First up, I hope you had a great time at Christmas. Thad and I both got snowed in on our travels (separately)!

So much for global warming!! Record snow levels all over the place and more to come over the New Year. It will NOT stop me getting to the pub tomorrow and I hope you all have a great time.

But as ever New Year is a time for re-assessment. Looking forward…learning from the past… making resolutions… making progress… learningnew skills…

This month’s niche report focuses specifically on the latter. It’s a niche where the demand is solid and growing and we think it offers an excellent opportunity for those who are willing to go that extra mile…

ANC Members should head on over to the member’s area now to check it out:-

http://affiliatenicheclub.bigcatskillz.com/members/

We’ll talk again next year… have a good one!

Happy New Year!

Dave B / Thad

OK, you need to keep adding blog posts to your site, maybe the odd article. You want to keep publishing articles to Ezine, etc.

You must NOT leave your site static. At least not if you want it to rank well in the SERPS.

This is where it obviously helps if you are into the niche yourself. But even if not there are a number of things you can try.

First, you could just repeat your initial information gathering exercise periodically. Check out fresh articles on Ezine, etc., go back to the library, buy more books.

And I’d certainly urge you to do that to some extent. I mean why not? If you spot a good relevant book on a second hand stall, grab it!.

Why not subscribe to some relevant magazines as well, both online and off.

But how about getting the information to come to you?

This is really simple to set up but does require an initial bit of effort.

Google Reader

You could use any RSS feed aggregator but Google Reader is as good as any.

You probably already have a gmail or Google account. Just select ‘Reader’ from the top menu. Type in some relevant keyword phrases and then find half a dozen sites that post 4 or 5 times a week.

Have a look at the information. Is it any good? Worthy of comment or reference?

I wouldn’t pick a site that posts hundreds of times a week or you will be swamped with information.

Once you have identified a few sites that regularly provide good relevant content all you need to do every few days is scan through the information.

Then you can either re-write it in your own words or just reference it (i.e. link to it) and make comments on it.

Don’t just have the RRS feed displayed. You must add some original content (and therefore value) around it.

Let’s just look at the site structure again and then populate each page. This is quite a long post and there’s quiet a lot to do here but if you have already done the prep work you should be able to do this in a few hours.

Just knuckle down and crank out those pages!

The About Page

This one is easy and was covered in Wordpress Wonder Modules #1 & Module #2, your Contact Form at the top followed by your Privacy Policy.

Depending on the type of site you have you may need a Disclaimer, etc. Have a look at what other sites in your niche are using and if they are using any kind of Disclaimers, etc. consider using them and if you need to, just copy and amend them to suit your specific needs.

The Information Pages

Make an individual page for each article you have written. Use your chosen keyword phrase as the title (and therefore url). Use your keyword phrase in the article introduction and summary and once or twice in the article body. Write naturally and never force in a keyword phrase.

At this point your article urls will look like this:-

yourdomain.com/your-keywords-article-one

yourdomain.com/your-keywords-article-two

(After the ‘/’ is your article title, got that? Don’t title your articles article one, two, etc.)

Next create your information summary page. This page is going to be the parent of your individual article pages as per the diagram above.

The title for this page will be something like ‘Sausage Making Information’

The url for this page will be:-

yourdomain.com/sausage-making-information

And this page will appear in your main menu.

Now go back to each individual article page and set it’s parent page to be your information summary page. You do this under ‘Attributes’ when you are in Page Edit.

The urls for each individual article page will now look like this:_

yourdomain.com/your-information-summary/your-keywords-article-one

yourdomain.com/your-information-summary/your-keywords-article-two

These pages will now only appear in your sub-menus.

But we haven’t finished with the Information Summary page yet.

Add a couple of introductory paragraphs to this page about how you are putting together some helpful articles on the niche, etc.

Then put the title of each article and just a sentence or two that describes it.

And make the title an anchor text link to the individual article page.

You can see what I mean from the demo site here:-

http://bigcatskillz.com/information/

The Review Pages

You populate the review pages in exactly the same way. Write a review for each individual product and then on the Review Comparison page set it out like a standard 3 -5 product review page.

But link each mini-review on the comparison page with the more detailed individual review pages.

Again, check out the demo site here:-

http://bigcatskillz.com/reviews/

Hang on, Hang on!!!

How do you write your reviews? This is the hardest part!

I know, I know… let’s see how I do it…

Bottom line. The single best way to write a review is to buy the actual product, particularly now with the FTC clarification of their guidelines.

But that’s not always really practical when you are starting out, right?

So, improvise. Find as many reviews as you can on a product, read the sales page and that of competing products.

After a while you almost develop a sixth sense as to what constitutes a good product but in the meantime try and come up with your own objective review based on your research.

Refer back, in your reviews, to where you found your information such as relevant forums, etc.

You can always modify it down the line in light of sales and refunds, customer feedback, etc

And ultimately, we strongly recommend that you do buy any products that you review.

Be very careful how you word your reviews if you have not actually used the product.

The Home Page

The home page should be an overview of what the site is all about.

Mention on there that you have some articles and some reviews and add links within your text to those summary and comparison pages.

The Initial Blog Posts

The first blog posts are easy to do. Just do a post on every article and review you have added to the site and link to it.

There are some example posts on the demo site here:-

http://bigcatskillz.com/blog/

Just remember, always use an anchor text link using the article or review title.

And voila! Your mini-site is now content rich and ready to go. And what’s more all those internal links will help boost your sites rankings in the SERPS given time.

But what about ongoing content, how do you keep finding that? We’ll look at that in the next post…

There are lots of ways you can find information on a niche, indeed you should already have gathered quite a bit during your niche research.

Online

As you do your niche research you will come across websites, articles, blog posts, review, etc. I hope you stored copies of some of those article, posts and reviews somewhere.

Grab half dozen of the best performing articles from Ezine and ArticleBase or anywhere else that takes your fancy.

Offline

I do this a lot!

Go to your local library and take out 2 – 4 books on your niche. Go to Amazon online and BUY some. Books are cheap and are a fantastic way to really get into a niche. Read ‘em on your way to work, in your lunch hour, before you go to bed.

Get the “.. For Dummies” book on your niche. There must be one (or more) that covers your niche. These are fantastic and are written in a way that totally fits in with those “5 steps to” articles that you will want to be writing.

Next, create a campaign folder on your hard drive (or you could use Google Docs) and just take a copy of pretty much everything you come across. That’s the beginning of your reference library.

Let’s start straight away and say that it does you no good whatsoever to just copy the stuff you find and plonk it straight on your site.

“Plagiarism is a sin against scholarship” as my old college teachers would say.

“But how many people have truly original thought?” was what I thought in response.

And that’s the thing, unless you are a Shakespeare or a Da Vinci, you are going have to get your content from somewhere, right?

So, what I do is gather up a reference library… maybe 10 – 20 articles and a similar number of blog posts, anything really and just read through it all a few times.

Then, armed with my keyword lists, I identify which keyword phrases I want to target and write optimised articles around that pulling the knowledge from what I’ve just read.

Write 5 – 20 articles. I like to do 5 – 10 what I call “How to” articles covering the very basics of your niche. Articles that anyone could read and get a very basic understanding of what it’s about.

These will form the basis of the content of your website.

In the next post I’ll tell you how to construct your website pages. And like I said I work backwards…

Before we add any content to our websites let’s first remind ourselves of the website structure.

The pages in level #2 will form part of your main menu and appear in your header Nav Bar

The pages in level #3 form your sub-menu and will appear in you side-bar navigation only.

You have to fill all those pages with content before you even begin to get your site indexed or point any traffic at it.

I can do this in under two hours but how do I do it? Simple, I cheat!! And I go backwards…

In the next post I’ll look at how you can gather up some relevant information…

The most important part of any campaign is your niche research.The more time and effort you spend on that the easier it will be for you to do everything in your campaign.

You should endeavour to create a niche report, exactly like the ones we provide you with in ANC. (Obviously you can use those to short-cut this step.)

Your Niche Report should, as a minimum contain the following:-

Background – An overview of the niche in question. Have at look at Google Insights and Trends. See how the niche is growing, when the peaks are during the year. Have a general look around related sites and forums and try and get a sense of what’s happening right now.

Jot down three of four paragraphs of general information, take screen shots, of any trend charts you come across, etc.

Marketing – Jot down your thoughts on how to tackle this niche. Think about who makes up the niche and how you are going to reach them. Article marketing can always be used but what about PPC and e-mail marketing.

What demographic is your target market? Will you be trying to target specific locations? It’s very important to to determine the who and where they go for solutions.

Affiliate Sites – Make a list of affiliate sites in the niche and what they are doing. Don’t spend too long on other affiliate sites. You may be intimidated by there size or their ‘fancy’ website. Just note what they are promoting and how. Are they collecting opt-ins, etc.

Merchants – Make a list of merchants in the niche. Make this as broad as you can at this stage, even if you do not intend to promote a particular product there may be cross selling opportunities further down the line.

Keyword Themes – Make several lists of keywords under broad theme headings. The more work you put into this now, the more benefit you will receive throughout your campaign. Remember, everything you do, articles, blog posts, pages, PPC and ultimately SEO are based around targeting keyword phrases.

You can use the free Google Keyword tool or you can invest in Micro Niche Finder as we have or try some other keyword generation tool.

This month I’m gonna do a series of posts on how you actually add content to your websites.

I’ve shown you the basics of the mechanics of creating a website in Wordpress Wonder module #1 and module #2. And I’ve shown ANC members the more advanced techniques in Wordpress Wizard.

Now I’m going to tell you how to easily populate all those pages and how you can keep adding fresh original content to your sites.

We’ll start though, as you always should, with Niche Research so look out for that post.

I just wanted to add some more thoughts on this.

Firstly, probably the most important point is that of a material connection disclosure.

Here’s a screen grab from the video:-

That’s the key.”The disclosure must be sufficient to alert the consumer that of the connection between the endorser and the product.”

So, if you are doing reviews and have a link to the product in that review and you receive a commision, disclosure is required.

And I therefore believe that what we have implemented on the Product Review pages on this site together with our Review Disclosure Policy is sufficient.

Transparency is the main thing that the FTC are seeking.

Other areas that require care are:-

Making Dubious Claims – It is important that we do not misrepresent a product or service or even where you may have had success with a product such claims cannot be regarded as typical. For example stating that you earn $100,000 / year thanks to Wealthy Affiliate. I mean you may do but that is not typical for the vast majority.

Some of the other points in the videos may not concern everyone but they do have possible implications.

Discussed at some length is the whole responsibilty that sellers (or merchants) have with regard to their affiliates:-

Monitor affiliates?

OK, you may not have your own product and therefore have no affiliates but how will this impact a Clickbank or Commission Junction merchant? And, therefore you as the affiliate?

I don’t know the answer to that at this point but I would suggest that as minimum you have a Review Diclosure Policy on your websites.

Thad and I will also need to discuss what additional instruction we need to give to our own affiliates but again, I would imagine this will at least require that ANC affiliates have a Review Disclosure Policy.

We’ll keep you posted.