Don’t worry, there are certain things that all good and profitable websites have, so if a website meets the criteria then there is a good chance it will be profitable. The more problems you find with the website, the higher the chances are that the website will be unprofitable, so below I will tell you exactly what to do to find a profitable website. Don’t forget, we are not choosing a website just yet. Right now I’m going over a list of things you should look for in websites you’re thinking about promoting.
I recommend watching the following video that shows how I find profitable websites to promote.
Finding Profitable ClickBank Products
Filter 1 - Ignore the Impossible Websites
You might be wondering what an impossible website is and how to ignore it. Well an impossible website is a website that is nearly impossible to make money online with (well make money by advertising on Google AdWords). Here is a list of the impossible websites that you should not promote:
* Paid Survey – Paid survey websites are way too popular with other affiliates, they have very high refund rates, and they are usually region specific (meaning they only sell well in certain countries).
* Download Unlimited Music, Games, Videos, Movies – These websites offer a one time fee or a subscription fee so people can download unlimited songs, movies, software, videos, games, etc. These websites are illegal (well, they are using loopholes to avoid being 100% illegal), but they are illegal enough that Google will not let anyone advertise for these websites.
* Auction Websites – This includes websites that mention government auctions, seized auctions, or car auctions. These websites are hard to advertise for and don’t usually convert very well.
* Dieting Websites – Dieting websites are very over advertised and have too much competition, which means that your advertising costs will be very high. These websites also have higher refund rates.
Besides the websites above you should also avoid promoting very popular websites. Why should you do this? One simple reason. You’re a beginner at this and the more popular the website/product you promote the more advertising competition you’re going to have to compete against. Some of the advertiser’s who promote popular products are very serious about what they do and have years of experience and unlimited advertising budgets. And while Google Money Pro will get you to their level, it’s best not to start off competing directly against the big dogs.
So what type of websites should you go for? This is the tricky part, because this is something you need to learn on your own. But I will tell you how to find the websites through the following filters. Don’t worry, because I know you need as much help as you can get, so I’ll give you examples below. It’s best if you start off small and work your way up. There are billions of people searching the internet every day so it will be close to mathematically impossible for you to find a product which receives near zero traffic. Still, you want to promote a product which receives enough traffic for you to get steady sales, but not so much traffic that you’ll have to compete against the big dogs (just yet).
Filter 2 - Avoid Poor Websites
Many people still lack faith in internet security and even the search engines look for certain things in websites (SPAM filters) which can affect your overall online success. That’s why you will want the website you’re promoting to have the best chance possible to look safe not only to the customer, but also to the search engines.
The following is a list of things that can possibly hurt your advertising success with Google and your sales rates with potential customers. You will want to avoid websites that do the following.
Websites that have AdSense advertisements on them – AdSense advertisements look like the screenshot below this paragraph. Google doesn’t consider a website in AdWords high quality if it contains several AdSense advertisements. You should also avoid advertising for websites which display Yahoo’s advertisements. They look almost identical to Google’s, but say Yahoo instead.
Websites that are already being heavily advertised – Don’t promote websites with tons of affiliates already promoting them. Chances are that these affiliates are already advertising on Google or have already tried to advertise on Google. This is easy to find in ClickBank because ClickBank tells you how many affiliates are currently selling products for the merchant by giving them a Gravity rating. If the word “Gravity” sounds familiar, it’s because I talked about it in the ClickBank signup section. I personally avoid advertising websites with a gravity higher than 30. *Note – If you have one of my review sites from http://www.stevensites.com, or if you have your own website you can ignore this rule.
Websites with duplicate content on each page – Don’t promote websites that have very few pages or have duplicate content on each page. This means websites that have links to other pages that instead of going to a different page, re-direct you to the same page you are on. For example, if you went to a website and click on the link to visit their Contact Info, but it instead took you to their home page. Also, try to find WebPages with more than just 1 page. Google will give the webpage a higher quality score if it has several pages.
Websites that force you to sign up for something – This includes websites that force their visitors to give their email address before they can continue to another page. You can promote websites that ask the user to sign up for a mailing list, but don’t promote the websites that require it before continuing.
Websites without a Privacy Policy – Google favors websites that have a Privacy Policy (or a Terms of Service). This link is usually near the bottom of the page and is a small text link. This isn’t too common for most WebPages, so if the webpage doesn’t have this, don’t worry too much. But you should still look for it and favor websites that contain it. *Note – If you have one of my review sites from http://www.stevensites.com, or you have a website of your own with a privacy policy you can ignore this rule.
Websites that are confusing or tricky – If the website is confusing to you, then don’t promote it. Make sure the website has clear information and contains an easy way for you to navigate the website. This can either be by a site map, or if the website is small enough it can have links to each of the pages at the bottom of every page. Try to avoid WebPages where the only way you can get to the previous page is to click the back button.
Websites that have pop-up windows – You don’t want to promote websites that have popup windows. Google doesn’t allow people to advertise for websites that have popup windows. If it is a dynamic popup window, it’s okay. Dynamic popup windows kind of float around the webpage and if you minimize the webpage the popup window is also minimized. *Note – If you have one of my review sites from http://www.stevensites.com, or you have a website of your own without popup windows you can ignore this rule.
Websites that you wouldn’t buy something from – If you wouldn’t buy something from the website you’re promoting (for any reason other than you’re not interested in it) then you shouldn’t promote it.
Websites that have a low commission rate – Commission is the amount of money you will get paid each time you sell a product for the website. If the commission rate is too low, it will be near impossible to make a good amount of money online. I don’t promote anything lower than 50% commission rate.
Other factors you want to avoid – This includes misspelled words, pictures that don’t appear, websites contradicting themselves, etc. Also, try to avoid websites that rely very heavily on Flash presentations. If you don’t know what this is, don’t worry about it because most affiliate pages don’t use heavy amounts of it.
Filter 3 - Find the Best Designed Websites
So…you know what design issues can hurt a website's profitability now you just need to know what features increase conversions and sales, as well as favor with the search engines.
Here’s what well built highly profitable websites all have in common:
Contact Us Page – The webpage will need to have a contact us page. This isn’t just an email address at the bottom of the webpage. A contact us page is a page that has an actual email form that you can quickly use to contact the support. It’s also a bonus if the website offers a telephone number, fax number, or a mailing address, but don’t expect this because many websites don’t offer telephone numbers for privacy issues.
Website Security – Everyone wants to be certain that they are not going to fall into an online scam or become a victim of identity theft. Websites that go out of their way to ensure online security sell a lot better than websites that don’t have certificates that display their protection. Please note that if you’re a website owner and you want one of these certificates, you can’t simply take a picture of it and display it on your website, these security images cost an upwards of $1,000 per year apiece. All websites with valid security certificates have a picture showing that their site is secure with a valid link that gives more information about their site’s security.
Money Back Guarantee – Websites with money back guarantees sell many times better than websites that don’t offer money back guarantees. All ClickBank products have money back guarantee and ClickBank websites that don’t display this are missing out on a lot of sales.
Privacy Policy or Terms of Service – This one isn’t required but it does help if the website you’re promoting contains a privacy policy or a terms of service page. Most visitors don’t read these, but it looks more professional if the site you’re advertising has one or both of these.
Filter 4 - Choosing the Profitable Website
This section will tell you how to find the absolute best website to promote online.
Now that you know what to look for in your websites it’s time to choose 4 websites that you are interested in promoting. I recommend you get a piece of paper and write down either the title or web address for each of the four websites you choose to promote.
Here’s what you should do step-by-step:
1. Choose a professional looking website.
2. On a piece of paper write down the websites title or web address, the type of product they’re selling, and their current gravity level (if you’re on ClickBank).
3. Do this for 4 completely different websites (don’t choose four websites that sell the same type product either).
How to Choose 4 Websites in ClickBank
Browsing through and choosing 4 ClickBank websites to promote is very easy to do. (If you don’t know how to find the websites in ClickBank to promote Go to the previous section titled “Signing Up with ClickBank” and then read the article titled “How to Find A Website to Promote on ClickBank”) Here are the steps to follow:
1. Go to ClickBank’s Marketplace by going to their website or by clicking on the following link: http://www.clickbank.com/marketplace.htm
2. Towards the bottom of the page you will see a box titled “List of Categories”. Inside that box are nine different categories that you can choose from. Select a category that interests you.
3. When you click on a category a page will load displaying the first 10 website results for that category. Each one of these results is a different product that you can promote and sell and make money with.
4. Open and look at all the different websites by clicking on the blue titles until you find one you want to promote.
5. When you find a website you want to promote, write down the information on the piece of paper and continue searching until you find another website.
6. Keep doing this until you have 4 different websites written down. Don’t forget to look in some of the other ClickBank categories.
How to Choose 4 Websites in PayDotCom
Below are the steps you need to follow to find 4 different websites to promote in PayDotCom:
1. Go to PayDotCom’s market place by going to their website or by clicking on the following link: http://paydotcom.com/marketplace.php
2. On their marketplace page you will see 10 different product categories. Click on a category that interests you.
3. Each category will display 10 different website results related to that category. Each result is a different website with a different product you can sell.
4. Open and look at the different websites by clicking on the blue “Visit Site” link beneath the website(s) description. Keep doing this until you find a website you would like to promote.
5. When you find a website you would like to promote, write down the information on a piece of paper and continue searching until you find another website.
6. Keep doing this until you have 4 different websites written down. Don’t forget to look in some of the other PayDotCom categories.
How to Choose 4 Websites in Commission Junction
Commission Junction is set up much differently than ClickBank and PayDotCom and they also have a much higher standard of accepted websites. Because of this it is much easier to browse the websites from Commission Junction and simply choose from there since most of their products are usually high traffic and good quality.
Filter 5 – Choosing only Websites That Get Visitors
Now that you have the information recorded on a piece of paper you will want to narrow down the list to just one perfect website. First off, we are going to find out if the website will receive visitors or not, because let’s face it…you can find the best website in the world, but if no one is searching for it you’re not going to become a millionaire. You want something that is regularly searched because it will generate sales day after day.
There are two different ways that you can find the traffic levels for the website. The first way is the best, but I know that Google’s Keyword Tool sometimes isn’t always available to all countries, so if you can’t use the first way, use the second way.
The First way (the best way) – Using Google’s Traffic Estimator
1. Go to Google’s Keyword Tool and type in the main theme for the first website’s product. For example, if the website sold Trout Fishing Tips, then you would search for “Trout Fishing”.
2. Look at the “Approx Avg Search Volume” column to see how much traffic Google receives on average per month.
The Second way – Using WordTracker’s Keyword Tool (Skip this section if you’re using Google’s Keyword Tool to find traffic).
1. Go to WordTracker’s Keyword Tool and type in the main theme for the first website’s product. For example if the website sold guitar lessons then you should type in guitar lessons.
On the next page you will see a large list of words (keywords) similar to the word “Guitar Lesson”. You will see a number next to each word. This number is the estimated number of people who search using those words in a day. Find the keyword that has the highest number next to it and multiply that number by 30 (30 days) to get monthly performance information. Write this on the piece of paper next to the website you’re researching. For example at the time of writing this the keyword “Guitar Lesson” was searched 29,220 times. So I would write down 29,220 next to the website on my list that sold guitar lessons.
3. Now repeat this for all of the websites on your list until each website has a number next to it.
How to Finish Determining if the Website Receives Enough Traffic
When each website has a number next to it you will have a general idea of how popular the product is. Here’s a list of how to determine how popular your product is:
Searches Popularity
Less than 8,500 Not Popular Enough
8,500 - 40,000 Perfect
40,000 - 150,000 Most Likely too Popular
150,000 + You need to be more specific
So you want to find a product that receives at least 8,500 searches per month, but not more than 150,000 searches a month.
Filter 6 (Optional) – Is the Website Google Good?
Note: If you have a review site from http://www.stevensites.com or if you’re advertising your own personal website for the first time, then you can skip Filter 6.
You may have never heard of this before, but you may want to make sure the website is “Google Good”. No, this doesn’t have anything to do with making sure the website meets Google’s guidelines. Instead, you need to make sure that the website has a good advertising history with Google.
You see, Google records the history of all advertised websites regardless of who advertises it. Here’s a good example of what happens:
Let’s say Joe advertises the website SomeWidget.com horribly enough that Google makes every keyword have a “Poor” quality score of 1/10 and requires a minimum bid of $10.00 per click to have his ads displayed on the first page of search results. Well Google doesn’t want Joe to just open a new Google account and do the exact same thing with the same website. So Google will remember, “Joe is a bad advertiser with SomeWidget.com so if he tries to re-advertise SomeWidget.com again in a different account with the same keywords, we will expect his advertisements to be of poor quality again and we will immediately mark them as poor quality”. But there’s a problem. Google can’t tell the difference between advertisers, Google will only notice websites. This means if Sam (a different advertiser) decides to advertise SomeWidget.com with the same keywords as Joe, Google’s computer will think “Based on past history, SomeWidget.com performed poorly with these keywords. To prevent this website from hurting our search results we will mark all the keywords poor quality score unless the website or advertising techniques are changed to make SomeWidget.com more relevant”.
This basically means, some websites have been “red-flagged” by Google because previous advertisers have poorly advertised the website.
Google red-flagging websites only affects new advertisers trying to promote that website. It doesn’t affect advertisers who are already promoting the website.
Does this mean bad advertisers can affect your current advertisements?
No, if your advertisement is performing well and other advertisers are doing a bad job promoting the same website, Google will not mark your keywords as irrelevant. Instead Google will see that your advertisements are relevant to the search results and will give you a good quality score.
Likewise, you can’t hurt your competitors by poorly advertising their website. Instead Google will just compare your advertisements against your competitor’s ads and will determine that his ads are even more relevant.
Doing the “Google Good” test
Here’s the quickest and easiest way to test to see if the site you’re wanting to advertise is currently in good standing with Google.
Step 1 ) Get the website address of the website you’re wanting to advertise (this should be the main website address, not your affiliate URL address).
Step 2) Log in to your Google AdWords account and go to your “Campaign Summary” page. Once on that page click on the blue “+ New online campaign” link (it’s usually near the middle of the page). A drop down menu will appear and you should select “Start with Keywords”
Step 3) A new page will load and you should see a yellow box that says “Copy your settings from an existing campaign”. Inside this box, select the campaign that you created earlier (it will have the paused “dummy” AdGroup in it), or you can select any other campaign. Then click on the “Go” button.
Step 4) Now you will be at a page that tells you to create your advertisement. Don’t worry, you’re not going to even submit this advertisement so you don’t need to be worried about anything. Just enter basic information within your text ads. Below is my test advertisement for “Discount Guitars”. The left advertisement contains brief instructions and the right advertisement is the ad I used:
Also, you should enter the same URL for the display and destination URL.
Step 5) Now simply enter a very basic keyword list that describes the product. The best way to do this is to use the keyword tool located towards the right of the keyword field. Inside this tool enter one word or phrase that describes the product and click on the “Search” button.
A box will appear under the keyword tool containing similar keywords to the word you entered.
When this box appears click on the “Add” link next to every keyword in the box that is related to the word you entered. You will notice that these keywords will be added into the keyword field each time you click on the blue “Add” link.
Step 6) Now enter a $10.00 per day budget with a default bid of $0.10 Max CPC. Then click on the blue link titled “View Traffic Estimator”. The bottom of the page will shortly display the traffic estimates for the keywords you entered into the keyword field.
In the traffic estimates table look and see if Google gives any “Estimated Ad Positions” for the website you’ve entered. If they do, then that’s great, it means Google sees the website you’re promoting as Good. If not, raise your Max CPC bid by $0.10-$0.20 and click on the “Get New Estimates” button until you can see “Estimated Ad Positions” for the website you’re searching for.
If the minimum bid is in ranges of $0.01 - $0.20 it has good status and you will be able to receive good traffic.
If the minimum bids are in ranges of $0.30 - $0.50, then this is an “iffy” product to promote. You may get traffic with it, you may not.
If the minimum bids are higher than $1, then don’t advertise this webpage, because you will not be able to get any traffic though Google with it.
Here’s an example between a poor “Dog Training Website” and “Petsmart.com”.
You may need to run this test with the remaining webpages on your list until you find a website that works. If you can’t find a website that works, then you will need to start over again and start choosing different websites to promote.
One last thing – Don’t Save the campaign you’re testing these sites on. To make sure you’re not going to create this campaign, just click on the “Campaign Summary” button near the top of the page.
Profitable Website Checklist
Many of you have requested a “Profitable Website Checklist” so you can see a quick summary of everything mentioned above. Try to choose a website with no more than three points missing from this list.
* Website is not a paid survey, music/movie/game download, seized auction, or dieting website.
* Website doesn’t have AdSense or Yahoo advertisements on it.
* Website has a gravity level of below 40 (if you’re advertising using your own website or review site, you can ignore this).
* Website doesn’t have duplicate content on each page
* Website doesn’t force you to sign up for something before continuing to the next page.
* Website has a privacy policy and/or terms of service.
* Website is clear and straight forward (not confusing).
* Website doesn’t have a popup window that opens outside of the website.
* You would feel safe purchasing a product from this website.
* You would purchase a product from this website based on its sales letter.
* Website has a commission rate of 50% or more (if it’s a digital product).
* Website has very few or no misspelled words, contradictions, and doesn’t rely heavily on Flash presentations.
* Website takes you back one page when you click on the “back button” and it closes immediately upon clicking on the “Close” button without any windows or automated chat sessions opening up.
* Website has a contact us page or an about us page.
* Website offers a money back guarantee.
* Website’s topic/product receives 12,500 – 150,000 searches per month.
* Website is Google Good
Finally – You’re Done Choosing A Website
I know these steps can be a huge pain to do, but one of the things most people have trouble with is finding a profitable website. If you do all of these steps you will easily increase your chances of finding a profitable website every single time by more than 50-80%.
If one of the websites you’ve chosen meets all the criteria above, then congratulations you have found a potential gold mine online. The only thing between you and wealth is getting people to see this website.
If two or more of the websites meet the criteria then you will need to choose one of the websites to advertise. Do not start off online by advertising two or more different websites at once. This is something you will do later on when you have more experience. So for now just choose one website.
If none of the websites you’ve found meets all of the criteria above, then don’t worry keep on searching. I would much rather spend 10-20 more minutes searching for websites then miss out on the chance of finding a website that could make me hundreds of dollars profit per day.
Question Asked: Should I focus on finding many products that generate a small amount of profit each, or only a small select range and then squeeze as much profits from these as possible?
First off, you should find one website that sells well. Then from there you should keep finding more and more websites that sell well until you have multiple sales coming in daily. I favor both the websites that generate small profits and the websites that generate large profits. Usually though people prefer fewer websites with larger profits. This way there is less hassle and upkeep of your Google Accounts, but websites with smaller profits sell faster. So in the end they are about the same.
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
No comments:
Post a Comment