The Post On Productivity I Wish Someone Else Had Written

Thank you Glen Allsopp!

So let’s get started…

My wife, Ayesha and I standing beside the skeleton of the 2nd largest crocodile here in the Philippines.

Our friends, Rodney and Maria

Together with the Iwahig Prison Dance Group

Getting ready for the underground river tour in Palawan

We’re still working on our wacky poses. hahaha

I should buy one for my drumset. hehehe

Our stay at the Daluyon resort (really nice here).

Island hopping time!

It wasn’t really easy driving this one. hahaha!

Love the beach and the clouds here!

Getting ready to go back to Manila

Read this email and you will find the motivation you need to push through any roadblocks that you’ve been having in your online business.

Hi Raymond,

This here’s a rant/pep-talk that sells nothing, but teaches
“everything”…

I know it’s been a while since I’ve kept up with you (my customers
& subscribers), so I wanted to kick things off with a little bit of
controversy…

———————-

First of all, yes, I’ve run 6.2 miles – check.

Secondly, yes, I’ve made personally made approx. $2 Million in
pre-tax net online profit the last few years, about half of which
is from affiliate income (and selling aff sites) – check.

But did I receive said funds from running 6.2 miles?

Well, yes and no.

———————-

Here’s the full story…

———————-

My wife (Sarah) loves to jog. She’s in great shape, and even though
every husband is supposed to say “she’s the most beautiful woman in
the world” (blah blah blah), in my case, it’s not hyperbole.

She has literally been offered modeling gigs, etc.

(And before you even think it – know that I had a net worth of like
-$1000 when we met, and not much more when we got engaged. And yes,
I know I am a lucky bastard).

And so, naturally, she likes to run in 5K, 10K and 21K endurance
races whenever there’s an event going on.

But the scary part is that – on top of being athletic and drop-dead
gorgeous – she’s also very good at convincing me to do stuff that I
don’t particularly like doing.

For example – running 10 KM events with her (which is 6.2 miles)

Ahhh-Haaa…

(At last – finally this email is starting to reveal the slightest
chance of making sense).

Remember how I said Sarah was in great shape, jogs all the time,
etc?

Yeah.

Me – not so much.

How should I put this… I think I’d be a great mascot for “Hefty”
garbage bags. That would be the type of modeling gig I would get.

Or otherwise some sort of commercial where the “image” they want to
portray would be a lumberjack-type guy with a beer gut and no
particular love for salads.

That’s me.

And that’s why running 6.2 miles is a pretty big deal. (Think:
Water Buffalo on a death march)

But I’ve done it a few times now. And every time I’ve endured this
strange ritual (running for a really long time, so I can receive
orange slices and a juice box at the end of it, whilst my internal
organs are shutting down), I’ve had the same epiphony…

I don’t know what it is, or why this happens – but EVERY time I
reach about the 5 mile mark, or even when I’m at the final few
minutes of the course…

…I just wanna quit.

Even though I’m literally steps away from the finish line.

Even though I’ve completed 90% or more of what is required to
successfully finish the race.

The inner “urge” to quit on the last stretch, to fall JUST short of
the goal, is paramount. Maybe this is a unique experience. I don’t
know.

But it’s very real on race day. Starting is easy. Pacing is easy.
The first 8/10ths of the race is burdensome, but doable.

But the FINAL STRETCH – though there is no difference in difficulty
or any physical aspect that is actually harder – requires every
ounce of willpower I can summon to keep pace and finish strong.

And somehow, I just do it.

Then for the final 50 meters, I “sprint” past the senior citizens,
power-walkers and middle aged women jogging with
strollers/chihuahuas who had passed me recently, and finish
gloriously.

(Immediately thereafter, I head to the orange slices/juice box tent
and have myself a delirious little feast).

————————–

What the Hell Does This Have to Do with $2 Million?

————————–

Believe it or not – everything.

I know to some people $2M isn’t much. (For example, the Government
- they’ve probably pissed that much away in the time it took for me
to type “pissed”).

But to most people, it ain’t chump change. That is life-changing
money. (And by the way, I haven’t “arrived” or anything. That was
$2 Million PRE-tax, remember? That leaves about enough for Sarah
and I to enjoy a Happy Meal at McDonalds and go out for a movie.
Still have a long way to go before I “arrive” anywhere…)

Nevertheless, a lot of people ask me questions about “how I did it”.

I’ve always struggled with that answer.

Truth is, it’s only been recently that I see it with total clarity.
It has nothing to do with niches, product choice, traffic source,
blah blah blah. The web has created millionaires out of every
platform, vertical and traffic method imaginable.

No, the “how” is a lot simpler than that.

In fact – my answer to that question has been refined to just one
word:

————————–

“FINISHING”

————————–

I am not particularly good at what I do. (I don’t even know what I
“do”. I do a bunch of stuff. Some of it works better than others.
Some of it flops.)

And I’m not even that good at “finishing”.

But the fact is, I have simply built, marketed and sold enough
stuff to get to that present number.

I am by no means the top-dog in my respective niches. In my best
affiliate niches, I was like #25, even though some of my campaigns
were into the 6 figures per year. The top guys were killing it.
(But they’re also probably single and this is their life).

All I know is that by simply FINISHING stuff…

…completing that authority site…

…loading in those autoresponders…

…outsourcing that article marketing campaign…

…finishing that salesletter…

…building those links steadily – a few a day…

…putting up those product reviews…

…You are setting yourself up to see results, period.

I know this sounds incredibly basic, but I’m willing to bet that
most of the roughly 30,000 people who’ve received this email today
can relate to this. (Even if only 12 of them have read to this
point).

For some unknown reason, the FINAL step is everything.

Most people get to the very end and quit.

(JUST before the results come in.)

That is the common denominator when I talk to people who are
“struggling”. They buy this, that and the other thing – screw
around with one strategy, don’t really finish it, then they try
another thing, etc…

(Sound familiar)?

Folks – even if you’re the “water buffalo” of your industry, and
your competitor-peers are the “grandpas and power-walkers” of the
niche – FINISH. Then do it again. And again.

It’s a million dollar strategy.

——————————

“But What About __________ in 2011″?

——————————

Yes, some technicalities have changed.

PPC is not “affiliate friendly”, that’s true. Neither can you just
auto-blog yourself into retirement by scraping WikiPedia or Yahoo
Answers across a diverse splog-network.

But really… what else has really changed?

The FUNDAMENTALS are the same.

I talk to affiliate managers from a variety of industries fairly
frequently, actually, and it BLOWS MY MIND how much money their top
affiliates are pulling, to this day.

For example, one guy (his name is Paul) manages the affiliates for
a newer product in a niche that is literally 36 months old.

One of their top affs is a college kid who barely takes it
seriously, and with one crappy review site – he’s pulling in about
$40K NET per month.

I could go on and on.

The internet is sort of like that stupid cliche… “One door
closes, another opens”.

There are new MASSIVE markets emerging every day, pretty much.

And in utilizing strategies like the Conduit Method (putting up
product reviews, comparisons, overviews) – you literally NEVER run
out of new opps for traffic, revenue, and growth thereof.

1) Start

2) Finish

3) $____________________

That is the equation.

Anyway…

I’ve got something coming up next week that will help some people
to both Start AND Finish. So stay tuned.

But more than that – please realize that this “stupid simplicity”
IS the answer.

Not some stupid course or “system”.

Sincerely

Chris “The Water Buffalo” Rempel
TheLazyMarketer.com
ActuallyRank.com
AffGenie.com
MakoDominator.com

When I was starting out I also had a ton of questions. Using Google to get some answers was really easy but in the “make money online” world, a lot of people are just full of talk and don’t really walk the walk. It’s really easy to get suckered in and believe everything you see and hear on the Internet. There’s this saying that always comes to mind… “People will say anything to make a buck and people will believe anything to make a buck.”

In my case, I’m one of those people who actually knows how to make a full time income with affiliate marketing but I’m not telling you this to believe me. With that being said, I would strongly advice you to just don’t blindly follow everything that I say. I don’t (and never will) have all the answers and my IM knowledge is still in super beginner level. hahaha! But the reason I’m having tremendous success with this IM business is that I’m CONSISTENTLY TAKING ACTION and seeing for myself with my own experiments what works and what doesn’t.

Now before I digress more, I would like to answer a question sent in by one of my subscribers. Here’s the question:

Hey Raymond,

Here’s my question:
What’s your opinion on long tail keyword with low comp and decent search vol?
How to find such keywords and your approach to successfully target them?
Hope to see your feedback soon.

When you’re looking for keywords, you need to satisfy two requirements. First, the search term needs to have a decent monthly search volume. I use the Google keyword tool and the minimum monthly that I need is 500 EXACT in global or local (U.S.) searches. I would like to remind you that no keyword tool is going to give you a 100% accurate results when it comes to search volume. I look at keyword tools as a basis and to get a feel for how popular a keyword is. I’ve learned inside Wealthy Affiliate that the most powerful keyword research tool that you can use is your BRAIN and so far I’m banking on that fact. hahaha!

Next is that you must be able to rank easily on top of search engines and this begins with gauging your competition. Now your competition is gong to be the 10 web pages on the first page of the rankings. When I started out, I determined SEO competition by putting a keyword in quotes but as I got more experience, it’s more effective and intuitive to just look at who’s ranking in the first page. Read the Keyword Research Simplified by Josh Spaulding to learn more about determining SEO competition.

Where To Find Long Tail Keywords?

My main focus right now is promoting physical products from Amazon. I believe getting keywords is so much easier when you’re targeting physical products. The marketplace for physical products is so huge that it’s really hard for a keyword to be saturated by marketers. And that’s why it’s going to be fairly easy to be ranking for keywords such as “product name”, “product name review” or “product name discount”.

Please don’t get caught up too much with labeling your keywords as long tails. Instead ask what keywords you are going to use if you’re in the shoes if your niche. This type of questioning will teach you how to tap the tremendous power of your brain and not depend on keyword tools. Look for the solutions that people are looking for in helping them with their problems because affiliate marketing is all about helping people solve their problems. The money is just the bonus for your genuine efforts in helping them out.

One example of this in my situation would be choosing products in Amazon.com. I saw a product that has a lot of consumer reviews but when I checked the keyword tool, the monthly search volume was not really encouraging. But I know that I found a good product to promote because the consumer reviews in Amazon were updated in real time and it’s going to be a while before the keyword tool picks it up. You can also look into your niche’s forum, the television, your friend’s discussion, basically anywhere when it comes to products to promote.

There are lots of people who make a lot of money in promoting info products from Clickbank but I found out that I’m much more comfortable in promoting real physical products that consumers use. And like I’ve said, there are many physical products that not many marketers are looking into and that’s where you swoop in!

Anyway I hope my answers helped you out in moving forward with your online business. There are still other questions that my readers sent me and I will answer them as soon as possible. If you have some questions, please send them over and I’ll do my best to answer them as long as they’re not related to Algebra. hahaha!

The Wealthy Affiliate University taught me how to become a successful Internet marketer. One of the things that I’ve learned from WA is how to spot a quality service and so my first thought was that you get what you’ve paid for.

To tell you the truth I wasn’t really expecting a good quality article from iWriter.

But I remained positive with all the new things that I encounter and so I decided to try them out. If you’ve been in the IM business for some time now, you and I both know that we always need unique content for our websites. And if you have the business type of mindset you know that your time is the most important resource that you have. So my advice is that you don’t buy that Ferrari yet! hahaha! Instead reinvest a certain percentage of your monthly income so that money becomes your slave and not the other way around.

I funded my iWriter account with $20 and ordered 4 articles with 500 words each. 1×500-word article is only $3 (300 words is only $2) and so my total was only $12! I ordered the articles right before I sleep and I was surprised because all the articles were ready the next morning.

Again I wasn’t expecting that much quality wise but I read one article and I just couldn’t believe what I’m reading! Obviously we all have different standards of how a quality article should come out but I was really more than satisfied with the article that I ordered. The articles from iWriter were so good that it prompted me to write this iWriter review even if they have no affiliate program! hahaha! That’s right, the iWriter links in this post are not affiliate links.

I already approved one article and that’s why you only see 3 pending articles that I need to review below. Here’s a screenshot of my article orders:

The article entitled “preparing for winter” is the one that I approved.

I’ve reviewed all the articles and in my opinion all of them were really good. They’re cheap articles but the quality didn’t reflect the price at all. The processing of the orders were really smooth thanks to their nice interface and the turnaround for the articles is just less than 24 hours! Are you kidding me?! hahaha! Plus, each approved article will have a spun version but the spin uniqueness is only 15% if you have The Best Spinner.

This is my first experience with them and I really hope that iWriter and its writers will continue to provide a consistent quality in service. I’m not sure if there’s any article writing service like iWriter but I’m just glad that I’ve found them. Thank you so much iWriter and keep up the good work!

Why do we have to build our own websites? Wouldn’t it be easier if we could just put an affiliate link in the article and direct the visitors straight to the merchant’s website?

My simplest guide to earning your first dollar with affiliate marketing teaches you how to do direct linking through articles (direct article marketing). But there’s one important reminder that I mentioned inside the guide. This kind of approach is NOT the IM business model that you want to pursue. But in my opinion, it’s the easiest way for a beginner to understand how affiliate marketing works. It’s also the strategy that I’ve used to earn my first sale.

I still remember that first time I was trying to learn the IM ropes. I was using Squidoo for my landing pages but I was having a difficult time getting indexed and ranked. I decided to promote a Clickbank product and bought a domain name so I could redirect the readers straight to the merchant’s site. The goal that I’ve set for that campaign was to write 4 articles a day with each having only 250-300 words. Ezinearticles.com wasn’t that strict so I could easily get my articles published even though the articles were very short. It was that time that I was also trying to get approved for a Platinum status so I have to get 25 articles approved. I ended up with over 20 articles but I was really burnt out. I lost the energy to write something that I didn’t really enjoy. But after a few weeks I checked my Clickbank account and was excited because I’ve seen my first sale from my efforts and it was a few days after a couple of months inside the Wealthy Affiliate University.

But we’re here to discuss the reasons why direct article marketing is not a long term IM business model. So let’s start…

Endless Writing

When you’re using articles to drive traffic to the merchant’s site, you have to generate articles in a consistent basis. You can make money using this strategy but the moment you stop writing, your income will also decrease and eventually dry up. The not so good news today is that articles from Ezineaticles or any other good article directory (GoArticles, ArticlesBase) is not that powerful anymore in terms of search engine rankings. When was the last time you’ve seen an article from a directory that’s ranking for a keyword?

I just checked one of my articles that was previously ranking in first page for a travel related keyword. I wrote this around August 2009 and it stayed in first page for many months and up to a year and it brought a lot of sales but now it’s ranking in page 6. If you want to rank your articles today, you have to target a long tail keyword and one that has little to no competition.

My strategy right now doesn’t involve submitting to Ezinearticles anymore since my whole focus is into ranking Amazon sites. If I do submit it’s because I just want a quality backlink for my search engine rankings.

Not Building Your Assets

When you write articles that will redirect straight to the merchant, your articles become the asset of the merchant. I know that we are affiliate marketers and we are promoting products of other people but we can still build assets. And one of the best assets that you can build is your own websites. Personally I never really liked building backlinks to my Ezinearticles simply because I don’t have any control over it.

Lower Conversion Rates

I believe this factor will heavily depend on the niche that you’re promoting and the angle that you’re going for. You can make money just by doing straight redirects but you’re leaving a lot of money on the table if you’re just funneling visitors straight to the merchant. The average conversion rate is 1% and this means that for every 100 visits to the merchant, 1 will actually buy. So if you’re going to use direct article marketing, you really have to do a lot of writing and generate at least 100 clicks. Don’t complain that you’re not getting sales when you’ve just managed to write 5, 10 or 20 articles. That won’t simply cut it.

Higher conversion rates will also depend on the keyword that you’re targeting. If you’re targeting buyer keywords and have managed to get top rankings then that’s probably good news for you. But for broader information type keywords, it’s going to be more difficult to warm up a visitor. And that’s why you need to build a website because that’s the place where you’ll give more information on what they’re searching for but only enough info for them to be interested in the product that you’re promoting.

There’s a ton of things that you can do when you have your own sites… build a list, gather comments, rank on top of search engines, monetize through advertisements, build more pages, etc. Most important of all, when the pages of your site is already on top of search engine rankings, you’ll then experience passive income.

These are just some of my thoughts and I’ve learned all of this from the community over at the Wealthy Affiliate University. I just turned 2 years last month (July 2011) and everyday my heart is just filled with tremendous gratitude that I’ve found them at the early stages of my Internet marketing journey.

First here’s the question:

Raymond, Thanks for the suggestion . Have marked a timeline to complete the trainings on CWS and start off with launching a review site.

However I am a bit overwhelmed since most of the markets look attractive (baby products, smart phones, home decor etc) and I am trying to identify profitable markets. From your review I guess you tried CWS from a review point of view (and it’s as good as you mentioned especially getting the perspective right for beginners). Additionally, if you could share a tip or two on identifying good markets (helpful tools/sites to find out what’s selling hot) and prioritizing them, either on a reply to this mail or your newsletter that would be great.

BTW I couldn’t locate a link to subscribe to newsletters on your site. Did i miss it ?

How Do We Find Profitable Markets?

Just to be clear (and because I have serious OCD when it comes to terminologies. hahaha), when you say market, this refers to a huge group of people. In the question, you gave some really good examples of some markets (baby products, smart phones, home decor) and that’s fine. But what you want to look for is a sub market under that huge market.

This is what you call a niche. Basically you drill down even further until you can find a sub market (niche) that you can potentially break through when it comes to ranking in the search engines and obviously the niche should have enough search volume for its keywords.

Let’s Drill Down The Baby Products Market

For this example we’re going to drill down the baby products niche and I’m going to use the Amazon marketplace. I have to say that I’m head over heels in love with Amazon’s affiliate program. If you’re still not seeing any results with promoting those acne guides and ‘how to cure *insert obscure disease here* materials in Clickbank then I strongly suggest you try out Amazon.

When you go to the Baby section (market) you will find a lot of sub markets. I can see strollers, car seats, nursery, feeding, swings, potty training, etc. You can classify these as niches but you can even drill down further to find more targeted and more specific niches.

Let’s choose safety gates.

I want to browse products that have a price tag of over $100 so you have to check that option in the left hand side. If you’re following me (and I suggest you do. hahaha) you’re going to see a lot of products that are over $100 and have acquired a lot of consumer reviews.

At this point I’m going to plug in the keyword ‘safety gates’ into the Wealthy Affiliate keyword tool (or the free Google keyword tool) and check out what keywords I can target and build a site from (I also like to target brand name keywords). The minimum exact monthly searches that I’m looking for is 500 and above.

My Suggested Gameplan For You

Suppose you’re going to work out a ‘safety gates’ campaign, I would advise you to build a general safety gates review site. Have a mix of both review articles and information articles. And rank the review articles in the search engines.

For example your domain would be… safetygatesreviews.com and one of your posts would be ‘kidco configure gate’ which is one of the many brands that distributes safety gates. Then you will work on building links so you’ll be able to rank the homepage for ‘safety gates reviews’ and the inside review page for ‘kidco configure gate’.

If you want a clear cut and simple guide into building Amazon mini sites that earns $50 or more per month, then I strongly recommend that you check out this Amazon WSO course.

How Do You Find Hot Products?

I don’t really have a surefire formula for this but watching some news and browsing the forums of your targeted audience can provide you a ton of ideas. I spend a great deal amount of time in Amazon and sometimes I would spot a product that got a lot of reviews just a couple of months ago and I classify this as a hot one. hehehe. If you have some ideas on how to spot hot Amazon products, I would appreciate it if you can share some of your strategies in the comments below.

What’s important for me is that the keywords have monthly searches and that I can penetrate the first page and eventually take over the top spot. And the good thing about Amazon is that there’s almost no second guessing if you’re going to be profitable or not. If you get ranked on the first page for a specific product name (eg. XYZ Sweep And Steam or XYZ Sweep And Steam review/s), it’s highly likely that you’re going to see sales.

I hope that you’ve found this answer to be helpful and I will try to add my RSS feed in the sidebar. hehehe. For now I will update you when I have a new post through my email list so make sure you’re subscribed. If you have some questions then feel free to send it in and I might write a blog post about it.

Unfortunately, I was one of those people who didn’t get any shadow of success in using Squidoo. It was really difficult to get a Squidoo page (they call this a LENS) indexed in the search engines. But still I believe that using Squidoo set me up to become comfortable in writing articles.

Just recently I saw a post by Tracey Edwards where she shared her simple technique of using Hubpages to promote Amazon products. I loved the simplicity of this strategy because this will allow you to test the conversions of a certain product. I mainly build new websites to promote Amazon products and honestly I’m not that 100% sure if they’re going to be successful but I’m very grateful that many of the sites I built have produced some really nice passive income.

Well this morning I published a hub page that promotes an Amazon product. I was surprised when I discovered that the hub page is already indexed (less than 12 hours) and is already ranking in the 2nd page for its product name keywords! The awesome thing is that I haven’t built any backlinks yet to that page. I’ve only experienced this powerful indexing and ranking stuff when I get my articles published over at Ezinearticles.com which I’m not using anymore. hahaha!

So right now I’m totally in love with Hubpages.com!

I believe the key to making this work is that you have to find something that has little to no search engine competition. The product that I’ve found has just been release a couple of months ago and there are still a few affiliates that are promoting it. Also try to choose a product that has a potential of getting noticed by their audience. For example in the product that I’ve promoted there were already 10 detailed product reviews from passionate consumers.

I’m comfortable in building my own websites but it can also be a good strategy to test products first before building a website for that product. And you test products by putting out content and getting them to rank quickly in the search engines. This can also be a really good way to get in front of trend traffic and get some easy sales.

I’m planning to write a free little manual that will contain some more details on how I approach this and so make sure you’re subscribed to my mailing list. Although it will take a few weeks before I know what really works and what doesn’t. That’s it for now. I suggest that you go over to Hubpages.com (or even Squidoo.com) and publish your first content then follow it by building some backlinks. If there’s any questions then please feel free to ask and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Well, I’m excited to report that June 2011 is that month!

I’ve set a new record this June and almost doubled what I’ve earned last May 2011 by generating $562.22! Thank you God!

June 2011 Amazon Earnings – $562.22

Amazon Income Recap

• January 2011 – $79.54
• February 2011 – $154.47
• March 2011 – $237.62
• April 2011 – $134.05
• May 2011 – $288.99
• June 2011 – $562.22

I’m too lazy to calculate the percentage of sites that contributed to my earnings. But I believe that most of my commissions came from only 3-5 sites and the rest probably came from related purchases and from sites that I built some months ago.

What Have I Learned So Far?

Patience is so important especially when you’re using SEO to get traffic. The number of days or weeks for a site to rank on top of SERPS will depend on how competitive your keywords are (what pages are ranking in the top 10).

The good thing about promoting Amazon physical products is that your competition in search engines isn’t really that difficult to outrank. You can easily get your first sale from a new site in less than a month if you do things correctly.

When it comes to the number of monthly searches for a keyword, I’m having success with choosing keywords that have an ‘exact’ monthly search of 1K (I use the Google keyword tool).

Then put some effort into writing quality product reviews because getting traffic doesn’t mean anything if you cannot convert your visitors into buyers. If you don’t like to write then the only option you have is to outsource your review articles. If you don’t have the money to outsource then stop whining and just get to work asap so you can reinvest later.

Right now I’m just going to continue on building these Amazon money machines until I reach my target income goal. If you want a good blueprint on how to setup mini sites that promote Amazon products then I highly recommend that you check out this course.

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Hi Raymond,

Your blog was the first access I had to SEO in January and I’ve been following faithfully ever since. I started very positive but made a couple of bad keyword choices that left me frustrated. I also got frustrated when all the backlinks I put in were not coming up. I ended up cancelling the products I bought and gave up for a couple of months. However I kept receiving your blog.

The turning point came when you put me onto FastAttack SEO and the warrior Forum. That really helped me get my head around SEO. I also found a great source for backlinks which really helped me out.

The final thing that fell into place was the keyword suggestions you gave a month or so back. I had a look at a few and with a bit more research found a beauty.

After a week I was halfway on page 2 just through the power of my url being the keyword. 4 weeks & 3 more articles later plus some great PR6 backlinks later and I went to no.4 on the 1st page. I got back from work to discover my first sale today.

I am so excited about where the site is going to go and inspired to create some more. My next challenge is finding killer content that will increase the sales. Any advice would be good.

Thanks for the great blog and I hope it goes onto inspire others.

yours very gratefully
Del
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