The Road To Success Is
Accomplished Through
Action Steps

As I said before, personalize your work schedule. Some steps will take more time to complete than others. If a certain Action Step doesn’t ring a bell, go back and review that particular part of the discussion. Work at a pace that is comfortable for you.

The key to success is to build your affiliate business the right way the first time.
 

STEP 1	Understand PREselling and its Effect on Conversion Rates Know the difference between selling and preselling.
STEP 2	Brainstorm Your Site Concept Develop a list of all the subjects that you know and like. Short list three concepts. Choose a tentative Site Concept. You’ll finalize it shortly.
STEP 3	Develop High Profitability Topics Develop a Master Keyword List. Identify demand (how often a keyword is searched for) by using Overture’s Suggestion Tool. Determine supply (how many sites already provide that content) by using AltaVista or Google. Keep research notes (for each keyword) on supply site info, possible partners and ideas for content. Gather this info from the top 20 SE ranking sites for your keywords. Choose the highest profitable keywords. They have high demand and low supply and offer a good number of possible partners. Diversify your master keyword list by breaking out (increase the number of related keywords). Use JimTools or Ixquick or LookSmart. Add keywords that reflect your customers’ needs and wants (how, what, when and where they search.)
STEP 4	Grow, Prune and Group Best Affiliate Programs Grow your possible partners research results by doing a search for each keyword on your master keyword list (“+keyword+affiliate”) to find merchants with affiliate programs or content sites that are affiliates. Use AltaVista, Overture, Google and/or Ixquick. using AltaVista Link Tool (enter link:domain of content site). checking out specialized Affiliate Directories like Associate Programs.com and Refer-It. joining Affiliate Backend Providers such as Commission Junction and BeFree or Affiliate Intermediaries such as Vstore or Nexchange. Diversify and reduce risk. Don’t give too much emphasis to any single program. Eliminate high-risk programs by identifying negative features. Select and categorize excellent merchant-partners (that you are proud to represent). Use Alexa.com to help. Finalize your selection of good affiliate programs that fit with your proposed Site Concept.
STEP 5	Refine Final Concept and Register Domain Name This action is not necessary if you own Site Build It!. The cost of a domain name is included. Use information in your master keyword list to refine your site concept. The key parameter is: As narrow as possible, yet still with lots of profit potential. See ten factors outlined in chapter 5. Begin work on Domain Name. Identify a “Valuable Preselling Proposition.” Answer in a very few words what specific and high value information your site delivers and what your unique positioning is for this delivery. Include your VPP in your domain name. Get further ideas from sites such as NameBoy. Confirm availability   and trademarks Use the service of a registrar to register your domain name.  Comprehensive list Register several domain names to keep future expansion avenues open. Choose a Site Concept that is something you know and love and that has excellent profitability. Take your time to identify the best concept and domain name.
STEP 6	Build a Site that Gets the Click! Start with the physical layout. Design it like a pyramid with three Tiers. The home page (Tier 1) focuses upon the fundamental Concept Keyword. It links with Tier 2 pages (high profitability pages). Each of these pages links with five to ten related Keyword-Focused Content Pages (Tier 3) Deliver valuable content to your readers and tasty content to the Search Engine Spiders. Establish your VPP. Excite your reader. Describe the benefits. Write content copy that answers the reader's question, What’s in it for me? Use your keywords frequently so that the SEs will rank you highly, your Title tag, META keyword and description tags, H1 and other header tags, Body copy, Link tags, file name / domain name, Image ALT tag and name of image. Experiment with differently constructed pages to find the most successful formulas for your theme. Create Keyword-Focused Content Pages that fit with your Site Concept and VPP, have a good supply / demand ratio and suit your interest / passion. Continue building until you have 50-70 content pages.  Don’t try to do them all in one week. Even if you only do one per day, you will accomplish your goal in two months. Just think, in one year from now, you could have 6 Theme-Based Content Sites, each a source of income!
STEP 7	Build Traffic to Your Content This step covers chapters 7, 8 and 9 of the course. It demonstrates that building traffic is an ongoing process. Submit your concept site to the major free Search Engines (AltaVista, Google, HotBot, and Lycos). Follow their submission policies. Watch the spider activity in your log files to see if and when they visit. Track each engine to see when your pages are indexed. Track the Search Engines’ rankings of your Specific Keywords. Tweak until at least half of your pages rank in the Top 10 on at least half of the Search Engines. Build popularity points with the SEs by increasing the number of important and related links to your site. List with major directories and with directories that are specific to your area of interest. Try exchanging links with other noncompeting sites. Interlink your domains that have related topics. Research and submit bids for keyword placement at the Pay-per-Click Search Engines (Overture, Bay9.com, FindWhat, etc.) Bid a minimum bid higher than the highest site that seems to reach your target visitor, as long as it makes financial sense. Work the niches, bid on hundreds of keywords related to your site. Get listed in the Major Directories (Yahoo!, Open Directory, LookSmart, and the others). Use techniques like word-of-mouth, e-zine publication, ads, link exchanges, sig file, etc. to build even more traffic.
STEP 8	Know Your Visitors Analyse your traffic. Know where your visitors come from and what words they use to find you at the Search Engines. Find out, and follow on an ongoing basis, the number of visits and visitors that your site receives on a daily basis and which pages are most popular. Do a Click In Analysis; create special tracking links to measure the success of off site promotions. Do a Click Through Analysis; convert your outgoing links to special tracking links to measure the success of on site links to know what exactly people are clicking on and what they are not. Build upon what works. Improve or eliminate failures.

Then repeat the process for every new Theme-Based Content Site that you develop. Build your affiliate business as big as you want. After all, it’s your road to success!

Well, that’s it. You now know enough to

• look deep within yourself and find your passion/knowledge
• create a site based upon that knowledge, full of high profitability topics
• find affiliate programs that fit with what you know and love
• write content that presells and gets excellent CRs
• write content that also acts like honey to the Search Engine Bears.
• build traffic through a variety of strong techniques.

Now it’s in your hands. Ultimately it all comes down to what one of my favorite entrepreneurs once said

There’s nothing else. Go get ‘em. I wish you only great success in all of your Web ventures.