Google Alerts as a Content Source


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In addition to using questions you receive from people to generate content, Google Alerts are also a good content source.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts are emails that let you know when there are news items, blog posts, videos, etc. on a certain topic.

What you do is go to www.google.com/alerts and enter search terms (words and phrases related to the topic of your site) you'd like to track.

There are some options to choose when setting up an alert.

The alert “Type” default is “Everything”, which will provide you alerts from news, blogs, realtime, video, and discussions.

“How often” enables you to choose to receive alerts as it happens, once a day, or once a week.

“Volume” gives the choice of only the best results and all results.

I typically go with all types of alerts, once a day, and only the best results.

As I receive the alerts, I will go through them and check whether any of them are targeted and interesting enough to report on with my own commentary.

In addition to providing a constant flow of content, Google Alerts also enable you to expose your audience to breaking news, as well as new and unique resources, tips, and ideas.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. You need to get a domain and hosting for your site before you start creating content.

Filed Under: Creating Content

Make “Ask the Expert” Videos


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I answer questions I receive at AskShawnCollins.com on video, and then transcribe those answers to make blog posts.

Shawn Collins on YouTube

Video isn't for everybody, and I am not going to teach you how to create videos here, as that's a whole big tutorial in itself. But I will say that it's easier than I expected.

Back in late 2006, I decided I wanted to learn how to edit video, so I forced myself.

When I wrote the copy for my business Christmas cards, I included a note for people to go to a link to see a special video message. That gave me about a week to figure out video and get a video posted to put on that page.

I ended up purchasing Sony Vegas video editing software for the PC and had a completed video inside of a couple hours – just from looking at a couple tutorials.

Also, whenever I've gotten stuck, I've found that there are tons of videos on YouTube on how to do things with video editing software.

You don't have to sound or look like a newscaster. I film all of my videos in one take without a script with a Casio Exilim EX-FH20 and a tripod. I like that camera, and it enables me to shoot in HD, but really any camera that records video will do.

Anyhow, the reason I include video in the process is that YouTube is the #2 search engine. So why settle for having your original content indexed in Google, when you can also have it in YouTube?

When I answer the questions on video, my answers are in natural language and naturally keyword rich. There are services to transcribe audio, but my answers are just a minute or two long, so I transcribe them myself.

I include the questions as I receive them, so they are asked the way people really ask questions. I typically see variations of the same dozen questions or so, and I answer each with their minor differences.

As you might imagine, this strategy works well, because I achieve long-tail penetration.

Some people might get annoyed to sort of repeatedly answer the same questions. I embrace the chance to have my content out there for as many variations of a search as possible.

You can see my YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/affiliatetip.

Speaking of Google (they own YouTube if you didn't know), you can also use Google Alerts as a regular source for new content.

Filed Under: Creating Content

Become an Expert on Your Topic


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One of the main reasons people go online is to solve problems, whether they be questions about their nagging cough, fixing a gutter, recovering a password or what have you.

Ask the ExpertThat's where you come in. You're the expert on the topic you'll be blogging about (or you will be soon).

As I mentioned in my previous post (How to Create Content for Your Site), I created a site where people could ask me questions with the promise that I'd answer them on my blog.

My site for asking questions about affiliate marketing is AskShawnCollins.com. The site is simply a submission form and a thank you page.

I keep the form quick and easy. If you'd like to include some sort of upsell and/or collect additional information, check out how Tim Carter collects questions.

I created the question page as a standalone site a while back and managed to get the site indexed well for my name, so I don't want to mess with that. But there is no reason why you should do that – it's easier to just have the form as a page on your blog.

Ask Shawn Collins in Google

Anyhow, there are a number of ways you could put together the form to collect the questions. I like to use Freedback, which enables me to have each submission hit an online database, as well as being emailed to me.

Also, Feedback sends an auto-reply to the person submitting the question, so you have a chance to remind them to opt-in to a newsletter, subscribe to your RSS feed, or some other action to keep them coming back to your site.

While you are setting up a question form in Freedback, go to the account tab and select Spam Settings. On that page, you can choose to add a CAPTCHA to your question submission process to reduce or eliminate spam submissions.

spam settings in Freedback

I have a CAPTCHA and get few junky submissions.

The easiest way to answer these questions is by writing a blog post with the question the person asked and then your answer.

In the event you are not equipped to answer a question, just do a little research and cite your source(s).

You can see my past answers from submissions to my form in the Ask Shawn Collins category of my blog.

Some other Ask the Expert site examples are Ask Dave Taylor, Ask Leo, and Ask the Mama (my wife).

As you can see with those domains, you can go with branding yourself and your name or make it more about the topic.

You can stick with text for your answers, but adding video to the mix is a great enhancement for your site and to get more reach in the search engines.

Filed Under: Creating Content

How to Create Content for Your Site


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Now that you've figured out which topic you want to cover, you've got to start generating unique and useful content.

content ideasOne of the biggest hurdles in running an affiliate site based on content is simply coming up with the content.

I ran into that situation early on in my blogging days, which started in 2004.

Over the years, I figured out ways for the content to come to me.

One thing I did was to take a page from the book of home building expert, Tim Carter, and his site, Ask the Builder.

Based on his extensive experience building homes, Tim made himself available to answer questions related to home repair and building.

He would then answer them on video and in text in posts on his blog.

I also use Google Alerts to help me with ideas to create content by tracking keywords to find relevant news stories, blog posts, etc.

Next up, I'll explain both setting up your site to accept questions, making videos, and how to use Google Alerts to track news stories.

Filed Under: Creating Content

Narrow Down Your Potential Topics


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Now that you've created a list of potential topics for your site, it's time to narrow them down and decide where you will focus.

narrow down choicesYou can go a few directions here:

  • The most popular topic: more audience, more competition
  • The least popular topic: less audience, less competition

These are generalizations, but they're true to a degree.

So, while we are about to check out the popularity of your potential topics, this exercise is more to give you a peek at the potential, since you can make it work either way.

Start by going to Google and searching for your first potential topic with quotation marks around the words.

Google topic search query

You can see in this example that Google has about 1,220,000 results for “science fiction books”.

That's an awfully big audience, but it's also one that breaks out into a variety of sub-categories.

So, if this were me, I'd think about the genre, author, or some other thing I prefer, to make it more focused.

Let's say I go with “science fiction books for kids”.

Google topic search query 2

That cuts down the results dramatically. Now we're at about 161,000 results in Google.

Repeat this process with each of your topic ideas, and then pick one.

What would I suggest? Go with the topic that appeals to you the most.

And then you have to move on to Chapter 3: How to Create Content.

Filed Under: Site Topic

Pick a Topic for Your Site


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So you want to be an affiliate and start making money off your site(s)? Well, the first thing you have to do is figure out the topic of your site.

Which topic for your site?There are two ways to go with this choice. You can either try to capitalize on something that's popular right now, or focus on a subject that you're interested in.

I would suggest the latter, as my experience has been that I lose interest in sites I create on trends.

After all of the initial work in getting the domain, hosting, site design, content creation, etc., I have just let sites die time and time again, because they were not interesting to me.

Your experience may be different, but I wanted to put it out there.

Anyhow, as far as picking a topic for your site, try making a list of your interests and passions. It can be a country, a sports team, a breed of dog – whatever it is that you really care about.

Do that right now, and then we'll move on to the next step… Narrow Down Your Potential Topics.

Filed Under: Site Topic

Introduction to the Extra Money Answer


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Hi, I am Shawn Collins, and I got my first computer in 1994. I was a year out of college and on the hunt for a “real” job.

Shawn CollinsAt the time, I was working in an administrative position for $10 an hour and no benefits. That was the most I'd made since getting my degree. Previously, I worked at a hotel front desk for $5.50 an hour and later as an assistant manager at a Blockbuster store for $7.50 an hour.

I wanted something more, and hoped a computer would help me get it. This was before I knew of Internet access at home, so I essentially got the old desktop clunker to write and print resumes and cover letters.

A couple years after buying the computer, I got an account with America Online. That was when it all changed. My computer evolved from a word processor to a life transformer, but I wouldn't realize that for quite a while.

One day, when I was playing around on AOL, I stumbled on a tutorial for HTML, which is code to create a website. I thought it would be fun to create a site, so I went through the lessons.

My first site was a single page about New York City and things I liked to do there. My HTML skills were limited and the page was pretty horrible, but my friends started visiting. That gave me the inspiration to keep it updated with my latest antics.

I can't remember quite how I got there, but I ended up at the Amazon.com affiliate program in mid-1997. The program would pay me a commission for referring sales to them. This was wonderful – I was underemployed and newly married, so the chance to make a few extra bucks was huge.

After I joined up with the Amazon affiliate program, I put up some links on my AOL website for people to buy books about New York City, and I waited for the riches to roll in.

Back then, you had to wait a good, long time to find out if you sold 250 books or nothing at all, because there was no online reporting. They would send a quarterly email with sales figures and commissions.

When my first commission statement came through, I was really anxious to open it. My eyes scanned down to the part about the money I earned, which was a total of $0.00.

But I didn't give up. I couldn't. I was so sure this could work, and it was just a matter of figuring it all out. The problem was that I couldn't find any resources to help me. This was way before the days of blogs, podcasts, magazines, and conferences on affiliate marketing.

It was a constant state of trial and error. I started focusing on reviewing new books about New York, and I was getting more pushy about having my friends and co-workers check out the site. When I got my second commission statement, I'd earned nearly $20 for the quarter.

Now, that sounds pretty horrible for three months of work, but it was proof that there was potential here. And it was a time when I really needed more money. My wife Vicky and I were making modest incomes and really wanted to buy our first house.

At a time that we were pinching pennies, I asked her if she was cool if I spent $70 to get a domain name for two years. It was a lot more expensive to get a domain back then, and that was money we didn't have to spare for a silly hobby.

She said no. I was sure I could get to the next level if I could just step it up and move my site to a real domain. I asked again and again. Finally, she couldn't take it anymore and agreed it was a good idea (or she figured her sanity was more valuable than that $70).

I felt totally reinvested with a domain name, VelocityNYC.com, and I studied the code on every site I liked to improve how mine looked. The site became my obsession, and I would work on it evenings and weekends when Vicky was taking graduate school classes.

The next time an Amazon commission email came through, I'd gotten up to $75 for the quarter. My domain investment was covered and I'd seen a big increase from the previous quarter. I was finding that more time and effort was equaling more money. What if I could keep doubling or tripling those amounts?

Well, it was more like I had to double and triple those amounts, because I was still earning a meager salary, and Vicky recently got the good news that she was pregnant. She wanted to stay home after the baby was born, and I wanted the same. But that meant we were going to have a third member of the family and less than half the income.

After privately freaking out a bit, I started brainstorming ways to make my site better and get more readers. Up until this point, I thought Amazon was the only affiliate program in the universe. But one day during my commute to work, I read about a website called Refer-it.com that was a search engine for affiliate programs.

There were hundreds of affiliate programs listed, and I was able to really broaden the products I could offer and make them even more relevant to the stuff I was writing. The next commission email from Amazon revealed that I was over $300 for commissions, plus I was making money with other affiliate programs I'd recently joined.

Affiliate marketing was paying the phone, cable, and water bill. Then it was covering the car note, and later the mortgage. I was making real money and moving from making ends meet to being comfortable financially.

This didn't happen overnight, and it wasn't easy, but it happened, and I started expanding what I was doing. Since I was in baby mode, I bought babylounge.com as my second domain, and made a portal for new parents. Then I bought another domain and another. I was finding that it was really fun and satisfying to write about stuff that interested me and paying the bills.

All these years later, I am still an affiliate. But I no longer work for other people. I walked away from spending my days in a cubicle in 2004, and I haven't looked back. Affiliate marketing is a lot different these days from when I got started. It's easier and cheaper to break into it. I have over 150 domains, and I work on my sites daily.

There are big opportunities for anybody to make from a few extra bucks to a living online. You don't have to be a computer programmer or a writer or marketer. You just have to bring commitment and passion to the table.

I'll take it from there. This site is the site I wish I could have read in 1997. it contains the lessons, tips, mistakes, failures, and successes of mine along the way.

This site will take you from having no clue about making money online to applying concrete advice to put more money in your pocket. I'll explain a lot of things, such as how to brainstorm ideas to earn cash working on something you love; start a new website in 30 minutes; test ideas to maximize profits; and scale your online business to increase revenue.

I am not a researcher or journalist. I have actually done all of this stuff, and I'll tell you how to do it yourself.

There are some people who shouldn't read this site… those who are already affiliates and know their way around creating a site, as well as anybody who wants to get rich quick. If you fall into either of those categories, don't read further. Click the back button now. Seriously.

For everybody else, read on and begin your path as an affiliate marketer.

Start with Chapter 1 – Pick a Topic for Your Site.

Filed Under: Introduction
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