For the uninitiated, an Amazon affiliate site is a website or blog that directly or indirectly promotes products sold on Amazon.com, the ubiquitous online retailer. Clicking certain links at these sites redirects you to a product page at Amazon, and when you make a purchase, Amazon pays the affiliate site owner a portion of the proceeds in exchange for the redirect. With commission rates as high as 15% and the ability to promote whatever products you’d like, including the very expensive ones, it’s easy to see how a well-implemented Amazon affiliate site could turn a tidy profit.

The trick, of course, is to build an Amazon affiliate site that passes muster in the eyes of Google Panda, and achieves the search engine results ranking it deserves.

Build Your Site Around the Niche, Not the Products

Google Panda is all about attempting to ensure that the pages ranked most highly for a given search keyword are relevant and provide the best user experience possible. As such, most of the sites that experienced severe downranking at the hands of Panda were ones that offered a list of promoted products, along with maybe a brief description of each, some keyword-rich promotional text (“This is such a wonderful product!” without any details) and maybe a few pictures. In other words, the exact same content you could find by visiting Amazon directly and simply visiting the product page. Credit to Google for sending these two-bit sites where they belong: out of the public eye.

Your job is to make your site stand out. You can accomplish this by building a site based around a niche, or a specific product category, instead of just the products themselves.

Let’s say you want to promote wireless internet security cameras. Instead of making a thin site like the one described above that simply lists and promotes the cameras, build your site around the niche of home security, and particularly the ways that technology can be used to improve it. This is something that will provide actual value to your traffic. A few examples of content ideas that could be applied to other niches as well:

• Stories of break-ins and robberies that could have been prevented with a wireless security camera.
• Comparisons of the top-rated security cameras.
• Software programs that integrate well with security equipment.
• How to set up home security equipment.
• Common misconceptions held by those purchasing home security cameras for the first time.

Once your readers see how valuable home security cameras are, they’ll be far more likely to click your affiliate links and actually make a purchase.

Know the Products You’re Promoting

Although you may be tempted to select products to promote simply based on their value or apparent immediate popularity, the post-Panda online environment dictates that it’s better to promote products that you’re actually comfortable discussing through knowledge and experience. Your readers will be able to tell whether you’re an expert regarding the products you’re discussing, and they’ll be more likely to stick around at your site if you are.

If you really want to promote a certain niche that you may not be totally familiar with, there are some good ways of conducting research:

• Visit forums devoted to discussing the products and learn from experts who use them every day.
• Watch Youtube video reviews of the products to see how they work in action.
• Download the manuals for the products to get additional details that might not be included in their general online product descriptions.
• Take advantage of return policies and trial periods. You may be able to try the products in your own home and return them for a full refund, so long as you don’t damage them. Any fees you incur in the form of return shipping will be worth the content you’re able to generate by actually using the products.

Allow for Interactive Discussion

Speaking of forums, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t set one up on your own Amazon affiliate site. Google Panda loves the idea of increased website functionality and interactivity, making a forum for your users an excellent Panda-baiting feature.

It’s important that forums are moderated and kept on topic, so don’t expect to simply create the forum, let it run itself and return to your normal daily operations. Jump in frequently to participate in discussions and answer your visitors’ questions.

Post Video Reviews of Products

Placing some multimedia content on your Amazon affiliate site can truly make it stand apart from the competition. If you have access to the products you’re promoting, record a video of yourself using them while you discuss what you like about it, how you like to use the product, your favorite features, etc. Doing so paints you as an expert with hands-on experience, and builds a higher level of trust between you and your reader.

It’s also possible to review the promoted products using video even if you don’t actually own them. Although “talking head” videos are maligned by some, the fact is that they prove that you’re a real person and not some faceless marketer hiding behind a potentially dubious site.

Think from the Consumer’s Perspective

When creating your Amazon affiliate site, it’s important to occasionally stop and think: If I were a customer researching these products, would this site provide me real, valuable assistance? If the answer is “not really, but I think I have good advertising strategies,” then your site will need a lot more work before it’ll pass the Panda test. Think about the things that you want to see when you’re researching a potential purchase for yourself, and implement them into your Amazon affiliate site.

Guest post written by: Mitch O’Conner, an online marketer and writer. When he’s not busy testing sites, generating traffic or writing content, he enjoys spending time with his wife and kids, watching TV, playing games or going camping.

To be a successful internet marketer you have to be aware of how others think and know how others see your business and the products/services being promoted. What that basically means is that branding is very important to the success of your online business. You need to be sure to never forget about your personal and business brands.

Now, you might be wondering what exactly a brand is? The vast majority of people assume it’s the advertising slogan or the logo of a particular business. Or that it’s a company’s colors on their ads or other things that stick out to people. But while these things do make up part any company’s brand, they certainly are not everything that it entails. Actually, there is a lot more to it.

The simplest way to put it is that your brand is everything you do online for yourself or your business. Make sure you always remember that when you are doing anything on the internet. It is the way you handle your customers, every blog post you make, every forum discussion you participate in, every social media account you post on, every picture that gets posted, every email you send, and so on. It’s also every product or service you sell or promote.

Your branding is done through everything you do so you need to always remember that whatever you are doing is potentially affecting your brand, either positively or negatively. Think about that the next time you are about to publicly rant on a forum about a refund request. Remember that the next time you are about to send a nasty email or write a blog post trashing a fellow internet marketer. Just don’t ever forget about your business brand.

Branding is very important for any internet marketer or other business owner. You are your brand and everything about your business is your brand. So you need be sure you that everything you do represents your brand in the best possible way.

For proper branding you must first decide what exactly you want your business to be portrayed as and then make sure you are doing things that are in line with that decision. It doesn’t have to be all perfect and nice. There are plenty of people and businesses who brand themselves as a “jerk” or something else like that. You can become very successful by doing things differently than everyone else. Just make sure you create a brand that you can stick with and keep up the persona in order to build it successfully.

Really what I am trying to say here in not so many words is that branding is very important for your online business and marketing, and you should never forget about your brand in your daily life. This will certainly help make your internet marketing business more sustainable and increase your income.

One of the big differences between sales and marketing is that when you are selling something you are trying to convince a person to buy a product. You will display or discuss all the different features in an attractive way, and hope to get the person to purchase the product or service. I’m sure as a business person you have probably tried that before, so you know that it works on a mostly unpredictable scale of averages.

When hundreds or even thousands of people visit your website, which is a fairly difficult task in and of itself, a small percentage of them will stay long enough to check out what you are offering. Then, if your product or service is amazing and your sales copy is excellent, another small percentage of those people will become customers. So you need to think about the sheer volume of traffic you have to drive to your website in order to actually earn a lot of money from it.

So, instead of just trying to “sell” to anyone and everyone that comes your way, your best option is to invest in marketing so you get the right types of people coming to your website. You need to use marketing tactics to identify who your potential customers are, bring them to your site, turn them into actual customers, satisfy their needs, and keep them coming back for more!

Think about it, if you are selling dog collars on your website, and you get 10,000 visitors who do not have dogs; your chances of making a sale are zero. But if you create a marketing campaign that targets dog owners and brings them to your site, you have greatly increased your chances of success. It’s a heck of a lot easier to sell collars to dog owners than it is to people who don’t even have dogs. That is the power of marketing!

There are many different kinds of marketing that you can do online with great results, they each have their own advantages, disadvantages and differing strategies but they are typically categorized under one umbrella called, internet marketing. Some of these techniques include search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing (SMM), pay per click (PPC), video marketing, and several others.

There’s a lot to learn so it won’t be quick or easy, but online marketing can be incredibly effective and cost efficient. The best way to figure out what works for you is to test various strategies and combinations of them until you are getting the results you desire. Be a marketer, not a salesman!

The exact phrase you may have heard isn’t the important part. It could have been anything related to the ones above. However, what I am getting at here is that we all hear about this mystical “X factor” that successful businesses have and that we, as business owners, need to find.

Okay so we’ve all heard about this big X factor, right? But I would bet my bottom dollar that if you randomly stopped 100 different people walking down the street and asked them what the X factor is for any popular business, they wouldn’t know. They might make something up but they would probably just stand there with a dumbfounded look on their faces without a clue what to tell you.

Most people assume that the X factor is what a particular business or person does the best. However, that could really just be a skill they have. It’s not necessarily anything special that others don’t have. As an example, if a business said that their X factor is that they write amazing salesletters, you could say that really isn’t so unique. There are hundreds of people that can write killer salesletters. So, how can that be called a businesses X factor? In my opinion, it’s nothing more than somebody that writes great sales letters.

I racked my brain on this subject for several hours trying to come up with an answer to it. What I finally figured out is that in reality the elusive X factor isn’t something that you can really put your finger on; it’s just something that exists for some and doesn’t exist for others.

Here are two examples of what I think are good illustrations of the X factor:

1) You walk into an event full of highly successful businessmen. All of them are multi-millionaires at the top of their professions. Every one of them is dressed for success and looks the part. You are in awe. But then Donald Trump walks into the room and suddenly all of these other super successful business men don’t seem quite so cool. You barely notice any of them anymore. Donald Trump has something about him that none of the others have, and it’s called the X factor.

2) A man walks into a party filled with beautiful women. There truly isn’t a bad looking one in there. Every one of them could be a successful model. However, there is one woman in particular that is surrounded by an aura. It’s not something you can see or describe, but you can feel it. She isn’t the prettiest woman in there but she still stands out above the rest. She carries herself in a certain way. She comes off as having real confidence without arrogance. She seems approachable unlike many of the others. There’s a mystery about her but she seems down to earth at the same time. You can say that she has an X factor separating her from the others.

The above examples are more or less what I think the true X factor is. The reason it’s so hard (or even impossible) to pinpoint is that you really don’t know what it is. That’s why it separates the highly successful businesses and very exceptional individuals from everyone else.

You might be wondering how all of this applies to an internet home business. It’s simple; many internet marketers are trying to find the X factor that will take their online business to the top. The problem is that they will never find it. It isn’t something you can just go out and find. It’s either there or it’s not. You will if know if it is because you’ll feel it. When you see an internet business that has it, you just know it. But it’s one of those feelings that can’t be described.

So if you ever sit down to try and figure out what the X factor is for your business, don’t make yourself crazy searching for an answer. You won’t find it by looking. You will just know it when you see it!

1) Backlinks get your pages indexed. That’s important because if they aren’t indexed then nobody will find them through search. You want the search engines, such as Google, to find them as soon as possible and crawl them regularly.

2) Probably the most well-known, and certainly one of the most important reasons for getting backlinks, is that they help your web pages get higher search engine rankings for the keywords you are targeting. The whole point of SEO is to get high rankings and backlinks are a vital ingredient for doing that.

One of the biggest problems with building backlinks is that it can be a very time consuming and tedious process if you do it yourself. And if you outsource it to an SEO company, it will cost you a lot of money. So, a great option is to find as many solutions as possible that are free (or very cheap) and don’t take very much time. One such service is called SocialMonkee.

So, what is “Social Monkee” exactly? It is an instant backlink builder that allows you to get 25 unique backlinks every day for free. That comes out to a total of 175 backlinks every week or around 750 every month without paying a cent.

They do have an option to upgrade, which will allow you to build 100 backlinks up to 3 times a day! But that is completely optional. You can even get an upgraded “premium” account for free. All you have to do is refer 12 members (free or paid) and your account will automatically be upgraded. It’s a win/win situation no matter how you look at it.

Submitting a page to SocialMonkee from the member’s area is super easy and only takes a couple minutes. And there’s an even faster and easier way if you use Firefox as your browser. They created a free FF plugin that allows you to submit your page with just a few clicks of your mouse. In addition to that, if you have a premium account you will get access to link reports and RSS feeds, which are great for keeping track of your backlinks and getting them indexed faster.

You certainly aren’t going to get top rankings for competitive keywords by just using SocialMonkee alone, but it is a nice addition for your SEO arsenal. Every little bit helps. When you consider the fact that it’s free and very easy to use, you really can’t go wrong. I recommend taking advantage of the SocialMonkee service right now!