In the last week, I’ve been creating a list of possible site topics on which to build a niche affiliate website. As of today, I have 116 topics that show promise. The breakdown from last week’s exercises are as follows:
- Topics Chosen from Affiliate Networks: 12
- Topics Chosen from Giant Household Inventory: 63 (narrowed down from a list of over 670 different products!)
- Topics Chosen from “Top Links” Sites: 21
- Topics Chosen from Personal Skills, Talents, Hobbies and other interests: 20
So now, I have to narrow this down … WAY down. My goal is to get this list down to 10-15 topics that have potential and that I can investigate further for popularity.
If you’ve created a list like this yourself, you need to have some criteria to narrow the list.
Here’s my criteria for this step in the project:
Am I interested in the topic or product category enough to research it, “live with it”, write about it, and build a site around it over the next several months?
After I get the list down to 10-15, then I’ll investigate keyword popularity and affiliate providers.
Time will be tight over the next week as I have some other commitments during my limited “free time”, but I’ll make sure to squeeze in at least a couple of hours on this project this week!
Filed under Picking a Topic, Status Updates, Staying Motivated by on Jul 31st, 2007. 
Still continuing the topic research. I visited all the sites quoted in my last post (Choosing a Niche Topic, Part 3). Unfortunately, I got very distracted visiting all the cool sites I found in the Google Directory, and trying searches on all the different keywords from the "top searches" sites.
I compiled a list of about 20 interesting topics from that exercise, so I think I’ll move on now to the final method of picking a niche topic.
Topic Selection Method #4: Your Hobbies, Skills and Special Knowledge
This final method of selecting website topics simply involves doing an inventory of:
- successes you have enjoyed
- challenges you have overcome
- hobbies on which you spend a lot of time, money and energy
- topics you like to read about, research and study in your spare time
- skills you have that you enjoy using
To start this process, I’ll list some examples of the above from my own life. This is only to help you understand the types of topics you might list.
Some Examples of Topic Ideas
My first example is from my job, career and related organizations:
For over 10 years, I have had a career in the field of training and development. I know how to easily put together interesting and informative training sessions, continuing education classes, and seminars and have helped other people to do the same. I’m a member of the American Society for Training and Development. I also am very skilled at helping people improve their existing public speaking skills and presentations. I’ve also won some speech contests through the Toastmasters International organization. This could easily lead to a whole site built around improving one’s public speaking skills.
My second and third examples are from one of my hobbies:
Since 1984 (23 years), I have hosted a weekly radio show on which I play music from Broadway, Hollywood, and London musicals. I’ve seen shows in New York City, plus seen dozens of shows as they tour through Cleveland, Ohio. This could easily lead to a whole site built around musicals, musical theater, songs from musicals and other related topics. (A couple of years ago, I built a website around my musicals radio show, but that’s only meant as a support site for the show.)
In addition, I’ve worked behind the scenes at the Cleveland radio station where I host the weekly radio show. I help on the technical repair crew by selecting, purchasing, installing and maintaining radio broadcast equipment. I have already built one website on a related topic, web audio, using some of my audio and technical knowledge. It doesn’t get a lot of traffic, but it was a good way to get started in building affiliate websites.
My fourth example comes from the things I like to read about:
If you were to browse my personal library, you would find dozens of books on self improvement and self/business success. I like to joke that I have the "largest collection of partially-read self improvement books". I have a lot of the seminal works by well-known authors such as Dale Carnegie, Tony Robbins and Jack Canfield, plus a multitude of other offerings from first-time authors. So, I could easily create a website around the topic of self-improvement, goal setting, time management, or any of a dozen other topics I frequently read about.
My fifth example (and final for this post), comes from a hobby my wife and I enjoy
Since 2003, my wife and I have been avid gardeners. We have built flower beds and vegetable beds. We have experimented with growing all kinds of different flowers and vegetables in our Zone 5 climate. We have had a few failures, and several successes. So, we could create a site on some aspect of gardening. We’re not professionals by any means, but we just have fun growing things.
Other topics
- We have owned two cats, so any site on a niche portion of cat ownership might be successful.
- We took a road trip to Salt Lake City and back. I can tell you how to save money and have fun!
- I’ve been a corporate interviewer and could provide assistance to job seekers on how to write a resume and interview properly with confidence.
- … and much, much more.
Your own personal list might include some of the following topics:
- Building your own motorcross bike
- Thoughts and advice on choosing and repairing lawn mowers and riding mowers
- The things you learned while finding appropriate long-term care for an aging relative
- Secrets to researching the obscure branches of a family tree
- Your big travel trip to China where you only spent pennies a day, but ate like a king
- How you take such great photos with your digital camera
- The successes, failures and advice you would tell others about renovating a home
- The fun you had planning a friend’s wedding and what you learned in the process
- The history of reggae music, plus some recorded interviews you have done with famous reggae stars.
- Advice for Little League coaches on how to turn a losing Little League team into the winners of the state championships (and how to keep parents happy!)
- Creative birthday party ideas for kids.
- Creative birthday party ideas for adults.
- Creative birthday party ideas for the elderly.
- … and much more.
The idea is to make a list of all the things you know about, read about, and spend time with on a regular basis. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a "professional’s lifetime" worth of knowledge. If you enjoy the topic, even in a cursory way, write it down! You’re only creating and brainstorming a list of possible topics, not making a final choice. Only focus on making a big list.
By choosing topics you are intimately familiar with, you just might have an easier time building a website around the topic because of your natural inclinations. Whether or not the topic will be financially worthy is another story. (That will be the topic of a future post.)
Off I go to add more to my ever-growing list of topics. I suggest you do the same!
Filed under Picking a Topic, Status Updates by on Jul 27th, 2007.
In the first part of how to conduct niche topic research, I searched through various affiliate networks for site ideas. Got about 12 ideas.
In the second part of this topic, I did a household inventory using a method championed by James Martell. Turns out this was a bigger project than I thought. It took me a couple of hours!
In total, I wrote up a 13 page inventory, with each page containing two columns of items! In total, there are over 670 different products on my lists 
. Granted, there is some duplication, but there have to be at least 500+ possible niche site ideas. Obviously, I’m going to have to narrow this down, and Martell’s suggestion is to pick 25 topics that look interesting on the list.
Before I do that narrowing down, though, I’m going to keep generating niche site ideas.
Topic Selection Method #3: Browse Top "Most Popular" Lists and Sites
In this third part of my topic research, I was going to write about the resources that Dr. Andy Williams writes about in his free ebook, "Building Fat Affiliate Sites." However, while I was browsing around looking for ideas, I came across a link for a great YouTube video on how to research niche topics! The video is by Steven of AffiliateMarketingDiary.com and is very comprehensive.
In this video, Steven highlights 10 websites you can go to in order to find ideas for website ideas based on the "most popular" topics that people are actually searching for. The video lasts about 10 minutes. Below, I’ve listed the links to the sites he references in the video.
Here are links to all the sites Steven mentions in the video:
- About.com Sitemap
- eBay Pulse
- eBay Pop
- Google Product Search (formerly known as Froogle)
- Google Directory (like the dmoz.org directory)
- Google Zeitgeist
- Amazon.com top sellers
- Amazon.com new releases
- Magazines.com (if there’s a magazine on the topic, it’s financially viable to pursue!)
- Yahoo buzz
Wow! Great information, and a whole boatload of site ideas popped into my head from this exercise. Gotta get them down on paper!
I’m seriously at NO LOSS for site ideas. The problem will be picking "just one" to start with!
Filed under Picking a Topic, Status Updates by on Jul 25th, 2007. 1 Comment.
In my last post, I reviewed one way to pick a niche topic. That was by browsing the contents of various affiliate networks.
My results? I am attracted to the idea of sites built around the following topics:
- robes and pajamas (sounds impossible, but fun)
- sofa covers (we have a couple of them at home)
- gifts for men (I’m a guy and could help women shop)
- model airplanes (used to build them as a child)
- sleds and toboggans (always loved sledding in winter)
- patio heaters / fire pits (I want to stay warm outside, too)
- custom t-shirts (sounds like fun)
- futons (we have one ourselves)
- toolboxes (I’m a guy who likes tools)
- toys that kids can ride (sounds like fun)
- candelabras (just sounds cool)
- credit cards (very popular because of the high commission rates)
In the above list, I’m just choosing based on the fact there is at least one website that sells the above products. I’d like to have more than one vendor to promote, so I’ll have to do some more research on each of these topics.
However, I’m just assembling a list right now and these topics are interesting enough for me to pursue further. More research ahead!
Topic Selection Method #2: Create a Big List of Products
This method is taken from James Martell’s Affiliate Marketers Handbook. The core idea is to walk through every room in your house and make a list of everything you see. The goal? Just to make a list of possible topics without trying to filter out or restrict any ideas.
For example, in my kitchen I see:
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… and more items are in the cabinets . Lots of individual products!
You probably have the same items in your kitchen plus maybe even a coffee maker, under-the-counter radio, hanging pot rack, roll around cart, pasta maker and more!
All of these items can be bought online, some at the providers listed at Netshops ! Therefore, all of these items could be potential topics of niche shopping websites.
In other words, you could create a whole site devoted to "hand towels", including an area on "hand towel racks" "hand towel holders", and maybe, for variety, a separate section of your site for "aprons".
Or you could create a whole site devoted to "popcorn poppers" OR "bread boxes" OR "woks" OR "refrigerators" OR "stand mixers". (Note: the operative word here is "OR" … as in one of these topics OR another one of these topics … not "AND".)
Of course, you could create a broader site around the idea of "cooking utensils" on which you could promote pots, pans, oven mitts, cookie sheets, spoons, drawer organizers and other related topics.
However, building a site around the topic of "kitchen stuff" would be too big and broad, unless you’re willing to make a site that covers every single thing a kitchen can contain. Too much work, and too diluted to be effective.
Inside, Outside and at Work
Martell’s home inventory method involves going through every room of your house (or apartment), including the basement, closets, and garage or carport. Include anything used for hobbies and recreational interests.
Once you’re done inside, then you go outside and continue the list being sure to include patio furniture, benches, patio umbrellas, individual gardening items, replacement windows, doors, gutters and even siding or bricks.
Once you’re done at home, then you repeat the process at work! You’ll find your list includes items like computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse, monitor stand, laptop docking station, filing cabinet, fax machine, picture frame, desk, shelving, rolling office chair, carpet protector, and much more!
As Martell writes in his Affiliate Marketers Handbook, the idea is to "become very, very product focused! And stay there." He also says the list will easily go on for several pages! (In his handbook, Martell even gives a "form" you can use for your list, but you can also just use any regular pad of paper.)
The general idea here is build a site around something you already know about and use. Chances are, the things you buy are the same things that other people buy just in different models, colors and varieties!
After doing the home inventory, then I can start analyzing which look like winners or not.
Wow, have I got a list to make! Off I go!
Filed under Picking a Topic, Status Updates by on Jul 24th, 2007.
I just came across a press release for James Martell’s Backlinks Workshop and found out I’m quoted in it! I had some positive things to say about the training, and James used them in the press release.
You can read my review of Martell’s Backlinks Workshop. Overall, the workshop is fabulous and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants their site(s) to rank higher.
Thanks to James for using my testimonial!
Filed under Getting Inbound Links, Staying Motivated by on Jul 23rd, 2007.
My big project now begins! As a reminder, the goal is to develop an affiliate shopping type of website that generates $500 per month.
My Criteria for Picking a Niche Topic
The challenge here is to pick a topic that’s not too broad, and also that’s not so narrow that no one searches for it. The overriding qualification factors for the new site are as follows:
- Am I interested in the topic or product category enough to research it, “live with it”, write about it, and build a site around it over the next several months? For me, this is most important!
- Is there a suitably sized market of people searching for information on this topic?
- Are there any affiliate programs on the given topic?
(As a sidenote to #1, I could outsource all the content to writers using Elance.com or Rentacoder.com, but for this new site I want to write as much as possible myself so that the content is truly unique.)
So, how to pick a topic? I’m going to use a variety of techniques to find a suitable topic, and I’ll itemize them here over the next few days.
Topic Selection Method #1: Browse through catalogs of vendors at niche shopping sites and affiliate networks
Affiliate Networks are organizations that handle the affiliate programs for other people and organizations. One of the biggest such networks is Commission Junction and they handle affiliate programs for thousands of vendors. All you need to do is sign up with CJ, browse through various categories, and you’ll find vendors you can associate your site with.
For example, under the category of “weddings”, CJ has relationships with MyWeddingFavors.com, Bachelorette.com (bachelorette party supplies) and KitBiz.com (a site that sells an “Official Bride Name Change Kit”). Commission Junction handles all the link building, link tracking and sale processing on behalf of these websites.
I also enjoy browsing the shops at Netshops. Netshops has over 150 different specialty niche shopping sites. For example, there is a site on bathrobes. Yes, a shopping site focused solely on bathrobes. They also have shopping sites on kitchen pots and pans, patio furniture, and toys that kids can ride. Wow! Promoting any of these alone or in combination, would make for a great affiliate site.
Lots of other affiliates directories, like those at Clixgalore.com, ShareaSale.com, Linkconnector.com and NCSReporting.com and dozens more all are great fodder for ideas around which to build a specialty shopping site.
Steven over at AffiliateMarketingDiary.com has a assembled a great list of over 35 affiliate marketing networks .
Also, Allan Gardyne’s Associate Programs website has a great catalog of different possibilities to browse through.
Picking a topic using this method would satisfy criteria #3 (Are there any affiliate programs on the given topic?) and probably criteria #2 (a market to sell to) as well. After all, there probably wouldn’t be a shopping site for a product that no one is searching for, eh?
The question is, do any of the sites/topics uncovered through this method hold my interest enough to want to research it, “live with it”, write about it and build a site around it?
Needs more investigation, for sure. I’ll start browsing using this method and see what I come up with!
Filed under Picking a Topic, Status Updates by on Jul 23rd, 2007. 1 Comment.
A friend of mine recently asked me, “Why are you only shooting for five hundred dollars per month? That seems rather low and uninspiring.”
I told him, “Actually, my eventual goal is five hundred dollars per DAY. That just seems amazingly out of reach right now when I’ve never even made five hundred per month from one website.”
I went on to say, “It’s not that I’m aiming low. I’m just picking a figure I think is reasonable to start with and I’ll build from there.”
When you’re working to make money from home on the internet, you should have a goal you’re working towards.
Some people are trying to earn money to pay down a five or six figure amount of debt. Many have done so.
Others are trying to make “a million dollars” on the internet. There are plenty of people who have done so, too.
Regardless of the goal, you have to start somewhere. And, if you’re like me working on this part-time between other responsibilities, you should set your goal small enough to succeed, and large enough to still be a challenge.
Hence, we start with a goal to “go for 500″ dollars per month.
Once that’s achieved, then I’ll set a higher bar. The race is on!
Filed under Status Updates, Staying Motivated by on Jul 19th, 2007. 2 Comments.
I just returned from a 2-week road trip to Salt Lake City, Yellowstone National Park, Mount Rushmore, and other wonderful places. Along the way, my wife and I hauled along our laptop to blog about the trip, post photos for family viewing, and to check email.
On this trip I realized I still get a lot of email. All kinds of internet marketing promotions from joining so many different sites. Probably 80% of my emails were notifications about the latest and greatest offer to make me successful on the internet. Even with a recent bout of unsubscribing from such lists about 4 weeks ago, I realize I still have a ways to go.
I hereby resolve that I am going to spend this prep week unsubscribing from anyone’s mailing list I haven’t read in the last month. My focus is on building a content-based affiliate website that generates $500 per month. Other email offers are merely distractions towards that goal.
I suggest you evaluate your inbox overload and start unsubscribing, too.
Filed under Status Updates, Staying Motivated by on Jul 16th, 2007.
Site Build It! is a complete content publishing system for anyone who wants to build any type of content-based website that ranks well in the search engines.
Included with the purchase of Site Build It!, you get one domain license, a site building ‘Action Guide’, video tutorials, access to keyword research and topic research tools, an online site building tool (with ability to upload pages created offline), mailing list functionality, access to a supportive community of fellow users, and much more.
Site Build It! is a service run by Dr. Ken Evoy in Canada who started his online publishing business with a book titled “Make Your Site Sell.” I have personally had one Site Build It! site about web audio since 2003 and have seen continuous improvement of Site Build It! over these last several years. (I use the FTP version of site design.)
See some sample Site Build It! sites including a very famous one built by Evoy’s daughter.
The Positives
Site Build It! is truly an all-in-one solution of training guide, research tools and website hosting. There is no other affiliate/content publishing system that, in my opinion, effectively combines those three items into one package.
The Action Guide
The Action Guide walks you through a 10 “day” process of building a site. In Evoy’s parlance, a “day” is not necessarily a calendar day, so think of it as a 10 “step” process. It might take you a month to go through the first four “days”.
The first four “days” (no matter how long they actually take) are all about researching your topic and finding the best topic around which to build a site. The concentration is on finding and analyzing keywords, including sifting through their supply, demand and their popularity using a variety of online tools provided for that purpose. The fifth “day” you finally decide on a domain name and register it in the system. Then, you can start building your site, either using the online site building tools or designing your site elsewhere and uploading pages.
Personally, I like the concentration of analyzing your intended topic to a complete extent before purchasing your domain name. Ken Evoy stresses the “turtle philosophy” of moving slowly and doing it right from the start. Thorough research up front really makes for a better site in the end. They really want to make sure you have picked a worthwhile topic that will bring visitors to your site, which I thoroughly applaud. James Martell follows this approach, too, as does Dr. Andy Williams.
The concentration of the Site Build It! philosophy is abbreviated C>T>P>M. Early in the first day of the Action Guide, Evoy adds the letter “B” to the front to turn it into B>C>T>P>M. In English, this translates to: Brainstorm your topic and keywords -> Develop Content and your site -> Get Traffic coming in -> Presell Visitors with the Content -> and finally, Monetize the Traffic.
There is a “day” devoted to building relationships with your visitors through an email list (a simple autoresponder and mailing list software is built into the purchase price). There is a “day” devoted to analyzing your traffic stats (stats included with the purchase price).
Back when I got my first Site Build It! site in 2003, the Action Guide was a PDF file, and the keyword research tool was a piece of software that you installed on your computer. As of July 2007, everything is online which makes updates by the SBI crew much easier. (Case in point, comparing a January 2007 printed version of the online manual against the current online manual, I see that almost all references and examples using the Yahoo/Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool have been seamlessly removed from the manual since that Tool was phased out in early 2007.)
The online Action Guide is very clearly written with pictures, links, and colored text, with links to other relevant materials throughout the members area as needed. It also assumes no technical knowledge. I’d rank it right above a “novice” level, but it certainly doesn’t come across that way.
Video Training
The video training is comprehensive, too. In fact, it was created by one of the students who won a competition that Ken Evoy ran for the purpose of finding someone to create video tutorials!
The step by step instructions are broken into 20-30 minute segments and are visually interesting to watch. Very clear. There are even two versions of the video training: one featuring a voice track with an accented male voice, and the second featuring a woman speaking with an unaccented American accent.
Research Tools
On the keyword research tools side, the system is proprietary to Site Build It!, but appears to be an amalgamation of Wordtracker results, Google counts, and Yahoo counts. I’ve used used Nichebot.com for keyword research, too, and see some similarities between NicheBot.com and Site Build It! in this department.
For comparison, James Martell primarily stresses the use of WordTracker for keyword research, however, WordTracker doesn’t give popularity rankings. Dr. Andy Williams also leans toward the use of WordTracker, but uses it in conjunction with his keyword analysis software which lets him slice and dice the keywords in all kinds of wonderful ways.
The content research programs are also quite good, giving you one-stop access to a lot of sources for content ideas for the pages of your site.
Site Builder Software
The online site builder is very well organized and simple to use. As you create pages, it automatically checks your META tags (title, description, keywords), as well as the keyword density of your page content before you save the new information. You can incorporate pictures, graphics, audio, Flash, and video into your site, too. Any links you include in your pages are trackable, whether they refer to other pages in the site, or whether they go off to affiliates or other sites.
There are many templates for your overall site design, and you can tweak colors and lettering as needed. The resulting sites are clean and professional looking, without being too slick or too amateurish. Remember, the overall focus for the sitebuilding efforts is on the content (which is what visitors really care about), not the “look” of your site. The cool part is you can change the look at any time without having to do a lot of rework, and sites look pretty much the same across all browsers. Additional templates were created and chosen through a contest among SBI users.
And, as you build pages, SBI automatically submits them to search engines. Wow! There’s also a “where each page ranks” in Google, Yahoo, and MSN, plus instructions for submitting by hand to manual directories.
Private Forums
Perhaps the best part of Site Build It! is the crowd of success-oriented people in the private forums. They are there to help you through your struggles and frustrations, and they are helpful and encouraging. Building websites in the privacy of your home can often be a lonely endeavor. When you have a question about the process, it’s nice to have a cadre of other users (and even Ken Evoy himself) you can turn to rather than remain frustrated forever.
If you feel you might need such support and encouragement, Site Build It! is definitely the way for you to go. James Martell just started a forum in 2007, but it’s not nearly the size and depth of the Site Build It! forums. My personal experience is that public forums, which tend to sometimes be helpful too, tend to lean toward being more negative. SBI Forums are great.
If you follow the guide through all 10 “days”, you should have a highly performing site at the end.
The Criticisms
I have very few criticisms about Site Build It! It’s a solid web publishing system with great support and continual upgrades and improvements. The current version is so much better than the first versions I used in 2003.
If you have a lot of website design experience, you might find the online site builder a bit restrictive to your abilities. If you’re a PHP hound like myself, you’ll probably go nuts at all that you CAN’T do since all the pages are .html extensions and there’s no PHP allowed (as of July 2007). Therefore, there is no WordPress allowed either, and no MySQL provisions.
You can’t “preload” content for delayed appearance on the site. Therefore, if you want to continually update the site, you need to login to SBI every day to make your changes or new pages. That’s a small bother from my “advanced-user-status” viewpoint but might not challenge the novice who doesn’t really know any other ways to update a site.
You CAN incorporate Javascript, but that option also has it’s own problems in cross-browser functionality.
If you don’t like the templates provided by the online builder, or you want more control over content layout, you can always design your site in Dreamweaver or some other software tool and then upload the pages through the “FTP It!” section of the site. (It’s not “true” FTP, and that might bother some people, but I’ve found it to work fine.)
Some advanced web designers might balk that you’re beholden to Sitesell (the parent company of SBI) for your site. Also, some people might complain that “everything” is online through SBI. I say, “well, tough luck to you.” This is the system Evoy has setup and it seems to work pretty well. If you don’t like it, go for the “do it yourself from scratch” approach of Martell or Williams.
If SBI works for so many people who have followed the process from start to finish, then it must work well. One respected affiliate marketing expert, Allan Gardyne, is an enthusiastic fan of Site Build It! and has several sites on the system, and a couple of public case studies of his own success. Good enough for me.
Note: Since everything is based online, you’ll do best if you have a high-speed internet connection.
Comparing James Martell’s Affiliate Marketer’s Handbook, Dr. Andy Williams’ Building FAT Affiliate Sites, and the Site Build It! Action Guide, I find that the SBI Action Guide is a little light in how to pick a narrow enough niche for your site topic if you want to build a content-based site for the purposes of building affiliate income.
There is a separate area of the Site Central Members Area called “Niche Choose It!” which is helpful, and a downloadable ebook on “Info Product Ideas”, but I still find that Martell and Williams do better on picking raw topics for the purpose of an affiliate-based site. This may not matter to small business owners who might be building a site to promote their own products and services.
In the “Day 6″ chapter on building your site, there’s a lot about how to make pages of content from the technical perspective, but not a lot of help on “how to write good content.” That’s not really terrible though, because there is Evoy’s separate FREE PDF book titled”Make Your Content PRESell” which covers the topic of writing in complete detail. Plus, you can get a FREE copy of Gary Antosh’s excellent book “Web Content Made Easy.” Great supplement material for sure.
Overall Recommendation
So, is Site Build It! worth $299 per site (July 2007)?
Considering all that you get for the price including:
- one hosted domain
- an excellent step-by-step action guide that stresses the slow and steady approach
- fabulously clear video tutorials
- comprehensive keyword research tools and topic research tools
- a good online sitebuilder with many bells and whistles including a short autoresponder and mailing list capabilities
- webmail
- an RSS feed for your site, and
- a success-oriented helpful crowd on the private forums …
… Site Build It! is one heck of a great value!. The total investment of US $299 is really less than $24.95 per month which you might easily pay just to host a site somewhere else, but not get similar support and encouragement from others that you get through the SBI forums.
Site Build It! is primarily targeted towards less-technically-inclined site builders.
If you have website design experience, you might find the online sitebuilder to be a little bit too clunky for your tastes and levels of patience.
Of course, if you have trouble following directions, prefer to do things “your way”, and don’t have the patience or discipline to follow the success trail laid out in the Action Guide, you’ll probably struggle along, too.
The SBI System is not just limited to people who want to build affiliate/content websites. Even if you own a small business and are trying to attract clients, Site Build It! is a great solution, too. However, if you don’t want to build your site yourself, there are SBI Certified Webmasters all over the world who will do it for you!
The army of SBI fans are truly devoted to the SBI because of the way it has helped them develop great sources of income while working from home. The fans love Site Build It! and they have made videos to prove it!
These periodically updated case studies give testimony to the power of Site Build It!
http://case-studies.sitesell.com
Filed under Product Reviews by on Jul 15th, 2007.
James Martell is one of several famous providers of training materials on how to build affiliate websites. James got his start building content-based websites that refer visitors to merchants who, in turn, paid James a commission if the person bought a product. Since those “early years”, James has expanded his income streams beyond pure affiliate sites by providing more and more training materials for people interested in making money while working from home.
The James Martell Product Line
As of July 2007, James Martell provides the following catalog of products:
- A training manual in PDF format called “The Affiliate Marketer’s Handbook”, combined with Camtasia instructional videos and videos from a live-training event especially created to be paired with the manual.
- A bi-monthly audio program called Affiliate Buzz to help keep you motivated.
- An online version of his "Affiliate Marketer’s Bootcamp" that takes you through the entire site building process over the course of several weeks.
- An online Backlinks Workshop to help you become an expert in getting the pages of your site to rank well in the search engines.
- An optional online website building software.
I got interested in affiliate marketing by purchasing the 2002 version of Martell’s “Affiliate Marketer’s Handbook.” At the time I found it to be very good and helpful to me. I also subscribed to his bimonthly audio program called the Affiliate Buzz. I actually built two sites following his methods. One is a patio furniture site. This site has since dropped out of Google because I did some subversive things to try to get it to rank higher and later abandoned it. Shortly after I purchased the manual, Martell announced that many of his affiliate sites dropped in the rankings because of his interlinking of sites and some updates at Google.com He recovered by building new sites, using new methods, which are outlined in his most recent version of the manual.
The Positives
I like the Affiliate Marketer’s Handbook because it clearly lays out in eight steps what any beginner would need to do to become successful in affiliate publishing.
Martell covers everything from assembling your basic materials of papers, pens, and passwords, to choosing a topic, to registering a domain name, to building the first few pages, to getting incoming links, and more.
He also is very realistic about income levels and to set your goals appropriately. He emphasizes this is not a “get rich quick” business model. It can be up to four to six months or more before you start seeing significant traffic to your site from which you might earn some money.
I also like that, although most of Martell’s income probably comes from his online bootcamps, he continues to build affiliate sites and tweak his methods, occasionally sharing his findings with listeners through the Affiliate Buzz.
The 2006 version of the manual is much better than the original version I bought, with a much clearer and specific example of building a website around the topic of barbeques which he does from start to finish in the manual. He covers everything very clearly and gives many specific examples.
Throughout the book are various links to Camtasia videos of how to do certain steps in the process. Because I’m fairly experienced as a website builder, I found the videos to be a little bit elementary. However, I understand that the target audience for the material is the complete novice. So, on that level, I think the Camtasia videos would be clear and helpful to any novice.
Included with the purchase of the book are a set of downloadable videos from the “live” version of James Martell’s Affiliate Marketer’s Bootcamp. The videos are very high quality, done with a three-camera shoot before a live audience. The videos help clarify what is in the manual … especially the video about choosing a topic … but I didn’t find that they add any noticeable content beyond that.
For the most part, James talks and shows things well in these live action videos, but I found he spent a lot of time puffing up his own sites and how great they are and how high they rank. Late in each video there are questions from the audience which help to add a little bit of clarification to the topics.
The Criticisms
Of course, this wouldn’t be a fair review if I only noted the good things. But, I only have a few criticisms with Martell’s approach.
1. Product and Service Suggestions in the Handbook
EZ-Webbuilder.com – There are less expenisve versions available
Martell spends a significant number of pages in the manual telling you how to use an online website builder (ez-webbuilder.com) for $29.95 per month. What he doesn’t tell you is that he OWNS the ez-webbuilder.com domain. It’s simply a private-label version of an online site builder created by WebsiteDynamics.com that you can find elsewhere for $10 cheaper.
Of course, you don’t have to use his sitebuilder suggestion and he says as much in the manual. You can use anything you want to build websites and there are a lot of options like Dreamweaver, FrontPage, WordPress, Dr. Andy William’s SEO Website Builder, Site Buildit! and many more.
However, if you don’t want to explore those options, try CityMax.com, macWebsiteBuilder.com, or BuilderSpot.com for the same exact online sitebuilder for only $19.95 per month.
When I first read his 2002 manual, I was exclusively a Dreamweaver guy. In the last year, I have started leaning more towards WordPress, so I found the extensive number of pages on ez-webbuilder.com to be a little too long and, in this case, self-promoting.
Note: Martell is a true affiliate marketer by referring his students to a website building software and extracting a monthly commission from the sale. It just rubs me the wrong way that he charges more for the exact same product offered elsewhere at a lower price point.
Website Templates through GoldenPineCone.com
If you choose to build sites using DreamWeaver, FrontPage or SEO Website Builder, you don’t have to buy the templates Martell recommends. Granted, the templates are really great looking. In fact, you might buy one for the first site just to get up and running quickly, but, in the long run do you really want your sites to look so similar to Martell’s and a lot of his students?
Domain Registration – Less Expensive Alternatives
Martell recommends buying your domain names through domain-maniac.com. As you might expect, this is just a Martell private-label version of a Domain Reseller Program from Tucows.com.
There are cheaper alternatives like Godaddy.com, MyDomain.com, and hundreds of other registration sites with domains less than $10 per month.
Remember, James Martell is making a commission off just about everything he recommends in the book. But that’s not a bad thing, because that’s his career and if you wrote a similar book, you would probably do the same.
2. Very Few Page Layout Instructions
I would like to see more information about how to design the layout of your page. Some ideas on where to put a product photo, or “best places to put affiliate links” and other such topics would have been helpful. I’ve learned such information from other sources over the years, but I would have liked to see some here, especially if this is geared toward novices.
On the other hand, if Martell wrote to "specifically put your links ‘here’, and use ‘x’ number of pictures on the page", EVERY student would do so and there would probably be some penalty inflicted by Google for so many sites leaving the same footprint!
3. Few revelations about how he currently builds sites
What James doesn’t tell you in the manual (but you learn after listening to his Affiliate Buzz newsletter) is that he currently outsources a lot of site building and maintenance tasks to other people.
Martell currently hires a lot of writers through Elance.com for the writing of his site content, but he only started using Elance in the last couple of years because of a recommendation from a student. He has another person help to edit the articles he gets back from Elance writers.
He hires other people to do a lot of his site setups, and mentions on one audio recording how he even outsourced the simple 5-minute installation of WordPress. He also has some type of custom software arrangement to post an article almost every day on some of his sites.
It might be helpful to think of Martell as the true embodiment of the term affiliate "publisher". Primarily he farms farms work out to other people, and occasionally does some things himself.
However, he does say that when he started in the business, he did write all of the content and did all the tech work himself or with the help of his wife and kids.
You have to remember Martell now runs a successful affiliate publishing business. It’s not a hobby to him, it’s a business. If you treat your website building like a business with diligent effort on a regular basis, you will eventually begin outsourcing such activities, too. You will eventually reach a point where you simply cannot do everything yourself.
4. You might struggle, but follow the manual
If you don’t have the inclination to follow directions and recommendations, you might struggle with Martell’s approach. If you have no sense of self-discipline, you will definitely struggle with the approach.
If you are coming at affiliate marketing with pre-conceived notions and previous website design experience, you might struggle with Martell’s approach and think of “better ways” to do the process. However, realize that Martell’s teachings have been used by thousands of people worldwide who have experienced success. And, they have worked for James Martell and they continue to work for him.
In fact, one of his more famous students is a woman named Bronwyn Bamber. She recently testified on one of Martell’s Affiliate Buzz recordings that she really didn’t experience true success with Martell’s process until she went back and read the manual again. Whole new paragraphs on the need to get inbound links “suddenly appeared.” In other words, by rereading and following the manual she really got all the information she needed. She now makes tens of thousands of dollars each month from sites built around personal checks, recipes and other topics (just search for her name in Google).
5. The live action videos
As noted previously, the videos from the live bootcamp included in the purchase price came across to me as a little too much about James, and not so much about the real purpose of building affiliate websites.
For several years I had a career as a professional computer software trainer, and also evaluated other trainers as part of my responsibility. I would put James in the “I need an audience and to be the center of attention” category (lots of public speakers and trainers project a little bit of this aura, too). I got a strong vibe of ego from hearing Martell talk about his high-ranking sites, which he uses to great excess as demo material. Some of the videos are better than others, but as a whole, I consider these videos only an “average” supplement to the manual.
On a sidenote, the cutaway shots to the live audience are a real hoot. I might be reading the people wrong, but to me, the audience seems to look bored, disinterested, expressionless and morose a good bit of the time!
6. Not really a bad thing …
Martell doesn’t readily share the URL’s of his websites. Some students would argue that Martell does everyone a disservice by keeping his websites “secret”.
I personally would like to see more examples of his sites beyond his original “1st-in” sites (1st-in-babies.com, 1st-in-cell-phones.com, and others which have since been penalized because of interlinking), but I completely understand his reasoning. Martell has had too many of his sites completely copied, word-for-word, by lazy students seeking a quick buck. Consequently, both his site and the copy site get search engine penalties slapped against them for duplicate content and a dozen other reasons. So, except in limited cases (which I have seen), he has kept quiet about his current roster of some 90 websites.
Note: Martell is not the only person to keep quiet on his URL’s. So does Michael Campbell, Dr. Andy Williams, Colin McDougall, and many other famous and not-so-famous people. Think about this in the larger business context: would you expect the Pepsi Corporation to publicly share all of its soft drink recipes?
My Overall Recommendation
So, is James Martell’s “Affiliate Marketer’s Handbook” worth $197?
I say yes, if you are a complete novice and really need a good foundational education in affiliate publishing. The target audience is novices, and I think Martell’s materials are good for that target audience. The book contains solid and thorough content, written in an easy-to-follow style.
If you have some sitebuilding experience and you have worked with other similar training products (like SiteBuild It! or SEO Website Builder), then I would suggest you might want to continue working with what you already have. You really don’t need to add Martell’s materials to your library. If you do, you might get a couple of good nuggets, but they might not be worth $197 to you.
Just remember, as with any content-based affiliate website, you can’t just build one Martell-like site, put up a few pages, forget about making further updates and expect to make shovels of money. This is NOT a "get-rich-quick" process and you must be committed to the long haul. You have to be willing to continually add new content and adapt your site as necessary to the ever-changing algorithms of the search engines.
James Martell’s Affiliate Marketer’s Handbook is available at http://www.work-at-home-net-guides.com.
Filed under Keyword Research, Product Reviews by on Jul 12th, 2007. 2 Comments.