AssociatePrograms.com

[NOTE from Allan Gardyne, CEO of AssociatePrograms.com: This affiliate marketing case study describes how a novice working part-time used Site Build It! to create an affiliate web site that achieved $49,000 in sales in just over a year. His second site has now achieved $217,000 in sales. We earn a commission on that. He spends nothing on advertising.]

By Rupert Farrow
of AssociatePrograms.com

First Steps: I was worried

When I started thinking about building my first affiliate site with Site Build It!, I was worried. The marketing hype surrounding Site Build It! and all its wonderful features sounded good but there was no proof that these features would help me make money. In fact, I was not entirely convinced that decent money could be made by affiliates who sold actual products rather than marketing ebooks.

What is Site Build It? Site Build It! is a suite of tools that enables you to build an affiliate business without knowing all the technical stuff. It takes you by the hand and shows you how to create a successful affiliate business. (It's not only for affiliate sites, but that's a good use for it.) It helps you research and brainstorm a topic, and helps you choose PROFITABLE keywords - ones with high demand and low supply. Then, even if you don't know any HTML, at the push of a button it builds web pages for you - all you have to do is write the articles, on topics in which you're interested. Next, you click the "Analyze It" button and it shows you how to improve the page so that it will be found in search engines. You don't even have to submit the site to search engines. It does all that, too, in a search engine friendly way. There's a whole lot more to it, but that's the essence.

Well, I'm pleased to say that if you do things properly, there's plenty of money out there. Of course, the first and biggest step in doing things properly is getting Site Build It!.

Site Build It! has a comprehensive 300-page Action Guide that takes you through the process of building an affiliate site. I don't want to give you all the details that the manual does. I just want you to read my story and see that Site Build It! sites do work.

They're not hard to build. If I can manage to build a money making site part-time, you can too.

When you look at the task in front of you, it can seem a bit daunting when you first start because of all the things you have to do before the pay checks start arriving. Please don't worry. Just remember all you want to do is build an interesting web site that people enjoy visiting. All your traffic and revenue will stem from there.

Read this case study and see that there is nothing special about me. I'm just a regular guy who doesn't know much about affiliate programs and even less about marketing.

OK. To get you started, here's a quick list of the steps needed to get a revenue generating site up and running. Of course, each step requires a little thought on your part but thinking and strategizing are part of the fun. I have spent some fun hours with my brother discussing possible topics for affiliate sites and our plans to make millions : )

Here are all the steps you need to take to make money on the Internet with affiliate programs.

1. Get Site Build It!
   
   
2. Write a list of things you're interested in, for example computers, sports, music   etc.
   
   
3. Use the Site Build It! research tools to find keywords that people will use to find your site in the search engines and choose your domain name (for example, good-idea.com).
   
   
4. Look online for good affiliate programs related to your favorite topics.
   
   
5. Decide on your site's theme or topic, depending on which topics look the most profitable.
   
   
6. Write and then paste your articles into Site Build It!. Site Build It! creates the web pages, puts them online and submits them to the search engines automatically.
   
   
7. Now have a look on the Internet for an online store's affiliate program and put its product links on your site.
   
   
8. Revise your site once you see which products your visitors are buying.

You don't even have to know HTML

In December 2001, I answered an advertisement in the local newspaper for a job with AssociatePrograms.com. I had never heard about affiliate programs before applying for this job and when the CEO, Allan Gardyne, said he preferred to market digital products I thought he was referring to electronics not ebooks!

Despite my complete ignorance, Allan hired me anyway.

Apart from day to day handling of email, Allan wanted me to do some affiliate marketing experiments. The first project he gave me was to build an affiliate site with Site Build It!. Since I had built only one site before, I was a little concerned about my lack of knowledge of HTML and also concerned about Allan's lack of knowledge of my lack of knowledge of HTML.

I need not have worried. Building a site with Site Build It! does not require any knowledge of HTML. In fact, I found building a site with Site Build It! was a very easy way to slowly get to grips with HTML coding. With Site Build It!, you simply include as much or as little HTML as you want.

My main motivation for building this site was that Allan was paying me. However, I don't think my position was very different from all those affiliates out there who are on their own. I was working largely unsupervised and I had to come up with all the creative ideas on my own.

Choosing the topic of your affiliate site

I'd already been thinking about the topic of my site for a couple of weeks before I received Site Build It!. I have interests such as DJing and music production and so I had been considering building a site on one of those topics.

The Site Build It! Action Guide recommends that you choose a topic for your web site that you are interested in. I wholeheartedly agree with this.

I analyzed all three topics using the research tools that come with Site Build It! to find which one was the most profitable. I was happy to find that the Site Build It! research tool came up with about 50 or 60 related keywords and ranked them in order of profitability.

I found that Site Build It! would allow me to do a full Site Build It! brainstorm and research session only once a week. Thus it took me about four weeks using the research tools before all the profitable keywords were identified for possible site topics.

I decided that a DJing site was profitable enough to pursue and since I "DJ" for fun, writing about it was easy and enjoyable. DJing is pretty low key. You get free booze and a good hourly rate to hang around in bars and play music. I found creating the web site was a nice opportunity to write anything I liked about one of my favorite topics. As a bonus, I get email every day from people who share the same interests as me.

The research tool gave me a list of keywords that I could "win" in the search engines. These keywords became the topics for my first few articles. These "winnable" keywords are search terms that lots of people enter into search engines but are terms that don't throw up many good pages. In other words, high demand, low supply – a perfect opportunity.

The research tool works automatically after you enter a possible site topic keyword such as "DJ tips". Site Build It! looks on the Internet and finds keywords that are continually associated with the keyword you entered. It then builds a list of the most relevant keywords as well as giving you an indication of which keywords are popular searches in the search engines.

My master keyword list

You create a list like this from the Site Build It! Manager by using the brainstorm and research tool. In Site Build It! speak, this page is called your "master keyword list".

I printed out this list and kept it next to my computer while I was writing each article. It is basically the plan for my entire site. The Site Build It! Action Guide tells you to do more detailed planning than this but I'm just not that organized!


This page was taken as a screen shot from the Site Build It! Manager (and then printed out). Site Build It! automatically searches the Internet for keywords that relate to your site's theme. The numbers to the right of the keyword list indicate the demand (number of people entering that word in a search), the supply (number of web pages containing that keyword - in other words, your competition) and profitability (rough guide to what keywords will be most successful at getting you traffic).

To produce the keyword list above, I clicked a button and ranked the keywords in order of profitability (keywords most likely to get traffic at the top). The idea is to write articles including keywords that many people are searching for so you can get lots of traffic.

Remember that when these people reach your site, they will want to read something interesting which relates to the keyword they entered. As a general rule, people search for information, not to buy things.

Number 17 on the list is the keyword "DJ equipment". You can see it has very high demand. This means it would be a good keyword to optimize the site for because a high ranking in the search engines for the search term "DJ equipment" should receive lots of traffic. In fact, the index page of my site is optimized for this keyword.

On my DJ site, I also used the keyword "technics turntables" for two of my articles. One article is titled "How to use technics turntables for DJing". I think this topic is a pretty good match for someone who types in those keywords. If my page comes up in the top 10 results then there's a good chance of getting the click to my site and a chance to make a sale.

Writing several good articles optimized to attract people from the search engines is a MUST. I've also written several articles on topics that only a few people search for. In the rest of the articles, I tried to squeeze in as many profitable keywords as possible without making the articles sound unnatural. Choose one or two keywords for each page and concentrate on them.

If any of this doesn't make sense, don't worry. Site Build It! gives you good, clear instructions and comprehensive advice on search engine optimization.

Registering your domain name and building the site

About 4 weeks after downloading the Site Build It! Manager, I registered my domain name with Site Build It!.

After a lot of thought, Allan and I decided on:

DJ-tips-and-tricks.com

It doesn't include the major keyword phrase "DJ equipment" but it does sound like the domain name of a friendly and informative site. People looking for information on DJing would be likely to click on a domain name like this in Yahoo or some other directory.

When I had finished writing a few articles, I was ready to start building pages. Since Site Build It! automatically submits new pages to the major search engines, it's a good idea to have the first few articles ready so that your site has enough pages to make a good impression if a search engine spider visits while the site is under construction.

Building web pages has never been simpler

Quick Tip If you like, you can skip over this building-pages section for now. Come back to it when you have Site Build It! in front of you and it will make a lot more sense.

Site Build It! is designed for people who have no knowledge of HTML. All you have to do is paste in your spell-checked plain text articles and Site Build It! will do the rest.

For those of you who know about HTML and want to have more complex pages, Site Build It! fully caters to you as well. It can interpret any HTML and build that into the page. You can upload images and build tables.

I did have some problems when using my own HTML on the index or home page. Site Build It! simply wouldn't display it properly. However, I never had a single incident on any of my other pages when I used my own HTML. It is best to keep your index page as simple as possible. The navigation bar feature means that you don't need to include HTML of your own on the index page.

Read on to find out how you can build a web page in Site Build It! and have it online and submitted to the search engines within minutes.

Step-by-step guide to building pages with Site Build It!

Here's a quick guide to getting a page online and submitted to the search engines in five minutes, even if you don't even know what HTML is.



Here is the main page of Site Build It!. When you first start, you should choose between building your home page or building a new page to add to your site.

Your home page (for search engine optimization reasons) is just a simplified version of your article pages. I'll just show you how building an article page works. It may look a little complicated, but trust me you can't go wrong. The Site Build It! Action Guide takes you through this process step by step and there is heaps of online help to guide you.

To build a new page, simply hit the "Add a Page" button. You are taken to this page where you can paste in your text and lay out your new page.



This is what you're confronted with when you want to build a new page. Every step is very clearly explained online. There is also context sensitive help which you can access by clicking on one of the little question marks (circled).

It is good to have your article and keywords researched so that you simply fill in the boxes. You'll have to give the new page a file name and title that contain the most profitable keywords that relate to the article. The title and description should also contain the keywords you researched, as well as making the page look attractive to anyone who reads them from a search engine. You see some search engines such as Alta Vista will show the description in the results and if your page has a good description, then you will get the click.



Building web pages has never been simpler. You simply insert a "headline" block and type in your heading. Then you insert a "text" block and paste in your article. Any HTML pasted into the blocks will be interpreted correctly and put on the page. It is a very flexible and fast method which builds a page on the server (and online immediately) so that there is no uploading step.

There are a few other blocks that make it easy for beginners, such as image blocks and text link blocks. Site Build It! comes with a super detailed manual that will take you through these features step by step.

At the bottom of this "Add a Page" interface, you can continually preview the page as you go so that you can experiment. Because Site Build It! takes care of HTML formatting for you, using Site Build It! is one of the best ways to learn HTML. As you start to understand the concepts of HTML, you can include it in your pages, preview them and experiment online without any hassles.



These buttons on the bottom of the page are self explanatory. "Analyze It" is used when the page is nearly complete. This button checks your page, making sure you've put the important keywords in the right places and achieved the correct keyword density in the main body of the article. "Build It" builds the page, putting it online and submitting it to all the major search engines. "Priority Build It" does the same thing but puts this page at the top of the list of pages to be submitted to the search engines.

I'd already written the first five articles in a plain text editor (such as Notepad or TextPad) so I had enough material to build my home page and a few content pages. It takes only a few minutes to get the hang of the Site Build It! interface.

One very important tip is to remember to use the "Analyze It" tool on all your pages.

The "Analyze It" tool is the fastest way to learn how to optimize a page for the search engines. Once you've used the tool a few times, you'll know search engine optimization inside out and be capable of optimizing pages without Site Build It!, even on other sites!

As you can see, building a web site with Site Build It! is ridiculously easy. Site Build It! takes care everything and lets you focus on great content to make your site sell. Trust me, writing good content is a big enough job without all the added hassles of worrying about technical issues on the Internet.

Getting DJ-tips-and-tricks.com ready for review

It was always the plan to make my site a good quality content site. This is the true way to long-term affiliate success. By building a good web site that people enjoy visiting you are essentially building an online business with a recognized brand. If visitors respect and like you, they are going to believe in your product recommendations and click and buy from your affiliate merchants.

On DJ-Tips-and-Tricks.com, I would never recommend a crappy product and so my visitors are justified in putting their faith in my opinions. If you follow the Site Build It! manual, you really can achieve a win-win situation where you get commissions and your visitors end up with products they are happy with.

Having a helpful and informative web site is vital if you want to be included in the Yahoo! directory.

I wanted my site to be in Yahoo because of the traffic I would get from this directory and because being listed in Yahoo! helps boost your ranking in Google. It is possible to achieve a good PageRank in Google without having a listing in Yahoo!. To achieve this, persuade important sites in your industry to link to you. My site received no traffic until it was listed by Yahoo!. Google seemed to find my site only through the link in the Yahoo! directory.

[Ken Evoy, the brains behind Site Build It!, advises:

"If you're not scoring at Google, list in Yahoo!. We believe their relationship is so close that you get 'Google algorithm points' and move up in the rankings."

His daughter Nori's site, Anguilla-beaches.com, gets a ton of traffic from Google, WITHOUT paying for Yahoo!.

Site Build It! Product Manager, Paul Crane, believes Yahoo!'s $299 fee is a good investment. He says:

"I paid the $299 fee to get Ultimatefatburner.com (PageRank 6) into Yahoo! (two days before they switched over to the new format, ARGGGGHHHH!), as well as for my new Yahoo! store (Ultimatefatburner-store.com, PageRank 0).

"Although PR score hasn't increased yet for Ultimatefatburner, traffic is up to around 1200 to 1400 uniques daily during the week, and 700 to 900 on the weekends. That's an easy 25% increase in traffic.

"On the Yahoo! store, PageRank has jumped from 0 to 5 in a matter of 6 weeks (as has traffic from Google and Yahoo!) and traffic has jumped from about 200 uniques daily to close to 700 uniques daily. Once my developer has cleaned it up, this will provide a pretty decent affiliate income – totally hands free.

"So I'd say it's VERY important to pay the $299 to get into Yahoo! if you've got a new site, and it will very likely be worthwhile for established sites as well – even though traffic originating from directory drill-down searches is minimal. Definitely an indication of some real co-operation going on between Google and Yahoo! – joined at the hip, you might say!" – Allan.]

I registered my domain name with Site Build It! on the 19th January 2002 and I paid the $299 USD to have my site reviewed by Yahoo! on the 14th March 2002. That meant it took me working part time about two months to build my site. When I paid Yahoo! to review my site, it had 18 pages.

Even after paying the $299 fee, my site was not guaranteed a listing in Yahoo! They would include it only if it was useful or informative enough. This is why you need to build a site on a topic you're interested in. Then you have no problems creating the kind of site they want in Yahoo!.

The classic mistake is to think: "I'm interested in making money on the Internet. I'll build a site about that." Stop right there! Countless thousands of people have already done that. Choose a less competitive field.

During the two months I was working on this site (before submitting it to Yahoo) I was starting to research possible affiliate programs to join once I began getting traffic to my site. However, Allan reminded me that it would be best not to have any affiliate links up on my site when Yahoo! reviewed it. Allan didn't want to give Yahoo! even a faint hint of a reason to decline entry of my site into the directory and waste the $299!

If Yahoo! don't like your site they can take your money and not list you. Be careful!

Getting my Yahoo! submission right

The first step in achieving a good Yahoo! listing is to research the directory so that you get your site in the right area. You want to have a good look around the directory so that you submit your site into a category that the reviewer will agree with and one that will get you traffic.

The category I found that my site most suited for was this one:

http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Music/Disc_Jockeys/

To submit your site to Yahoo!, you go to the category your site suits and click on the "Suggest a site" link. You will be asked if you want to pay for an "Express Review" or wait for the free service. The paid listing is required for commercial sites so the fee is only fair. You could try the free listing but you'd have to wait with your site doing nothing and sitting there with no affiliate links.

When you submit or suggest a site to Yahoo!, they ask you for a brief description of your site. At the time I made my submission, it was a good idea for you to include as many keywords as possible to maximize the traffic you get from Yahoo!. Recently Yahoo! has switched to displaying results from Google so most of your traffic from Yahoo! will result from a high ranking in Google. It still makes sense to put keywords in your Yahoo! description, because Yahoo! may change again in the future.

Here's the profitable keyword-loaded description I submitted to Yahoo!:

How to use DJ equipment, turntables and make your own dance music with audio production software.

Here's the description Yahoo! actually used for my site next to the listing:

Addresses equipment, turntables, dance music production, and more.

So the Yahoo! reviewers describe your site however they want. There's not much you can do about it except make sure you do everything right, have a keyword loaded description and choose the right category. You must also have a minimum of 10 articles on your site to make it a useful addition to their directory. Remember the money you pay to Yahoo! is only to get them to review your site. If your site is not good it will not be included and your money will be lost.

One thing that is good about Yahoo! is that they are efficient. I submitted my site on March 14th 2002 and I started receiving visitors from Yahoo! on the 16th March. I was very impressed as I started getting 60 unique visitors a day on 16th March and now I get well over 100 unique visitors a day from the Yahoo! directory alone.

The link from the Yahoo! directory also helps my link popularity in Google. I am sure a number of my top ten rankings are due to the fact that my site is listed in Yahoo!. In addition, I was getting no traffic from Google for months until my site got into Yahoo!.

My point is, in my experience Yahoo! listing is essential if you want to succeed.

How to get an important free link to your site

The Open Directory (www.dmoz.org) will list your site only if it has good content. Since I didn't have any affiliate links up yet for the Yahoo! review I also submitted my site to the Open Directory at the same time.

The Open Directory is staffed by volunteers so the speed of service is not the best. To suggest a site to the Open Directory, simply go to the correct category and hit the "add URL link". However, the category that best suited my site did not have an "add URL link" and when I went one category up the online form wouldn't work properly.

After three tries over three weeks, I gave up and started emailing Open Directory editors.

All I said was that I was having trouble with the online form and that if he could list my site, I would be very grateful. I supplied him with my site's URL, description, title and appropriate category in the Open Directory. The result – boomshanka! Two days later, my site was in the Open Directory and it was now ready for all those money-making affiliate links.

Inktomi and Looksmart

At the same time as the Yahoo! submission, I paid $39 (via Positiontech.com) to get in the Inktomi search engine because it is one way of getting into MSN.

I also paid to be reviewed by LookSmart just before it switched to a pay-per-click version. After carefully looking at my Site Build It! traffic stats, the LookSmart listing appears to be a waste of money.

[Rupert could have saved the money he spent at LookSmart by using Zeal.com as a backdoor entry into LookSmart. That would give him free traffic from LookSmart and especially MSN. To get into Zeal, you have to spend an hour passing their zealot test, which is fairly interesting. Another good reason for avoiding LookSmart is that it gets into bed with predatory advertisers. – Allan.]

Affiliate programs: The magic links that make you money

Quick tip If you're new to affiliate programs or struggling to earn a good income from them, get the FREE Affiliate Masters Course. Download this free book at: http://aff-masters.sitesell.com It's superb.

Although I've waited until this stage of the case study to talk about affiliate programs, it's best to consider what affiliate programs might suit your site from the very beginning.

During the first stages of planning my site, I had a look at possible affiliate programs. It was important to find merchants who had products that I could recommend and who also had a generous affiliate program I could join.

When you are dealing with real, shipped products, it is also very important to choose a company that has competitive prices. People compare prices online and if they visit your site, click through to the merchant and find your merchant has the best deal, then you're more likely to achieve a sale.

The whole point of my affiliate site is to help people buy DJ equipment. I made sure I spent plenty of time researching online DJ equipment merchants so that my visitors are offered great deals from my site. I wanted a partnership with a merchant that I would buy from, not just the merchant who at first glance looks the most profitable.

Sometimes it's not that easy

I came up with two good affiliate merchants, MusiciansFriend and Zzounds. Both of these online stores have massive selections of DJ equipment and great prices. Zzounds pays 10% commission while MusiciansFriend pays only 5%. At first you might think that going with Zzounds is the best option but read on to find out why I ended up choosing MusiciansFriend.

The problem with the Zzounds affiliate program was that the store didn't sell one particular profitable product that I was really keen to promote, the "Technics turntable". I own a pair of these turntables and I think they are a high-quality product. Since one of my pages was going to be optimized for this keyword, I wanted to have direct affiliate product links on this page for my visitors.

This brings me to the second problem with the Zzounds affiliate program. It doesn't have direct product links. I wanted my visitors to be able to read my rave review of a Technics turntable, and click from there straight to the merchant's page on Technics turntables.

Whoops! Exclusivity Clauses

One option I considered was joining both affiliate programs and using both programs to maximize the commission generating potential of my site. However, when I read the affiliate agreement of each program they both contained exclusivity clauses saying they must be the exclusive affiliate merchant promoted on my site.

I wrote emails to both affiliate managers asking to be excluded from the exclusivity clause due to the fact that their store did not stock all the products I wanted to promote. The response was not good. I could not put direct competitors on my site so I had to choose one program or the other. Exclusivity clauses are unusual. Use this example as a good reason to read the affiliate agreement!

In the end I chose MusiciansFriend because they had direct product links as well as very good prices.

The next step was to populate my articles with direct affiliate links to the products I am talking about. I also put a link to the general DJ section of the MusiciansFriend store on my links page.

I did not want to turn my visitors off by putting too many links up so I kept things subtle. When I optimized a page for a product keyword, the only affiliate links I used were for that product. For example when someone searches for "technics turntables", they find my page on Technics turntables and direct product links to exactly what they want.

What my Site Build It! site achieved

The aim of my site was to make some money through affiliate programs. When I started I had never built an affiliate site before and I was frankly skeptical that it would work. However, it seems that if you get enough people coming to your site who are interested in your topic then you are bound to make sales like I did. People who are interested in learning about DJing are also interested in buying DJ equipment.

Take a look at how my traffic has grown since January. Remember my site was registered in Yahoo! in March. Look what a difference that made to my monthly traffic average.

Site Build It! gives you some very useful traffic statistics. Take a look at the table below to see the list of top 25 keywords people used to find my site. Looking at a table like this, you can see what keywords get me traffic.

I found that I was getting traffic for keywords that I had not even optimized a page for. One example was "Cubase tutorial". So I later optimized a page for this keyword and received even more traffic for it.

Top 25 of 2423 Total Keywords
#	Page Views		Keywords
1	1122	13.31%	dj equipment
2	386	4.58%	dj tips
3	237	2.81%	cubase tutorial
4	162	1.92%	dj
5	161	1.91%	technics turntables
6	160	1.90%	gemini turntables
7	157	1.86%	turntables
8	142	1.69%	dj mixers
9	124	1.47%	technics 1200
10	106	1.26%	numark turntables
11	99	1.17%	dj software
12	98	1.16%	mp3 dj
13	94	1.12%	dj turntables
14	92	1.09%	technics turntable
15	89	1.06%	mp3 dj software
16	76	0.90%	dj tips and tricks
17	73	0.87%	beat mixing
18	61	0.72%	mp3 dj mixer
19	58	0.69%	dj turntable
20	57	0.68%	dj mixer
21	56	0.66%	how to dj
22	56	0.66%	how to use turntables
23	56	0.66%	numark tt100
24	51	0.61%	dj tricks
25	46	0.55%	traktor mp3

As you can see, Site Build It! tells you what keywords are working for you. You can also find out what pages are your most popular. It makes tweaking your site fun!

One of the major keywords for my site is DJ equipment. This was identified in the Site Build It! research and brainstorm tool as very profitable and as you can see it is my top keyword. This means that Site Build It! has clearly demonstrated to me its ability to find profitable keywords and help you optimize your site for top search engine rankings for them. To put it simply, Site Build It! search engine optimization really works!

If you look at the percentages, you can see that I get traffic for lots of different keywords with my major keyword giving me only 13% of my traffic.

My site has many different pages that cover a wide range of topics. Having lots of articles means that you have many different doors into your site.

Here's a list of the most profitable keywords that I optimized my site for:

Keyword	Google Rank (11.6.2002)
DJ equipment	5
Technics turntables	5
Gemini turntables	5
Cubase tutorial	2
Audio cd production	4
DJ tips	1
DJ mixers	3
Mp3 DJ software	6
DJ mixer	3
Mp3 DJ	9

As you can see, Site Build It! allows you to obtain good search engine rankings for a wide range of keywords. This makes the traffic to your site more robust because you are not relying on one specific search phrase.

You can check these rankings for yourself in Google. Site Build It! is very good at helping you optimize your pages for high rankings. Since you'll know what keywords you should be optimizing for, this basically guarantees you traffic.

This traffic is also the best kind. The people you attract are actively searching for information on this topic and will be interested in related products. The sheer volume of sales generated by my site proves that fact.

Site Build It! provides you with all the information you need to maximize the traffic you get to your site. Take a look at this screenshot from the Site Build It! traffic stats page.

Due to the delays in shipping items and waiting for possible returns the site actually generates on average $350 USD a month (the average since affiliate links were put up in May 2002). I am very pleased with what I have achieved. Now I just occasionally add new articles and handle the email.

I receive a lot of email from people who want to talk about DJing. I now know lots of DJs all over the world and I enjoy that.

[The true test of affiliate success is actual checks received. Here are the first four checks we received from MusiciansFriend:

$208.56
$233.40
$272.92
$455.83

[That's a nice increase, isn't it! – Allan.]

Site Build It! all things to all people?

I'm sure you've already read something about Site Build It! being unbelievably good software. In my experience, Site Build It! does offer everything a first time affiliate would want.

As you can see, my very first affiliate web site makes money. Now it is done, I have moved on I'm building more sites generating new revenue streams. With four or five sites I could afford to do this full-time. Site Build It! takes care of so much manual work that having 10 sites would easily be possible.

Instead of building new sites, another option is to IMPROVE your first site, look for ways to attract more people to it, and encourage a higher percentage of these visitors to buy things. Take a look at Allan's advice at the end of the next section.

You can forget about researching search engine optimization, web hosts and HTML design. Just forget about all of that and start focusing on web site ideas that excite and interest you.

It's a cliché I know but you get out of Site Build It! only what you put in.

You need good ideas and drive to succeed with this suite of tools. Before you get Site Build It! try to think of some topics that you might like to write about. If you can't think of a single thing that makes you excited, then don't buy. Your visitors can tell if you're just going through the motions like a robot.

[On the other hand, the brainstorming advice in the Action Guide could surprise you. It could help you come up with a good idea to suit your interests – Allan.]

Site Build It! is the robot, you're the living, breathing, passionate creature that adds your soul to the words on your site. Your visitors will appreciate your honesty and benefit from your knowledge by buying the right products from your merchant partners.

Future directions

DJ-Tips-and-Tricks.com pretty much takes care of itself now. I have to do only about two hours a week general maintenance. When a new product comes out that interests me I can write a new page about it.

I also get the occasional request from owners of other sites who want to use some of my articles. This is an easy way to get links to my site.

I have already built a second site using Site Build It!. This next site is already attracting more visitors and earning more money than my DJ site. The monthly affiliate check received in December 2002 from my second site was $698.20. It took me much less time to complete the second site and my planning was much better from the start.

I honestly believe that this form of affiliate marketing can be very profitable and personally rewarding. As I continue to build new sites, I can see the revenue grow. With the time it takes me to build a site decreasing and the profitability increasing, it seems my dream job of earning a living from web sites built around my hobbies and interests is becoming a reality.

8 ways Rupert could increase his monthly commissions

[Notes from Allan Gardyne, AssociatePrograms.com]

Rupert has just scratched the surface of what's possible with his affiliate site.

For example:

1. Rupert hasn't written even one article for a newsletter. This is a powerful way of enhancing your reputation, attracting visitors to your site and adding long-lasting links to your site (when the newsletters are archived online).

2. He hasn't begun his own mailing list. Site Build It! includes a high-quality product which makes this easy. MailOut permits you to collect subscriptions via your site, import lists, build a quality HTML ezine (with automatic text translation), SpamCheck, sophisticated background bounce-management and the entire thing is built to keep spammers out (VERY important for a mail server – all the big ones are having HUGE troubles with AOL, Yahoo! etc.), stats, etc., etc. Rupert should be capturing all that traffic for repeat exposure.

3. He hasn't begun his own newsletter (same benefits as above).

4. He has done only a minimal amount of experimenting to see if he can raise his conversion rate. Experienced marketers continually tweak their sites, changing headings, text, graphics, products they promote etc., looking for ways to encourage more of their visitors to buy.

5. Apart from getting listed in Yahoo! and DMOZ.org, he has very few links to the site. He hasn't telephoned even one web site owner to try to arrange reciprocal links. This is hugely important and worth spending time, energy and money on.

6. He hasn't offered any information via an autoresponder. A seven-part autoresponder course would give him seven chances to achieve a sale instead of only one.

7. He hasn't expanded the list of products he is promoting to include new merchants. For example, although MusiciansFriend's exclusivity clause forbids him from promoting direct competitors, he could offer his visitors a book on how to be a DJ and he could also promote music magazines.

8. He hasn't built a large site. Building a large, comprehensive site, the best in your field, makes it harder for newcomers to compete with you.

To sum up, while Rupert is pleased with the income DJ-Tips-and-Tricks.com is producing, there's plenty of potential for more.

As I write this, Rupert is busy expanding his second Site Build It! site. The latest monthly commission check, for $698.20, shows us that he's on the right track.

I've promised Rupert a bonus when one of his sites earns its first $1,000 commission check. I'm sure he'll receive it very soon, thanks to Site Build It!.

UPDATE:
Second affiliate experiment tops $1,000 a month

He did it! Rupert's second affiliate marketing experiment is bringing in more than $1,000 a month in commissions. Read how he does it here...

Case Study #2