Here’s What I Learned:

1. Most people don’t understand how to do link building right:

There is a severe lack of understanding on how to build links to smaller niche websites as well as tactics used to build links to larger websites. So what I’ll be doing is buying monthly memberships to every major monthly recurring article marketing / link building style services out there (tell me what ones you want to see in the comments) and documenting case studies on my blog showing me (or one of my VA’s) using them.

My goal is to find some software service(s) that I can wholeheartedly recommend for building links more quickly to smaller niche websites. Higher end link building is something I can talk about as well, but so many people are interested in the niche website building aspect and they get stopped because of link building. Even if this costs me a few thousand dollars in subscription fees this should be worth it to be able to show some useable data to you. I’m not going to reveal the niche websites I’ll be doing the link building on (see this post for why), but I will document rankings, total number of links built etc.

2. Most people don’t understand how to find a good niche

This was another trend. Too many people had crappy niches that they’d selected. I think I might do a webinar talking about this in the future and sharing some of the tools I use, but more importantly how to interpret the data these tools provide into actionable tactics. More on this to come.

3. Most people don’t understand how to set up a niche website correctly

I saw a lot of poorly placed advertisements, bad looking websites, complaints about the time it takes to make a unique look for each website etc. I also received at least one hundred emails over 2011 just from people asking for feedback on their websites so I already knew this was a problem area. This is something I’m certain I can clear up for you. I’m going to be hosting a webinar with another niche marketing expert very soon (make sure you’re on the newsletter to get the invite). We’ve been working on the solution to this problem in the form of a WordPress theme that we’re calling the last niche website theme you’ll ever need to buy (presumptuous you say? if you come on the webinar you’ll see what we mean). We’ve been working on this project with a team of programmers since Oct 2011 and it’s finally ready for a limited beta release where we’ll be selling it at a discount to people that make it on the webinar.

In any case, we won’t just be pitching our theme on the webinar but just discussing general site construction as a whole and showing how the theme solves the problems.

Jan 30th Update: Do you want to be a beta tester? The theme is just about done, but we want a few beta testers to help out. Please contact me here if you want to work on the theme, provide feedback, submit bug reports and get the final theme for free.

Overall Impressions:

I know this feedback came from a small sample size of people when compared to the thousands of people on my newsletter, thousands that read my blog and listen to my podcast etc. but I’m sure there must be more of you struggling with these concepts and tactics. So I’m going to be spending some time talking about the topics above in upcoming blog posts.

1st: What link building services do you want me to pay for?

2nd: What else do you want to learn from me in 2012?

Every Amazon Associates like to reach their income goals, be successful, and get an Amazon payback month after month. What really makes the difference among them? The skills and tools? And the niche? I will share my secrets (success story) with you so you, too, can be successful.

Who am I? I’ve been following Chris’ blog since June 2010 and a proud student of his Niche Profit Course. Joining Chris’ NPC in March was one of the best decisions I have made on my online business journey. I had my first sale in May, 3-digit in Oct and 4K+ earning from Amazon in Nov 2011:

In order to be successful, I have been keeping a positive mind-set and a focus on one business model to help grow my monthly paycheck from Amazon. I hope this would inspire you to become a prosperous one.

Say NO to these 4 killers:

1. “I can’t!”

How many times have you heard about this inside yourself? “I can’t do this; I can’t do that.” Stop saying this to yourself. You can’t do it because you “really” can’t? In most cases is not “I can’t “, but “I don’t want to”. As long as you put your mind in doing something, then you can do it, no matter how hideous the task is.

2. “It’s not much!”

Yes, Amazon Affiliate commission starts as 4% which is not much. However, everything adds up. When you ship out 7 items or more, you get 6%. Shipping out 630+ items will get you 8%. Indeed, comparing to Clickbank Affiliate and Adsense payout, you could experience as high as 10% conversation rate. Every little bit does add up.

3. “It doesn’t work!”

If it doesn’t work, how come thousands of Amazon Associates are making hundreds and thousands every month? There are many business models out there. Amazon Affiliate is just one that worked well for me. Why not make it work for you? Why are you chasing THE next online business idea one after another?

4. “It’s too difficult!”

No pain, no gain. Indeed, internet marketing is not a rocket science. If you break the process and steps down task by task, it’s not that hard as you imagine. Simple walking away would not get where you want to be.

Instead, fill yourself up with a positive mind-set and start saying YES:

1. “I can!”

Trust and be confident in yourself is the first step to get you to take actions today. You know more than enough. No matter how big your goal or dream is, you can!

2. I set and REACH my goals – Set your goals little by little; one at a time. Take your time to define one, schedule and take action to reach it.

I set my daily and monthly financial goal, but it won’t get me there without taking actions. Instead, I set measurable goals like writing one product review every 2 days, build 10 backlinks everyday, or build 2 product review sites a month etc.

3. “I’m working on and finishing this!”

Reading blog posts, studying ebooks, watching video training won’t get you to reach your goals unless you do something with the information you’ve learned. Get off your butt and work on a task one by one. This is all you need to complete your project in schedule.

Sometimes it may take longer than you plan to complete a task like writing a product review, create backlinks, and customize your WordPress theme. Or you may hit road-blocker and don’t even know how.

There are tons of free information out there to unblock yourself. Google search, read, and do it piece-by-piece.

4. “I’m learning and growing everyday.”

There is a lot that we don’t know; We don’t even know what we don’t know. That’s ok.

As an aspiring Amazon Affiliate, you just keep learning on daily basis. It’s totally okay to make mistakes as they are your best teachers. Would you tell me which profitable internet marketers didn’t make any mistake?

You don’t need to know all steps perfect to get your niche sites out and make your sales. You are not failing, you are just one step closer to your success. Each of us have to take baby-steps in order to get to where we want. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it will certainly require us to work hard to achieve our goals.

Did I miss any successful mindsets that you would like to share with us? Which one is your favorite one?

From Chris: I will echo what Kent said. This business model really isn’t rocket science but it does take concentrated work on a few very specific tasks. If you’d like to buy Niche Profit Course you can do it here. Whatever you decide to do, pick one thing to focus on and go after that.

7 Day Holiday Shopping Earnings For One Website:

Google Adsense: $666.74

Amazon Associates: $326.21

Commission Junction + Linkshare: $200ish

I also made a few hundred dollars from other merchants as well

Overall 7 Day Earnings For One Website: Roughly $1,200

Boo Yah! Thank you for shopping America.

How Did I Maximize My Earnings For This Website?

Let me cover some of the specific things I did for these earnings:

Writing Content To Target Seasonal Shopping Keywords:

The first thing I did was write Black Friday, Cyber Monday etc. deal style posts using my standard keyword style i.e. “Cyber Monday -My Niche- Sales” and every time these types of posts cause huge spikes in traffic to my various websites. Millions of people every year search exactly in this manner of “Cyber Monday -Some Niche- Sales” and the first strategy was to write content targeting those keywords.

Result: Gave me traffic spikes and earning spikes on those days.

Monetize The Content Very Well:

This year more and more retailers were doing deals every single day from before Black Friday began, through Cyber Monday and now they’re still doing them every day all the way up to Christmas. I noticed this trend last year and so moving into 2011 my goal was to increase my income from other sources which includes Google Adsense and other affiliate programs like Linkshare and Commission Junction across the board.

Using More Affiliate Programs:

I more heavily promoted Wal-Mart (who had some really good online deals this holiday season), Buy.com and a few other large merchants besides just Amazon.com through Linkshare and Commission Junction. This helped give an extra few hundred dollars for the month.

Google Adsense Strategy:

For Adsense I went for an inline Adsense approach instead of just using out of the way banners (this is a pretty obvious step of course, but normally I’m much more focused on going after the affiliate commissions). The Adsense ad titles and URL’s matched my regular site navigation link color and I left the text of the ad black. I trailed all content with Adsense ads as well which is something I’ve since done on every site I own. The idea is that if people don’t find what they’re looking for after looking through the content the next natural step is to click a link to leave. In this case, the first link they see next being an Adsense ad.

Amazon Associates Strategy:

For Amazon I just focused on linking to products within my niche that were on sale for the entire black friday / cyber monday deals week time period. I didn’t spend a bunch of time focusing on the lightning deals this year because I noticed those products were selling out far too fast to do any heavy affiliate promotion of them. You can see more tips on how to make money with Amazon here.

Email Marketing Strategy:

I sent multiple emails out during this week just linking back to the content that I created above. Email has always been a pretty strong component to making money over the holidays and that’s something that I like to do for my larger authority style websites (I don’t do a ton of email for my smaller niche sites).

Go Create And Promote Last Minute Shopping Content:

If you missed the boat on Black Friday / Cyber Monday promotion on your websites don’t miss the days leading up to Christmas. You can make a lot of money on “Last Minute” style keywords and shoppers for your websites, so make sure you’re creating and marketing that last minute content on your website later this month. Let’s make December a record month for our website earnings

Don’t Own Any Websites?

If you don’t own any websites stop reading about all the money I’m making and get started making your own websites. You can sign up for my free course outlining how I make money with websites below this post (or via this link) and that’s a great free way for you to learn more about this business – All I ask is that you don’t sign up and do nothing with the information I’ve provided.

Check Out The 1 Day Cyber Monday Hosting Deal Here

Free Webinar Bonus Incentive:

To help get you started off on the right foot I’m also going to host a webinar on what it takes to make a profitable website for everyone that signs up for the 50% off hosting deal today through my link above. On the webinar I’ll show specific examples of profitable websites I’m running today and highlight the key elements you need to focus on to create profitable websites of your own.

I do receive a commission if you sign up for hosting through my link and that’s partly why I wanted to do this bonus webinar for you. It’s a way to say thanks for the support and to also help you learn from some of my real life successes and failures with websites over the years.

Today is the last chance to get hosting for 50% off and to join the free bonus webinar I’ll be hosting in early December. The Cyber Monday Host Gator hosting deal ends at 11:59 PM CST tonight!

Get HostGator Hosting Today For 50% Off Here

Note: This bonus webinar is only available for people who sign up for hosting today using the link above. (Just send me an email with the URL you used when you signed up for HostGator hosting and I’ll send you the webinar invite. A webinar replay will be provided to those who can’t attend live.)

You need to be a new HostGator customer to get the 50% off so keep that in mind as well.

What’s Upcoming On The Blog?

I’ve been using the strategies I shared earlier on how to make money on the holidays and so far have set income records for almost every website I own. Google Adsense isn’t even my focus and I earned $200+ with it yesterday lol. I love this business.

I’m going to be sharing more tips on how I killed it this year with my websites and email marketing so be sure to stick around I also have an awesome podcast episode coming up with someone who got started in domains back in the mid 90′s – visionary style.

1. Keep Track Of All Holiday Shopping Time Periods

I love Amazon for well over 90,000 reasons now, but what I love most about them is their ability to literally create trends that all other online retailers follow. Here are the major shopping periods for Amazon in the month of November that you need to keep track of:

A. Countdown To Black Friday Deals Week (already happened last week)
B. Black Friday Deals Week (going on right now until Sunday)
C. Cyber Monday (Monday November 28th)
D. Cyber Week (Tuesday November 29th through the end of the week)

If you don’t know when these shopping time periods are going on you won’t be able to take advantage of each shopping time period.

2. Heavily Promote The Shopping Periods

Promotion should come in several different ways. Here is how I maximize income from my website properties during Black Friday deals week:

A. Write Your Black Friday / Cyber Monday / Cyber Week Article Titles For SEO

Depending on the size and competition of your niche it’s entirely possible for you to be able to rank for “RC Helicopter Black Friday Deals” and your website might look something like bestrchelicopters.com/rc-helicopter-black-friday-deals. There are hundreds to thousands of people that will search in that manner (“Keyword Black Friday Deals”) for tens of thousands of products and niches.

B. Drive Traffic To Your Black Friday / Cyber Monday / Cyber Week Article

The best way I’ve found to drive a ton of traffic to my holiday sales articles is via my email lists. I run email lists for every single website that gets a minimum of a few hundred unique visitors a day. If it’s a product review website I might give away a buyers guide or a pdf on the top 10 products or brands related to that niche to get them to sign up. In most niches outside the internet marketing blogs you might read visitors are for more likely to sign up for an email list for something free than they are on a blog that talks about how to make money online.

C. Actually Write About The Best Deals

This sounds obvious, but if you don’t put in the effort to actually share the best deals you’ve found on Amazon and other retailers then you’ll have a very low conversion rate. Part of the reason why in the past I’ve been able to break $1,000+ dollar days with my Amazon earnings on Black Friday and Cyber Monday is because I save my various niche blog readers and email subscribers time by finding them the best deals and simply telling them what they should buy because I spent the time to find them.

Overall Suggestions:

If you haven’t written a Black Friday deals post for your various niche websites then I hope this blog post serves as a reminder to get one out immediately and cash in on the holiday shopping period when EVERYONE is receptive of seeing good deals. I’m shooting for another $1,000+ day with my websites and if the last two years are any indication I should break that mark again.

If you haven’t even gotten started building websites – what are you waiting for? Go snag a Black Friday hosting deal at HostGator for 50% off

Why I Show Off Websites I Own That Make Money

The reason why I share websites that I’ve made money with is because people won’t believe what I say and keep reading my blog unless I show proof. So there’s no better way to show people they should listen to my advice than to show them specific real life examples of websites I’ve made money with. I think after showing everyone how I’ve sold well over a million dollars worth of products for Amazon, sold a website in a deal worth six figures, bought a website and with a little effort turned it into an income stream that may break $1,000 this month (more than quadrupling the monthly earnings from when I bought in in July) people have probably seen enough to know that I’m speaking from actual experience.

I share these examples because it makes for compelling content, builds credibility for me and in turn more people read my blog and participate in the stuff I’m working on (On that topic – can we get some more donations?). But now I’m straying away from the reason why I wrote this blog post in the first place so let me get back to the point:

How I Found Every Website You Own:

I have a subscription to the website WhoRush.com and with a very simple search using my blog as an example I can find the following websites that I own:

There are additional tools that allow you to search by IP address, Google Analytics ID, Google Adsense ID, Whois search etc. as well.

If you tell me a website you own and you have even one website on your server with an Adsense ID I can use that to find every other website you own that uses the same Adsense ID!

Thanks for telling me about that one website you own and are trying to sell on Flippa – now I know every single other website you own, can look through each of them to see how you’re getting traffic from Google using another tool like SEMRush.com and can copy the niches you’re in if it looks like there is enough value there for me to compete.

Now I don’t explicitly seek out people that share their websites to do the above, but there are a lot of savvy people that do. WhoRush and SEMRush are two amazing research tools (I love SEMRush the most though) The point I’m trying to get across is that you should never tell people about your websites that make money. Now some of you might be thinking – ‘Sweet now I can use these tools to go check out all the websites Chris uses to fund his lavish lifestyle’ (joking of course) – well it’s too late to do that because I’ve set up safeguards to prevent this that you can employ to protect yourself as well.

How To Prevent People From Seeing All Of Your Websites:

The only surefire way to prevent people from finding all of your websites is to have doubles of everything:

1. I have two Adsense accounts.

One Adsense account is a personal account and tied to my SSN# and another is for my LLC which is tied to my business. (completely ok for you to do)

I never tell anyone about the websites I own and run under my second Adsense account. I also don’t host any of those websites on the server that this blog is on so there isn’t anyway to find those websites that way either.

2. I have four hosting accounts.

I have two dedicated servers with HostGator and a couple shared hosting accounts for some smaller niche websites I run.

You only really need to have two hosting accounts if you want to protect yourself, but I use a dedicated server for this blog and a few other websites I’m hosting here for stability purposes. I have a second dedicated server for some larger websites I run under my second Adsense ID. In any case, the point being that you don’t want anything that links the websites in one hosting account to a website in another hosting account. So don’t use the same Google Adsense ID, Google Analytics ID etc.

3. I use domain privacy on every domain name I own.

This helps to prevent people from using the Whois tool that can search for your name, address etc. and find you that way as well.

Overall Summary:

There are tons of bloggers in this space talking about their earnings each month from niche websites (without disclosing URL’s) and in less than 5 minutes I can find out every website they own, how much money each one is probably making based on the traffic and keywords I see they rank for and just about everything else about their business. If I can find out this information then you can bet other people can too.

Now because of this added privacy I have to pay an extra few hundred dollars a month for another dedicated server just to prevent some savvy unscrupulous blog visitors that may stop by, read about some of the successes I’ve had and want to find what other things I’m running that are currently successful. So you can save yourself a lot of trouble by simply not telling anyone about your successful websites. I could go into more detail about how to protect yourself but the above tips will help you out quite a bit.

I am curious though – how many of you knew that tools like this even existed – where people can find basically every website you own very easily? Let me know in the comments below.

Disclaimer: The following was not a paid review post, but I do have a free comped subscription to WhoRush.com and SEMRush.com. I’d gladly pay for SEMRush.com and probably WhoRush.com as well (SEMRush is definitely my favorite though).

Email Sent To California Amazon Affiliates:

Hello,

The Amazon Associates Team
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/

Why This Is Good News For All 50 States:

This is the first state that has repealed the affiliate nexus tax after it was put into place (correct me if I’m wrong). Now we just need Illinois, Colorado, Connecticut, North Carolina and Hawaii to step up and repeal their laws. If you live in one of the states still affected by the Affiliate Nexus Law keep up the fight – at least you see now that it’s possible to get this stupid law repealed.

Thanks Lorraine For Sending This In

Update 1 From Tristan at Amazopia.com via the comments below:

I don’t know if I’d be celebrating quite yet. The law hasn’t really been repealed.

So either way, it looks like California affiliates are screwed… eventually. Amazon might very well have to boot its California affiliates again in a year when the Cali law goes into effect, at least.

Doh! Serves me right for writing a blog post but not more accurately reading every detail about it. A national online sales tax is something that we’ve been heading towards and if Amazon can do something without closing down the affiliate program that’d be great.

In a down economy states are always looking to find ways to increase tax revenues and deal with budget shortfalls. Sadly, this usually comes in the form of new taxes from state legislatures / governors and the new tax most threatening to our industry is the affiliate nexus tax.

What Is The Affiliate Nexus Tax?

States argue that even though an online retailer (Amazon for example) doesn’t have a physical presence in their state they claim having an affiliate in the state represents a physical presence for the business because they are helping to sell the online retailers goods in their state (silly huh?). So once there is a physical presence established in the state the state then says they can collect sales tax from these merchants because of the affiliate relationship.

Primary Problem With The Affiliate Nexus Tax Law: It Doesn’t Work

The politicians involved in signing these laws into are either ill informed or just plain stupid because the businesses helping to promote and push these laws into existence aren’t Mom and Pop shops that are “hurting” as the bill proponents would have you believe, but rather huge national retail outlets like Walmart. So as Amazon has proven time and time again, whenever the affiliate nexus tax law passes in a state they simply shut down their affiliate program and then the state not only isn’t able to claim sales tax revenue they thought they could, they also end up hurting thousands of people that rely on affiliate program income to make a living. Now I don’t want to get into any political debate so let me just share how others have gotten out of this mess.

How To Set Up A Business In A Neighboring State:

Disclaimer: Again I repeat – I am neither an accountant or a lawyer, the advice I’m about to share is based on what I’ve heard other affiliates do when the nexus law passes in their state. Consult with your accountant and/or a lawyer before doing anything outlined here.

Step 1: Create an out of state LLC or other business entity
Step 2: Use a registered agent service to forward your mail
Step 3: Open a bank account in the new businesses name
Step 4: Voila, you can now reapply to various affiliate programs that were shut down because of the affiliate tax nexus law under your new business
Update: Good discussions in the comments as to whether or not this method is allowed – just another reason for you to ask your lawyer and/or accountant for advice for your state: See here.

Overall Advice:

As with most things in life when someone throws up a roadblock the easiest thing to do is not look for a way to get around it. But, if you’re willing to put in a little work and hustle to make your business work even in the face of various obstacles thrown at you I’d suggest the alternative of simply moving onto other affiliate programs and other forms of website monetization. Remember there are thousands of ways to make money online you just need to pick one that works for you.

Need To Sell Your Amazon Website Now?

If Amazon has shut down their affiliate program in your state and you’re not interested in pursuing the above please contact me if you have Amazon focused websites you’re looking to sell now. We may be able to work out a deal: Get Rid Of Your Website