The Best of Both Worlds: Useful and Profitable
Last week, Brian Clark of Copyblogger.com released a 5 part guide to keyword research for bloggers. While several people, including myself, have covered the topic, Brian took the guide to an entirely different level. Each section discusses different aspects of keyword research (such as “How to find Post Topics that Score Big” and “How to Choose a Popular Niche for Your Blog“) and is nearly 8,000 words in all! Now, guides of this quality tend to naturally act as link bait anyway, but when you throw in the fact that it’s written and published on a site with more than 30 thousand subscribers, it becomes downright viral. Not surprisingly, it’s been attracting links and plugs from all sorts of high profile sites.
So, while I think Brian’s keyword research guide is certainly worth the read, and absolutely worthy of discussing, this isn’t going to be about keyword research at all. Rather than talk about the principles Brian covers and how you can learn to choose the best keywords for your site, I’d suggest you get it straight from the highly skilled source. The aspect that of the report I want to analyze is the profitability of the report.
You see, while Brian’s guide is a great resource on keyword research, it’s also an AMAZING resource on affiliate marketing. While he doesn’t cover the topic much in his guide, Brian is providing a wonderful example and possibly even a template for those of us looking to generate affiliate marketing income from our blogs. So often when you read about making money through affiliate offers your directed to sites dedicated to the product or sales pitch posts that don’t provide much value to anyone but the affiliate. We rarely hear about mixing affiliate offers with link bait or viral content but that’s just what Brian has done. Throughout the 5 part guide Brian mentions three different keyword tools, WordTracker, Wordze, and KeywordDiscovery. While many people, myself included, probably would have simply dropped their affiliate link in whenever one of the tools was mentioned, Brian once again, took it a step further.
Rather than simply dropping the affiliate link in the keyword guide itself, and possibly compromising some of the authoritative feel it creates, Brian instead linked to well written and comprehensive reviews of each product. It’s in each of those reviews that you’ll finally find an affiliate link. By the time anyone gets to those links, they’ve likely read a good chunk of the keyword research guide and have been conditioned to buy. The guide not only teaches them about the need of one of these tools, it also explains how to effectively use it to profit their blog. Bascially, the entire guide acts as one hell of a pre-sell.
Obviously I’ll have no way of knowing how profitable the guide turns out to be, but I’m willing to bet it brings in quite the pretty penny. Even if it’s not an incredible amount of money, it’s not all that often that you can make money and attract loads of inbound links from the same piece of content. So, after you’re done reading the great information about keyword research, I encourage you to take another look at the guide from an affiliate marketing perspective. Better yet, analyze it and figure out what you can do in your niche, that will be the best of both worlds; useful for your readers, and profitable for you.
Comments
Emma February 26th, 2008
Ben those are some very good points you made. The pre sell is really important. By the way I noticed you got some PR back congratulations.
Newest on the Net February 26th, 2008
Great article. You really added value to Brian’s series. I have been trying to think how to use affiliate marketing on my site. I think that this is a brilliant way to do it. By not including the affiliate links in your site, it increases it chances to go viral. But, you provide great reviews to interested readers.
Interwebhunt February 26th, 2008
The pre sell is super important, if not the most important.
Ben Cook February 26th, 2008
@ Emma, glad you liked the post. What PR are you seeing the site at? I’m still seeing the big 0.
@ Newest, yeah, this really inspired a couple of ideas for myself as to how to promote different products and programs. It really was another fantastic guide from Copyblogger.
Brian Clark February 26th, 2008
I’ve always said that the people I see getting the most out of Copyblogger watch what we do as much as what we say. Nice job, Ben.
Ben Cook February 26th, 2008
@ Brian, in this case I’d say that’s definitely true. Your site is a great example of how to build a blog and make some money while you’re at it. Then once you’re an authority in the niche, you can subscribe to Teaching Sells and figure out how to create your own course or membership site
Steven Bradley February 27th, 2008
Nice find Ben. I think this strategy isn’t unique to the keyword report. Brian uses the same strategy in other places as well.
Brian it’s interesting you mention watching CopyBlogger. I recently wrote a post on finding a blogging mentor (hope you don’t mind the link Ben) with the idea that you get more out of a blog by watching what the blogger does in addition to what they say. I naturally listed CopyBlogger as one of my own blogging mentors.