Wealthy Affiliate -- Week 2 Assessment

Hi All! I've been scarce this past week, I know. Let me tell you what I've been up to.

I read "BeatingAdwords", "Inside The List", and "The Worn Paper System". The first two ebooks are written by Kyle and Carson, founders of Wealthy Affiliate.The latter is by Sara Brown. I came across her ebook from one of the affiliate marketing email subscriptions I opted into. I'm sure glad I read these three, because I think they each tap into distict aspects to affiliate marketing, rounding out my foundational learning.

Do you recall that I submitted my first article in EzineArticle? Well, it was rejected because the article violated the terms of agreement. I apparently have some things to learn about my choice of words and writing perspective. Instead of re-writing the artilce, I modified an existing article that I wrote for Squidoo (another thing I did this past week) and submitted it to EzineArticles. I am confident this one will be accepted. That makes three articles total -- one on EzineArticles and two on Squidoo.

I'm still at my infancy when it comes to knowing the power of Squidoo. There's an ebook out there that I hear is really excellent. It's called,
"Social Networking On Squidoo". I decided not to purchase it at this time. I want to concentrate my efforts on the basics of affiliate marketing first. As well, I think I'm a fairly computer savvy enough to figure out how to utilize Squidoo to be financially rewarding for me. It will be especially beneficial when I actively promote my niche.

That brings us to the next accomplishment of the week. One, I placed my first PPC campaign on Google Adwords. Carson from Wealthy Affiliate logged into my Adwords account and critiqued it for me. This is another benefit to being a Wealthy Affiliate member. I get personal support. One of the things Kyle and Carson do is help us out with our Adwords account. This benefit is priceless, because a PPC campaign can be very expensive if not set up correctly.

My first PPC campaign promotes an affiliate marketing product. Initially, my keywords were so specific that, although they were 5 cents per click (CPC), they were not getting any impressions. Carson gave me a heads up on my keywords, that they were very specific. But, being the noob that I am, I had to learn what he meant. Now I know.

No impressions means that no one is typing in those keywords. So, I modified the keywords to make them a tad bit more generic. The ads were receiving impressions, but my ad was NOT being viewed on the front page, thus receiving zero clicks. On top of that, my CPC max was at 70 cents. Also to my observation, I started noticing a trend as to the time of day the impressions counter would increase and when they stayed the same. There is so much learning I'm going through by just watching the stats on my campaign. The good thing is that I haven't paid for anything yet (there's still that little bit of fear in me that I won't get any sales but have shell out in clicks). The bad thing is that I haven't received any clicks yet, leaving my click-through rate (CTR) at zero. My bottom line was also at flatline.

There's no reason for concern, however, since I am learning a lot and not at high dollar cost to me. My most iimportant lesson learned is the importance of choosing a niche market. Especially for beginners, it's important to promote products that has little competition. This thought got me down for a couple of days, but after some deep thought as to what niche market I could enter, I came up with an idea. I'll let you know how it performs.

By the way, I logged onto Squidoo this morning to find that my two articles are ranking significantly better. One was ranked at 86,000+ initially. A few days later, it's at 12,000+. The second one dropped 3000 to about 9000+. This tells me two things. One, the first article that started at 86000+ ranking is in a competitlve category. Two, the second article is in a significantly less competitve category. This tells me a lot about which niche is potentially more profitable for a noobie like me.

I spent many hours over the weekend into getting my website up. I chose a template from Open Source Web Design, uploaded it to my virtual dedicated server. You don't need to get a dedicated server to do what I did this weekend. I just like the flexibility it gives me to be able to do whatever I want on the web server. This is the computer geek coming out in me. But don't sweat my overkill. All you need is an affordable hosting plan.

I modified the template to suit my needs, replacing the images with my own.

I have to back up at step and tell you that I purchased Snapz Pro X 2, a screen and video presentation software built for a Mac. Yes, I run my biz proudly on a power pc Apple laptop! I played around with Snaps yesterday and am now able to create and screenshots and modify them to my linking, giving me control of the images I want to place on my website. This is a powerful tool that will also allow you to record your moves on the computer and save them as a movie file. Way cool. Will have to play around with that feature later.

My website is going to serve as the landing pages to my ads and artilce links. I will also implement email marketing methods I read about in
"Inside The List". This means getting an Aweber account, something I have been thinking of doing but needed a justified to do so. That time is nearly approaching.

The most effective method of attack is to get the pages up and start writing ads/articles that point to them. Then, I should gradually implement stage 2 -- email marketing and my niche.

My niche servers three primary purposes - to serve as the bonus material for products that are not mine, to be a product for others to promote, and to create an email list, This is ambitious, but I know what I have to do to make it happen. So, stay tuned to my progress.

One more thing before I sign off. With all of the ads and articles I post, I am quickly drowning in all of this information. I can easily see myself not knowing where I have advertised what, what I need to do next, etc. To remedy this, I've created an excel spreadsheet that lays out my product promotions and the actions I've take on them. Therefore, I know what action items are outstand for each product. I encourage you to document, because this will soon overwhelm you if you don't keep your information organized and meaningful.

Lastly, take action for yourself. Surround yourself with a good support group like
Wealthy Affiliate, take advantage of the resources that are available to you, write articles and ads to promote products, do a ton of market research, stay low-cost, take your time, learn by reading and doing, be creative, treat this as a business. Your success is in your hands.