This article describes the techniques I use to earn money (affiliate income) from datafeed driven websites in 10 simple steps. It is quite a long article as there is a lot of ground to cover, and even with this length there are things that we will simply skirt across and other things we will not cover at all.
I am working on this article and hope to turn it into an e-book that will hopefully help up and coming affiliate marketers.
The article uses the Datafeed Import Plugin for WordPress.
I hope this helps someone who is looking for a simple how-to, keep checking back for the full e-book. I will post about it here when I have completed it.
1. Identify your niche
Identifying your niche is the single most critical step, and the biggest hurdle that you are going to have to overcome, and yes, it is the very first thing that you are going to have to do. Many people fail at this stage, make yourself different and dedicate time and effort to this and you will find that perfect niche for you to work in.
My advice is always look to the things you know, the things you are interested and can write about. You really do not want to work in a niche you have little or no knowledge in, if you do you will need to research every point, when you write you will not seem authoritative, whereas, if you write from your own passion and knowledge it will certainty come across in your writing, your readers will pick up on that and give you a level of unconscious trust based on the feeling they get when they read your pages.
I tend to use mind map software in these cases, but you can simply create yourself a mind map by jotting down some ideas on a page and then feeding ideas off ideas, until you have a number of niches that you feel confident that you could work in with your current knowledge.
Once you have narrowed it down to a maximum of three ideas, it is time to look into those niches and see which has the most potential for development, you need to do some leg work here, get yourself onto the search engine of your choice, and do some research, there really is no short cuts here, you need to put in the time to look and trawl, the likelihood is that if you are interested in your chosen niches you will already have a good idea of what is out there, but be sure that you are going beyond the usual websites you visit and look deeper into the search results to get a feeling for the market place. The questions you should be asking are:
Who else is operating in your specific niche
- What are people looking for that is not provided by those already operating in your niche
- What are those people already in your niche doing well
- What are those people already in your niche doing badly
- Is there room for another to operator?
I would also, at this point, do some keyword research, for example if you are looking to market pink cars, look at search phrases round the subject of pink cars. The Google Keyword tool can help here. You are looking for all the phrases that people search for that are related to your niche and the types of search volume there is for that niche.
There is no golden rule about what figure represents a good search volume. A search term may have a huge search volume, but also be very competitive, for example ‘Credit card’ has an exact local(uk) search volume of 22,200 (May 2011), which on the face of it looks great, but consider how difficult it will be to break into that niche, every man and his dog operate in that niche, including some big, big players, alternatively, a niche may have a very low search volume of 200 searches per month, but no-one else is operating in that niche meaning it will be fairly easy to rank number 1 for that search term and Hoover up most of those 200 searches, which, if you then turn into sales could mean good affiliate income.
It will also depend on the products that you are planning to promote, what is their value? are they high value items and as such one sale per month will bring in a good affiliate commission, or are they low value items meaning you will need to sell those in volume to get any reasonable return.
Obviously the ideal is a high value product, with a high search volume and little or no competition, however, the likely hood of you finding one that perfect are very slim so we have to work with what is out there.
Don’t let a competitive niche put you off, it maybe that you have an angle on that niche that no-one else has thought of, but be extra sure that you have got your research right and you are going to provide something that is both wanted and missing from the market place.
There are no real rules again about which of your ideas you should choose, which niches you should work in and which you should not, but the research detailed above will allow you to come to an informed decision. Much of it maybe a gut feeling that you can provide something new in that niche or that you will enjoy working that niche and as such the success will be secondary, and ironically, an operator who enjoys working is one that is usually successful.
2. Find some hosting
A fairly easy step, but make sure that you go with someone reliable, remember Google have recently changed their algorithm, to include page load speed, a great deal of this is down to the host, if they put large numbers of websites on a single server and over load it due to cost cutting, the likely result is a slow website.
I would recommend GoDaddy for WordPress Hosting, they also provide a domain registration service and also a ready installed WordPress hosting package, if you go for this you can skip the next two steps, making the process even easier!
Signing up is a very simple process, it is a click and buy, they will take you through step-by step how to setup your hosting, and you will be emailed all your connection details
3. Register a domain name
The registration process of a domain name its self is fairly simple, the trick is finding a good domain name.
A domain name can make or break your affiliate business, some of the best affiliate domain names simply say what they do, i.e. moneysavingexpert.com, they are memorable domain names, but they are also built on reputation.
When choosing a domain name, your keyword research that you conducted in the first place will help you. Good keyword domain names will help you in your search engine ranking, Google uses keywords in domain names in their ranking algorithm, so look out for keyword or phrase domain names where the keyword or phrase has a high search volume.
You will have trouble here finding domain names that have not been registered, however, there are two alternatives, buying a domain name from someone else, or ‘catching’ domain name that someone has failed to re-register.
I will blog more about buying domain names and catching domains in the future, but monitor the lists published by DomainLore and use DNViper to catch domains that you are interested in. Both those sites already have the relevant information on what you need to do so I will not re-publish that at this stage, but it is well worth your while getting registered on those sites, you may get that gem of a domain name that will make marketing your project that much easier.
4. Setup WordPress
Why install WordPress its a blogging platform? Well WordPress is so much more than a blogging platform, it is now a CMS, and the developers of WordPress are always trying to push it further into the CMS field with the new features that they provide.
WordPress is Open Source and as such it is free, you simply download the latest version and install it, you do not have to pay a programmer to write you a website, you are in control. It comes with many of the features you need for a good website already built in, menus, categories, tagging, image management, inbuilt search, plugins to extend its functionality and themes to change how it looks.
The setup of WordPress is a very easy simple thing to do, I will not re-post here what others have described far better than I can, follow the tutorial on the WordPress.org website and create your WordPress install.
Once you have WordPress installed you will want to get the plugins that you require to make your site do what you want it to do. There are many thousands of custom written plugins to extend its functionality, so it you have a particular requirement it is likely that there is a plugin to do it.
Make sure you do install the following plugins as a basis to any WordPress install:
WordPress Firewall2
Login Lockdown
WordPress SuperCache
All-In-One SEO
These plugins secure WordPress and make it more efficient in terms of the application. You may also want to read this article about making WordPress more secure. Do not worry too much about this but do make sure that you install the Firewall and Login Lockdown plugins as these will protect your site and your hard work from people who may attack.
There are also many thousands of themes pre-developed, themes change the look of your site so you can make it suit your nice well, for example for our pink cars website, you will want a theme that is pink, probably has a picture of a car rather than the default WordPress theme which is white with pictures of trees!
There are also many premium themes, these are themes that you will have to pay money for, but usually they are a fairly small fee of up to $100 (£50 ish), which is very little for a good looking designed site. I use the following premium theme sites which provide a good range of themes to suit all needs
Elegant Themes
WooThemes
WP Remix
WPZoom
Custom Theme Development
If you can not find a theme to suit your needs you can get one designed and developed by a WordPress Developer. At Digitalquill we do quite a lot of custom theme development for various companies. There are many companies that offer custom WordPress development, but make sure you get a WordPress specialist to do it for you.
You can either have your own designer create static designs what can be converted into a WordPress Theme or a brief can be followed, and the theme created from scratch.
Custom Plugin Development
If you have a particular requirement for your site that is not met by any of the plugins available, you do have the option of getting one written that will extend the functionality of WordPress. This will cost you from as little as £100 depending on the complexity of your requirements. Again make sure that you choose a Specialist WordPress Developer for this task and not just any web developer, as you will find it cheaper to get a specialist who already knows their way around WordPress and its Code. At Digitalquill we develop numerous WordPress Plugins so if you have a requirement please do let us know and we will try and help.
5. Install Datafeed Import Plugin for WordPress
This is where the magic starts, he holy grail for Affiliate marketers has always been to be able to create a website rapidly without the need to invest a great deal of money in development costs, this is the very reason why this tutorial has focused around WordPress.
The Datafeed Import Plugin for WordPress allows Affiliate marketers to create a website from an affiliate datafeed in a matter of minutes, and not only that it will keep your sites content up-to-date.
The Datafeed Import Plugin for WordPress is a premium plugin, but it only costs £25 and you can use it on as many websites as you like, and it includes free updates, meaning that when you buy you will continue to get updates for the plugin for as long as it is developed, ensuring it will work with future versions of WordPress and you get all new features created.
The Datafeed Import Plugin for WordPress is very simple to use. I will describe this later in section 7.
The datafeed import plugin will import any well formed datafeed in CSV, Pipe separated, XML or RSS format and create blog posts for each product in that datafeed. Unlike other plugins it gives you control over what data from the datafeed you use.
Typically a datafeed will have a large number of columns with a range of different types of data, title, colour, description, price, weight, size, image, thumbnail to name some. You may only want to use the title, description, price and image. The Datafeed Import Plugin uniquely allows you to select those columns from the datafeed you want and choose where you want them to appear in your site.
The datafeed import plugin for WordPress will create categories and tags for you and insert the post it is creating into the relevant category and add the relevant tags, it also works with the All-in-one SEO plugin so you can improve the Search Engine optimization of your site using the plugin.
6. Find a datafeed
You will need to sign up to the main affiliate networks, I would advise the following:
Commission Junction
AffiliateWindow
TradeDoubler
There are more and you will be able to find them with a simple web search. Once you have signed up you can search for a affiliate merchant that suits your niche. Ideally you will have already done some of this research in step 1 and identified companies with affiliate programs that you can promote.
These days the affiliate networks are generally very good with the quality of their datafeeds, in the early days of affiliate marketing, we struggled with getting quality data from merchants. We do still have some problems with some merchants who do not keep their datafeeds up-to-date, but this is getting less frequent.
Once you have found the merchants you want to promote you will need to apply to become an affiliate with them, I generally drop the affiliate manager an email to introduce myself and let them know what I plan to do with their affiliate program. This way you will have a greater chance of getting accepted onto their program and you will also get the affiliate manager on your side. This is good because they may then provide you with your own discount codes to promote or other promotional material that could be useful for you.
When you have been approved, find their datafeed, select the relevant format (XML is preferred, but CSV or Pipe separated formats are also fine) and copy the URL or Link to that datafeed. You are then ready to start an import into your WordPress site.
7. Setup an import
The datafeed import plugin for WordPress is very easy to use, the interface has help throughout incase you get stuck. In our case, once we have installed the plugin we are going to choose create feed from URL. This allows us to create a site that will automatically update its self.
The plugin allows you to schedule updates, I would suggest that you set it to update weekly, unless you are working in a niche where prices are constantly changing. I know of a colleague who uses this for a websites selling plumbing items, these literally change on a daily basis and sometimes during the course of a day, but the norm would be to set it to a weekly update.
Just to explain what this will do, it will re-import the data from your datafeed, and update posts where required, keeping prices and specifications up-to-date. It will also create new posts for new items added to the datafeed and delete posts that do not exist in the datafeed anymore.
Once you have imported the datafeed, the datafeed import plugin for WordPress will analyse the datafeed to find out what fields it contains, it will then present them to you giving each field a reference that you will later be able to use in the template youa re going to build.
The plugin gives you some options to filter the datafeed, you can choose to only import products that include a keyword, or exclude those that include a keyword. You can have as many of these filters as you like so you can make sure that you only import the products that you want from your datafeed. I have datafeeds that have 10,000+ products in them, but I am only interested in 5-10 of those products for my niche, so I use the plugin to filter those out and only import the ones that are in my niche.
You can also choose to only import a range of products from the datafeed, this was implemented for people who have slower servers, meaning that if your system struggles to import, make it only import the first 1000 of the datafeed, and then 1001-2000 etc. It is unlikely that you will need this if you have a fairly modern server.
You are now ready to create the template, this is the bones of the Datafeed Import Plugin, this is what it will use to create the posts from the datafeed, and it is where this plugin differs from others in that you are free to choose which columns/fields in the datafeed you use. You can choose to use them all, or like I do at times just choose to use the product name and price.
Creating the template is very simple, you just add the #1# reference to the template where you want that data to appear, for example if #5# is price you could add:
Price: £#5#
This will then be replaced for each product post created with the relevant price:
Price: £9.99
You will notice in the example above, I not only used datafeed data in the template but also static text. You can add as much or as little of your own text in the template as you like, this text will appear in all of your posts for all of your products.
The template designer in the datafeed import plugin for WordPress also allows you to add HTML content either visually using the buttons provided, add images, bold, italic, links etc, but also if you are confident with HTML you can go into the HTML view of the template designer and write your own code.
Once you have created the main body for the template you will need to tell the plugin which categories to post those products to, you can use either datafeed data or static data in te categories field, for example, if #7# is the merchant category, you could use:
#7#, Ford,
This will then put each post in what ever category is in the field #7# and in the category ‘ford’. The plugin will create categories if they do not exist.
You can do the same with tags, either add a datafeed reference and/or your own static text.
The final part of the template designer (if you have followed my advice from step 4) is the All in one SEO plugin fields, these can either be populated using static text or they can use datafeed data using the reference the plugin has given that field.
Once you are happy with the design of your template, simply click the process button and the Datafeed Import Plugin for WordPress will then process through the datafeed that you have imported and create posts for you in your site. It will do this in the background and give you a counter on the screen so do not be alarmed if you go to your site and the posts are not immediately viewable. Also if you have followed my advice from step 4, and you have installed the SuperCache plugin, be aware you maybe seeing a cached version of the site and you may need to force a re-build of that cache.
8. Write some unique content
Writing unique content is the most critical thing you can do with your datafeed driven website, anyone can follow these steps and create a website, but the chances are that would just replicate what is already out there. The Datafeed Plugn for WordPress has done all that hard work for you, but there is no shortcut to you adding value to the site.
This content maybe reviews of the products that you have listed on your site, tutorials about using them. Don’t forget that content does not have to be just words, images and videos are also useful for users of your site, if you can add value to the content that has already been automatically imported yourself you will be onto a winner. Customers want to know what you think, people buy from people so be friendly, avoid the trap of just writing ‘This is a great product’ type reviews, give a genuine opinion, better still give a glimpse of your experience with that product.
Adding unique content will not only please your customers but it will also please the Google Gods, who hate sites that simply duplicate content from else where, after all what value do they have for the internet user?
9. Promote your site
Promoting your site should be what you spend the majority of your time on. It is something that really gets people running scared, but there is no real magic formula or magic wand to promoting your site, you need to do the leg work yourself.
There are many options open to you to promote your site, I will briefly describe some of them below.
Google Adwords
I have started with Google Adwords as this is the only shortcut you can make. If you have some cash to throw at your project then Google Adwords or similar Pay Per Click advertising maybe the right solution for you. I am not going to go into details here about how you should manage that process, but make sure you know what you are doing before you go headlong into an adwords campaign as this could result in you spending money hand over fist without any rewards.
It goes without saying, no-one minds spending £100 on advertising if you earn more than that on commissions, but you need to be sure that you get your sums, adverts and keywords that you are biding on right.
Link Building
Link building is the single, only way to build up the reputation of your site and to build traffic. If your site has not inbound links, no-one will find you, Google will not see you as being authoritative. However, if you have hundreds of in-bound links then you will not only generate direct traffic from those links but you will also be seen by Google as someone that people want to link to and as such someone who is authoritative in the subject.
It would be very easy to go out and get 1000 link backs from random sites that are here today and gone tomorrow, there is absolutely no use in doing that at all, no use in paying for link building services unless they are reputable and are going to create good quality links.
The only link-backs that make any difference both for your generating traffic an in the eyes of Google are those from relevant sites, sites that are already authoritative and have a good reputation.
How can you build links? There are many ways, I always advise participating in forum discussions, and blog discussions, monitor the web for people talking about your niche subject matter and join in with the conversation. Don’t post ‘Come to my site’ style posts, but engage people in conversation, give them advice after all we have already established that you are knowledgeable about your subject otherwise you would not have chosen this as your niche in the first place. Link backs can come in the form of signatures, or pointing people to relevant products or advice on your site. Make sure you build up a good reputation on the community otherwise you will be in danger of being a spammer.
Engaging in this type of activity can also beneficial to you, it will allow you to talk directly to potential customers, find out what they are wanting, what they want to know, what they need and you can add those things to your site.
Social Media
Social media has become very, very important to your marketing strategy, twitter, facebook, linkdin all provide you with opportunities to promote yourself and your blog, tweet about new products, new reviews, new content, again engage with twitter users who are posting tweets relevant to your subject, follow others in your niche so you can stay on top of your subject.
Make a facebook and Linkdin page for your site and post information to it, you will find that all these pages will rank highly in Google and you will generate a great deal of traffic from them.
YouTube
I have already commented that content in your site doe snot just have to be text, more and more these days video content is becoming a great draw to people. Not only does it give you the chance to do something more dynamic than you can in text, it allows you to sell yourself, but it also gives you the chance to get a good ranking in Google. Remember those ‘Video results’ in the search engine results, your YouTube video could be there.
What is the use of all this other than to give information to your customers? What if they find my video from searches on YouTube its self? Well you can embed links into your video, and as we discussed above in the link building exercise you can engage with your potential customers.
Post video reviews of products, video tutorials and simple introductions to your site and what you are all about, these add to your site and give it a richness that otherwise could be lacking. Remember people buy from people.
Off-line promotion
Remember that just because your site is online and your service virtual, you can still do offline advertising, moneysupermarket.com spend millions on TV advertising, ad when you break it down all they are is an affiliate site.
I am not suggesting you start trying to product a TV advert, but local advertising, letter heads, business cards and the like all help to promote your site.
10. Keep updating and working on your site
As an affiliate marketer your work is never done, the fatal mistake that many make is not to have longevity with their projects, they do not see immediate rewards so abandon the project or simply flit from one project to the next, never bringing out the potential of any of the work they do.
If you have this mind set, my advice would be simply don’t bother, you will just waste your time. You have to b in this business for the long run. No rewards will not come immediately, and yes you will no doubt become disillusioned, but rest assured, you will start to see rewards if you continue to work at it.
Do not think that I have done all this work so I will leave the site to tick over, even if it is bringing in good affiliate income. You need to continually update, develop the content, add new products and offer a better service to your customers. Do this and you will be assured a happy future.
