The Alpha Method

The Alpha Method
The Alpha
Method
By George Brown
AKA -The 19 year old internet multi millionaire.
This (awesome) report‟s FREE! And therefore if you
like it, likewise feel FREE to pass it around – just
don‟t sell it please, that‟s not allowed 
By: George Brown
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The Alpha Method
Contents
Introduction ......................................................................... 3
Step 1 – The Sales Process............................................. 5
Step 2 – The Alpha Review ............................................. 7
Step 3 – Alpha “How To” ............................................... 21
Step 4 – Research - The Alpha Way .......................... 28
Step 5 – Setting Up Your Alpha Site .......................... 36
Step 6 - Cloak Your Links!............................................. 45
Conclusion .......................................................................... 50
Copyright 2011 – George Brown.
By reading this document, you assume all risks
associated with using the advice given below, with
a full understanding that you, solely, are
responsible for anything that may occur as a result
of putting this information into action in any way,
and regardless of your interpretation of the advice
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Introduction
Affiliate marketing. The concept is so simple, right?
Promote someone else‟s product, take a cut of the
purchase price while letting the product owner
handle fulfillment, refunds, support, etc.
In reality, it can be very frustrating to actually
accomplish affiliate marketing the way that you
were told to do it. You know, the traditional way
where you promote a product from a related
content kind of site or blog. The site itself is not
usually the hardest part – the hard part is getting
the enormous amount of traffic, coupled with the
right pre-sell in order to see the results you need.
Oh…and this all depends on whether or not you
have selected a product that actually converts well
in the first place!
Now, don‟t misunderstand – it is possible AND
lucrative to set up affiliate sites like this
(obviously). But it takes BOTH time and effort to
get the traffic and volume that is needed to be a
successful affiliate marketer. Even with the
Google Sniper method for instance.
Let‟s take the affiliate model down a notch and
make things a little simpler, shall we?
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Here in this report, we will discuss a method that
has withstood the test of time. This basic idea and
outline is not my own (I actually came across it on
a forum a couple of years ago) – And I‟ve
combined with some of the best methods I have
personally found online to date.
I‟m calling it „The Alpha Method‟ because it has
been used by some of the Big Dogs in Internet
marketing as well as taught by them as a way for
new marketers to get started!
With this method, you will learn a system that is
not only simple, it is leveraged too! Leveraged, in
that you will be taking advantage of the merchant‟s
own promotional and marketing efforts in order to
channel the buyer onto your links and see results
on your own affiliate site. This is a very effective
way to get started.
You will learn how to select an appealing, HOTselling product, how to structure your site, what
kind of reviews to create and how to add those
affiliate pages to your own site.
Are you ready?
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Step 1 – The Sales Process
We have to explain what happens in a normal sales
process in order to point out the place where you
want to be in that chain of events.
When customers are online, they are usually either
looking for a solution to a problem they are having
or they happen to notice an offer while they are
socializing or „hanging out‟ online in some other
way.
So – a customer is made aware of an online
product in one of two ways:
1) They are using a Search Engine like Google,
Yahoo, Ebay or even Amazon to look for
something OR
2) They are looking at something else and see
an Offer in the form of a PPC ad, banner ad
or newsletter etc.
At this point, they either make an impulse
purchase, decide not to buy at all or they decide to
research the product further before making
the buying decision.
This is where you want them to find YOUR site.
These are, effectively, soon-to-be buyers and are
on the verge of making that purchase. They will
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either get the first product they see, or they will do
some research and find something better.
In this research phase, what is it they are looking
for? They are looking for a combination of Proof
and Justification. We all want our money to be
spent in a worthwhile way and we all want to feel
justified in spending that money. Have you ever
spent time researching a product that you really
didn‟t want? Of course not! Customers research
products that they are already interested in. Think
about it.
Customers make the effort to look up “Best iPod
review” or “Best MP3 player for the money” etc.
(you get the idea) in search of real user opinions.
They are looking for complaints, problems, issues
and anything that will help them to feel good about
buying (or not) the product in question.
This is where you want be. You want to be able to
meet them in their research phase so that you
can divert their search over to your affiliate
site, where you will have the answers they are
looking for.
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The remaining steps are not necessarily in linear
order. Please read through the remainder of the
report before you begin to take action.
Step 2 – The Alpha Review
Of course, reviewing products is not a new
concept. However, you may have also noticed that
a lot of current „review‟ sites are not really review
sites, but instead are sales sites that don‟t really
offer much in the way of information.
This is where you will be doing it a bit different.
The aim here is not to sell the product – remember
that we are trying to come into the buying
decision already in progress and supply them with
the Proof and Justification that they are looking for.
Here is what you do: Create a simple „fact sheet‟
for the product and place these on the product
information page that is on your site. This page
will get organic search engine traffic for the
product‟s keywords that you have selected.
The „fact sheet‟ will need to contain at least the
following information:
1. Product name
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2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Product developer, creator or author
Official domain name
Company (or brand) name
For software etc. – the version history
Cost
Refund policy
For this portion of the review, you want the
language to be real and natural. You do not want
to „keyword stuff‟. Give as many real details as
possible as that will help the people searching (as
well as the search engines!). This is covered by
basic on-page SEO principles.
You also want to provide real, actual user
testimonials by doing your own research on the
product. Select several of the glowing and positive
comments that you find and then place “snippets”
of them into the review.
For example – let‟s say that you are promoting a
weight loss program. Here is what a “snippet” of a
user comment would look like:
“…boy, was I sore! But it was the most fun I‟d had
in awhile! I hardly knew I was exercising…”
--Real/Actual user comment from Example.com
OR
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“…my biggest problem has always been motivation
and being able to get myself going. Well, those
days are long gone…”
--Real user comment from AnotherExample.com
Forum
And on and on with these kinds of pieces of real
quotes…
It‟s a good idea to keep them as short as possible
so that you don‟t run into copyright issues. By the
way, I‟m not your mother or your lawyer, so please
do your own due diligence regarding that! If you
don‟t feel good about quoting like that, then please
paraphrase the comment and include it in your own
review. You can do this by saying something like,
“One user from ExampleForum.com said that they
were laughing and having so much fun, they didn‟t
even realize they were exercising! The pounds
came off before they even knew it! Now they are
dragging all their friends to the class.”
The main idea is to report the information, rather
than say you, yourself are the reviewer. You
should only say you have reviewed the product
when you actually have! Remember that you
aren‟t selling the product, so you want to keep the
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mood soft. No need for monster buttons and
headlines here!
You are providing a service by assembling the facts
and helping that customer to go to the search
engines, find your product-related keywords and
make that buying decision!
Of course, read the sales page and information
about the product carefully. Be sure you
understand what it is and/or what it does that is
beneficial and makes it an attractive buy. Then,
write the review as if you were telling your friend
about a product or solution you had found.
Successful reviews sound more like a discussion of
the strengths and weaknesses of a product, while
focusing on the product and the reader – not the
writer!
Be sure to leave out verbiage like “buy now” and
other hype in your reviews. Also, no text links or
pop up ads for other products. You want to keep it
as clean and simple as possible.
You don‟t need to do anything magical here – just
go to the sales page, take note of the benefits of
the product, then focus on those while being
sympathetic to the customers who are interested.
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Keep in mind that the sales letter for the product
already speaks to the target market, so your
review should follow the same basic format. Why
re-invent the wheel, right? Keep the tone light and
conversational and you‟ll do great!
Where can you find products to promote?
There are several really great places to look:






Clickbank
PayDotCom
Commission Junction
Amazon
Google Affiliate Network
Etc.
In each of these affiliate networks, you will need to
take a little bit of time to look around, browse
through their Help section and get a feel for how to
find products and how to promote them. For
example purposes, I‟m going to show you how you
might select a product from Clickbank.
You will first need to sign up for an Affiliate Account
with them. Go to: www.clickbank.com
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When you get to this screen, click on the “Learn
More” button under „Affiliates‟.
Read through their information about Clickbank
works on the next page, then click on the large
“Sign Up” button in the upper right and corner of
the screen.
On the next page, you will need to fill in the
appropriate information about yourself. At the end
of the form, you will see a box asking for your
Account Nickname. This is your affiliate ID and will
be visible at the end of your affiliate link as well as
at the bottom of the Clickbank sale page for
whatever products you promote – this is how you
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will know that you are being credited properly for
each sale.
I‟ll show you later how to test your links for this.
For now – understand that you want to create a
nickname (ID) that you don‟t mind people seeing.
Do not choose anything offensive! You can make it
initials or numbers etc. Just keep it professional.
Follow the prompts from Clickbank to finish signing
up for your account.
Once you have your login information, you can
start looking for products you would like to
promote.
Login to your new Clickbank account here:
https://www.clickbank.com/login.htm
Enter in your account nickname and password that
you created. You will be taken to your main
Account Home. Click on the “Marketplace” link in
the top menu bar.
You can then look through the Categories menu on
the left hand side of the screen – or search for a
product or topic from the search bar at the top:
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For this example, I selected the
“Business/Investing” category. On the following
results page, the products are sorted from most
popular to least popular. Take your time learning
how to read all the little icons etc. that are with
each listing and what they mean. The main ones
you are going to look at are the average $/sale and
the gravity. The $/sale is a personal decision. For
the gravity – you want a high number rather than a
low one.
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Now, read the description and click on the product
title so that you can take a look at the sales page.
The criteria here is easy – if reading the sales page
makes you reach for your wallet, then you found
your product to promote! If you aren‟t compelled to
buy the product for yourself, keep looking.
If you have found one that you‟d like to promote,
then you can start looking for your review
information as mentioned previously.
Your affiliate link is available to you by clicking on
the green “Promote” button next to each listing.
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When you click on it, a pop up window asks for
your account nickname.
Enter your nickname and click on the “Create”
button. The pop-up window will then display both
your raw, encrypted affiliate link as well as your
HTML “Click Here” link, like this:
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Either of these links is good to use, depending on
what you are doing.
To test that you link goes to your affiliate ID,
simply click on the “buy now” or “add to cart” sales
buttons. When you get to the Clickbank order page
like the one below, you will see your affiliate ID at
the bottom of the page:
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This example says [affiliate=none] because I
clicked the product link from the category page
listing, instead of the affiliate link itself. If you
have done everything correctly, instead of “none” it
will have your affiliate ID/nickname there instead.
The other affiliate networks work similarly to what
it described here. You will have to become familiar
with how to search their product base and how to
get your affiliate link…but other than that, there is
not too much to it!
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So, why is this one of the easiest methods to use
when you are not putting in all that much effort?
There are several reasons.
1. Instead of working hard to point customers
at the merchant‟s site from the get-go, you
are actually meeting their customers in the
middle. AFTER they have been exposed to
the offer in the first place and BEFORE they
have made the final decision to buy.
When a product generates a lot of chatter, it
also generates a lot of research traffic that
you will be getting in front of. They
promote like crazy, and you benefit!
2. The content you are creating is effective –
plus you now have a system where you can
quickly and easily put up review pages. You
aren‟t spending your time frustrated with
that learning curve we talked about at the
beginning. You are creating one „fact sheet‟
after the other with this systematic
approach. When you get the hang of it –
you will see that it takes hardly any time to
put up a 50 page site, filled with highlytargeted and unique content.
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3. If you have struggled to build your own
email list – you will soon discover that you
are sitting on a gold mine with your site.
You are also targeting people that are doing
what? They are making a decision to BUY!
Your content is effectively prequalifying them
as buyers. You can easily build a newsletter
with this kind of site and find that your
subscribers are more responsive than most
others.
This „Alpha‟ method really does leverage all of the
merchant‟s efforts at promotion. They do the
selling and the catering to the demand of the
public. You are just stepping in to help the
customer with their final buying decision and
getting them to click on your affiliate link (and
getting your affiliate cookie into their browser)!
This is a tried and true method and its validity is
not in question among those Alpha marketers in
the „know‟. What is important here is to select the
right niche along with the right product. We will
get to niche research in a minute, but before we
do, let‟s take a look at how to make this strategy
work for you!
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Step 3 – Alpha “How To”
Now it‟s time to talk about the nuts and bolts of
this method. It‟s not complicated, but it will
require a basic knowledge of how to conduct
research online and how to set up a website.
1. Start with selecting a profitable niche
that also has lots of products available.
A profitable niche is usually also a popular
niche where people are spending lots of
money. You can look in any of the major
affiliate networks for one that you‟d like to
work with. Of course, you will learn more
about niche research a little later on in this
report.
2. Create a site that has your product
reviews on it, along with your „fact sheet‟,
real user comment snippets and affiliate
links that are plain to see at BOTH the top
and bottom of each product page. While the
site can be for a more general niche, each
product will have its own specific page.
3. The home page (or index page) of the
site should have links to each product,
your top product or your opt-in box. It
will be up to you to decide how you want to
layout your main page of your site. You
should also include a site map, a privacy
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policy page and a contact page. If you
decide to list short descriptions of each
product on the index page, it is okay to use
the word “review” in the link title. This will
help to target buyers. Keep the review
descriptions short and sweet, then at the
end use a “read more” or “like this? See
more here” kind of link to encourage clickthrus.
4. Take your time building backlinks. There
is no need to go crazy and build as many
links as you can as quickly as you can. Do
that and you‟ll end up in the Google
sandbox. You don‟t want that, so just
submit a few articles to a few free directories
if you want. You can also take advantage of
paid links through 3WayLinks or LinkVana.
This will help you to build links without
worrying (or working at it yourself!) and it
looks more natural anyway. You could also
add links by doing your own blog (or forum)
commenting, or with Web 2.0 sites like
Squidoo or HubPages etc. Be sure to add
links that go directly to the product
review/info pages as well.
**A great way to gain extra exposure for
your site is through Article Marketing. If you
know this, then you may have also heard
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about the site, Associated Content. Well,
Associated Content has become Yahoo!
Content and you can submit all your articles
to them AND GET PAID! Yep, you can sign
up as a contributor and submit articles to
them and get paid either up front (if you
don‟t plan on using the article anywhere
else) or you can get paid each time your
article is viewed (this is suggested for this
method). If you like to write, you can also
take a look at their Assignment Desk and
write for others. The pay is not much, but
why not get paid to do what you were going
to do anyway?? You can sign up as a
contributor and find out more about how it
works here:
https://contributor.yahoo.com/signup.shtml
5. Stay on top of your sales and the traffic
stats. Okay, it may take a week or two for
the first amount of visitors to find their way
to your site – but this will build up over time.
You site will begin to gain some age and
authority over the coming months and this
will only help you. Often, even a small
amount of visitors is enough to get some
sales. Keep in mind that you have targeted
people on their way to a buying decision and
not just any old visitor.
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Pay attention to your traffic, which is coming
from your targeted keywords that you
selected during your product research,
verses sales. If you have traffic and no
sales, then you may be facing a conversion
problem. This means that your site may not
seem believable or perhaps your links are
buried and not easily accessible.
***At this point, we‟d like to mention that a
more traditional HTML site may work better
for this method than a blog. While
WordPress blogs are fantastic to use and
customize, you are often limited in the main
layout. A regular HTML site is often easier to
layout and be sure that your important
information is above the fold. This is
important! You want your site visitor to be
able to begin clicking on your links without
having to scroll down. In “research mode”,
most people are scanning sites and making a
quick decision to either stay on the site or
leave. Your main link needs to be easy to
see and right at the top of the page.
Nvu is a great WYSIWYG (What You See Is
What You Get) HTML editor. More specific
information regarding this is in Step 5 –
Setting Up Your Alpha Site.
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6. Take Action Now and Don’t Give Up! Too
many people give up too easily (you know
who you are!) or have what I call IM ADD
(Internet Marketing Attention Deficit
Disorder). : ) The reason this method
works is that you are finding products that
are appealing and that people want to buy,
and your reviews are written to be
compelling and effective. Yes, you need to
be reviewing HOT-Selling products, but this
comes through some amount of trial, error
and testing.
When you have found a winner, then for that
niche you will want to progress from the
„review‟ model to building a stronger
presence and scaling up your content. But
don‟t put the cart before the horse! It‟s okay
if your channel site sales are a bit sporadic –
these kinds of sites are consistent in that
they build search engine authority over time.
You will most likely have some sites that do
not get much in the way of results. That
doesn‟t mean that this method stinks. It
simply means that you need to select other
products, review them, and create another
site. Repeat the process until you have
some winners! It won‟t take long!
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Okay – by now you are probably wondering what
this kind of review site looks like. So here is a
really great example:
http://www.selfhelpinsider.com/
This site is a great example of how to write your
short reviews. You will want to combine them with
the „fact sheet‟ we showed you earlier, along with
the comment snippets and your affiliate link at the
bottom.
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Otherwise, this is also a good example of how you
may want to layout your main index page. Here
we see a list of products for a particular niche,
along with a brief intro and a call to action – “Read
More” The titles are also links that lead to the
review pages, then to the affiliate product itself.
Here is a bit more of a modified example:
http://www.insideyourdiet.com/
This site has a few introductory paragraphs
explaining what their site is about, and then they
list their reviews. On each review page you will
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see a similar layout to the „fact sheet‟ that you will
create.
Step 4 – Research - The Alpha Way
As already mentioned, the research to find a good
niche and thus, good products is the most
important part of this whole “Channel” method.
Selecting the right niche can make or break you.
You want to know before you even start all your
work that you have a niche that IS and HAS hotselling products.
There are many research methods, tools and
techniques. What you are going to learn here is
the underlying principle of conducting your
research. Not one methodology works for
everyone – so on that front you are left to your
own devices. Here is an overall view that will
hopefully allow you to see or ‘get’ the underlying
science to niche research.
The steps will be listed as “Step 1”, “Step 2” etc.
but you will probably need to go back and forth in
order to refine your searches until you have found
THE niche that you want to work with.
Research Step 1. Open up the Google SE in
your browser at www.google.com
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Research Step 2. Find actionable articles.
You can do this by running queries that find
actionable content. You can use the search
box as a regular expression (RE) engine
window.
As an example, in the search box, enter the
following - site:ezinearticles.com “2…6”
What results are returned for you? Here is
what recently came up for us…
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Do you see that all of the results are
ezinearticles.com articles that have the
number range of tips included? “Poker
Strategy for Pocket 2‟s-6‟s” etc. So you can
change the numbers to any range you like
(“3…7” or “5…10” etc.) or you could be more
specific and look for “3 tips” or whatever you
want. You can also look at different
directories like - site:articlealley.com
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Search where ever you are comfortable or
take a look at several. Take note of the
action words in the titles. Such as:
"How to"
"How do I"
"Ways to"
"Discover"
"Methods of"
"Steps to"
There are more – but you get the idea. You
will want to search past the first page and
perhaps even through all of the first 10
pages of the results. You can go through
more if you like! You are looking for ideas
from the articles that others have written.
You may also want to be sure the
information is fresh and current by searching
by date. You would enter this in the search
box - site:articlealley.com “December
1…31 2010”
This search will give you a list of all the
articles written and submitted to Article Alley
in December of 2010.
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You can also combine these searches to give
you more defined results. When you do this,
you will use the pipe symbol or the OR
directive in the search box. So you would
enter:
site:ezinearticles.com {"how can I"} | {"3..7
tips to"}
or maybe
site:ezinearticles.com "3..5 tips" OR "how
can I"
Do you see how that works? Now the results
would be sorted by both of your search
criteria and help you to drill down into the
kinds of information that you are looking for.
Research Step 3. Zero in on niche ideas.
You can now begin to ask yourself if the
article author is a true believer in the topic
they are writing about. If they have been
writing on that particular topic for awhile,
that is good. You want to see if the author
knows the topic deeply. Are they considered
an expert with a breadth of knowledge?
You want to take a look at the author‟s
profile and see if they have numerous
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articles in that niche. If not, then you can
safely ignore the author. (Not the niche –
just the author!) If they do have many
articles written about that particular niche,
then you will need to continue your research
on them. Now take a look at the dates on
the article submission. If the oldest article
was written some time ago and you can see
that they have been consistently writing
articles up to now, you will want to place this
niche on your list. This tells you that the
author is most likely making money with this
niche to be so consistent in their writing.
Now you want to look and evaluate the
articles themselves for keyword use. Do the
articles contain LSI (Latent Semantic
Indexing) throughout each article? LSI is
basically the use of secondary keywords to
support the main keyword or keyword
phrase. If the author is knowledgeable and
has done a good job, at least some of the
articles will show a balanced use of LSI. If
you don‟t know what some of the keywords
would be, you will need to conduct your own
search using the Google Adwords Keyword
Tool or the keyword tool of your choice.
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Research Step 6. Make sure you have a
viable niche. You want to repeat Step 5 to
find more than one qualifying author. If you
find several authors that are in the same or
closely related niche, then you probably have
a winner.
Take a good look at the niche to see if it is
Over-Competitive and if so, look to a subniche that may be even better. By carefully
looking at the LSI you should be able to tell
what the sub-niches are. However, if the
main niche appears to be a good choice all
on its own, then that is when you can take a
breath. You have probably found “your”
niche!
Research Step 7. Qualifying your list of
“maybes” Now that you have a list of
possible niches, you can run this query on
Google. Go back to the Google search box
and enter:
site:ezinearticles.com {"how can I"} | {"3..7
tips to"} | {"4..6 steps to"} YOUR NICHE
KEYWORDS HERE
Of course, you can enter the search criteria
of your choice, but this is a good example of
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how to find articles that are providing
effective tips and information.
This is where you need to start to use your
instincts and the „research‟ starts to go
beyond the scientific. The results are not
going to scream out at you “pick me, pick
me!” but you will have to make a judgment
call and follow your gut about which of the
articles contains the best information that
will lead you to a great niche.
Research Step 8. Now you can evaluate
how the niche is monetized. Select the more
successful and qualified authors and take a
look at their website. They should have a
resource box at the end of their articles that
lists the link or address. Take a look at how
they are monetizing this particular niche.
See if they are selling their own product or if
they are promoting affiliate products. Are
they using CPA or other ads?
If you have a number of authors to look at,
cross reference them to see if they are
selling any of the same products or kinds of
products. Are they running pure sales
campaigns or are they running a CPA
campaign? Are more of the authors using
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Adsense? Are they promoting Amazon
products? A careful review of the sites will
tell you how they are making their money.
You should be able to now cross reference
the search volume of the keyword with the
kind of monetization being used to give you
a rough estimate of how much money is
possible with this niche.
*Additional Search Query – You may also want to
try this „intitle‟ search to find potential niches:
site:ezinearticles.com + intitle:"how can I"
Or
site:ezinearticles.com + intitle:"YOUR KEYWORD/S"
Step 5 – Setting Up Your Alpha Site
As already mentioned, the best way to create your
site may be with a standard HTML site. However,
you may also want to consider setting up a
WordPress site. They each have their advantages
and dis-advantages – but you will need to make
that call on your own! This report is going to give
you several options and you can decide from there.
The first thing you need to do – now that you have
your niche, is to purchase your own domain name.
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There are many places you can register your own
domain, and a great one is NameCheap.com and
for hosting, HostGator.com is inexpensive and
reliable.
Both of these sites have great information and
support to help you get set up. Take some time to
look at these sites and ask them questions if you
have any about their services.
Now that you have your domain name and hosting
for your site, you are ready to take a look at
creating either a standard HTML site or a
WordPress site.
For a standard HTML site, you will need an HTML
editor. Most commonly known as a WYSIWYG
editing program, the acronym stands for What You
See Is What You Get – and means that it provides
some of the flexibility of a word program so that
you can create pages for your site without knowing
HTML. We are going to use Nvu as our example
software.
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You can download it at: http://net2.com/nvu/ As
seen below, you simply need to click on the large
“Download” button on the right – it‟s free!
Follow the installation instructions. When that‟s
done, go ahead and open up the software. You will
see it is set up similarly to a regular Word
document file. Again, take some time to play with
it and see how the different menu options work.
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There are some really great videos on YouTube
that you can watch to learn how to use Nvu. View
them here:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nv
u&search_type=&aq=f
You don‟t have to create your pages from scratch if
you don‟t want to! There are templates available
that are free as well as some that you can
purchase. You can conduct a search for „free HTML
templates‟. OR…take a look at these sites:
http://www.freelayouts.com/websites/htmltemplates and http://www.templatesperfect.com/
Again, for example purposes, I download an HTML
template from one of these sites. You would
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download it like you would any file, unzip it and
save it to your hard drive. Then open Nvu and
click on the “Open” button in the menu bar. Select
the file called “Index” from your folder where you
saved the template and it should open in Nvu.
Here is my example:
As you can see, once the file was pulled up into
Nvu, I was able to start typing in my own
information. I changed the site title to “Alpha
Method” and then added “Welcome to The Alpha
Method!” as the title for the top section. You
would continue and input your own information into
any template you decide to use.
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Once you have a page the way you want it, it‟s
time to save the file and upload it to your website.
You will save it to whatever folder you want and
you will upload it via a FTP program. FTP stands
for File Transfer Protocol and allows you to transfer
files from your hard drive onto your hosting
accounts server. You will need to have your FTP
login information from your hosting account. This
you will need to gather on your own, since we have
no way of knowing which hosting company you
have decided to go with.
Once you have that information, you can use and
FTP program available. FileZilla is a well known
program, as well as FireFTP etc. You can conduct a
search to find one that you like. For this example,
FireFTP for FoxFire will be used. When you have
the program installed, you will need to login or
connect to the server using your login information
for FTP from your hosting company.
In FireFox, the link for FireFTP is in the Tools
dropdown menu. When opened, it looks like this:
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The folders listed on the left are the files on your
computer. When you connect, you will also see
your website files in your server on the right.
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You will click on the file you want to upload from
your computer files on the left, then click on the
file you are going to upload to on the right. This
will be the Public HTML file folder. Then click on
the arrow button that points to the right in the
middle gray bar to transfer and upload the file.
This effectively copies the file and does not erase it
from your hard drive on your computer.
You can visit this page to learn more about
uploading files using FTP:
http://fireftp.mozdev.org/help.html
Once you upload several pages to your site, you
can list the pages via links in your menu or by
creating links within your content.
It can take some practice to set up this kind of site,
but it is really not that complicated once you take
the time to watch some of the tutorial videos and
read thru some of the help information that each
program or software provides.
If all that seems just too much for you, then a
WordPress site might be the answer. You can set
up a free WordPress blog site by visiting
www.wordpress.com or you can have your own
dedicated site by visiting www.wordpress.org and
installing the WordPress software.
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The difference is that a free WordPress blog is
somewhat limited in the customization features and
what you can do with the site. Plus, you don‟t
actually OWN it and are really just renting the
space. For our purposes, you really should use a
WordPress.org site where you have to install the
software on your server and host your own site.
Using HostGator, it is simply a matter of using
Fantastico to help you install the WordPress
software. You can see how to do that here:
http://www.hostgator.com/tutorials/wordpress/2.7
/installing-wordpress-via-fantastico.htm
If you are not using a hosting company that has
Fantastico – you can download and install the
software yourself. Here is a great site that explains
how:
http://www.solostream.com/blog/tutorials/how-toinstall-wordpress/
Of course, you may want more of a middle ground
between creating your own HTML site, and a
WordPress blog…and I may have an option for you.
Weebly is a website creation site that allows you
to create your own website through a drag and
drop interface. The software is all integrated and
there is nothing to download. You sign up for an
account, then you can create a free site or even
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purchase your own domain name through them
and they will host the site for you.
Visit www.weebly.com to find out more!
Oh, Step 6 will not work as laid out if you do choose to
go with Weebly. You still will want to cloak your affiliate
links, but you will need to investigate an alternate
method. Just FYI!
Step 6 - Cloak Your Links!
Last but not least…it is important to keep track of
the affiliate products (and your affiliate links!) you
are promoting. There are many reasons to
thoroughly check out a particular product and its
owner to be sure that they are in possession of a
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good reputation. This will save you many
headaches later on down the road. It can be a
good idea to take control of your affiliate link by
being able to change the information on the sales
page quickly and easily.
Let‟s say that for some reason the product owner
decides to suddenly replace the current product
you are promoting with something else that is
drastically different or even inferior to the previous
one. Think about all of the places that you have
put up links to the sales page. It can be a
nightmare trying to change out all of those links!
Wouldn‟t you like to be able to put up a sales page
to a similar product instead?
Not to mention crooks out to steal your affiliate
commissions or people who by-pass your affiliate
link by clicking to go directly to the site. All of this
can mean money taken right out of your pocket.
On this note, you may want to consider placing
your affiliate sales page onto your own website.
This is also known as Affiliate Link Cloaking. There
are hundreds of different cloaking programs online
– some free, some not. Some just mask your
affiliate link or hide it. That is a start, but a true
cloaking will require you to have your own page on
your site.
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Here is a great program that you can use to
effectively cloak your link and give you control over
what is shown on the destination sales page. It is
from GLH Software and it is one of their free
webmaster tools. Here is the link:
http://www.glhsoftware.com/webtools/cloaker.htm
With this tool, you enter in the Page Title. This can
be anything you want, from the full product name,
to an abbreviation, to an ID number that you
assign it. If you feel good about the product‟s
longevity, then you should probably use the full
product name.
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Then you copy and paste in your full affiliate link
and finish off by naming the file. This will help you
find the file on your computer as well as be seen as
the extension on your website address. Thus, you
will probably want to match the Page Title.
Next, you click on the “Download” button and the
file is downloaded to your computer. Keep track of
where you download these kinds of files.
You will need an FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
program in order to upload your file. FileZilla is a
very popular FTP, as is FireFTP (which is a FireFox
addon). You can use whichever one you‟d like.
The file should be uploaded to your site‟s “Public
HTML” file folder. You can also create a subfolder
there if you‟d like to keep your products organized
better.
As an example, let‟s say that we are promoting an
article spinning software. You may have heard of
The Best Spinner software. A straight upload you
did of that sales page might look something like
this:
http://examplesitename.com/thebestspinner
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Or if you had created a subfolder and then placed
the downloaded file there, the link would look like
this:
http://examplesitename.com/recommend/thebests
pinner
Here, the “recommend” is the subfolder that the
file was placed into using the FTP software.
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Conclusion
There you have it – a method for creating simple
review sites that works for both physical and digital
products.
The most important part of this method involves
the research to find your niche – and you may find
that, at the beginning, it is also the most time
consuming. Believe me - it is time well spent!
Be sure to commit to really taking action and not
giving up until you have at least 5 successful sites.
Then you can move on to other business models to
scale up your online business and your profits. No
business model will pay you for just sitting on your
backside!
The Alpha Method really is a collection of some the
very best information on how to get started and
finally make money! Give it a chance and you will
see that it really is one of the easiest, truest
methods around.
Oh, and have some fun with it too! Don‟t be afraid
to show your personality and be creative.
You‟ll be an “Alpha” marketer in no time.
George Brown
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