There are several free resources for keyword research. However, a big annoyance in the past was Google’s keyword tool, which did not provide actual numeric search volume data. Google has finally opened up their keyword tool!

Google’s keyword tool now provides numeric data on total monthly search volumes and average search volumes. I used to use Seobook’s free keyword tool, but Google’s keyword tool is just as good - or better.

Paid options such as Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery (which can cost hundreds a month) are now obsolete. If you’re targeting search engine results on Google, who do you think is going to have the best data?

Try out Google’s new and improved keyword tool!

If you are using long-keywords, you might be frustrated by how little traffic they bring in. Even if these keywords are profitable, they can have an overall small value. Here’s how to keep using long-tail keywords but still bring in large amounts of traffic.

Use long-tail keywords to target buyers - of other products

The value of long-tail keywords is that they allow you to target visitors in the buying phase, who are most likely to make a purchase through your affiliate link. These are people who have already thought about specific products and hopefully have a wallet or credit card in hand. You can expand the scope of your keywords by targeting competitive products with similar long-tail keywords.

Suppose that you are trying to sell “affiliate ebook 1″. You would develop marketing campaigns for keywords such as “affiliate ebook 1 review”, “affiliate ebook 1 scam”, or “affiliate ebook 1 cost”. Now, look for similar products in the same niche. Suppose there is “affiliate ebook 2″, “affiliate videos 3″, and “affiliate site 4″. Now you can target similar keywords, such as “affiliate ebook 2 review”, “affiliate videos 3 scam”, and so on.

When the visitor reaches your page, you can review the competitor’s product, and then compare it with your original affiliate product. Recommend your product over your competitor’s product, and you will be poaching potential customers for your own affiliate program.

Target long-keywords across product types in the same niche

When you follow this strategy, you can also expand your marketing efforts effectively across different kinds of products. In the previous example, I suggested that you could compare an ebook you are selling with videos or a membership site. This way, you can capture an even larger customer base interested in the same niche.

The main point is to find people who are looking to spend money in a niche similar to your own. You are no longer restricted to finding people who search for your specific affiliate product, which could be very small. This simple tip can greatly increase your traffic and profits!

The Open Source Affiliate blog has been running for a while now, and I would like to know what would be most helpful to my readers.

It seems like the most traffic so far is to the product reviews. I can provide more reviews, and more in-depth summaries of the content. Let me know what type of content, or which specific products, you would like me to write about, by leaving a comment. All comments are moderated before appearing to prevent spam, but I will definitely see each comment.

If you prefer learning more about specific affiliate marketing products, rather than general affiliate marketing tips, I can change the direction of this blog to give you what you want.

People are always trying to sell the latest get-rich-quick scheme based on internet or affiliate marketing. How quickly do you think you can really get rich online if you are starting from scratch?

How affiliate pros make money quickly

You might have seen marketing “gurus” or “pros” brag about making $10,000 in 1 day, or how they launched a new product and made $100,000 in the first week. These guys are NOT starting from the beginning. They already have an established base and resources that they can leverage to produce these kinds of results.

If you are starting from the beginning, you should not expect to have similar results right away. Experienced affiliate marketers have many contacts, both in the real world and online. Their social or technological networks are extremely powerful tools to leverage. For example, some of these people already have a mailing list with 100,000 subscribers. If they create a new product and email their subscribers, even at a 1% conversion rate, they have 1000 immediate sales.

Another example would be people who already own a large network of websites. Suppose they decide to create a new money-making site, whether that site sells memberships, uses Adsense, or reviews affiliate products. By linking their preexisting large network to the new money-maker, they immediately gain large amounts of traffic and Pagerank. If you create a new website, you cannot expect to have such similar results.

Making real, consistent money takes time

Laying down the groundwork to make consistent, large amounts of money takes time. You might be able to find a quick blackhat method to earn you a quick burst of cash, but for stable profits, you will have to be patient. Whether you are using article marketing, link building, or other similar methods, it will take time for the traffic to increase and you to make profits. Suppose your landing page converts 1% of visitors to a sale. That means you need 100 unique visitors every day to make 1 sale per day, for $20-40 a day. 100 unique visitors is certainly doable, but not overnight.

To give you some idea of what’s realistic, I will describe the results for some of the first affiliate campaigns I tried. I wrote one article each for a couple different products, and created a Squidoo lens for each one. One Squidoo lens receives about 3 visitors a day, and each month I get about 1 sale. Another lens receives about 1 visitor a day, and over 3 months, I made 1 sale. If I had kept writing more articles, and submitting them to more directories, I’m sure I could have increased my traffic and profits. However, I didn’t know back then if those niches were making any money. Until I waited long enough, or if put in enough effort, to receive a couple hundred unique visitors, I wouldn’t know if that niche was worth pursuing. Now that I know, I can go back and develop the good niches, if I choose to.

Set a realistic affiliate marketing timeline

Don’t waste money pursuing fast promised riches from internet marketers. Instead, create a realistic timeline and goals for yourself. Then, go about pursuing them. You could make the goal of having your first affiliate sale in a month. Maybe your next goal would be to have 1 sale a week in the next month, and continue setting goals until one day you realize that you are a rich affiliate marketer!

How would you like your websites to dominate the first three pages of search engine results for your target keywords? I won’t make you pay a large price for this “secret”. Find out how to boost traffic by capturing ranking keyword sites for free.

What is Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 refers to the variety of websites with user generated content that are gaining high Pagerank and search engine results. Examples include Youtube, Myspace, and Squidoo. These sites are authority sites with high Pagerank, so user generated content on them often rank on the first page of search engine results. In fact, these sites are basically 100% user generated, which means you have a free open platform for creating high ranking sites.

People have been taking advantage of Web 2.0 internet properties to promote affiliate offers. Often, this appears in the form of spam or other low quality content. Google has been penalizing some of these sites, but they still remain viable platforms for fast ranking.

Ranking for keyword search engine results with Web 2.0, for free!

Many Web 2.0 platforms use nofollow links, which means you can add your link to the site, but it will not help you main website rank better in the search engine results. However, this is not a problem. What you want to do instead is to get your domain name out there, regardless of whether your actual site ranks well.

Say you are targeting the keyword “newbie affiliate marketer” and have a website called newbieaff.com (unregistered as of this writing). Then, what you would do is create websites on the various Web 2.0 properties. However, always remember to include newbieaff.com in your property names so that you visitor picks up on it.

For example, you can create a Youtube channel with the name newbieaffdotcom targeting your keywords. Post some affiliate tutorials. Next, create a Yahoo Groups call newbieaffdotcom, and post some relevant material. Then, create a Squidoo lens with newbieaffdotcom in the title, and so on.

If you do this, for moderately competitive keywords, you can expect to have your Web 2.0 properties dominating many of the results on the first couple of search engine result pages. And this cost you exactly 0 dollars!

What Web 2.0 properties to use for keyword SEO?

There are many Web 2.0 properties you can use for your keyword campaigns. The more you use, the better. The different kinds of Web 2.0 properties you will want to use are social bookmarks (Digg, Propeller, etc.), social networks (Blogger, Myspace, Squidoo, etc.), and media sites (Youtube, Metacafe, etc.). You can also consider traditional article marketing (ezinearticles, goarticles, etc.) as a limited form of the same idea. However, if you combine all of these different methods, you will get the best results.

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel to become a successful affiliate marketer. You don’t need to pay exorbitant fees, either. Just study and implement the strategies you used by successful affiliate marketers who are trying to sell YOU stuff.

Example: Learn how to run an email campaign

Let’s say that you want to run an email campaign promoting affiliate offers. If you browse affiliate product pages, you will often notice opt-in forms. Submit your email address here (just create a new one from yahoo or gmail if you hate spam). Don’t buy anything they market to you! Just collect the emails and study how they are running their campaign. How frequently are emails sent? How long are emails? How much content vs marketing?

Search for affiliate codes with Google

If an affiliate does not cloak his affiliate links, you may be able to see the unique identifier in the affiliate URL. Try searching for this on Google. Now you see what offers that affiliate is promoting, and even how he is promoting them. If you find a squidoo lens, try searching for the URL of the lens. Now you see how that affiliate is promoting squidoo lense. You can learn a lot by researching your potential competitors.

Reverse engineering: a free affiliate education

Internet marketing gurus will tell you all sorts of things about how to make money online. However, often there is a big difference between what they say and what they do. Forget the theory and market-speak. Look at what they do. This is how to make money, and you can see how they are doing it for free!

What is the difference between a short term and long term affiliate strategy? While you are making money, are you building YOUR online assets or someone else’s? Let’s examine the difference between two different affiliate strategies.

Short term affiliate marketing

If you follow the traditional path of affiliate marketing and simply use article marketing or PPC, you may only be building up a short term path to profits. Each time your campaign dries up, you will have start over from scratch. This means you must perpetually write articles and promote PPC campaigns.

Who is benefiting the most from your work? Think about all of the articles you submitted to ezinearticles.com, or all the lenses you created at squidoo.com. These sites are benefiting from the content that you created for them. These large sites also benefit from the free traffic that you provide. They increase in Pagerank and authority. As you go on an article marketing campaign, you also provide them with more backlinks.

This is why when your campaign ends for some reason and you have to pick a new product or keyword, you need to start over. Meanwhile, these large sites can redirect traffic as they see fit and continue to profit.

Long term affiliate marketing

Although using fast or free methods to make money now is not a bad thing, you should also consider developing long term affiliate marketing goals. If you buy your own domain and hosting, you can start adding permanent backlinks and traffic to YOUR site. The process may be slow, but in the long run, you will have a stable source of traffic. You can then redirect it to whatever affiliate offer you wish to currently promote. Your hard work at creating quality content and backlinks will benefit YOU.

How to transition from short term to long term strategies

Making money is often faster with short term strategies. However, you should think about taking some of the profits from these temporary methods and investing them into your long term strategies. Take some of your PPC or Craigslist profits and devote them to building your own website or even your own products. This way, you can enjoy immediate profits, but you also build a long term money-making foundation. What you really want is a permanent online business that provides you with money 24/7 automatically. Think about the end goal while you continue on your affiliate journeys.

If you are having trouble finding a low-competition, high-traffic niche for your affiliate marketing, here’s a tip that can help you out. Just keep track of current events in the news or on TV, and exploit the opportunities.

Keep track of the news and keyword trends

Every day when you read the newspaper or watch TV news, you should make note of any truly novel, attention-grabbing pieces of news. People who hear about it will search for more information on Google. If it is a new piece of information, there may not be a lot of websites about it. This is your chance to capture large amounts of traffic by putting up a quick blog post or website with the right keywords.

Another place to search for upcoming topics is Google trends. They show you the most searched keywords on a daily basis. These keywords often reflect current events as well.

Monetize with relevant affiliate offers

When you create a quick website or article, you will want to find a relevant affiliate offer. You may have to be creative. If the topic is a celebrity musician, you could offer ringtones from the musician. If the topic is technology-oriented, you could offer tech gizmos for sale. In the worst case, you at least put up some Adsense.

Move fast to profit from current events

Many news items blow over after a few days. You have to be alert for hot topics, and move quickly to profit from current events. This tactic is not for every affiliate marketer, but something to keep in mind if the opportunity arises.

Although many affiliate marketers start with selling ebooks through Clickbank, there are many other ways to make money through affiliate programs. Let’s look at the different kinds of affiliate programs, and how you can make money with each one.

Affiliate sales programs

Affiliate sales programs are the common type of affiliate marketing. Clickbank, one of the most popular affiliate programs, is a prototypical example. You, as an affiliate marketer, try to convince someone to buy a certain ebook. In turn, you receive a portion of the sales price. Informational products are popular with affiliate sales programs because they are easy to purchase online, with immediate delivery following sales. Other affiliate programs for physical programs include Linkshare and Consumpion Junction, which serve as umbrella organizations for many different companies. Other companies, like Ebay and Amazon, have their own affiliate program. Physical products you usually provide a smaller commission than informational products, because the high production costs decrease the profit margins. However, more people are willing to buy physical products, such as those you would see in an ordinary store.

Cost per action affiliate programs

Unlike sales programs, cost per action (CPA) affiliate programs pay you whenever a customer performs a specific action. These actions can vary from simple clicks to complicated survey answers. Google Adsense is the most popular example of a program that pays whenever a user clicks on an ad. For such programs, you are usually not allowed to promote the ad directly, in order to prevent the advertiser from losing money on artificial clicks.

Other CPA programs pay per sign up, which can be free for the customer. Some CPAs will pay you each time a customer supplies a zip code or email address. Other require the customer to fill out a survey, or other more detailed information about himself. Sometimes there is a cost to the customer, such as payment of shipping and handling to receive an otherwise free product. In any case, the payout for CPAs is usually lower than for direct sales commissions. However, CPAs are often easier to obtain, since it is easier to convince a customer to fill out a form than to part with his money.

Which kind of affiliate program is best?

The type of affiliate program you choose will depend on the your campaign’s niche, as well as the source of traffic. If you are receiving targeted traffic for a niche where people purchase many products, you would be better off with an affiliate sales program. If, on the other hand, you receive general traffic, where people are still looking for information rather than products, you might be better off with a CPA that connects visitors with product information. It is usually best to diversify your options by joining and promoting multiple types of affiliate programs.

Title tags are an important part of search engine optimization. You should obviously put your main keyword targets in your title tags. However, titles also have the dual purpose of capturing your reader’s interest. Here are a few tips for optimizing title tags.

Search engine optimization: double your titles for double the keywords

You can have your target keyword in your title more than once using a related form. For example, if you keyword target it is “affiliate marketing”, you could create a title such as

• Affiliate marketing advice: successful affiliate marketers reveal their secrets

This type of title covers the variants affiliate marketing and affiliate marketers. Another option would be to use a related word.

• Affiliate marketing advice | How do internet marketers think?

This last title shows how you can split up your title with the pipe symbol.

Making readers click on your titles

Often your title serves as a link from another page (such as Google’s search results). In this case, you want your title to stand out and attract attention.

One way to invite curiosity is to ask a question.

• Do you know how to make money online?

You can also include a controversy term.

• Affiliate marketing SCAMS.

This title also demonstrates the use of capitalization. Use all capital letters sparingly.

Try using non-standard symbols to start your title.

• ~Affiliate marketing~

This can lead to higher clickthroughs. Imagine a reader scanning down the Google search results. He will notice the symbol (sort of like a bullet point).

These tips should help you optimize your title tags for both search engines and readers.