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Last update, we wrote our all important keyword plan for our main article – now it’s time to sit down and write this article!
This article is the main page on the site. It’s the one that is either going to make us lots of money or break our hearts. For this reason, IT NEEDS TO BE FANTASTIC!
We want to write a main article that not only ranks well in Google thanks to excellent keyword research and link building but keeps ranking well in Google because it will be the best guide there is to this product. Not only this, but our readers will find all the answers they were looking for when it comes to which particular product to buy so they will click on the Amazon links and purchase away.
If you haven’t read my other niche site case study updates, you can find them all here. They will help you build your own niche site and follow the progress of my own, new niche sites.
Step 5: Write the main article
It can be tempting to outsource writing work, but unless you struggle writing in the language that your niche site is to be in, I encourage you to write this article yourself. The best way to understand the process is to do it yourself, so at least for the first site, write your own main buying guide.
To get started, pull out your keyword plan from the last step. The good news is that this keyword plan will make things easier as you already have the structure of your article. All you need to do is write it! And include lots of keywords.
Including lots of keywords in an article and making sure it doesn’t sound like you have added lots of keywords is a skill. It’s going to be tricky and time consuming the first time you write one of these articles – my first one took basically an entire weekend! But now I am able to write them in a few hours.
Your keyword plan will tell you your sub headings and exactly where in the article to add your keywords. If you had a lot of keywords then you may find it too hard to include them all. This is ok. It’s better for the article to be high quality than to include every single one of your keywords.
The other thing you are going to need to do while writing this article is to do lots of research, particularly if you don’t know the product well. By the end of this article, you are going to be an expert in this area!
I suggest reading your competitors’ articles, looking at manufacturers’ websites and reading review websites.
I recommend making this article a page on your website rather than a post. It will be the main article on the site which you will want to feature as much as you can.
I personally do not like it to be the home page though – I like to use the home page to spread around link juice and I think it looks more legitimate if the home page is not a buying guide. However, if you are sure you will only ever have one buying guide on the site, it might make sense to make it your home page. I will talk more about home pages in a future update.
Joining the Amazon Associates Program
At this point, I recommend that you also read the Amazon Associates operating agreement and do everything you can to ensure that you are following their guidelines.
You do not have to spend much time looking online to find people who have lost tens of thousands of dollars after their Amazon affiliate account was shut for breaking a rule that they didn’t realise existed. Here are some things you will definitely want to avoid:
- Copying Amazon ratings, reviews, any content at all.
- Mentioning price. You will see many niche sites doing this but you are not allowed unless it is coming from Amazon directly so always correct. You can do this with an info block with the EasyAzon plugin.
It’s also very important that you have a disclaimer. It’s not completely clear whether this must be on every page with a link to Amazon or just on the site once but I would not take the risk and add it to every page. You can find it in part 10 of the agreement above…
The agreement is not that clear actually which makes me very frustrated! I have contacted Amazon a couple of times for clarity on some points but they just tell me to read it.
You can also submit your application for the Amazon Associates program at this point. Then you can add Amazon links to your article as you write it. It won’t be manually approved until someone actually buys a product through your links so it doesn’t matter that your site is not quite finished yet.
I highly recommend you use the EasyAzon plugin to add your links. This plugin is fantastic! It not only makes it much easier to add your links, but it also localises your links which can make you a lot more money.
By localising links, I mean it changes which Amazon website it redirects your readers to depending on where they are located. If they are in the UK, they will go to Amazon UK, if they are in Canada, they go to Amazon Canada, etc. This makes me an extra thousand dollars a month! So it is well worth the tiny cost of the plugin. You can click here to see how much it costs.
You can see EasyAzon in action and read my tips about how to best present Amazon links to make more money here. I recommend you read this article as you write your main article to help you work out how to best place your links.
Once you have created this article – publish it! And do something to celebrate as writing this article is hard work!
Getting payments from Amazon
Getting payments from Amazon is annoying as they only do direct deposit for accounts in their region or send out cheques. I know first hand how annoying this is as I am based in a country without Amazon. It takes 9 weeks for my Amazon cheques to clear! And it doesn’t work if you are a digital nomad.
Thankfully, there is a great alternative which is what I use for all my Amazon payments except Canada where I am still stuck with a cheque.
Payoneer is a service which will give you bank account details for many countries around the world including in Europe and the USA and you can accept Amazon payments this way. They also give you a debit card so you can withdraw your US dollars from ATMs or use it to make payments. You can also transfer the money to your home bank account which is what I do.
There is an annual fee which is charged once your account has money in it and they take 1% of Amazon US payments but this is far better than dealing with cheques and I get a better exchange rate than my home bank too.
If you sign up with this link, we both get a bonus $25 when you start earning money.
Our niche sites
It’s now been about two months since we finished our niche sites and started link building. We have finished building links with our PBN and have been doing small amounts of link building, particularly to Site 1. Site 2 is proving harder to get links to.
So how are they going? All information below is about the last month. The numbers in brackets are their figures from my last update, a fortnight ago.
Site 1
Ranking for: 438 keywords (247 )
Main keyword is ranking: 27 on average (30), currently 27.
Sessions from organic search: 138 (105)
Money made: US$1
Site 2
Ranking for: 106 keywords (80)
Main keyword is ranking: 135 on average (105), currently 105.
Sessions from organic search: 41 (47)
Money made: US$9
Site 1 was finished about two weeks before Site 2 and has also had more links built to it.
I am loving the progress of Site 1 and disappointed by Site 2. It’s only early days though! They are both showing similar progress to my last niche sites.
First Sales
Both the niche sites have had a sale each. Site 2 surprised me by having its first sale in Canada! This shows you the value of localising the links with EasyAzon. It’s now made CDN$12. The first niche site is sitting on about US$1.
Amazon associates account passes the manual review!
In my last update, I discussed how the new Amazon associates account was shut down after failing the manual review. I am happy to say that it passed the second time!
I now wish I had been patient and tried one thing at a time so I knew for sure what fixed it, but as you can imagine, I was impatient just to get it working. This is what I changed:
- We changed all ratings for the products to be different to the Amazon review ratings. We already knew that we aren’t allowed to copy them but many were similar.
- We removed any reference to price. This had creeped in a couple of times accidentally. We had a subheading about “best x for under $100” and the product was no longer less than $100 so we changed it to the cheapest item we could find to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
- We changed all images to be coming from Amazon directly rather than the EasyAzon plugin which seems to save the image to the site. I find it hard to believe this was the issue but I wanted to be thorough.
Time and money spent on step 5
Time Spent: 4-5 hours per site
Money: US$0
I already own EasyAzon so this was not an extra cost for me. I suggest you strongly consider buying it.
Don’t be disheartened if this step takes longer for you – like I said above, my first article like this took an entire weekend! Nathan used to write these articles for me as his job so he has had lots of practise. I would recommend you budget about 8 hours per article at this stage for this article.
You can read step 6: adding more content.
Find all niche site case study 2 updates here and other more posts on my case studies and niche sites here.
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I would love to hear your thoughts below about writing your main article! Any questions?Disclaimer: This article contains affiliate links to EasyAzon. I love this plugin as it makes my life easier and makes me large amounts of money! If you puchase this plugin with my link, I will receive a small commission. Thank you for supporting this site and ensuring I continue to add valuable content about how to build niche sites.
