OK – let’s look at Step 2 – researching keywords. I am not sure why I always made such a big deal about keyword research before. I think it is because there was always this feeling that I just didn’t know enough. Yes, Amazonian Profit Plan depends on SEO or basically free traffic and therefore keywords do have great importance.
I think that I really got too caught up always seeking but never finding the truth about keyword research that when I read through APP the first time, I sort of shook my head when I got to the part about how they glean keywords. Paula admits she/they hate doing keyword research so they made it so simple that I was almost disappointed at how simple it was.
I don’t want to give away the whole idea but it involves taking the name of the product and all its variations as well as general terms and compiling a list that comes to a total of 500 exact searches a day. Wow, how simple is that?
So just to let you know how long it took me to compile my list of 5 products – maybe 30 minutes TOTAL. Then each product took another 30 minutes for each product to come up with a nice fat list of keywords just using Google Keyword tool.
So easy!
But here is where I got a bit tripped up the first time I read through Step 3 – Competition Analysis. After all, if the product we are hoping to promote are already very competitive, it might be discouraging to the new marketer. While I am not new, I admit I’d like to see so sales come in within 2 to 3 months. So their competition analysis makes it simpler to rank higher sooner.
It involves looking at each keyword and determining the strength of the top 10 sites. This involves looking at the Google pagerank of each backlink. Now, Paula admits that there may be other ways of doing it and they do use Market Samurai for some of their research, but this is what works for them. I am willing to do it their way for now, but I admit it is rather involved and is the longest part of choosing products.
Step 4 – Writing the Review
OK here is where APP stands head and shoulders above the rest. Paula admits that it hit them that since long sales copy generally outsells short sales copy, would it not apply to reviews? On a whim, they began to write longer more useful reviews and BAM! they were shocked at the difference in their conversions.
Well, it makes sense. When I first read that, something inside me clicked and I knew that this was the difference between why some affiliates have to build dozens of sites to make a decent living whereas Paula says that just one of their handful of sites they own that fits that criteria – just ONE! All from “piddly” Amazon commissions – pffft!
They don’t leave you alone here either. Very thorough explanation about how to write their long style reviews. They go all out taking you by the hand, showing details on how they determine what to write. They have included a full “real review” in the appendix too just for reference. Simply a no-brainer even for the most backward writer.
Yet as simple as it is, this part takes the most time – researching, compiling, sifting and writing out a good solid review page can take a good part of a day for each product. Is it worth it? I think of it as an investment – as these reviews will continue to bring sales long after the product has gone.
Let’s recap so far
So you choose 5 products using their criteria, do a bit of keyword research for each, check out competition, then you write a long review per their blueprint for each product. Sounds like work, huh? They openly admit it. But the point is well taken, that once the work is done it is done except for a bit of tweaking later as sales start coming in.
Next time, I’ll go over Step 5 – the part about publishing your content, which includes deciding whether to specialize or generalize your product sites, getting a domain, hosting, adding images and links. Then finally Step 6 – how to get traffic.
See you then!
