I set off today to follow Affiloblueprint’s training video on making a header for my pages. I have Photoshop, but they recommended a free tool I’ve never heard of called paint.net (not to be confused with the Paint program that comes with Windows).

You can get it here:
Paint.net.

So instead of using my Photoshop (which really slows down my computer), I downloaded and used this free tool. It worked great and I made a professional-looking header.

A little aside: I have a list of really great tools and resources that I’ve compiled over the last few years. It’s interesting that the AffiloBlueprint’s training videos have mentioned a lot of them, and without promoting their affiliate link (it one case they flashed it on the screen but clearly said it was an affiliate link which we could use if we wanted, but don’t feel obligated.)

For example, I came to the conclusion that Host Gator is the best web hosting source for someone like me; I want free add-on domains, I want really good up-time, and I don’t want to pay a lot. Interestingly, that’s exactly the host that AffiloBlueprint recommended.

Another example, I used to work for a graphic designer, and we used a royalty-free photo service that charged us a lot per month. Right before I left, another employee showed me IStockPhoto.com which has great photos for dollars. Again, AffiloBlueprint mentioned their website.

I’ve tried a few free FTP programs but decided that Filezilla was the best. Guess what FTP program the AffiloBlueprint videos recommended?

So right away I trust them and I know they’re giving me the most helpful information, not stuff that will make them the most money.

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I watched the videos from week 2 (Yeah, I’m in a hurry) which were all about writing articles for your chosen niche.

Mark gave some really good tips for working with eLance.com to hire someone to write, and also other ways to get content including writing yourself.

Since I’m pretty poor at the moment, I’m going to try my hand at writing them myself.

So I wrote 3 articles (well actually 1 long article I’m going to break up into 2 with a tip he gave, and another normal-sized one).

These articles are more general, but I think I’m going to have to hire someone to write the more technical ones since it will take a lot of time to get proficient in this niche in order to write them myself.

Hmm…a friend of a friend moved near me after graduating. Wonder if I could entice him to write some for me for a fee…

I want to mention again how impressed I am with these AffiloBlueprint training videos. They are clear and well thought-out. They’re in the form of Mark giving a presentation while one of his staff listens and asks questions. Everytime I start to wonder about something, his staff member asks exactly my question. And you can tell they took a lot of time to edit these videos because her question and his answer become part of his presentation in the video on a slide.

And there’s none of Mark trying to impress us with how rich he is (*cough*GCD*cough*). All you see are screen shots and video captures of what he’s doing on the computer.

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I sat down to do the home assignment from the week 1 videos: choosing a niche and doing keyword research.

Now before I bought the AffiloBlueprint, I had an idea for a niche. It was something that I started driving traffic to from a PPC ad of a single Clickbank product when I reviewed the Google Cash Detective. I’m getting an average of 1 sale per week and making about $20.00 profit.

But when I watched the video, I discovered this is exactly the same niche Mark Ling uses as his example site, having built a similar site to what I was planning a few years ago.

At first I thought I need to find another niche because I don’t just want to copy him. But I decided that it’s such a good niche (lots of Clickbank products) and I really did have the idea before I purchased, so I’m just going to ahead. After all, if I’m getting 1 sale/week right now with a single PPC campaign in a niche that is extremely competitive, maybe if I build an entire site I’ll do better. Mark’s site makes $500.00/month. If I make $100.00/month, I’ll still be happy.

So I really didn’t have much research to do. I already had tons of keywords in different categories from my PPC campaigns. So as instructed by Mark, I selected a few high-traffic keywords from each category and also some product review keywords, a total of 30 keywords in all.

The other thing I did was download Traffic Travis. It’s one of Mark Ling’s products for manipulating keywords and it has a free version. (Actually it does more things too, but I’m only interested in keyword research right now).

I’ll write a separate review for it, but here are the basics: the keyword research tool has 2 parts:

• Keyword Finder to get keyword suggestions from a few different search engines
• Keyword Sorter to help you organize and tweak them

I found that the keyword suggestion part of it leaves much to be desired. For example, I typed in ‘lifelike babies’ (By the way, I did this as a test. This is not my niche).

A few times when I did the same search, it returned only 2 results:
lifelike babies
life like babies

But then when I repeated the search, I got 200 results. Some of the keywords it suggested made sense, but some were way out there like:
woolworth sit in
woolworth building
implantation signs
adopt a virtual pet
design your own virtual house
etc.

But the second part of the tool that lets you organize and tweak your list is really handy.

So my recommendation is to use a different tool to get your keyword ideas, and then import them into Travis Traffic for manipulation.

They sell two versions:
Traffic Travis free
Traffic Travis Professional

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