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As promised, today we begin an affiliate marketing case study with one of the students going through the Affiliate Marketing Schoolbook Beginner Course. We'll be hearing from him once a week and following his progress as he builds his first site. Take it away, Jamie!
AMS Case Study: Week 1
I just received my copy of the "Skip the Scam Get the Skills" Affiliate Marketing Schoolbook by Laura Burke and downloaded it to my computer. I am very excited about getting started with her course and learning everything I can about affiliate marketing. I am new to affiliate marketing and I have no real computer skills other than surfing the web. I do not know how to build or market a web site, and that is why I decided to get this course so that I could get a thorough step by step course that would show me all the steps I would need to take to start make money as an affiliate marketer.
I talked with Laura and have decided to do a journal to chronicle my achievements along the way, in hopes that someone else will read it and see that it is possible to be a complete newbie as they say to internet marketing, and learn how to make money. Each week I will submit a review of all the lessons I have gone through, what I have learned and applied. So I hope this helps someone else that is new to internet marketing to take action and learn how to make money.
Lesson 1
In the first lesson the course goes over what you can expect from this course and what it will go over. It goes over that you should give it at least six months to a year to expect to see decent money. I like that she has set a reasonable goal of when to expect to see money. A lot of times, people read all these get rich sites where they say you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars in the next week by a pushing a few buttions on your keyboard, and what I have learned is this is all a bunch of hype. If you want to really establish a business on the internet that is going to make you money and keep you making money, it is going to take work, and that is what I am ready to do.
Also the first lesson goes over what affiliate marketing is and how it works. When I read this it seems like it is so simple to make money—build a web site, drive traffic to your web site, send visitor to product sales pages, visitor buys product, you make money—but I know this isn't as simple as it may seem and it is going to take some time and hard work.
Lesson one also gives us our first homework assignment which is to brainstorm a list of as many topics as you can think of that you either enjoy or have some experience with. What would you love to get paid to do? Here is my list.
Assignment 1
1. Playing guitar
2. Outdoors
3. Football
4. Basketball
5. Fishing
6. Mixed Martial Arts
7. Hunting
8. Body Building
9. Making Money
10. Investing
11. Fly Planes
12. Gardening
13. Motorcycles
14. Boating
15. Outdoor Survival Skills
Lesson 2
Planning your site - Goes into explaining what keywords are and how important they are to building a site around specific keywords you are passionate about. I totally agree with this because if I am going to be working on a web site for hours I want it to be about something I am interested in. It also goes into keyword research a little bit and explains that you want to build your web site around keywords that are searched for a lot so that you can drive a lot of visitors to your site, not one that nobody is searching.
The second assignment to complete is to go more into detail on our keywords, using keywords people would use to look up your web site.
Assignment 2
1. Guitar lessons
2. Guitar lessons online
3. Learn guitar online
4. Flyfishing
5. Flyfishing rods
6. Flyfishing equipment
7. Fishing lures
8. Outdoor camping gear
9. Camping tents
10. Mixed martial arts equipment
11. Mixed martial arts lessons
12. Bodybuilding workouts
13. Workouts to build muscles
14. How to invest for beginners
15. Learn how to invest your money
16. Gardening supplies
17. Gardening tools
18. Motorcycle helmets
Lesson 3
Evaluating your competition - In this lesson she goes over how to evaluate your competition by doing searches in Google with your keywords using quotes and "allintitle." This was a great lesson—I had no idea that by adding quotes and putting allintitle would show how many are actually using that keyword on their web site.
This week I learned a lot about the basics of affiliate marketing, and I feel this course is going to get me to become a successful affiliate marketer.
-- Jamie
Laura's comments
Jamie is off to a good start! He has a nice assortment of possible subjects for his first site, which is great because if he discovers that his first choice doesn't have the money-making potential hoped for, he has lots of other ideas to fall back on.
He also has begun a nice list of keywords that people might use while searching information on those topics. He will be narrowing down this list to one subject as he continues through the lessons.
Don't forget to subscribe using the orange button at the top of this page so you don't miss any installments in this case study. See you later!
I LOVE my “job.” Affiliate marketing takes work, but it doesn’t feel like work.
{ 1 comment }
A lot of great information here and I wish Jamie the best. I received your sample lesson and found it very enlightening! I am looking forward to your next post.
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