Blueprint Steps #7 and #8: Link and Cross-Promote

We’re going to look at the best way to link your niche family for search rankings and cross-promotion today.

Once you have your programs selected, we need to establish your network. The short version is that you’ll place your high-ticket affiliate products on your parent niche. The goal is to funnel lower-level niche traffic to this parent niche. This is important. This is why program selection is so important. Your lower-ticket items will be placed in the child niches.

In the below explanation, I’m going to assume you have one parent niche (P) and three child niches (C1, C2, and C3). Here’s how you’ll link your niche sites in this example:

C1 links to C2 and P. C2 links to C3 and P. C3 links to C1 and P. In other words, the children link to one other child each; and they all link to their parent. Make sense?

If you haven’t already done this, be sure to check out these two programs to help select your affiliate programs:

• http://www.BloggingInAction.com/desperate/
• http://www.BloggingInAction.com/molb/

Free Software, Graphics, and Books

By the way, if you want to get your hands on all kinds of software and books to help you build your VRE empire, join the Auto-Pilot Premier member group. I give out hundreds of dollars worth of tools, templates, graphics, and books every month for the insanely low membership fee of $4.95!

What might surprise you is that I make next to no money on this program. Why? Because I spend almost all of those $4.95 membership fees to develop or purchase rights to products that I give to you as a member.

In essence, when you join the premier group, you are joining a buyer’s club. In fact, members get to request the types of content they’d like to see available for download!

I don’t know how I can be more fair than that. Join us today .

Blueprint Step #6: Choose Affiliate & Advertising

We’re moving on to affiliate program selection today, and this is where things get fun.

Some affiliate selection is rather obvious, some is less so. Your best bet is to sign up for a range of affiliate services and browse their inventory for offers related to your pages. There are two important points to consider:

1) Your offers must be incredibly relevant, I mean SPOT ON relevant, or they won’t get clicked. If you can find an offer that mimics the keywords in the page, then you’ve done well.

2) Your offers must have value. That means that you have personally checked them out, gone through the signup process, and done your due diligence. This is not a requirement, but if people are clicking on your links, make sure you send them to a deal that they can use, not just one that will make you money.

That’s the point of niche sites — you’re finding a need and serving it. Yes, you make money in the process, but you don’t want to make money without providing your visitor a good experience. Keep your sites valuable, informative, and on the level, and we all benefit because people will be more likely to click.

You’ll want to sign up and browse affiliate programs at places like Amazon, Commission Junction, Clickbank, and Linkshare. You’ll want to create accounts at advertising sources like Kontera, Chitika, AdSense, WidgetBucks, and TextLinkAds.

Optimizing each of these services for profitability is outside the scope of this group, but it is something I cover in detail in “Blogging in Action.” That one chapter of the book is something that other people would sell as a full product!

• http://www.WordpressForBeginners.com/amazon/
• http://www.WordpressForBeginners.com/cj/
• http://www.WordpressForBeginners.com/clickbank/
• http://www.WordpressForBeginners.com/linkshare/
• http://www.WordpressForBeginners.com/kontera/
• http://www.WordpressForBeginners.com/chitika/
• http://www.WordpressForBeginners.com/adsense/
• http://www.WordpressForBeginners.com/widgetbucks/
• http://www.WordpressForBeginners.com/textlinkads/
• http://www.WordpressForBeginners.com/adbrite/

Now we’re crossing over from pure auto-pilot sites to affiliate marketing, and you know what? This is where you can earn some money. Affiliate programs like Amazon have low commissions but high conversions, whereas other programs have lower conversions, but extremely high commissions. We’re going to discuss finding those winners in the next e-mail.

Ingenious Way to Target a Niche

I’m sure you’ve noticed that this group is very tightly focused around blogging: specifically, learning to blog for six figures, redirecting traffic to blogs, and monetizing blogs. I rarely step outside this framework.

Until today. You probably realize by now that I’m a fan of multiple income streams. And I like to remain current on breaking developments in all of the industries I follow. That means that I end up following a lot of clunkers and dogs, because 95 percent of new developments are just noise. But that makes finding the truly memorable and outstanding programs all the SWEETER.

I’ve found two of those memorable programs.

Desperate Buyers Only

In one of the best-written e-books I’ve ever read, Alexis Dawes completely changed how I view niche and auto-pilot income. The concepts are so incredibly simple, yet effective, I’m actually embarrassed that I didn’t think of them myself.

Alexis will show you how to target an insanely narrow niche, and still make great money from it. There’s always been a balance. I use keyword analysis to help me find good, profitable niches. But one of the determinants of profitability is search traffic. Desperate Buyers Only allows you to target niches with less traffic, and therefore less competition, but still make great profits by increasing the conversion rate and profitability per visitor.

Simple, ingenious, and I’m so glad I found it. Check it out for yourself — I think you’ll be impressed.

1% M.O.L.B Wealth Formula

Alex Edevane really turned me around with this product. I ALWAYS go into these types of programs rather cynically, looking for holes. I just can’t stand all of the ridiculous claims, screenshots of income statements, or pictures of cars and mansions. After all, it’s just another affiliate program.

But Alex can back up his claims with a program that works — provided you work it. This is a solid blueprint for success, and while I think the content can be improved a great deal, I also feel that this is the single best way to get started in affiliate marketing today. Just like Blogging in Action is the best path to a six-figure blog, 1% M.O.L.B. is the best path to starting an affiliate marketing career.

Check out the proof yourself!

If you decide to use either of these programs, please shoot me a quick note to let me know what you think and how it’s working out for you. I’d love to compare notes. Who knows, maybe we can give each other a leg up!