subject: The Power Of Creating A Blog As Part Of An Affiliate Program [print this page] Blogging is an internet phenomenonBlogging is an internet phenomenon. You should really take the
time to learn how to use this powerful tool to market your
affiliate program.
A Blog is basically an online web log or journal, so to speak.
There are literally millions of blogs on the internet today and
they are all varied and different; they are different not only
in the type of content they provide but also in the way that
the content is written or delivered to its target audience.
Some blogs will be all text based and yet others will
incorporate audio and video. How creative you get is limited
only by your creativity. Your job is to create and use blogs
that deal specifically with the product you are promoting. As
such, considering you are marketing my program we would want to
focus on blogs that deal with real estate investing,
purchasing, and of course where to locate the source of funds
one needs to compete in today's real estate market. The key
here is to be very narrow in your approach. What I mean by that
is that you should stay away from "general" discussion blogs
and focus more on the targeted "niche" information.
For example, you might want to start a blog about "general real
estate practices," or "how to invest in real estate," or
something like that. These blogs are way to generic and general
in nature and not suitable for your purposes. You want a very
focused blog; something along the lines of "finding real estate
investors," or "Finding the money to do your real estate deal."
The point is to create a blog that meets the criteria of being
very focused. The reason for this is quite simple. If you were
to type in the search term "real estate investing" or "How to
invest in real estate," you are going to get over 22 million
responses. However, when you narrow it down to a very specific
topic like "finding money for real estate deals" you have
narrowed it down to a little over one million. People online
that you want to market to will be using very specific search
terms. Your job is to create a blog that meets those narrow
search criteria.
Once you find the search criteria that you think your customers
will be using you are going to want to create a blog that
meets those needs and you want to start posting on that blog.
At first, please, do not make any mention of your affiliate
program. Just post commentary on the blog. For example, if you
use the search term "finding money for real estate deals" you
will find that one of the top search results is a blog that was
started very simply with word press and quite frankly is not
that impressive. Your job is to make a better blog. And by the
way, you may want to seriously consider having more than one
blog! Remember, the key to a great blog is to be very targeted
with the information you are discussing.
Understand the nature of the person you are marketing to. Most people do not want to buy! They want information. Your job is to leverage information! So create a blog that deals specifically with the information people are looking for. Provide them with relative and insightful blog entries and continue to make blog posts.
Make sure that you use the same "key words" every time so that
your blog comes up in the search results and makes people want
to click on your blog for the information they are looking for.
To start your blog I would recommend that you read my e-book
"How to get all the money you need to buy property," and then make a blog entry reviewing the book. Get a conversation started on it. Get people to comment on your blog about their experience with the book. Hell, give the book away to your friends and family and ask them to go to your blog and post some comments. Be creative. The more people you have talking about the book the easier it is going to be later to get them and others to buy.
Remember what I said about using the same key word. In this
case your key words would be "Alan Cowgill" and "How to get all
the money you need to buy property. "Try using those two
statements at least twice in each blog entry you make. Perhaps
you might want to make a blog entry for each chapter. Again,
the key here is to get creative!
Once you have a good discussion going you are now going to want
to insert your "leverage." For example; next to the blog entry
about the e-book or the chapter you are discussing at the
time, you may want to consider entering a link and commentary
letting people know that they can download their own free copy
of the e-book so that they can join the commentary! The key
here is to get them to download the book and to capture their
email address. Make it a requirement that they provide you with
a "good" and "viable" email address so that you can send them
the link where they can download the book. This guarantees you
that you are getting good contact information from them. This
helps you build an email distribution list.
Lastly, once you have a loyal following you can start making
blog entries about the affiliate program you are promoting. For
example, you may want to make a blog entry about Chapters three
and four of the E-book and then follow it up with;
You can learn more about this topic by visiting Alan's website
and attending one of his seminars or better yet getting one of
his home study courses. Click here for more information.
This is where you can insert your "affiliate link" to make sure
you get the credit! The key here to remember is that you want
to leverage information so that people trust you and the
information you are providing. Once they trust you and you have
a relationship with them, that is when you insert your
leverage!
We should mention that starting a blog is easy and fun! Did we
forget to mention that you can start one for free!? Although we
normally do not make a practice of recommending products or
services from other companies we decided to make an exception
in this case. If you want to start your blog and need to do it
as easily and as inexpensively as possible then we would
recommend that you check out Word Press. You can find them
easily with a search engine.
To your success,
E. Alan Cowgill
PS. To get an idea of how to put a Blog together you should go
online and take a look around at some of the more popular blogs
to get some great ideas on how you should do yours.