Hello fellow affiliates. My name is Michal and as I am a super affiliate I was asked to write something about myself and offer some advice that will help fellow affiliates earn more with HN and make better websites.
This is what you are going to learn today:
- Something about me and the niches I operate in
- How users – and more importantly, Google – see brands and website quality
- Some tips that will help you along your journey
I started to play with online marketing something like 9 years ago. I started with duplicate content, scraping content from Wikipedia, and building profile links and Web 2.0 properties like crazy. I even bought link packages from services like Backlink Cannon that blasted spun articles on around 400 domains with spun anchor text that propelled my sites to top rankings. And then after a month or two it tanked.
It worked for a while but then came Panda and Penguin and trashed all of my websites. I was doing OK then but it all changed when I started to focus on creating a quality user experience, branding and the NEEDS of USERS. Last month (July 2016) I had 449 sales with HN, but I know some of you sell more than this and might laugh at this number.
Before I joined HN I sometimes stumbled upon their top affiliate stats and used to say to myself, “OMG, those are huge numbers, I wish I could replicate those numbers and achieve something similar.” So I joined HN and started focusing on the user and now I am where I am.
Hard work and focus on quality is the way to go right now and for the future; it is not about shortcuts, tricks and loopholes folks. Sure, they work for a day or two. Go to BlackHatWorld and buy some Link Packages if you are that type of guy.
But for me, it’s all about quality user experience and branding. That’s where the money is and everything else is just wasting your time and begging to be hit by algorithm updates in the near future.
My Niches And Work Ethic
The main niches I work in are fitness, weight loss and men’s lifestyle. I have affiliate sites that are monetized with Amazon, ClickBank, HN and also some AdSense sites.
If you want to make money online, you have to work in a really popular niche which has expensive products, expensive ads via AdWords and huge search demand.
Some days I work from 6 am to 10 pm because I have lots to do; there is a crisis like a big Google quality update or there is a newly launched product and I want to capitalise on it as soon as possible and it doesn’t matter if it’s a work day or weekend.
You have to approach this like you want to be the best in the world on the topic your users and Google users want to see and read about. Then you have a chance. Otherwise it’s only a matter of time before your site is downgraded by some low quality algorithm update.
But some days and even weeks are great when you take the time off to think about new directions, new goals, to travel and enjoy life.
But to be honest, I just can’t shut my mind off completely and not think about affiliate marketing and website stuff even when I am away from my laptop. It’s a curse and a blessing at the same time!
Brands, Brands… Quality Websites
How do you define a brand? That’s kind of a difficult question to ask yourself don’t you think? But there is hope at the end of the tunnel – I will show you some signs that successful brands have in common.
When you know how to approach brand building, you can follow some simple but not so easy to implement principles to create a powerful online presence.
Brand for me is something I want to trust in and seek out when I want to spend money or gather great information.
You can tell yourself “WTF??? You must be kidding right? What am I supposed to do with this kind of info?”
Let’s stop for a minute and think. How can you imitate a great brand feeling even though you are not a great brand YET?
Design my friend, design.
Check out the most popular sites in your niche, check out WebMD, Fitness.com, Cosmopolitan.com, the top 100 Alexa ranking sites and look for similar things among them.
What is great is that people (your users and more importantly, users of big search engines) are familiar with such layouts, so it’s time to emulate this and score some trust points in the mind of readers.
Try to acquire visitors besides search engines. Look on Pinterest and Facebook, comment on relevant articles and post your links (nofollow) that will lead back to your site. The goal here is to acquire traffic and convert it into customers or repeat visitors.
Some helpful tips on branding:
- Stay away from keyword rich exact match domains
- Use modern, responsive and AWESOME looking themes
- Try to come up with something short and easy to remember as your brand
- Use short paragraphs
- Use great professional pictures – you can find them on Stock photography sites or sites like Pixabay.com
- Use bullet points and numbered lists
- Have an awesome and modern logo
- Show your logo often and mention your brand in your layout and text
- Encourage fruitful discussion on your posts
- Show your social presence
- Link to resources that might be helpful to your users
- Show your users easy ways to contact you if they want
- Your website must be really fast
Remember the most IMPORTANT thing:
You want your users to come to your site, come back and revisit your site, to spend time on your site and to recommend your site to their friends.
Social networks are great for this but remember, Google doesn’t use social signals from Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter or G Plus in their algorithm. You have to offer them unique insights that cannot be found somewhere else and answer the implicit questions they might have.
It is simple, but not easy right?
Links, Fewer Links And Even No Links At All
You shouldn’t be building links, you know that, right?
If you still want to get links, I would go for in-content links from domains that are attracting search engine traffic and that are well known and linked from other popular sites. By in content links I mean links within articles with natural anchors and that are not too keyword focused. Like for example, “great article on building links here” etc.
Those are the links that will help you rank instead of penalizing you, like a link from a bad blog network that nobody wants to visit and recommend to their friends.
PageRank still has its place, but I would focus on the user first and having great quality content that solves a problem which is also worthy of links and recommending to other people.
I have read patents that said if you have so much and so much links you should have such and such other signals, so I would say be careful about link building.
Tools And Services I Use Daily For My Work
- Grammarly
- Ahrefs
- Semrush
- Search Console
- WordPress
- CloudFlare
- Google Analytics
- SimilarWeb
- Market Samurai
Some Random Tips To Help You Out
- Follow Googlers, ex-Googlers and what they say (Pedro Diaz, Fili Wiese, John Mueller, Gary Illyes)
- Watch every webmaster hangout – EVERY webmaster hangout that has been published. You can find them here
- Read case studies from other affiliates or others that mastered their traffic source
- Inspire yourself daily with the income of other successful affiliates
- Exercise and take care of your diet – this will have huge impact on your productivity and health
- Learn, learn and always learn something new and try to deepen your knowledge of SEO, Marketing, Usability and Conversion Rate
- Try to stay away from recurring online expenses, it adds up fast
- Invest in great content – try to find GREAT writers on forums, iWriter, TextBrokers etc. and keep them
- Work on brand recognition and on getting links from established websites that receive search engine traffic
- Study Google Patents, it will show you where to focus (On the User – LOL)
As you can see from these tips, Online Marketing and SEO is simple in theory but not so easy to implement. It will take lots of time and you won’t see results immediately and you will be frustrated a lot.
But when you persist and create something awesome, money will follow.
Remember, you are competing against everybody else out there so it’s going to be hard. Invest your energy into content and focus on the user so you can reap the benefits in the long run.
Q1 My Niches And Work Ethic
The main niches I work in are fitness, weight loss and men’s lifestyle. I have affiliate sites that are monetized with Amazon, ClickBank, HN and also some AdSense sites.
If you want to make money online, you have to work in a really popular niche which has expensive products, expensive ads via AdWords and huge search demand.
Some days I work from 6 am to 10 pm because I have lots to do; there is a crisis like a big Google quality update or there is a newly launched product and I want to capitalise on it as soon as possible and it doesn’t matter if it’s a work day or weekend.
You have to approach this like you want to be the best in the world on the topic your users and Google users want to see and read about. Then you have a chance. Otherwise it’s only a matter of time before your site is downgraded by some low quality algorithm update.
But some days and even weeks are great when you take the time off to think about new directions, new goals, to travel and enjoy life.
But to be honest, I just can’t shut my mind off completely and not think about affiliate marketing and website stuff even when I am away from my laptop. It’s a curse and a blessing at the same time!
On Page SEO Tips For Building High Quality Web Pages
Mention your keyword or variation of your target keyword in the main topic of the page – usually in the heading tags but Google can figure that out even if it’s not in the heading tag.
Write compelling meta descriptions that will show user what he can expect to find on your page and make him want to click on your listing.
Write meta titles that will be something between the page’s main topic and click through rate magnet. Remember, the main goal of the meta description and meta title should be to show potential users that you have something of value on your page that will solve their problem.
Of course, the main content should be well formatted and clean with no grammar mistakes. It should be written by an expert and offer something of value that can’t be found somewhere else. Interlink where it’s appropriate to solve the problems of your users.
For more on what to focus on regarding quality, feel free to read these two articles:
Brands, Brands… Quality Websites
How do you define a brand? That’s kind of a difficult question to ask yourself don’t you think? But there is hope at the end of the tunnel – I will show you some signs that successful brands have in common.
When you know how to approach brand building, you can follow some simple but not so easy to implement principles to create a powerful online presence.
Brand for me is something I want to trust in and seek out when I want to spend money or gather great information.
You can tell yourself “WTF??? You must be kidding right? What am I supposed to do with this kind of info?”
Let’s stop for a minute and think. How can you imitate a great brand feeling even though you are not a great brand YET?
Design my friend, design.
Check out the most popular sites in your niche, check out WebMD, Fitness.com, Cosmopolitan.com, the top 100 Alexa ranking sites and look for similar things among them.
What is great is that people (your users and more importantly, users of big search engines) are familiar with such layouts, so it’s time to emulate this and score some trust points in the mind of readers.
Try to acquire visitors besides search engines. Look on Pinterest and Facebook, comment on relevant articles and post your links (nofollow) that will lead back to your site. The goal here is to acquire traffic and convert it into customers or repeat visitors.
Some helpful tips on branding:
- Stay away from keyword rich exact match domains
- Use modern, responsive and AWESOME looking themes
- Try to come up with something short and easy to remember as your brand
- Use short paragraphs
- Use great professional pictures – you can find them on Stock photography sites or sites like Pixabay.com
- Use bullet points and numbered lists
- Have an awesome and modern logo
- Show your logo often and mention your brand in your layout and text
- Encourage fruitful discussion on your posts
- Show your social presence
- Link to resources that might be helpful to your users
- Show your users easy ways to contact you if they want
- Your website must be really fast
Remember the most IMPORTANT thing:
You want your users to come to your site, come back and revisit your site, to spend time on your site and to recommend your site to their friends.
Social networks are great for this but remember, Google doesn’t use social signals from Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter or G Plus in their algorithm. You have to offer them unique insights that cannot be found somewhere else and answer the implicit questions they might have.
It is simple, but not easy right?
