The Truth Is – The first year of your new affiliate websites’ life is going to be a series of ups and downs. Traffic will spike, traffic will be non-existent, and you my friend, are going to do what everyone else does… question your sanity, and wonder WHY you ever decided to build an affiliate website in the first place!

We All have two choices – Adapt to It, or Move into Another Line of Work!

The Early Months of Your New Site

It’s Blissful right? You just launched a new site, and within like a week, you notice that it’s indexed in search engines and already ranking in the top 30 for several well planned phrases! It’s like a friggin honeymoon… nothing could go wrong!

The first – second months continue to bring in good traffic numbers and you even have several sales on your new website! You simply couldn’t have planned this any better and suddenly you start to feel that you truly learned something from all your reading and efforts! Accomplishment! Check!

Around the end of the second month, you notice that traffic has started to dip just a little… but really pay it no attention – it must be a fluke right? Wrong. This is the point that REALITY starts to creep into the picture and you start thinking that something must be TERRIBLY wrong with your new site!

Chill out… step back… take a breath… its normal! Especially for an affiliate website! Why do you think the N1Way Guide suggests NOT revisiting the site for several months? Its by design!

The Cooling Off Period – aka – Unconfirmed Sandbox

From around day 45-90 of your new website being live, you are going to find that traffic dips significantly! In most cases, you will panic and start using search tools to see where you rank and find that the stellar rankings you had during the first 30-60 days, well… they’re gone! Now, you can’t even find your website in the top 100 search results!

Here is how it usually works:

• Days 1-45, Great Rankings, Great Traffic for a New Site! You are on Cloud 9!
• Days 30-60, Steady Rankings, Steady Traffic for a Fairly New Site! Already Thinking of Your Next Site – Gonna get Rich! Woot!
• Days 45-90, Drop in Search Rankings, Slowly Dwindling Traffic numbers. Uh-Oh, I Must have Done Something Wrong – Nahh… its just a Glitch!
• Months 3-6, Steady drop in rankings, traffic and earnings. WTF! This is like a Bad Dream! F*&k the N1Way Guide and Everyone who Read it!
  

It’s this point… that you need to realize it’s all by design!! If search engines took everyone at Face Value and treated every site the same, they would simply cycle through new sites every month, and NONE would ever grow into an authority!

This is the same point in time that 90% of us QUIT working on a site or walk away from Affiliate Marketing completely! The 10% who stick to the plan and move past it, well, they are the successful ones who will have build the foundation of a steady passive income in a few months!

From here forward, its going to be a slow process of your site gaining authority. The ONLY GUARANTEE beyond now, is that if you quit, you lose… everything else is up in the air!

What Can You Do During the Slow Months?

Follow the Guide, Continue with Forward and Backward Marketing, Build More Sites into your Downline, and move on… Remember, if it were easy… everyone would be doing it!

About 2 years ago, I wrote a post on the Niche Store Builder site about how building affiliate websites is like being a farmer, it’s just a different crop! In that post we were Growing DollaGreens. Now, you need to consider that when that post was written, you could push out a BANS site with a minimum of unique content and rank well… within 1 week! So at that point, the idea was to plant as MANY seeds as possible, weed out the bad crops and apply as much love as possible to the good ones!

Aside from the “As many sites as possible” part, everything else still holds true! As a matter of fact, you may even notice alot of similarity to the N1Way Guide!

• Build your Site and Water It
• While you WAIT for it to Grow, Build MORE! If you watch it like a hawk, you go nowhere!
• Revisit your Crops every now and again to Water Them
• Over Time, Weed Out the Bad Crops
• Rinse… repeat… never ending!

Again – the ONLY GUARANTEE you have from building these sites is that if you STOP WORKING ON THEM, you will FAIL! If you follow the N1Way Guide, build a downline of sites and revisit them in measured intervals, you will ultimately Succeed!

Not alot by any stretch of the imagination, but high quality – and takes less than 5 minutes a day!

Today – I want to discuss another Proven Link Building Strategy that works, blog commenting, with a twist!

Blog Commenting as a Link Building Strategy

Now – I realize someone is going to think or say – “But I Already Comment on Blogs” – I am not talking about simply going to a related blog, commenting and moving on, but instead… Finding a Quality Blog that will deliver the MOST Bang for the Buck for your comments! Yes… Blogs with Authority AND the Top Comments Plugin!

Why The Top Commenter Plugin?

Look on my own Niche Store Builder site – I have the Top Commentator Plugin running, and unknown to those not paying attention, when you make the top 10 list, you have a sitewide link, as well as authority juice from all the pages with PageRank, which are many!

In most cases, the Top Commentator Plugin removes the no-follow attribute and all links are readily followed and passing page authority to your link.

Finding the High Quality Blogs

You can spend all day looking for the right blogs – or you can simply pick up another tool for your site building toolbox, Fast Blog Finder. What fast blog finder does…

• Searches for Blog Posts based on Keywords You Enter.
• Sorts the Blogs by PageRank Authority, Updates, and Page Authority.
• Highlights Blogs using Do-Follow or No-Follow links
• Allows you To Keep a Log of Where You Have Commented (Important)

In a nutshell – at $49 Fast Blog Finder takes ALL of the guesswork about finding the Best Sites to begin a relationship with, and lets you simply focus on building the relationships.

Why Look for the Top Commentator Plugin NOW?

Simple – the beginning of the month is getting ready to roll around right? Well, in most cases, the Top Commentator section resets at the beginning of every month, and your single comment might just give you a sitewide link for quite a while!

Over the last week of September, you need to find and leave a comment on the blogs you want to “Make the Top Commenter List” on next month. When October 1st rolls around, your email and credentials are already in the blogs approved list, and you simply revisit, leave a comment (or two) relative to your site, and shazam – instant HIGH QUALITY sitewide link!

Putting it All Together – Step by Step

If you have Fast Blog Finder, fire it up and go to the search box. If not, you can search Google the same way, just not as easily.

1. Search for: “Your Niche” + “Top Commentator” (include the quotes and the + sign) Let the Fast Blog Finder tool run for about 15 minutes and go do something else while it compiles a list.
2. Sort the List by Domain PageRank, with the highest at the Top.
3. Visit Several of the Sites on the list, and engage in REAL Discussion! In other words, contribute REAL comments to the discussions.
4. Repeat the Process for several days, until you have a pool of several sites you are commenting on.
5. On October 1st, revisit the sites you commented on, and engage in further discussion, even if its just continuing the same discussion your originally replied to.

Before someone asks – pay no attention to the nofollow or dofollow attribute. Most of the Top Commentator widgets remove the nofollow, but even if they don’t, you will get good click traffic from the links as well.

Another Link Builder Review at the NSB Site

For those who don’t subscribe over the Niche Store Builder site, I wrote a review of another text link building tool last week. Read the TextLinks Review for further info, and take advantage of the Free 21 Day Trial Offer before it expires!

For the sake of example… lets just call it Brown Nose Marketing! BTW, the domain is available if anyone wants to go get it! Pretty catchy actually…

Why not Just use Articles, Blog Posts, and Link Directories?

Have you heard of the Google Sandbox Effect? I won’t get too deep into in this post, and between today and tomorrow, if you read anything about it after this post, you will find different opinions. I have swayed in both directions at different times myself. The trends and other professionals in the market however suggest it does in fact exist, whatever its called!

For sites like we are building today, there is no use debating whether it exists or not, instead, lets just focus on some things just about everyone agrees on:

• Search Engines discount links from article directories – so if you only get article directory links, it may extend your stay in the box!
• Search engines discount blog posts with no-follow OR do-follow! If you focus all your link effort on blog posts, get comfortable!
• Search engines discount link directory links – if you only get directory links… extended stay in the box!
• Search engines link 1-1 link exchanges, so if you “give a link to get a link”, they call that a link scheme…  get cozy in there!
• Just 1 Higher Quality link carries more power than 100 poor ones! This may reduce the timeout!

So with knowing those things – its important for us to make sure we don’t focus entirely on one strategy, and using the N1Way Guides philosophy of  “Do Only Whats Needed – Nothing More“, I have taken the forward and backward strategy in the following direction.

This method takes just 2 minutes a day… no different.

Find The Authority – And Beg for Exposure!

Just like the guide suggests, I have setup my forward marketing routines already. There is really nothing I can do on those until they come to me! As for the backward strategy though.. I have had a “Very Specific Press Release and Site Profile” written.

Its really nothing special, just 300 words that I had Rob over at TextBrokers write for me. Under normal circumstances, I would just submit it to article directories and sit back waiting… er… hoping for lackluster results. Not this time, not ever again!

Make it Stupid Simple for Them and They will Respond!

The information release is just a brief overview of the website, what the website is about, the target audience and of course, my contact information. All of this is already on the about page of the website as well.

What I have also included in it, is a brief brown nosing request to share it with their own audience if they feel its a worthy resource. Nothing fancy [wiggle that nose a little]… pretty humble and to the point.

Mr or Mrs Editor -

On July 25th, I recently opened a new website about [linked niche anchor text]. Admiring your own  knowledge of the [niche market], I feel that my resource may be useful for your own audience, I would feel honored if you shared it. If not, I completely understand, however, I respect your opinion very much and I would appreciate if you could take just one moment to help me improve my new [linked niche anchor] by telling me my why its not worthy.

I have included a brief press release below that you are welcome to share on your website or other media outlets and reprint for your own needs.

[press release]

Thank you,

[name]
[Address]
[email & phone number]
[niche website address]

If it’s Worth Doing – It’s Worth Doing Right?

That was one of my fathers favorite sayings… if you have to do it already, why not just spend the extra few minutes and do the damn thing right?! In this case… doing it right means sending it to the TOP of the food chain and working my way down!

First - Setup your email as a template in your email system. If nothing else, just save it as a draft, complete the title though!! Very Important! Now you only change the name and recipient every day.

Second - If your email system allows you to set an auto responder – do it! Thank them for getting back to you so soon, and promise to reply again shortly.

Third – Instead of simply using Google to find authority sites in the tight niche, head right to the TOP of the food chain! In my case, I am going to start with the editor of golf.com. From there, its off to ESPN, and EVERY other major news outlet that covers major news in my niche!

Fourth - Don’t kill Yourself!! One email, 2 minutes a day… that’s all!

Fifth and finally – Don’t expect high return rate on your efforts for this. BUT… even if you send out 10 and only 1-2 actually write about it… your high quality results are well worth hundreds of low quality links!

BTW – IF any of the people actually respond directly back to you, start compiling a database of contacts broken down by where they work and what [niche] or industry they represent! If they responded today… chances are much better they will respond again if you ever launch another site!

Edit: Reward yourself for each small success! If someone like Sports Illustrated publishes your release, it will be picked up and spread across hundreds (maybe thousands) of other websites that syndicate their content. Reward yourself by taking a day or two off from requesting exposure from others… You have earned it!

A Hands-Off Launch Marketing Plan

Keeping in the spirit of the entire N1Way Guide, I want to do ONLY whats needed, and nothing more. This may actually fall into the nothing more category, but it saved me HOURS of work in the first few weeks of the site being launched.

You may recall that I mentioned I used a person who offered a press release service on eBay, for under $15. He writes it, he distributes it… its his basically, except it announces YOUR site to the world! I have used him on several projects in the past year or so, and when building this new site, I asked him to put together a “Launch Package” for this type of site.

In the spirit of disclosure – I did not setup an affiliate program to promote this for Alex, and I only asked him that if its successful, just to shoot out a site for me every now and again! Alex has gone ahead and setup this launch package at my request… for you!

Whats in the Launch Package?

• 200+ Word Press Release, Distributed to Free PR Sites (These are likely to be syndicated on other sites as well)
• 40 DoFollow Social Bookmarks in Different Accounts
• A YouTube Video Announcement of Your Site  (Posted at YouTube, and 5 others like Yahoo, AOL etc)
• 25 Hand Written emailed Link Requests to other high profile sites in your niche market!!
• Cost: $45 $30 with Coupon Code: “thenichestorebuilder“ Which was setup JUST FOR US!

I’m not going to tell you to expect a press release from Tom Clancy… you won’t. It will be a simple press release announcing your new site, as well as the features your site offers visitors. You WILL have the opportunity to approve it before sending.

When I look at what Alex put together – I truly cannot justify doing it myself at launch time! Between the press release submissions, the bookmarks and the YouTube video.. that 3-4 hours of work by itself! Add in the fact that he is going to email 25 webmasters and ask for a link to my site! I’m frothing at the mouth for not doing this sooner…

If you want to take advantage of the offer – just to go his eJunkie page and buy it! All you have to do is give him your domain, and 3-4 key phrases your site focuses on. He does the rest. If you prefer to email him directly and ask more questions… Alex can be reached at usproblogger -@- gmail.com (Remove the spaces)

Alex’s eJunkie Page is: http://www.e-junkie.com/usproblogger/product/91382.php

Enjoy it while it lasts… I am!