In my last post, “Launching a Simple Affiliate Site – Part 1” we covered selecting a topic, as well as making sure we had multiple ways to potentially monetize the site. This week, we’re going to cover keyword research, buying a domain, and getting hosting.

There are plenty of premium keyword research tools out there that come with a monthly fee. However, one of the goals with this guide is to keep costs as low as possible. With that in mind, my first stop for keyword research was the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. In the text field for “descriptive word or phrases” I enter a few of my base keywords. Since the site topic is “Philadelphia Eagles Jerseys”, my initial keywords are: Philadelphia Eagles jerseys, Eagles jersey, Eagles jerseys. I also added in the phrase “New Jersey” in the filter options to keep out a million New Jersey keywords.

Once the results are returned, at the bottom of the list there is a link to export the result to .csv for Excel. Now that I have my keywords in excel, I sort by average search volume, then weed through the list by hand and remove any keywords that wouldn’t make sense in my site. In this example, I got some keywords like “nba jerseys” and “hockey jerseys”. After trimming my list down, I’m left with 25 or so keywords. These will serve as the focus for the pages of my site. Any of the more generic keywords like “authentic jerseys” will be modified to fit my site topic. So, “authentic jerseys” becomes “Eagles authentic jerseys”. Once I get my keywords more targeted to my topic, I break them down into relevant groups. This step is really similar to what you would want to do if you were creating a PPC campaign. The keywords get broken down into tight, relevant groups. I already have my keywords sorted by search volume, so it’s easy to identify what the most important words in each group are. The groups ended up breaking down into the following areas: General, Authentic, Cheap, Custom, Replica, Throwback, Kids, and Players. These will serve as the main categories for my site, with the general keywords being the used on the home page.

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By this point I have both my topic, and a list of keywords to target broken down into relevant groups – now it’s time to find a domain name. Glancing over this list, the phrase “Eagles jerseys” appears an awful lot, and for good reason – it’s the main focus of the site. So, let’s see if EaglesJerseys.com is available…

Well, EaglesJerseys.com is taken already, and is currently the home of a junk parked page, complete with a pop up. However - EaglesJerseys.org is available for $10. At this point, I can do a few things. I can either email the owner of eaglesjerseys.com and make an offer on the domain, I can pick up one of the other TLD’s for a very minimal cost, or I can continue my hunt for a better .com name.

In this case, I’m going to go with the .org. I think I can safely assume the current owner is going to be asking way more than the domain is worth, especially for our purposes. My main goal for the site will be to get it to rank for the base keywords “Eagles jerseys” and “Philadelphia Eagles jerseys” - so EaglesJerseys.org will work just fine. Using the coupon code OYH1, I get 10% off my GoDaddy purchase, and we have ourselves a domain name. Now, it’s time to shop for hosting.

Because we’re really only looking to make a simple affiliate site, a small shared hosting package should suite our purpose. No need to go and drop $200 a month on a dedicated box to serve up 25 pages and some banners. For budget hosting, I have had good experiences with CyberWurx.com and SuperbHosting.net. Both can have you up and running for less than $7 a month. The Superb Hosting blog plan is $42 for a year, and comes with a $25 credit for Yahoo’s PPC program. Either of these two hosts will provide us with everything we need to get a Wordpress site up and running, without any issue at all. As a side note, when shopping for a host keep in mind there is no such thing as “unlimited bandwidth”. I’d be cautious with any hosts who promise this. They’re going to cap you at some point – try not to buy the sizzle. As I mentioned, I can personally recommend either of the two hosts I mentioned, but feel free to try out any on your own.

Once you pick your host and purchase your plan, we’re finished with phase two. At this point we have our topic, a list of potential monetization methods, our keyword list, a domain, and a hosting account. Next week we’ll cover installing Wordpress, setting up our plugins, and adding pages to our site.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 1:34 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, affiliate marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.