Create Passive Income - Part 2

by Lynn Terry

Copyright © 2005 Lynn Terry

Reprinted with permission.

In my previous article, I told you a little bit about creating passive income with search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per- click (PPC) advertising. If you didn't read that article, you can go here to read it now.

So continuing that discussion...

Once you know exactly what term or phrase people are searching for - and how they are searching for it - it pays to take a close look at the competing web pages or advertisers. Then you have a good idea of exactly what it will take for you to jump in and claim your stake! Wordtracker can help you figure this out.

You can take a free trial run of Wordtracker here.

Now, if you don't already have your own product(s), there are two ways you can get started. You can find a great affiliate program, and then research the market. Or you can
find a great market, and then search for a complementary affiliate program. I use both of these methods, depending on which I happen to run into first.

(Some marketers will argue that you need to find the market first... but I'm going to assume that you are smart enough to know whether or not a product has a decent market -- and
then brainstorm the best ways to approach them!)

So that's it:

1) Find a product
2) Research the market

Finding a product is easy—you just pick one and run with it. Not all campaigns are going to be successful, so you start with one and you either get it up and running smoothly—bringing you in a nice passive income—or you fail fast. Period! But you can't do either until you get started!

There are a lot of affiliate programs to choose from. If you are having a hard time choosing a program to work with, try:

Clickbank
Commission Junction
Linkshare
Share a Sale
Affiliate Fuel

And here's one I just checked out recently - A LOT of great products to choose from:

Leadhound

But wait -- you can get lost on any one of those sites looking at different programs, and end up with 14 different products you want to promote. Just choose ONE to start. Jot down a note somewhere of the other programs you want to try next, one after the other. Trust me—you want to start out with a very sharp focus and expand slowly.

Next comes the Keyword Research - or researching the targeted market. If you're building web pages around your affiliate products, you want to choose 1-3 very focused keyword phrases (a.k.a. search terms) to optimize each page for. If you are going to promote the affiliate product via PPC, you want to find as many keywords or search terms as possible!

My suggestion: do both. Choose 1-3 keyword phrases to optimize for, and use the rest in your pay-per-click campaign for the same product.

You really want to choose keywords and phrases that are an EXACT MATCH for your landing page(s). For example, if I am promoting sweaters for small dogs, I should NOT use the keyword "dogs" or "sweater". It doesn't matter how many searches a day—or month—these keywords get. If the keyword isn't a perfect match for what I am offering, it is going to be a waste of time and/or money. (Proven Fact)

Instead, I would go for keywords like:

dog sweater
small dog sweater
small dog clothing
small dog clothes

...etc

Rosalind Gardner says that she typically has around 2,500 keywords for any given campaign. Rosalind is the author of THE SUPER AFFILIATE HANDBOOK. Now don't let that number scare you... instead, I shared that tidbit with you to give you an idea of how many ways there are to approach any given market.

If you want to pick up Rosalind's ebook, visit this page.

There are a lot of ways to "say" anything. Here's an example for you:

online
on line
web
internet
net

Get the idea?

So yes, you do have to do a bit of brainstorming. The keyword research tools out there are not going to do ALL of the work for you. However, they are VERY useful in a number of ways...

There are two that I use faithfully: WordTracker and Keywords Analyzer.

WordTracker offers a free trial, though it is very limited (only showing you 15 results per search). That said, you can use it over and over with no time limitations. It does show you different results for singular and plural forms of any given word - and it shows different results than other tools as the data from each is pulled from different places. So I definitely recommend that you use more than one tool.

Overture is a great place to begin your brainstorming. I often use their free Search Term Suggestion Tool to really get warmed up. You can find that tool here (and you'll want to bookmark it):

Go ahead and click on that link and then type "sweater" into the text box and hit your enter key. Here are some of the first few results you'll see (numbers might vary):

30,023 sweater
13,244 dog sweater
11,192 wool sweater
9,739 cashmere sweater
6,956 womens sweater
4,697 argyle sweater
4,579 small dog sweater

So you can see, just using the term "sweater" in the example above where we were promoting small dog sweaters... would result in A LOT of untargeted traffic.

Next - hold your mouse over the term "dog sweater" in that list, and click on it. Now you have a huge list of potential keyword phrases to work with!

Note: You really don't know which gets more searches: "dog sweater" or "dog sweaters" or "dogs sweater". Overture only shows you the singular version of any given word. This is
the reason you double-check your keywords with WordTracker.

Now if you think Overture is cool (and it is), you're going to LOVE Keywords Analyzer. This is the other keyword research tool that I mentioned above—one I use for all of
my keyword and market brainstorming whether I am working on an SEO project or a PPC campaign.

Let me tell you why I love this program.

Keywords Analyzer is capable of pulling literally thousands of niche keywords, and then giving you all the pay per click data on both AdWords and Overture campaigns that you would possibly need for "competition analysis."

You can also use it to research for search engine optimization (it has exact phrase matching for website results).

One of its most powerful and useful features is the "Advanced Search" function—this separates it from other similar tools and makes it a serious research tool—in addition to its ability to search for Pay Per Click data.

Essentially, what the Advanced Search does is to search your keyword and return a list of results. It then searches those results and adds the results to the original list. And then
it searches those results........and so on, as many times as you specify when you are setting up the search.

This is how it's able to generate huge lists—over 11,000 results for keywords using the word "car" and nearly 4,000 results for keywords containing the word "mortgage," for
instance.

The "Related Terms" search is a really useful unique search as well. This tool helps you research new angles to your keyword that you may not otherwise have considered. This
search interrogates Google and gives you a list of potential keywords that are all somehow related to your original keyword, but do not include it. Very often this list forms the basis for a whole new research session and new opportunities for your marketing!

Keywords Analyzer will also show you the most used URLs in pay-per-click ads for any given keyword. What this means is that you can plug in "small dog sweater" and research the competition—find out if most of them are competing to promote the same product... look at all of their titles, and really analyze their ads. And you can do all of this for
every keyword—all within one program. Very powerful!

But here's something REALLY cool. In the latest version, you can import results from WordTracker—so you can see all of these great details about THOSE keywords, too! It's
really simple. You just click on your Search button and then click "Import WordTracker Results."

And NOW you have the results from more than keyword research tool—all within this incredible program. Singular versions, plural versions, SEO info and competition analysis
- PPC details - you name it! It is THE MOST comprehensive keyword research tool I have EVER used.

Keywords Analyzer costs $79. It's well worth that price, without a doubt, considering just how much you can increase your profits—or begin to earn—when you have this kind
of information at your fingertips 24/7.

For me, all of these tools combined have been THE BEST investment I've made into my online business.

But right now - and for the next week or so - Chris is giving us a price break. This is a special deal for YOU, so if you share this link ... please share it sparingly. That means - don't publish it in your newsletter or share it on your blog... just a friend or two that you think could really benefit from the deal would be okay. Chris has said that if this page "gets out there," he'll have to pull it.

Here's the page - and you get Keywords Analyzer for only $65 (click on the link).

I am honestly not sure how long Chris will extend this offer for us—and NOW is the time that you want to begin your sales campaigns for the new year. I want to encourage you to give this program some serious consideration... because it's a good deal, yes—but also because it could make the difference in how profitable this year ends for you.

I use it. I love it. I make money online. And there's nothing different about you and me—YOU have as much potential as I do (if not more) and the opportunity to SUCCEED is out there for ALL of us.

Here's to our success!

P.S. Learn MORE about creating passive income by listening to our one-hour, recorded CD of our live teleseminar! Lois interviewed Lynn Terry to help you "Learn How to Create Passive Income so You Can WORK LESS and MAKE MORE" and you can still get the CD, MP3 recording and transcript.

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Lynn Terry is the founder of Self-Starters Weekly Tips and co-owner of Turning Ideas Into Dollars private forum. She has been earning her living online since 1997, a VERY long time in Internet years! Subscribe to her free weekly ezine about internet marketing. Lynn has recently published the "The Passive Income Guide for Online Business."

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