided by your affiliate program, such as MoreNiche. In case you are using it, you can check right away (links open in a new window) by logging in or registering.]

Some good places for stock resources (that is, stock resources out of your affiliate program) are YouTube – for videos; Stock Exchange – for photos/images; Widget Box – for flash and other interactive objects. The types of content you plan to use must co-respond to a certain aspect of the work on your website. If you preffer to work on the marketing, SEO (search engine optimisation) you should use re-written content either formatted with stock images or just plain text.

If your don’t feel like exchanging links 24/7, optimising your site, etc. you should start planning out some fresh content for your site. Either way you will get visitors from search engines and, eventualy, you will start selling right away. You can read more about search engines in the SEO category. I’m classifying the types of content because there is no point in over-working yourself doing full-time both types of website works.

Original content

There is nothing like fresh and new thing to learn when visiting a site. This can get you a lot of backlinks (depending on how useful it is) or at least a lot of visitors. Remember that whatever site you have, your visitors won’t need always to come over and buy something. You gotta convince them that your site is a good place to hang out.

Starting out with original content is not always the best idea. Beginners, always save your content on your hard drive, because if your marketing efforts fail and your site is no longer worth working on (get’s banned from Search Engines, etc.) you will delete it, start a new one, but your precious content will be long gone before you realize it. Always keep a backup copy of your original content. If you decide that you have no further use of it sell it, heck, you can even sell it on eBay!

But enough bullshit, let’s go over some tips on writing down an original content. Because you will be writing on a content that is relative to your niche, product you are promoting it might not always be so interesting to write about. Make sure that you choose a niche to work on that has something to say about – previous life experiences or personal expertise.

Choosing your niche to work on wisely will be a big bonus when you start creating your content. Other good thing to keep in mind is to be actual. No one is interested in reading on topics that are outdated. Even if you run a pharmaceuticals shop, make sure you create a blog, get links exchanged in between, and write down something original for your visitors. Don’t feel shy to write down something you’ve seen the other day (for example), because clients/visitors love seeing a chief figure getting down to earth and speaking to the average folk.

Pre-written content

Pre-written content is a great thing for people just starting out or all of you marketing/seo gurus out there. It takes me about an hour to fully transform an article I’ve scraped from the net, and believe me, this is the easiest way around. Just think about it – if you spend 2 hours per day (or two articles), 5 days a week (ten articles) and every month you’ll have FOURTY new articles on you website.

That’s great but the key to success is doing something often, even if it’s for short period of time. On the average a good website has around 2,000 pages of content on it, excluding product catalogues, etc. It is the size that gives popularity. Just like putting your local news stand against a mall. Remember, though, it is better to be quality than quantity.
A good article resource I use for my affiliate sites is Article Geek.com or Ezine Articles.com.

[hint: if you login to MoreNiche and go to the "guides" category there is a ebook on "fast and effective article re-writting" which I highly recommend.]

Copied content

Scraped, copied and duplicate content. There is not much to talk about it. No one likes to see a rip-off of someone’s hard work. Additionaly, you can easily get banned from search engines. Don’t think it’s a low price to pay – it will kill nearly 50% of your traffic.
Just don’t be an asshole and play fair, ok?

Yesterday I found something pretty neat on the net. Thanks for that video Ross! Practically it’s a guide to making an affiliate blog in 10 minutes. Yeah I know, sounds awesome. And it is.

note: The following technique is about using ClickBank (an affiliate program), but it can work with any other, especially with MoreNiche. I’ve also added a text version of the video below to serve you as a step-by-step guide and it has links, too!

The text version

Part 1: Introduction

[There is a blogger dashboard on-screen]

“I’m going to talk to you today about setting about a blog for affiliate marketing. Now, for an affiliate marketing blog I use blogger, hosted on their site. The reason behind that is because there is literally no expense. If they (or you) decide to remove your blog, it’s no big deal, you can set up a new one the next day under either the same account or even a new one. So, this is the new blogger,”

[shows you around the interface with the mouse cursor]

“brand new with all kinds of new changes and this is their layout out there. We can pick a new template, edit the html, choose fonts and colors, but the page elements is what’s important. The main mistake that people make with an affiliate marketing blog is to include things like.. adsense! Adsense is a problem so we’re going to remove it right now.”

[removes the 'adsense' page element by clicking edit on the element itself]

“The reason adsense is a problem is it gives people somewhere to click outside of your affiliate links. You don’t make much money from adsense, but if someone buys a product from your affiliate blog that will, inturn, give you much more money than the adsense to click. Some people would like to combine the two or utilize both. I recommend not using adsense on your blog if you’re going for affiliate sales. So, I have my Squidoolands here.”

[note: Squidoo is a "Fast, free and easy way to build a page on a topic you're passionate about". You register on the site and write on a topic you know about. Then you can import it to blogger or just keep it posted on their site. The point is that by adding a Squidoo lens to your site adds more content and allows you to move around traffic from your Squidoo page to your affiliate blog.]

[shows his Squidoo page]

“I have a Squidoolands for every marketing blog that I have. What it does is that it lets you filter traffic from Squidoo to your blog and your blog to Squidoo where you have.. affiliate.. links!”

[note: somehow the way this guy talks sometimes really entertains me. No offence.]

“Nice, easy and very simple. This lens is not gigantic at this point, shortly it will be filled with videos, so if you wanna learn more about affiliate marketing you really will be worth your while to visit it.”

[goes back to his blogger dashboard]

Part 2: My secret weapon

“This blog is also empty. What I’m going to do is show you one of my secret income producing tools. The URL here is RSS feeds generator.com. What I did was put in some keywords and my Click bank URL and it gave me RSS feeds. So, I’m gonna take this RSS URL copy it, go back to blogger and add an RSS feed. Here we go. This will show five items. It randomizes the items, so they change.. naah.. let’s change the title. Now, each of those links has my Click Bank ID built right in. So, if they click on those links they are going to the product and I will get paid if they purchase. If it’s the top-selling products it should have a decent sale-through rate.”

Part 3: Driving traffic to your blog

“So, then you have to get people to your blog. There are few things you can do to do that. This web site is Pingoat.com. It’s a huuge, huuuge pinging service. They have a ton of websites they can ping. So, you put your information – your blog URL, your RSS feed, which comes with every blog and Squidoolands. So, you ping and you’re good. The other one that I always use is Feed Shark. Again a ton of options. Some of them cross-over, but pinging twice in a row will just not accept your ping, so it can’t really hurt you at all. So, THAT works.”

Part 4: Getting a lot of backlinks FAST

“The next web site we need to see is.. Submit ‘em now. This is a Firefox plugin. Absolutely free. You click right here, it takes you to the download, you upload it to Firefox. It has 113 RSS feed directories and blog directories built right-in. They are easy to use. You fillout some basic information about your blog, and you’re gonna go. It’s very simple to build a ton of great backlinks to your blog and your Squidoolands. Your Squidoolands comes with an RSS feed as well, so utilize that, treat your Squidoolands like a blog. Now you are filtering traffic between the two sites the key is to tag them differently. Use different keywords, slightly different of course, you still want them to be descriptive or otherwise your traffic is garbage.”

Part 5: Posts

“So, when you post to your blog your posts should between 4 and 600 words and talk about affiliate marketing products or whatever niche you’re in. Now, I use ClickBank, but you don’t have to. You can use things like Commision Junction or literally anything you can think of. Linkshare, Share-a-Sale.. they’re all great options, so you can create a blog in whatever you have interest in. Keep that in mind – you can earn money online , never sell any products and never deal with any customer service. It’s really a very nice, clean business to get into[amen!]. So, take my advice and enjoy.”

Well that’s it. Better get down to work you guys!

Press Ctrl+D to bookmark this page so that it will be easier to come back and look at it later if you need to. Cheers.