What should I outsource first for my affiliate marketing? Content Creation

Over the past year I’ve learned a good bit about affiliate marketing as a whole, much of which is good business practice regardless of industry. Also during this time I have come to find out what parts of building these affiliate websites are the most daunting, at least for me.

From what I have read on forums, blogs, and other marketers sites, the thing I struggle with the most is content. Writing content more specifically. There are two reasons why.

The first reason is that it just takes so long. There are many other things that have to be taken care along with all of the content creation, and I am much more efficient at getting those done. While I do feel that I am pretty good writer, it is still a huge load of content.

For example, a typical site that is considered to be a small site by the Affilorama template requires 30 pages. Each page is usually a 500+ word article written around a specific keyword phrase. That is JUST the content for the actual web page. Now we need to write content for off the web page in order to start driving traffic to our site, as well as build up back links so that we rank in google.

So how much more writing is that really? Let me give you some examples.

I am testing out using AMAutomation.com, which is an article marketing resource recommended by Affilorama. AMAutomation is a service that allows you to post articles to blogs within specific nitches.  The articles can be written in such a way that allows for this piece of software to ‘spin’ the article so that each article is unique.

Doing this requires that you manually rewrite an already written article, at least 2 times.  When I do this, I go through and rewrite each sentence two more times to say the same thing, but using different words.  So we should be around 1500 words total for 1 article submission to AMA. Then I go back through, and reword some phrases in each sentence once or twice. This allows the software to come up with very unique articles…basically the more options you can give it the better. We’ll say another 250 words or so.

For all 30 pages on the site, we want at least one link in our AMA articles.  Each AMA article is allowed up to 3 links, so we’ll use all 3. That means we need at least 10 AMA articles for one site, or 30 pages.  Lets do some math…

1 Site = 30 pages X 500 words each = 15,000 words

1 AMA article = 500 + 500 + 500 + 250 = 1750 words X 10 = 17,500

15,000 + 17,500 = 32,500 words

The second reason, yes there were two as I mentioned earlier, is that my sales copy is not very good. While I have started to master some of the more technical parts of creating these websites, writing copy that is not only appealing but actually enticing is something I need work on.

If I can outsource my writing to a resource that can not only give me 32,500 words with a good turn around time, and also write excellent sales copy, I think that will be well worth the financial investment, giving me more time to focus on the aspects that I can do and do them better.

It’s weird to me that it’s been almost a year since I was semi actively posting here, but I guess that is how things go. I suppose it is somewhat gratifying that I’ve managed to keep posting to this ‘blog’ since 2006 even if there has been some down time here and there.  One of my first posts was about starting some company, which I can tell you never went through.  That is a problem I’ve had thus far in my life, actually following through all the way on a business idea to the point that the income is residual.

This is where affiliate marketing comes in. For those of you that do not know what it is, let me explain very briefly.

Affiliate Marketing is at its least, sales.  Being an ‘affiliate’ means selling someone elses product.  This can be physical or digital products, for this example lets use digital products only.

Say someone writes an ebook called How To Fly Kites. This person sets up a website to act as a sale page to try and sell their ebook. There are several websites that would allow them to post up their product, so that other people, the affiliates, can access the information, and in turn, set up their own websites that will ‘upsell’ the ebook, and drive traffic to the authors website.

When someone clicks on a link that appears on the affiliates website, which goes to the authors website, the authors website knows where that traffic came from…which is the affiliate site.  If the person decides to buy the ebook, the author then knows that the affiliate who’s page the purchaser came, deserves commission.

Sounds a bit confusing, but really it is not. The part I am attempting to play in that whole equation is the affiliate. I am working with all digital content for now as the commissions are extremely high(75%), and I can get paid from one source.

I already have two websites online that I build myself from scratch, with some banner design help from my good friend Dave over at www.ArtIsMyMiddleName.net.  These sites, as far as affiliate sites goes, are rather small, but they are still making sales which is VERY exciting.  I plan to beef them up a good bit more here in the near future, but first I am working on a brand new site.

I’ve just started going through an affiliate marketing program, which is basically a crash course series of videos, audio, and pdfs, giving lessons on everything you need to know in order to build affiliate websites and make affiliate sales.

It is by far the most comprehensive course on the internet right now and has been scaled so that even someone that knows nothing about design, coding, selling, researching, or anything, can get started fast.  I’ve already learned a lot of basics and have a strong background working with all aspects of the internet, so I am blasting through the lessons, but I am learning many things at the same time.

Anyways, which me luck so that I can actually keep this ball rolling.  I’ll keep you posted on my outcomes.