standout tv: BloggerTipsTricksHow To Build an Authority Amazon Niche Site that Generates $1000/Month

Ankit's Introduction

Hey guys, in today’s blog post I’ve invited Abhishek Tavasalkar who went from being broke to making $1000+/month in just under 5 months via his Niche Site.

After failure of his first site, he was adamant on being a successful blogger and hence after proper research and extreme desire to make it big, he’ll now share his journey of his niche site using only Amazon Affiliate Program.

If you ask me, this is one of the most in-depth articles I’ve read when it comes to building an Amazon Niche Site.

Here Abhishek shares the exact Blueprint that he followed to build his site and reach his goal of making $1000/month and a little more.

Without further ado, here is Abhishek’s story in his own words.

Every year Amazon pays Billions of Dollars of revenue to affiliates, who bring in sales for the E-commerce giant.

Starting with a measly 4%, the commission increases upto 8.50% as the number of sales you make grows.

Amazon Affiliate Product Sales Rate

If you look around; there’s a significant despair over some people taking away the majority of this affiliate income...

...while some find it hard to cross $100/month mark. Take a look here.

You may ask, “What’s the problem?” “Why there’s such an imbalance?”

I’d say it’s all in the ‘approach’.

I’ve slanted the word, underlined it, bolded it and quoted it... just as to represent; how important that word is.

The first site that I started was under ‘Technology’ niche; I produced good quality content (as I thought so) on it, and slapped all the ways I could make money off of it.

I used Adsense, CPA ads, Amazon Affiliate links... however at the end of every month.

I failed!

I failed to cross the $100 mark; with all three revenue models combined.

Most importantly with Amazon.com Affiliate; I was able to generate only one sale that brought in $6 for the 1st Quarter of 2015.

Amazon Affiliate Income - Quarter 1 2015

Same continued for next three months and here’s how I fared in the 2nd Quarter of 2015.

Amazon Affiliate Income - Quarter 2 2015

Wow! an increase in income, and that’s because I accidently sold a $1000 laptop (2.5% comm.)...

...but the product sold for the month of April, May and June combined was just 1, a f*cking 1.

I realized something was wrong with my ‘approach’ (you see what I did there again).

The content I published was excellent, much better than my competition (no I’m not being superlative here).

Keyword Research was marginally better, since I was able to find low competition keywords with favorable amount of search volume (read 320-1000).

Moreover, I was able to rank site’s article to first page of Google for targeted keywords tearing most of my competition.

The site gave results; that everything a new blogger could wish for: Great Content, Traffic, Ranking, and Appreciation from other bloggers and readers.

However the one thing that I lacked was income; never did the site reached more than $100 per month. Not even when the site reached a milestone of 75,000 Page views per month.

Saddening, isn’t it?

Being a beginner I had messed up a lot of things for the site, and decided I had to sell it.

Nonetheless, I was into this blogging field to make money, tons and tons of money.

Hence why just brainlessly starting a new site didn’t make sense to me at all.

I went into research mode for the month of June and July, 2015.

With my research I found out that bloggers like Chris Guthrie, Spencer Haws, Claire Smith and bunch of others were making 5-figure income just from ‘Quality’ Amazon Niche Sites.

Once I was fuelled into Amazon Niche Sites; I was now nowhere interested in building in an Adsense based site... because ads were growing particularly annoying day by day and required enormous amount of traffic to make ‘significant’ income.

“For the month of July, 2014... my old site had 75K Pageviews, while the Adsense income for that month didn’t even crossed the $100 mark.”

Adsense site traffic report

Still don’t believe me, this is the traffic report of a site that makes $2000/month via Adsense with over 40K daily traffic. Duh!

Moving on...

After researching for those 2 months and being completely unpaid for the next few months to come, I started a new niche site, which I’d like to call as Authority Amazon Niche Site (will explain that later)

Working seriously for next two months, here’s what the 3rd quarter of 2015 looked like for me.

Amazon Affiliate Income - Quarter 3 2015

As you can see... from only 1 product in 1st and 2nd Quarter, how did I grow by 3700% in terms of product sales and 360% in terms of earnings in 3rd quarter?

Well that’s what this article is all about, to instruct you about how to change your approach towards building an Amazon Niche Sites and make a sustainable income off of it?

Before that... let me address the elephant in the room.

Here’s how the 4th Quarter for my Authority Amazon Niche Site looked like:

Amazon Affiliate Income - Quarter 4 2015

Over $2,800+ in revenue, 983 items sold and 1050 items ordered.

Now how did this metamorphosis happen?

From being broke in July, 2015 to making close to $3000 in fourth quarter of 2015.

Marvellous, isn't it?

Since I too want you all to be in my place, I’ve written this guide especially for people who are yet to taste sweet grapes of blogging. This is what this article is all about, about making $1000/month via an Amazon Niche Site.

Before I give you the entire Blueprint on how to build an Authority Amazon Niche Site that earns at $1000/month (within next 4 months), I’d like to do a head-on comparison between Amazon Affiliate and Adsense, and advice you why you should ditch Adsense.

3 Reasons as to why Adsense sucks...

...and why newbies should stay away from it.

Definitely there are bloggers like Jon Dykstra who makes $40,000+ income via Adsense... but that happens because he gets Millions of Traffic and tends to invest in paid advertising to get majority of traffic.

If you look at this case study of 23 successful Bloggers; you’ll notice that majority of them make income via Affiliate medium and Private Ad listings.

Only 2 of them make reasonable money off display advertising.

Moving on... why adsense sucks;

People Don’t like Ads:

Whenever my mom’s watching daily soaps, the very moment in-between commercials break out, she changes the channel.

From our very childhood, we have been fed directly and subconsciously that ads are irritating.

Being a blogger myself, I have adblocker extension enabled, so as to save myself from annoying ads.

When it comes to Amazon Affiliate, it’s a totally different ball game.

People search for something they want to buy or want to know more about like ‘Best Tablets under $300 for kids’, and using links you sent them to Amazon... this type of model is highly unobtrusive nor the does the reader has any second thoughts when moving over to Amazon, as it’s the 3rd most popular website in the world.

“With Amazon Affiliate Programs, your content makes you money.”

Click to Tweet

Stone Broke CTR:

Since people don’t like ads, let alone clicking on few of them. Ads placed on sidebar get totally ignored; hence to make any satisfactory income, you need to place them within your content.

Bad example of Adsense ad placement.

I’ve read guides that claim to increase CTR, but all they really preach us to do is put ads under an image or button and disguise the reader that it’s part of the content; rather than an advertisement.

With a CTR of 1%; you’re better off not putting any ads at all, and keeping the site design clean.

For few months that I’ve worked on this new site, I’ve been able to generate conversion rate between 5-6% because I’m promoting products that readers actually want to buy and use. And since it’s Amazon, people don’t give a second thought while purchasing from this e-commerce giant.

No supervision over Displayed Ads:

Adsense does provide us option to select what category of ads we’d like not to be shown on our site.

However, one does not have control over the individual ads that get shown on our site.

With Amazon it’s completely opposite; you promote the product you want and have full control over it. Moreover, when a user buys product other than you promoted, you get paid for it too. Isn’t it awesome?

Yes it is.

Ok! Before we start to the exciting part of this article that you’ve all been waiting for...

...let me give you an overview of:

9 Steps Formula to building an Authority Amazon Niche Site

By now you’ve seen multiple times I’ve mentioned the phrase ‘Authority Amazon Niche Site’ What is an Authority Amazon Niche Site? Here’s what it is...

This is what Authority Amazon Niche Site is...

When we talk about niche sites, all we ever imagine is a 10-12 pages site that has a very long article on its homepage and a set of other articles.

A lot of these niche sites were powered by their own set of PBN’s that lost its value due to Google’s massive PBN de-indexing.

Due to this, most of these thin niche sites vanished ‘Up in the Air’ with no chance of coming back.

Authority Amazon Niche Site is totally opposite of it. One such example of an Authority Amazon Niche Site is... thewirecutter.com.

thewirecutter.com full homepage

Built by a bunch of popular writers and editors previously working for authority sites like gizmodo.com, arstechnica.com, Lifehacker.com and so on, the site is one hell of a wonder.

Moderate examples of Authority Amazon Niche Sites can be PhotographyGearGuide.com or Wirerealm.com.

Motive of any Authority Amazon Niche Site will be to get the user onto Amazon.com, however the content and user satisfaction is considered of high importance rather than mindlessly building backlinks and making money.

With an Authority Amazon Niche Site (AANS), the intent will be upon ranking the site based on content and user experience, rather than increasing the number of backlinks.

For AANS we also consider factors like:

Site Loading Speed
Navigation and Design
Brandable Domain Name
User Time on Site
Bounce Rate
HTML/Text Ratio
Excellent User Experience
Informative and Long Content with linkback to reliable sources
Highly Responsive Theme and Content Design
Content Representation
CTR on SERPs
Social Shares
...and everything else that helps user have great experience with the site

Source: blog.searchmetrics.com

Hence before building the site, it’s very important to keep these factors in mind and then start building a niche site. Now let’s get down to business! Shall we?

Chapter #1: Niche Selection

If you’ve read stuff about Niche Selection, then trust me you’ve read it all:

Go to Amazon.com Best Sellers Page and select the Best Selling Products as your next niche. Trust me, you’ve read it!
Go to flippa.com, check websites that have been ‘Just Sold’. If they’ve been sold successfully for a healthy amount, copy its strategies, niche, keywords, backlinks and so on. You’ve read this too, didn’t you?
Go to Alltop.com; check out the various niches listed there and select one that interests you.
Make random searches for different keywords on Google Keyword Planner and check which keyword has less competition, moderate search volume and go with it. You’ve read this 100 times, haven’t you?
Using different tools and different websites, doing this and that, and arriving on a niche that isn’t competitive and easy potential to make money.

Niche Selection process meme

Trust me you’ve read dozens and dozens of such niche selection process, and they’re all good and great... I’ve used some of these to arrive at some wonderful niches that I had no idea existed as a profitable market.

But what if you are just starting out and no major experience in building niche sites, what do you do in such cases... where you don’t have the cash to hire content writers who will write content for your site and make you buttload of cash, what do you do in such scenarios?

I too was in the same dilemma, having very little money to invest in my current project.

Just like Steve Jobs incorporated his Calligraphy lessons in developing beautiful typography for Macintosh.

Couple of years before, before I had any interest in being a blogger... I was interested in building a business by importing Chinese products and selling them under my brand name. Cool huh!

That time, I had seen a video about selecting a product that is going to be cheap and will be used by a lot people.

If you’re wondering what that video was, I’ve embedded it below:

Here’s what I did while selecting a Niche...

I didn’t use any tools, or any website... I just looked around my computer table and found 25+ product niches on which I can build a new Authority Amazon Niche Site.

On my table I currently have Stapler, Computer Speaker, Monitor, Computer Cabinet, Printer, Power bank, Room Freshener, Power Strip, Mobile Charger, Table Lamp, Headphones, Gaming Mouse, Wireless Keyboard, Calculator, Glue Stick, Pens, Comb, Cushion, Plastic Chair, Computer Table, Hand Towel, Paper Punch, Writing Pads and few other things.

This allowed me to get multiple niche ideas within a minute or so. If I just move around the house, I’m sure I can find 100+ niches... and trust me you can too.

One by one, I used Google and manually checked the competition for certain keywords.

I used basic buyer search queries like:

“Best *keyword* under 100”
“Best *keyword* under 200”
“Best *keyword* reviews”
“How to *keyword*”

This allowed me to get a general idea of what type of sites are ranking on 1st page: Authority Sites, EMD affiliate site, Brandable Affiliate Sites, Ecommerce Sites, Web 2.0 pages and so on.

Here are the certain filters I used in my mind to finalize on the Target Niche:

1. Sufficient Knowledge about Niche:

Hey, they said Lawnmower niche is profitable. I heard... But I’ve never used a lawnmower, nor do I know how it actually looks, doesn’t know how it sounds; then how will I be able to write article on it?

Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Since we’re building an authority niche site, it’s important that you’ve used the product at least. Otherwise, you’re going to get bored pretty quickly... since you wouldn’t know what more to keep writing about.

I was very informative about the niche that I chose, and it happens to be my favorite hobby... hence it helps me to think about other type of products that people might be using and the modifiers they use to search for that product.

2. Is the Niche Popular on Amazon.com?

I remember one of my friend who messaged me one day saying, “I’ve found a huge Amazon niche about Wall Ovens with products priced over $1000”

Wall Oven Niche

I searched a little bit on the site, and messaged him saying, “Don’t work it, the niche will be a total failure.”

Here’s why:

Because the niche he mentioned, no doubt was a wonderful one and used by several people in American homes, however when I checked it on Amazon, there wasn’t a huge catalogue of products and the most important thing, almost all of the products had only 5-6 reviews with only half of them being ‘Certified Buyers’.

This clearly showed that not a lot of people were buying them online because it was a costly product, big in size and weighed at 120-130lbs.

People aren’t comfortable buying such big products online.

Hence make sure that niche you’re going to target has a large product selection catalogue, with average of 50-100 reviews on most of them.

Amazon Product Reviews

Let’s do a simple math: Suppose you stumble on a product that has 126 reviews; assuming that an average of 5% of people leave their reviews on Amazon, one can realize is that product must have been bought by over 2500+ people.

(126 / 5) * 100 = 2520 products sold

3. Are there products directly related to your niche?

If you’re targeting Digital Camera & DSLR Niche, then the products related to that niche will be Memory Cards, Carry Pouch, Lenses, Batteries, External Flash, Tripod, Chargers, and Shutter Buttons and so on.

Digital Camera and DSLR related products

Hence when you’re promoting your main product, you can cross-sell and also promote other products that work as accessories.

Chapter #2: Keyword Research

Keyword Research is a crucial step to building an Authority Amazon Niche Site.

It forms the base of building any niche site.

With proper keyword targeting, one can definitely rank certain blog posts without requiring any backlink juice at all.

Recently Ankit wrote a guide about how to perform Keyword Research using Reddit, which I believe will be very helpful to you. Also, you can check some other guide about keyword research here.

However since I’m assuming you’ve selected a niche, you’ve been working on... we can generate our own keywords by using certain modifiers.

Keyword Research Best Camcorder under 200

Let’s assume that the niche we’ve chosen is about Cameras: Products related to this niche will be Point and Shoot Cameras, DSLR, Camcorders, Sports Cameras and so on.

With such niche divisions, you can create your own keywords like ‘best DSLR cameras under 500’ or ‘best camcorder under 200’...

...and honestly I don’t need any tool to make such keywords, nor do you.

Here are certain modifiers that you can attach to your niche word and create innumerable keywords.

Buyer Keyword Modifiers:

“Best + Product Category”
“Top + Product Category”
“Good + Product Category”
“Cheap + Product Category”
“Product Category + Reviews”

Example: Vacuum Cleaner Reviews

“Best/Top/Good/Cheap + Product Category + under + Price (100, 200, 500, 1000)”

Example: Best Digital Cameras under 100, Top Camcorder under 200, Good DSLR cameras under 500, Cheap Gaming Laptops under 1000.

“Best + Product Name + for + Men/Women/Kids”

Example: Best Razor for Men, Best Handbags for Women, Best Stroller for Kids.

“Where Can I Buy + Product Category”

“Product Name 1 + vs + Product Name 2”

Example: Samsung Galaxy S6 vs Apple iPhone 6S

Just like we have Buyer Keywords, we also have Informational Keywords that can be indirectly used to promote products that help solve a problem that user has.

Information Keyword Modifiers:

“How to + Keyword”

Example: How to click Macro Images using Digital Cameras

“How to make + Keyword” “Keyword + Guide”

Example: Best Mobile Photography Guide

“DIY + Keyword”

If you look around, you’ll be able to create plenty of such modifiers that are bound to have good search volume.

Important tool to ease your Keyword Research trouble:

Keyword research tools are an excellent way of sprucing up your keyword research goals.

Without much effort it shows us keywords related to our seed word and also displays search volume for all of those.

This happens to be helpful when you want to target specific set of keywords having minimum search volume criteria.

Since we’re building an Authority Amazon Niche Sites, we aren’t going to consider CPC a factor while choosing keywords, and we won’t be using Adsense until the site reaches at least 100,000 Page views per month.

Here I’m not going to talk about various tools related to keyword research; as it has been covered multiple times by many other bloggers.

I’ll just talk about the one tool that I’ve been using consistently for finding some precious keywords.

That tool is Long Tail Pro.

I’ve used a quite a lot of tools other than LTP, but this is the one that I’ve found to be absolutely amazing and easy to use.

Here’s a full review of Long Tail Pro, if you need to know more about it.

Secret Trick I use to find Highly Profitable and Easily Rankable Keywords

This is the stage where lot of people fail to build a successful niche site.

This is that one stage they take for granted, and it spoils all their other hard work.

If there’s one important thing that I’d like to point out from this entire post, it would be this section.

So read it carefully, as this is the one thing that led to my success of achieving $1000+/month via Amazon Niche Site.

Since I’ve told you several times that I spent two months just on researching the project that I’m working on, most of the time all I did was just kept digging more and more keywords.

Here are the three things that I did to find highly profitable keywords:

1. Buy Long Tail Platinum for limited time:

As we all know that Long Tail Pro costs $97 one time… whereas you need to pay $27 monthly to upgrade it to Platinum version.

Once you buy the Pro version, just buy Platinum version for a month or two.

The second point will show why you need to buy Platinum version for a limited time.

2. Breaking Keyword Research myth:

Most Marketers out there recommend finding 10-20 keywords related to your niche and then start out by writing articles based on it and so on.

I followed the same strategy for my previous blog and it failed miserably.

I went broke using that strategy.

It was hard for me to do keyword research for an article the other night and next morning start writing article on it.

Hence for this new niche site, I did something none of them have recommended so far and that is ‘Keyword Research in Bulk’, and with bulk I mean finding huge number of keywords at once.

I remember, I was scraping 60-70 keywords in a day on which I’ll write articles. For now I have a total of 500-600 keywords that I had searched early.

These keywords will probably last the entire life of my Niche Site.

This also helped me in being choosy while writing articles as I had a huge catalogue of keywords.

Since I had upgraded Long Tail Pro to Platinum edition, I was able to quickly find out competition for various keywords and the keywords having competition less than 30, I was quick enough to write it down.

And with write, I mean writing using pen and paper. I created a book that has all the strategies that I am using for my site and it includes huge set of keywords related to my Amazon Niche Site.

Why I recommend doing this?

It’s because when you’re in keyword research mode, you are bound to find some of the best keywords that other time we tend to ignore. You tend to dig really deep down to find several gem of keywords. Hence why I advise you to do the same.

3. The biggest step to Amazon Niche Site Success:

This last step to my secret trick allowed me to rank most of my articles very quickly and with less effort.

Wanna know what is it?

Here’s a question to you: which keywords would you target in the first six months if you find one keyword with monthly search volume of 1600, another one with 480 and other with 70 search volume?

Most of the niche site building articles suggest going for keywords having more than 480 monthly search volumes.

The truth being, many other marketers out there are competing for same keyword.

Hence being a newbie, we have a fewer chance on outranking them.

I realized this and hence most keywords that I targeted were having monthly search volume of not more than 200.

I had even targeted keywords that had volume of 30 or even 10. T

his helped me rank 5-6 of articles on first position for main keywords within 3 months after starting out.

Trust me, I’m not a pro, I’m just; as beginner as you are and ranking 5-6 articles within 3 months and generating sales was definitely a mammoth task for me.

Since these articles were ranking, the other (extra long) keywords which were closely related to article topic, I started ranking for them as well which helped the site’s traffic grow at a steady rate.

Niche Site Traffic Analytics

Though it did involved the way I wrote articles, which I’ll explain in the Content Writing Section.

Chapter #3: Knowledge Research

Once that you’ve selected a niche, found good amount of keywords in bulk, the step that comes after it and before setting up your niche site is Knowledge Research.

As the name suggests, you can clearly think what this topic is all about.

Here are certain things that you need to consider under Knowledge Research.

1. Get to know more about the niche:

No matter what you think, it’s important to research a lot about the niche (you’re targeting) in detail.

I researched for about 7 days to get to more idea about the niche that I am currently working on, and trust me this is helping even today.

It helps even when someone asks me for advice related to my niche.

This helps when it comes to writing article, and allows you to provide your own views about the product you’re talking about.

Like suppose if you start working on a niche about Gym Supplements, then it’s totally important for you to research about:

What do Gym Supplements contains
What are the ingredients involved
Certain elements that needs to be considered while buying gym supplements
What are the things one should avoid
What is the recommended dosage or intake one should take
Side effects caused by Gym supplements

Hope you’ve got a basic idea about why I’m talking.

These things helps when you’re writing article, it allows you to give your own opinions related to the product, even though you haven’t used that exact product.

Here’s a great example of how one can do Knowledge Research for a niche you’re going to be working on.

2. Important Terminology related to your Niche:

Aperture, Focal Length, HDR, Shutter Speed, Geo tagging, polarizing filter: the terms I mentioned are related to Digital Camera and DSLR niche.

Every niche comes with its own set of terminology, and it is of high importance that you learn and realize what these terms mean, what they stand for, and function they perform.

If you fail to learn these terms, you’ll get a huge number of comments thrashing you for your incomplete knowledge.

Moreover, it helps, when your site starts to become an authority in that niche, and people ask your advice about various products in comment section or on social media.

3. Popular Products:

We all know that Apple iPhone is a popular product in the smartphone niche or Rolex is a renowned and luxury wristwatch brand.

You need to know products that are popular in your niche. Period!

There’s no other way to it.

For this, you can use of Wikipedia, Amazon Best Sellers, Niche Related Forums, Niche related authority sites, Users reviews on various sites and so on.

This helps to compare the product you’re writing review about with the popular product in that niche.

Before we move on to the next topic of our article, I just want to give you a brief overview of why Research is important before starting a niche…

Why Research is Important before Starting any Authority Amazon Niche Site…

As they say… Research can make or break your site. It’s the root that is going to provide strength to the entire existence of your website.

If you lack here, your target of reaching $1000/month would seem a far off dream.

You might have seen many bloggers that set out to build the next big blog but fail to generate any considerate amount from it. Why?

Because they lack in the research department, hence why; many bloggers who start 3-4 blogs fail miserably and don’t make considerate amount of money from it.

With a proper research, you can definitely be smart in a world of dumb bloggers.

I myself realized this and hence spent 2 months only on researching my niche properly that allowed me to reach my dream of $1000/month within 5 months of starting the blog.

Isn’t that cool? Yes it is.

Ok! Let’s move on to the interesting and indispensable part of building an Authority Amazon Niche Site.

Shall we start?

Chapter #4: Choosing a Domain Name (Expired vs Fresh and EMD vs PMD)

‘Choosing a domain’ is given less priority when it comes to building any affiliate niche site.

One debate that been going for a very long time when it comes to choosing a domain name is;

Whether to go for an Expired Domain or Fresh Domain?

The one I chose for my site was an expired domain that helped me get an edge when it came to ranking articles.

This, however, doesn’t mean that fresh domain are any less bad. Most people, however, burn badly when it comes to buying expired domains, even the biggest marketer in the industry Neil Patel could help it.

There are plenty of things you need to consider if you’re going to go by the expired domains path:

Best part of owning a expired domain is, you already get multiple sites linking to your domain, that offers plenty of juice to rank up your site quickly.

Wanna know how to buy expired domains? You can check detailed guides here, and here.

Note: Be careful and make proper profile check before finalizing a domain name for your site.

I’d however, advice to avoid going expired domain way, as the good ones sell for $100’s of dollars while only the spammy ones are available for cheap.

Now you may ask what about Fresh domains?

Buying Fresh domains is like buying a spanking new car and you know that you’ll be the first one to own it, and no other hands involved.

This helps if you’re a newbie and don’t want to burn your hands while choosing an expired domain.

Even with fresh domain, you can definitely rank and bank from your site quickly (3-4 months).

Hence don’t mull over expired domains, if you can’t find a good one in a day... book a fresh domain instead.

Moving on…

Now that we’ve gone over the process of buying a domain name, let’s talk about choosing the domain name itself.

EMD v/s PMD (Exact Match Domains v/s Partial Match Domain)

Let’s assume the main keyword I’m targeting is: Best Self Balancing Scooter under 1000

Here’s how an Exact Match Domain might look like:

bestselfbalancingscooterunder1000.com

It doesn’t take genius of a mind to see that EMD’s look ugly… very very ugly.

There was a time in SEO when you could rank easily just by using an EMD domain… but those days are gone for good.

These days are about building an authority, about building a brand and if your domain looks that ugly, your site surely would suck big time.

Partially Match Domain (PMD) on the other hand are better versions of EMD’s, where you involve just one main word or synonym of that word in your domain.

Hence, if the keyword I’m targeting is Best Self Balancing Scooter under 1000, the domain I may end up choosing might be: scootharmony.com or symmetryscooter.com instead.

(I know the domain names look funny, but I couldn't come up with good names that quickly.)

This allows me to build a name that is short, easily brandable and users can directly type into their browsers.

With help of this essential guide, you’ll definitely come up with an exciting and brandable domain name.

“The point here is to find a right balance between choosing a domain that can be easily branded, whether you’re choosing a fresh domain or going down the expired domains path.”

Chapter #5: Hosting & Site Setup

With a properly researched niche and a domain to die for, you now need a hosting that will be able to handle your site properly.

What kind of Hosting you Require?

Depending on your technical skills, you have two options while choosing hosting for your niche site.

Either to go with Shared Hosting or cloud VPS plans.

For Shared Hosting I highly recommend going with Hostgator.com (avoid Hostgator.in) or Interserver.net as they provide one of the most reliable hosting out there I've ever seen.

Note: Use coupon '1cent1month' with Interserver.net to get first month hosting at $0.01

DigitalOcean happens to be the best when it comes to cloud VPS hosting. (Not recommended if you’re just starting out)

However I’ve already written a detailed guide on how to setup a WordPress site on DigitalOcean, you can check it here.

There’s always a big debate going on whether to go for Shared Hosting or cloud VPS hosting, however, I’d recommend choosing it depending on your expertise.

If you’re fairly new, Shared Hosting happens to be the outstanding option… while if you’re aware about problems you face with Shared Hosting, going the VPS route can be a viable option.

Choosing Theme and Setting up your Site:

I cannot recount the number times I’ve been appreciated by other bloggers for the design and theme I chose for my niche site.

Choosing a Theme isn’t only about eye candy and fancy elements. It’s about loading speed and proper SEO optimization.

However, that doesn’t means you should go with a theme that’s dull and looks like it’s made way back in early 2000. To be straight to the point, one theme I highly recommend is Schema from MyThemeShop.com as not only you can modify the theme according to your liking, it’s highly SEO optimized along with quick loading speed and Schema markup which happens to give you an edge compared to your competitors.

If you’re not with Schema theme, themes from developers like Thrive Themes and Studiopress happens to be a worthwhile mention.

Once you’ve chosen the theme you want… Refer this guide to setup your site under 20 Minutes.

Important things to consider while setting up your WP site:

Install WP on root domain itself and not on ‘yourdomian.com/blog’. Most of the time, we ignore to notice this and it isn’t the optimal way to do it.

Hence, observe a little before you install. If you happen to do it; then delete the installation and install WordPress again.
If you happen to afford SSL certification, go for it... as it adds up as a ranking factor. Check your hosting’s FAQ’s to know more about how to setup SSL. Hostgator shared hosting happens to provide shared SSL.
If possible, make use of CDN as quickly as you setup your site on WP. This one thing happens to save lot of bandwidth and improves loading speed too. Make use of this guide and learn how to set it up for your site. I’ve set a small guide down below on how to super speed up your WP site, read it before you setup Cloudfare account.
Decide primary and secondary color for your website: Primary color is usually the color that is going to be base of the website and will be used in logo, nav bar, footer, popups and so on...

...while the secondary color will be used for links, buttons, and other sort of small decoration. A site that uses multiple colors in an unmanaged manner looks like a total hogwash.

Once you install site theme; write a dummy article and try out different colors that will go well. Make sure that the primary colors and secondary colors should be contrasting to each other. You can make use of Adobe Kuler to finalize a color scheme for your site.

Here is the list of 5 popular blogs out there and the HEX color code for their primary colors:

Buzzfeed.com – #e32
Techcrunch.com – #089e00
Mashable.com – #00aeef
Neilpatel.com – #f16334
Hongkiat.com – #26519e
Do not make your site look similar to any of your competitors. In this day and age when people are busy with so many things, it’s only the visual things that they tend to remember.

If your site looks just like your competitors... it’s such a waste opportunity to make a difference.

Most niche sites overlook this important thing and thus gives us an edge to represent ourselves better. For inspiration, you can use color scheme or design of any authority site that is nowhere related to your niche.

For my own site, I (shamelessly) borrowed color scheme from an industry leading SEO/Blogging site. I call this the ‘Parasite Color’ strategy, where you lynch on the design elements of an already established site, that isn’t related to your niche.
Just like the colors, use only two fonts for your site. One font that will represent the content and other font that will represent heading, Nav Font, Logo, Sidebar and so on. In this modern age, I highly suggest using only Sans-serif fonts that aren’t too thin and too strong, and are easily readable on desktop as well as on mobile screen.

Here's a list of popular Sans Serif font:

1. Lato
2. Open Sans
3. Montserrat
4. Source Sans Pro
5. Raleway

If you want to be a little creative, you can even use certain serif fonts like Quando or Sanchez to go along with your sans-serif font.
Make sure you simultaneously check how your site looks on mobile and tablets when you’re editing its look and feel on desktop.

I ignored this one thing and my older site had rendering issues on mobile and looked very ugly. Make use of Google’s Mobile Friendly Tool to check mobile user friendliness of your site and make certain changes if any suggested by the tool.
This last tip about site setup is my highly personal opinion.

I’d like to mention that do not go around asking for lot of suggestion from other people. You’ll be more confused than ever. Just keep doing things that you believe will be right for your site after a proper research.

Don’t lug around asking for theme suggestions, color suggestion, font suggestion and so on. Research a lot of before you take any decision and stick to it once you’ve taken it.

I’m not saying to not ask suggestions at all. You can take advice from experienced guys, but just don’t get stuck in the suggestion and advice loop for too long. It will confuse you more.

Before I move onto the next topic i.e. Content Writing... I’m going to show you how to make WP site super fast that I mentioned about earlier.

One of my Facebook Friend Ashwin Singh suggested this trick to make WP website Superfast.

Here are the detailed steps:

Step 1: Install W3 Total Cache Plugin on Your WordPress Blog.

Go To: W3 Total Cache > Browser Cache.

Here, Turn On Below Feature,

Set expire header
Set entity tag (eTag)
Enable HTTP (gzip) compression

Step 2: Install JS & CSS Script Optimizer Plugin.

After Installing; Open (WP Settings > Script Optimizer) Plugin; Enable it.

Note: If you are using Jetpack plugin; then this plugin won't work, I recommend you to disable Jetpack.

Make sure the below options are enabled in the plugin.

Pack scripts using Dean Edwards's JavaScript Packer
Combine all scripts into the two files (in the header & footer)
Use plugin for CSS
Combine all CSS scripts into the single file

Note: Some of your Javascript may not work after using this plugin. Check your Site properly after installing this plugin.

Note 2: It is the most IMPORTANT step, so if small functions of your site won't work then also try to use it.

Step 3: Use CloudFlare.

Make Sure These Options are enabled in Your Cloudflare account.

Go To "SPEED" tab and minify JS, CSS, and HTML option.
Go To "SPEED" tab scroll down Turn on Rocket loader. Choose ‘Automatic’ in Rocket Loader option. (Most Important)

Note: For New sites added on Cloudflare; it takes some time to show the effect because of Name Server (NS) changes.

After doing all above step you will get 90+ GTmetrix score, but your page load time also depends on your server as well as images, hence don't forget to optimize your image before uploading.

If you follow the above procedure correctly, your 50% work of building an Authority Amazon Niche Site that will generate $1000/month is done.

The rest 50% is about writing content, promoting it and building backlinks.

Here’s just a basic overview of what we’ve discussed so far:

Niche Selection: Select Niche based on your personal experience related to product coming under that category.
Keyword Research: Make your own keywords by adding various modifiers to main word related to your niche and sub-niches.
Knowledge Research: It’s highly important to know what your niche is all about. Research plenty about the history of that niche, popular brands, popular products, what extra features one gets for additional price, so on and so forth that will allow you to write articles like an authority personnel in that niche.
Domain, Hosting and Site setup: Important thing to note here is, do not copy theme and design of your competitors. Make your website standout by never compromising on its design. For starting 2 months you can keep the website lightweight by not adding too many elements on the sidebar and not putting any adverts and banners.

Let’s move on to the most interesting part that I’ve been dying to share with you all guys and that is Content Writing and Representation.

Chapter #6: Article Writing & Content Building

I just cannot recount the number of times; people have appreciated me over and over again for my content writing and representation skills.

No I’m not boasting off myself, I’m just saying what happened in reality.

And as a matter of fact, it didn’t come out of a blue. I researched; I practised and improved my content writing and representation skills day by day.

This one article about 7 Simple Writing Edits allowed me to add glitter to my articles and helped me make it strong and tight.

This article about 20 Rules for Writing allowed me not only to write an article but also helped me develop a sense of having conversation with the user, it allowed me to ask questions, put readers in different dilemma and leave them spell bounded.

Every article on the website boostblogtraffic.com is an instruction manual on how to boost your confidence and skyrocket your blogging career.

“Hint: Most of the things/myths you’ve known about blogging will be blown to pieces by this blog, and read all articles by Jon Morrow.”

Moving on...

I’ll be showing you step by step process on how to craft not just an article but a highly informative sales brochure that will stimulate your reader to stick to every word you say.

Ready?

Content Writing

For many years there has been a big debate about ‘Who’s the king?’

Some say, “Content is the King”, others say, “Promotion is the King” while a quite few of them say, “Backlinks is the king”

Though you can choose your poison, but I differ from all of these sayings.

Let’s take an example about a car: The main motive of any car is to run. It has so many parts that have to work in unison to make the car run, isn’t it?

American Muscle Car

Here one cannot say that Engine is the king or Suspension is the king or Transmission because what it would do if the car is tireless or there’s no driver to drive it. (Though we do have driverless cars, thanks to Tesla and Google)

Did you get my point?

Just like a car, for your blog; no one thing is the king, all aspects of a blog have to work in unison and keep moving towards the main motive and i.e. ranking a website and making money off of it.

I’d frame it this way, “You are the king and your blog is the kingdom. It’s your responsibility to take care of all regions that come under your kingdom, be it content writing, promoting, publishing, or making backlinks or setting up the site.

If you lack in one of these, your kingdom (site) won’t be able to function properly.”

Have my POINT?

Therefore here are 5 things to consider while Writing Content for your Authority Amazon Niche Site.

1. Content Length

Crapping out the bulk; here’s my straightforward answer. Every article that you write should be at least 2000 words. Doesn’t matter if you’re targeting a keyword that has 30 search volume, 480 or 1600.

Every article that you pen should be at least 2000 words long. Here’s why:

Google algorithm is basically a robot. Though the algorithm is highly complex, there are certain parameters than can be easily matched. Since the entire internet consists of content... there’s ton of bullshit going around that promises a lot but delivers nothing.

In this age, content that is longer and informative serves much better compared to content that is size of pint.

Don’t believe me? Here are some statistics:

Longer Content gets better Search Engine Ranking

Image above from SERPIQ demonstrates that longer content (more than 2000 words) gets better Search Engine Rankings.

Longer Content Gets higher Social Shares

Longer content is directly proportional to higher number of shares.

You can read this data-driven answer about why content length is important and how it affects your rankings.

I personally suggest writing longer content; because not only does it rank for keywords that we’ve targeted but also for keywords that I don’t have clue about.

This is one good reason why I always suggest longer content. Here’s an example that I’d like to share about longer content.

Content length helps to bring more traffic

Here’s an Analytics report and Google Keyword Planner suggested search volume for top 3 traffic raking articles for my Amazon Niche Site in a day.

As you can see an article that brings in 123 page views per day has only 70 search volume for the main keyword for an entire month. (A f*cking entire month)

How’s this possible? It is possible because the article I’ve written is over 3000 words and receives majority of traffic from ultra long keywords that I haven’t specifically targeted.

With longer content, I don’t mean writing in the bush... I mean providing information that your readers are going to love.

What readers love?

Content that doesn’t looks like text... text... text... and... Lots and lots of... text...

In the next point I’m revealing how to make your content look sexy.

2. Content Representation

We all know that reading long content is boring, hence here’s my strategy on how to built content that is long but doesn’t feels boring.

If you look at articles like Quicksprout’s Advanced Guide to SEO or Backlinko’s Definitive Guide to Keyword Research, one thing that appropriately stands out is the way their content is represented.

In this age where everything needs to happen quickly, the only way to convince your reader to stay longer on your site is by spicing up the visual elements.

Our brain is wired to remember visual elements higher compared to contextual elements. This is the reason why every big brand out there is spending Millions of Dollars on spicing up to visualize itself much better than its competitors.

City marketing lights night

Though you don’t have to do that... just $67 would be enough.

These days, it’s not just about writing content but also about how you represent it.

One plugin that I use for my Amazon Niche Site is Thrive Content Builder.

I’ve written an exhaustive review of Thrive Content Builder and described its various features.

With this one plugin you can quickly turn your content from boring to magical.

Here’s a video review of Thrive Content Builder to help you understand the plugin better.

Thrive Content Builder, also referred to as Thrive Landing Pages costs only $67 Lifetime and $97 Lifetime for unlimited sites and happens to be a mixture of 11-12 plugins in one.

I don’t know the any other way to frame this... but if you want your Authority Amazon Niche Site to stand out, go get Thrive Content Builder now.

However if you want your site look just like one of a small plant in the bushes, please don’t buy.

Moving on... here are certain things to consider for representing your content much better than your competitors.

Keep font size not less than 16px, as it suits better on Desktop as well as on mobile devices.
H1 Header is reserved for article’s title hence don’t use it inside your article... however make use of all other Header properties from H2 to H6 to divide your content accordingly.
Sufficient breathing space is required in your content: Make sure to keep Line width at least 20px so as to not make it look cramped.
Instead of writing longer paragraphs, split them into smaller paragraphs; with each paragraphs being not more than 3-4 lines longer. (This article is one such example, isn’t it?)
Use Header tags to divide your content after regular interval of 200-300 words. This ensures your article doesn’t looks like a big chunk of text with no ending.
Just like headers, use images after every 200-300 words to visually divide content and give your readers a breathing space.
Decorate important points by using combination of Bold, Italics and Underline. Instead of decorating your keywords, decorate important points in your article that users should take notice about.
Highlight important paragraph by using a combination of alternate text and colored box which can be easily done via Thrive Content Builder and I use it 5-6 times in all my articles.
Create sub-content: For example, you’re writing an article about ‘5 Best DSLR under $500’ then its sub-content would be... ‘5 Important Things to Consider Before Choosing DSLR under $500’, this not only helps in increasing content but also helps in providing value and an unexpected viewpoint to your content.

One example of sub-content would be ‘Problems I currently face with WordPress Editor’ section in the review of Thrive Content Builder. Here the content isn’t directly related to the main topic but it does helps in dividing the content and providing value to the user.
Make use of Blockquotes with option to share the quote on Twitter, this not only helps in bringing social shares but also helps in bringing much-needed traffic.
Use Bullet points when writing specifications to various products and services.

Let’s move to another aspect of Content Building i.e. Images

3. Why Images are Important and How to use them?

Images happen to form 90% of all visual elements. E-commerce websites know this fact better and hence, invest plenty of money to build eye catching banner images and product images.

Since we’re building an Amazon Niche Site, we have a free supply of these professional and eye-catching images.

Any product on Amazon has an average of 3 images at least and I highly recommend to use 2-3 images for a single product in a list post type of article like ‘Top 5 Best Mobiles Phones under $500’ or so.

I personally include 10-12 images on average; in a 2000 words article.

You can get these product images easily from Amazon.com.

Once you download images from Amazon.com, here’s what you need to do:

Most of these images have dimension of 1500x1500px with huge amount of white space that goes to waste.

Download this photo editing tool called as Photoscape as it will help us crop, edit and resize images quickly and efficiently.

Photoscape Editor

With the help of this tool; crop extra white space from your images, which not only helps in reducing image size but also decreases image dimensions.

Later resize the image in such a way that its Width isn’t bigger than 650px and height not larger than 400px.

Save the image in JPEG format and set JPEG quality to 90%.

For SEO purposes it’s important to compress images as much as possible without losing considerable amount of quality, to reduce loading time on your site.

Once you save the new edited image from Photoscape, upload it to tinypng.com (drag and drop) to reduce its size even more. You’ll be shocked to see that Tinypng.com reduces images size by 5-50% without affecting image quality much.

Download the compressed image and upload it to your WP site whenever you need it.

How to use alt tag for SEO purposes?

I personally add my keywords in image’s alt tag that helps my content look cleaner and non-spammy, because alt tags are used by indexing robots and very few (blind) people get to know what’s in the alt tag.

This is what I personally do and helps me to larger extent as alt text too is read by Google Robots, however you can choose to not follow this if you differ.

Do I need to add caption underneath an image?

Captions are a great way to describe your image and you can add an important point that people may like to read.

When readers are in hurry, they tend to scan your article and only read what’s easily get picked by our eyes. Captions happen to do that job by being a different part from the actual content.

Add a link to Amazon in your caption content and definitely you’ll get certain sales.

4. Buy Now Buttons

There’s a big debate going on between using Soft Selling and Hard Selling in Affiliate Marketing.

With the former giving a casual message of knowing the product more and buying later while the latter focuses on taking immediate action.

Since Amazon.com is the third largest website in USA, every person in America who has access to Internet must have visited Amazon.com at least once.

Due to the website’s sheer popularity and customer-first service, people wouldn’t give a second thought of buying from Amazon.com.

This is the reason why I use Hard Sell approach with my Amazon Niche Site, it helps me achieve conversion rate of close to 6%.

I place a medium sized ‘Buy Now Amazon Button’ at the end of each product preview that reminds reader he/she can buy the product right now itself from Amazon.com.

5. Important things to consider while Content Creation

* Link to Amazon.com as much as possible: Goal of any Amazon Niche Site is to get every reader onto amazon.com as quickly as possible.

The e-commerce giant website is created in such a way that any user would find majority of its time spending on that website once they visit it. They find themselves discovering the site more and more.

Since you get paid for all the other products a user buys that are not promoted by you, you can start linking to the site from the first 200 words itself.

Link the product title, product images, contextual product name and buy now buttons that will help a user get to Amazon.com.

Most people say, “Higher amount of Affiliate links in an article, leads to penalty” but that happens only when your content is thin, length is less and quality is low.

Since every article we’re writing happens to be more than 2000 words, we’re building pillar content and will only help the site grow.

I find myself linking to Amazon.com 25-30 times in an article.

You may use Amazon’s Site Strip to generate short affiliate URLs rather than big and ugly looking full URLs. You’ll automatically get Site Strip once you’re logged in as an Amazon Associate.

* Link to other Authority Sites as much as possible: Any article on a website is said to helpful only when you link to other helpful resources and references.

If you don’t, you may find yourself hanging inside the zoo of a Google Penalty.

Link to Wikipedia, high authority sites and forums posts in your niche with a dofollow link. You may even link to sites that are not highly authoritative but happens to have high-quality content.

You may link to product reviews, how to guides, informative steps, product manuals, forum post with problems related to products and so on and so forth.

I usually link to other sites 7-10 times in any article.

* Embed Videos: As I mentioned earlier, today’s content isn’t just about text... it’s more about how you represent it.

The better way any information is represented; yields in having good conversion rate.

In a list post, you must embed videos related to product review that helps user make a better decision.

As I said earlier, our brain tends to catch up and remember visual elements quickly... hence embedded videos will help your reader make a faster buying decision.

You can embed one video per product.

Thrive Content Builder has option to embed video and adjust the video dimension according to screen dimension. You just have to use video’s URL rather than any embed code.

All you'll have to do is just drag and drop the Youtube video module in the content and paste the video's URL.

I've seen a lot of websites disable full screen button, this is the one thing I personally don't recommend.

What's the use of watching a video, if you can't resize it to full screen, it's almost similar to taking away user's freedom to make a simple action.

It really irritates user as when a he/she can't make a simple choice to 'fullscreen' a video.

Moving on...

Now that for the better part we've talked about the site itself and on-page, which I hope you may have enjoyed.

I'd like to introduce you to an integral part of skyrocketing an Amazon Niche Site, and that is building links... let's hop onto it.

Chapter #7: Building Links and Ranking

Purpose of any affiliate website is to make money, and to make money; the site needs to rank quick (if not quicker), and for the site to rank quick; one needs to build links.

If you’ve read articles related to Link Building, you surely would have stumbled on this popular image.

For those who don’t know, Matt Cutts is (maybe was, since he's dissapeared for a very long time) the Head of Spam Control Department for Google and any link that you build manually for your site is considered as SPAM.

Throwing caution to the wind, I’ll be moving on and showing you the strategies I use to build links to my Authority Amazon Niche Site and how it helped me rank on #1 position within first two months.

Mind you, I’m not a pro, nor do I have experience in building affiliate website. I just built my first Amazon Niche Site and made about $2000 via it in December, 2015 with only a handful of traffic.

If I can do it, then why can’t you? You surely would be able to do it much better than me.

Before I move on to show you the exact strategies for building links step by step, here’s one note I’d like to add.

“In today’s SEO world, building links from sites relevant to your niche has more weightage than building links from sites irrelevant to you even though having better metrics.”

Hence if you’re working on a niche like ‘Green Tea’, then getting links from sites, forums and pages related to Coffee, Tea, Herbs, Spices and so on will be more beneficial than getting link from say an authoritative tech related website. Moving on...

3 Strategies (I've personally used) to Build Links for Amazon Niche Site

These strategies are quick to implement and will provide considerable amount of juice to your website.

1. Profile Links

These happen to be the simplest ways of building links to your website.

Here is what profile links means:

“Profile link building is a worthwhile SEO technique lately in use. In profile link building, you create user profiles on various forums, blogs, social media, message boards, guest books and web 2.0 sites, etc. as most of these sites allow you to add your site URL and description, and so you can add your site URL along with a few anchor text links on these profiles. Thus, profile link building utilizes the authority of popular third party websites for the sake of building backlinks to the target pages."

For getting profitable results in building profile links, the profile page should be open to be crawled by search engines and non-registered users.

Currently it doesn’t matters if the link you get is nofollow or dofollow, however the site from where you’re getting profile links must have good metrics. For beginners, getting profile links from sites having DA30+ can be considered good. This is what Profile Links look like:

Metallica Instagram profile Link

As you can see the image, it’s the Instagram profile of Heavy Metal rock band Metallica; here they have linked to their website after a short description.

Here’s another example:

Ankit singla twitter profile

This is the Twitter profile of our Indian blogging rockstar Ankit Singla, and as you can see he has linked back to BTT... which happens to be a profile link.

Profile Links from Twitter, Instagram and other popular sites happen to be nofollow.

However there are ton of other sites that provide dofollow profile links.

Here’s a small list of sites that have high authority and provide dofollow profile links.

http://www.panaramio.com
http://about.me/
http://www.newsvine.com
http://carbonmade.com
http://www.skillpages.com

There are tons of sites like this that allow you to create your profile and list your site URL too. You can access a boatload of these sites here, here, here and here.

Note 1: Due to various changes that occur in these sites, time and time again, it may be possible that some of these sites might be shut down, under maintenance, changed their interface or might not provide link at all. However it is still worth a try, isn’t it?

Note 2: Remember, the more profile links you make from sites relevant to your niche, highly beneficial it will prove to be. However don’t go overboard and build huge number of links in a day. I’ve mentioned the rule you should follow while building links in the next chapter. Hence don’t miss it.

Profile link building is a child’s play and even a newbie can build these links very quickly and efficiently, but you need to diversify your links and hence without wasting time; let’s move on to the next link building strategy.

2. Blog Commenting

One of the oldest and still working Link Building strategies is: Blog Commenting. Before the rise of search engines, Blog Commenting was an incredible way to discover new websites by dropping their links on other sites.

Blog commenting

Very quickly it started to be a spamming technique, when Google launched it Page Rank metric, which claimed that higher the number of links pointing to a website, higher authority it would have. From that point on, people have been misusing Blog Commenting.

There are different ways to get Blog Comment link to your website; however I tend to use other WordPress websites only; to make Blog Comments. Depending on you, you can use other type of sites too.

You can use below footprints on Google to find WordPress websites to comment on:

Keyword “Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked”

Keyword “Leave a Reply”

Keyword “Notify me of follow-up comments by email.”

Keyword “Notify me of new posts by email”

In place of ‘keyword’, just use the keyword you have targeted for your article, this will not only show up websites related to your site, but also the sites related to your article too. Mostly importantly, this will also help you find your niche competitors too.

3. Forum Posts Backlinks

This is my main and important backlinking strategy that helped my ranking shoot up pretty quickly.

Mind you, I’m not talking about Forum Signature link; they don’t work like they used to. I’m talking about the links you can create by replying to forum post and dropping your website links.

Like these:

Forum Link Posting

or these...

Forum Post Backlinking

No matter which niche you are targeting, there are always going to be huge set of forums that have better metrics, and getting links from these help your site get a SERP boost.

Most of the older forums tend to offer dofollow links, whereas the most authoritative forums with bigger user base offer nofollow links.

Getting links from both of these forums help you get a SERP boost.

And the question would be, how are you going to find such forums, isn’t it?

There are mainly two ways I used that helped me discover such gem of forums.

One of these is: Competitor Backlinks Analysis.

Before starting any niche, it is highly recommended that you find at least 10 sites that are targeting the same niche as you. SEMRush helps here.

SEMrush Backlink Analysis

Once you have this list, you can use tools such as Ahrefs, Majestic SEO or a more convenient SEMRush to find out links of your competitor sites.

Click this link, to receive 30 days FREE trail of SEMRush!

I recommend scraping the backlinks of only those sites that rank high in SERPs, but aren’t authoritative or more appropriately having Domain Authority less than 25.

Scraping your competitor’s backlinks, happens to make your work more easy and quick.

Want to build backlinks

It’s like getting recipe to KFC's Fried Chicken, now you have to just cook it.

The other way of getting forums related to your niche is by using footprints.

Footprints are my favorite way of finding forums related to my niche.

Within a matter of 10 minutes I can find 50-60 sites that allow linking in their posts and almost half of them offer dofollow links.

Use footprints to find good quality forums

Here are the footprints that I use to find such forums:

Keyword inurl:forum

Keyword “Powered by vBulletin” (Recommended!)

Keyword “Powered by phpBB”

Keyword “Powered by SMF”

Keyword “Powered by punBB”

There are tons of other footprints that you can use to find backlinking opportunity, however it depends on how deep you want to dig.

Moving on...

Here are some untold rules regarding Forum Backlinking

Certain forums have strict policy for spam and hence don’t lose hope if you get banned immediately.
Some forums don’t allow you to posts unless you’re referred by a forum member.
Many forums will moderate the first 5 posts that you make, so as to stop spam.
Other forums won’t allow you to add links in your posts until you’re 5 or 10 posts older.
Sometimes you may find that your post along with a link back to your site gets accepted and posted immediately; without moderation, however the next time you try to log into that forum, you’ll see a message like “You’re Banned. Date Ban will be lifted: Never” and your post removed. Friend, don’t lose hope. If you’ve had a girl you love the most, reject you, then trust me this is just another forum... there are plenty of fish in the ocean.

Banned on Forum

To keep yourself safe and not come off immediately as a spammer, I recommend answering your first few posts with good quality content, and do not drop your link onto it.

You’ll then get to see, if your post is under moderation or gets directly posted.

If under moderation, wait till the post get accepted, if the post is accepted immediately then in your next post or in the same post itself you can try to drop your link.

For a highly exhaustive list of Footprints, just read this Slideshare PDF, and you’ll get tons of footprints to find different types of backlinking opportunity.

I personally used these 3 types of backlinking techniques to take my niche site from $0/month to more than $2000/month within 4 months period. If I can do it then you can too.

Other two methods you can try are Guest Posting (watch Matt Cutts’ say on Guest Posting) and (Contexual) Link Buying, which works well too. For experienced reader, you can even go the PBN route if you have the budget and know how things work in that region.

I a, the dumbest guy you’ll ever find when it comes to PBN and it tends to give me nightmares; hence I never went the PBN way.

Chapter #8: Simple Tips & Tricks for Smoother Execution towards a Successful Authority Amazon Niche Site

There are always some tips and tricks that you need to know and perform in order to do anything in your life.

An Amazon Niche Site is filled with plenty of tips and tricks as such.

Below I’ll list out the certain things I followed that allowed for smoother functioning of my Amazon Niche Site.

1. Article Velocity

When I started my site, I had made a promise to myself that I wasn’t going to build another Affiliate Site that bites the dust.

I promised to myself that whatever content I publish will be of high quality and extremely informative.

Multiple bullshit SEO gurus claimed that you need publish content daily or thrice a week to see immediate growth in traffic.

However, I followed the Skyscraper technique as termed by Brian Dean and analysed most of the content in my niche.

This helped me analyse my competitor’s content that were on 1st page and helped me built content of maximum quality.

I decided I wasn’t going to post regularly, nor thrice or twice a week.

I settled on posting just 1 article per week (4 articles in a month) but of A+ grade.

Due to college timing, I can only allot time to write 1 article per week.

This allowed me to write content that was worth everyone’s time and with so much time I was able to design it well via Thrive Content Builder. (Trust me on this, you need this plugin)

Once your website is entirely ready and you start posting articles on it, make sure the number of articles you’re going to post on it in a month.

Every Wednesday I post one article on my blog and that schedule has been going on from Day 1.

Never miss the day you post article on your blog. If time is your problem, you can even build a site and post just 1 article/month (though expect slow earnings) and no matter what; keep that velocity constant otherwise without any penalty your traffic will start going down due to inactivity or irregular article posting.

2. Cross Promotion

Cross Promotion is an E-commerce term that helps sites like Amazon.com and other generate that extra amount of sale.

Whenever you open a product page, you’ll see other recommended products; as your scroll down, you’ll see combined price of various products along with the product you’ve chosen. Once you’re on checkout page, you’ll again see recommendations for the product you’re about to buy.

This helps Amazon.com and other Ecommerce sites generate that extra amount of sales without doing much.

Here’s how Cross Promotion looks on Amazon.com:

Cross Promotion on Amazon.com

I’m on the product page of a popular action camera called as GoPro Hero 4.

As I scroll down a bit, you can see Amazon.com has clubbed the product with a Power Battery and Memory Card, and asks the user to see the price of this combination in the cart.

Just below it, you can again see a slideshow of different products titled as ‘Customer Who Bought This Item Also Bought’ which in turn helps user to buy accessories to club with the primary product.

Just like this we’re going to use Cross Promotion on our Authority Niche Site. Here’s how you’ll do it:

Assume you are writing an article about Top 5 Gaming Laptops under $1000. In such list post almost all the laptops will be similar to each other, other than coming off from different brands.

Once you list out the list of 5 Laptops, after it you can create a list of ‘Recommended Accessories’ that may go with any of these laptops user decides to buy.

In this Recommended Accessories list you can include different accessories like Gaming Mouse and Keyboard, Gaming Mousepad, Gaming Headset, Laptop Cooler, Upgradeable RAM and External Hard Disk and so on.

Once the reader finishes reading the entire article, he can go through a list of recommended accessories... to club with the laptop he/she buys.

3. Checking Google Analytics and Webmaster Daily

Most newbie blogger fail to realize how powerful these two tools provided by Google are.

No doubt Google officially gets our blog info that helps make their product better, however the functionality they provide via Analytics and Webmaster combined may go well over $1000 in price.

Usually newbie bloggers check their Analytics account daily only to keep a tab on traffic; however this tool and Webmasters is much more than we use it for.

For the first two months after launching your blog you won’t be able to see much traction in terms of traffic.

This period is what I call as ‘Dormant Period’ where your blog isn’t going to grow quicker.

Hence in ‘Dormant Period’ it’s of no use to keeping track of daily traffic, as it won’t help much.

Things to Track during ‘Dormant Period’ in Google Analytics

Time on Site
New users vs Old users
Referral Traffic vs Organic Traffic
Mobile Traffic vs Desktop Traffic
% of Traffic from Targeted Countries
User Age: 18-54 happens to be convert better
Loading Time for your Website

Things to Consider in Google Webmaster

Since you won’t be receiving much traffic, here are the two things I concentrated in ‘Dormant Period’

Check the Search Keywords for which your articles are ranking.

For any article, you may target 2-3 keywords, but your article will rank for many other keywords that you haven’t actively targeted.

Keep a tab on such keywords and constantly keep building links to such articles that are on 2nd and 3rd page.

Secondly go to Search Traffic >> Links to Your Site

It will show the external links that have been indexed by Google for your site.

You do not need to buy any indexing service or manually submit your article URL to Google.

Let the articles be indexed automatically by Google and for this to happen; keep sharing your articles on social media services like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Reddit, Stumbleupon and so on; on moderate basis.

If you’re busy and don’t have time for sharing your articles on social media, you may buy such services... as your website needs to be shared constantly on socially. The more your website is fetched by Google robots on social sites, the more Google assumes your site to be active.

First two months of any blog are crucial. In this period you have to take high care for your website so as to help it grow bigger.

If you follow whatever I’ve mentioned in this guide properly, you’ll see a huge surge of traffic in the coming three months.

4. Link Velocity

As I mentioned earlier, building links is like giving power to your website that will help you rank to #1 position.

Just like I mentioned you need to keep article velocity of 4 articles per month or 1 article/month or whatever you’re comfortable with.

You also need to follow something called as ‘Link Velocity’.

I recommend building 2 links every alternate day, one dofollow and one nofollow.

Now every alternate day (for atleast 3 months) you need to follow this rule of making two links; that you cannot miss. This helps in gradually moving your website’s articles to number one position.

You also need to try Anchor Text Variation to avoid yourself from any Google Penalty.

Other Affiliate Blogger’s don’t follow the concept of Link Velocity and hence you have the opportunity to keep your guns on their shoulder and fire your ammunition.

Make good use of it and watch your turtle win against the rabbit.

However I’d do like to add, in today’s SEO it doesn’t matter if the link you make is nofollow or dofollow unless you’re building links from sites having good metrics and are authoritative in your niche.

5. Building Brand

Before starting my blog, I had been in research mode for two months.

These two months helped me realized that all the other niche sites were focussing on making sales and pushing their readers to move on Amazon too hard.

With use of comparison tables, big 90’s styled looking Amazon buttons and longer but thin content.

What most of these websites were missing was STYLE and SUBSTANCE.

They were just spitting out content rather than representing it.

Most of them had EMD domains and didn’t have the ‘Feel Good’ factor to it.

On the other hand, Big Authority Sites weren’t directly targeting long tail keywords and hence some of their articles were ranking for most of these specific keywords.

Like for example, if I searched for keyword like ‘Best Rugged Portable Bluetooth Speaker’, then the article that would rank for was related to only basic Bluetooth Speakers and no mention of rugged speakers.

“If Google doesn’t has any article (to rank for) on a specific keyword, then it will rank articles that are loosely related to main keyword, and mostly from authoritative site.”

For my niche site, I realized this gaping hole and hence decided to build an Amazon Niche Site that would have Content, Design and Trustworthiness of a Bigger Authority Site and target specific keywords just like other low-quality Amazon Niche Sites and hence the name Authority Amazon Niche Site came into existence.

Since Google gives specific preference for websites that turn out to be Brand, it helps in ranking better without backlinks and building a brand also helps in getting direct visitors and trust of users visiting your site.

Moreover, once your website becomes a brand, it becomes easier to sell it later and (guess what) at much higher price.

Chapter #9: Keep the Money Flow Continuous

The hardest part about making money online is not just to make money... but also to keep the money flowing at a constant rate.

There are times, when your traffic and income may shoot up due to festival season or various sales on Amazon.com. However once they’re done, both the factors (traffic and money) may tend to dry out.

Hence it is very important to keep making money round the clock and not just for a limited amount of time. Here are certain things to take care about to help you from losing out the cash (and piece of mind).

Here are certain things to take care about to help you from losing out the cash (and piece of mind).

1. Always make sure that your website and article are in healthy position and safe from hack.

Though WordPress offers a free platform for any of us to start a blog, it isn’t the most secure one. A basic WordPress installation can be hacked easily even by a newbie.

You have to make sure that you take some preliminary measures to make your niche site more secure.

I personally use iThemes Security plugin (FREE) that handles all the basic security measures required.

Using this plugin, you can change the WordPress login URL:

Hence from http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin you can change the login URL to"

http://yourdomain.com/whatever-you-like

This will save your site from a ton of non-legit logins.

It will also help in hiding other users from accessing the heart of any WordPress site and that is WP-Content folder.

Though being free, the plugin has thousands of options to play around with. Check out its full review and know about various options here.

2. Always Keep Backups

Since WordPress isn’t the most secure or robust blogging platform out there, it is bound to get hacked or cause various functionality problems.

Having your site backup all the time, should be your first priority.

Even if your site is down for 5 minutes, you’re losing money.

Use BackWpUp plugin to backup your site daily or on weekly basis automatically directly to dropbox.com.

Just set it up and forget it.

I personally backup my site on weekly basis on Sunday at 3 pm, since I write only 1 article per week... this happens to be best option for me.

Also try to be in contact with a WordPress developer who will help and solve, if there are technical issues with your blog and you can’t solve it.

3. Make sure your site and articles load the way they’re meant to be 24x7

Recently while writing this article, my own Amazon Niche Site suffered from a problem, where scrolling for 50% of the articles got disabled.

The problem was occurring from 7 days (due to a Javascript file) and I was totally unaware about it. Took 3 days to diagnose and solve all the issues.

This lead to poor conversion rate; that affected sales and income for the month of January.

Hence from now I make it a priority to keep checking my articles whenever I’m free.

4. Outsource things that you can’t handle on your own

I personally can’t handle two things on my own: Handling WordPress during Technical Issues and Social Sharing.

Hence I pay other people to do that work for me, this may cost money but helps save time and headache, trust me.

I contact the person who is in charge for handling my WordPress site during technical issue, whenever I have any problem or issue with my site, I just shoot him a message... he checks and solves all the problem even before I finish my dinner.

This keeps me tension free:

Social shares are an important aspect in today’s SEO, the more your site gets discovered from various social platforms; the more you happen to succeed.

We’re humans, and we’re meant not to be good with everything we do... Hence it is important to outsource certain services.

Personally if you use Fiverr or other services, you might have to pay more. Hence I recommend outsourcing services via Facebook; using various groups where others bloggers are a part of it.

Via this you may get your work done for less and can build a nice relationship with the other person.

5. Keep a tab on your rankings

Trust me; you don’t need a paid tool just to tell you for what keywords your articles are ranking for. Google Webmaster does that job easily.

It gives a comprehensive list of keywords that your site is ranking for.

Make use of that data and built links for articles that happen to be on 2nd or 3rd page.

Always use Incognito mode in your browser to check your own rankings.

6. Keep updating articles

The world is changing at a mind boggling rate, whatever released 2-3 months ago, becomes outdated by today.

Same is with your articles, regularly update your articles after a period of 2-3 months and then submit the URL to Google Webmasters.

This helps in keeping all the articles on your site active and your traffic increasing at a steady rate.

7. Watch your website trend over a series of 7 days and then take action

Your traffic and income will not be constant every day, each day they will dip and rise.

If your website gets say 1000-1200 visits over a period of 7-8 and then suddenly on 9 day traffic gets dropped to 800 visits.

Don’t PANIC.

Only take action if the traffic or income drop is consistent over a period of 7 days.

Most bloggers happen to panic very quickly and take steps that may hamper their blog traffic.

Hence observe the trend over a period of 7 days and then take any action.

8. Never keep your site inactive for a very long time

You can recover from a penalty and regain your traffic, but if your website becomes inactive for a very long time, its traffic will start decreasing gradually, and no matter what you do later. The traffic will keep sliding down. You won’t be able to recover it that quickly then.

Inactivity is the biggest enemy to any blog.

Suppose you have exams that are going to carry on over a month and you weren’t able to update your site for the entire month, the traffic on your site will start decreasing gradually due to no content.

Before you take leave from site, schedule new articles in advance, and let WordPress publish those articles for you at the time you want.

Conclusion

If you’ve reached till here, after crossing this massive sea of content:

Pat yourself on the back.

You did a great job.

You’ve just completed reading a 14,000 words article on how to build and sustain an Authority Amazon Niche Site and make atleast $1000/month off of it.

I’ve poured all my heart out into this article and to my truest knowledge; and don’t believe I’ve missed out anything I know.

I’ve poured all the knowledge I have, all the experience I got; into this 14,000 words piece of content.

If you think that there’s still a secret recipe that I have but haven’t revealed, then you may keep thinking so.

Most people who talked to me, believe that there’s some secret thing that I’m hiding that allows me to make $$$$/month, and not just me but other bloggers out there who make a living out of blogging.

Constant Dedication, Smart Work and the Desire to be rich are the three ingredients you need to success in this world called Blogging.

If you lack any of these, you certainly won’t be able to reach where you thought you want to reach.

Make a plan and start working.

I too don’t claim that this is the best guide on building an Amazon Niche Site, I’ve just poured my personal experience into it and that’s all.

Monday, August 15, 2016

BloggerTipsTricksHow To Build an Authority Amazon Niche Site that Generates $1000/Month

3 Reasons as to why Adsense sucks...

9 Steps Formula to building an Authority Amazon Niche Site

This is what Authority Amazon Niche Site is...

Chapter #1: Niche Selection

1. Sufficient Knowledge about Niche:

2. Is the Niche Popular on Amazon.com?

3. Are there products directly related to your niche?

Chapter #2: Keyword Research

Important tool to ease your Keyword Research trouble:

Secret Trick I use to find Highly Profitable and Easily Rankable Keywords

Chapter #3: Knowledge Research

1. Get to know more about the niche:

2. Important Terminology related to your Niche:

3. Popular Products:

Why Research is Important before Starting any Authority Amazon Niche Site…

Chapter #4: Choosing a Domain Name (Expired vs Fresh and EMD vs PMD)

EMD v/s PMD (Exact Match Domains v/s Partial Match Domain)

“The point here is to find a right balance between choosing a domain that can be easily branded, whether you’re choosing a fresh domain or going down the expired domains path.”

Chapter #5: Hosting & Site Setup

Choosing Theme and Setting up your Site:

Important things to consider while setting up your WP site:

Chapter #6: Article Writing & Content Building

Content Writing

1. Content Length

2. Content Representation

3. Why Images are Important and How to use them?

4. Buy Now Buttons

5. Important things to consider while Content Creation

Chapter #7: Building Links and Ranking

3 Strategies (I've personally used) to Build Links for Amazon Niche Site

1. Profile Links

2. Blog Commenting

3. Forum Posts Backlinks

Click this link, to receive 30 days FREE trail of SEMRush!

Chapter #8: Simple Tips & Tricks for Smoother Execution towards a Successful Authority Amazon Niche Site

1. Article Velocity

2. Cross Promotion

3. Checking Google Analytics and Webmaster Daily

4. Link Velocity

5. Building Brand

Chapter #9: Keep the Money Flow Continuous

1. Always make sure that your website and article are in healthy position and safe from hack.

2. Always Keep Backups

3. Make sure your site and articles load the way they’re meant to be 24x7

4. Outsource things that you can’t handle on your own

5. Keep a tab on your rankings

6. Keep updating articles

7. Watch your website trend over a series of 7 days and then take action

8. Never keep your site inactive for a very long time

Conclusion

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