It's hard to believe that it has been 3 months to the day since my last post here.  But the fact is that a lot has happened in that time.

By the end of July, DreamPurses.com was live.  It works and I was a bit underwhelmed.  The journey had been well worth the time and effort.  I had been drawn into a totally new experience and I thank Holly for introducing me to this world.  That said, I began doubting that this new world was one for me.  I'll try to document my thinking.

First, it's a tough business.  For me this was due to a couple of factors.  First, the competition in building review sites is stiff.  There are many people competing and therefore the obvious prime sites and keywords have been taken.  Secondly, Amazon's ability to provide a legitimate review experience is substantial in many niches - and more and more are evolving.  Searches in Amazon get all of there offering updated up to the minute.    

Next, when I got to studying the value add provided by a review site, I became skeptical.  The justification for a product review site is legitimate, but the time it takes to do a first class job for the user is extreme.  Not only do you need to set up the site but you also need to keep it up to date.  And I really came to doubt my ability to be the "expert" in a given niche, maintain that expertise, and make money all at the same time in the face of the final reason...

The arithmetic didn't work for me.  (Maybe for others.)  The arithmetic I understand in review sites is that you need to have many of them.  I could not offer true value in many niches because there wasn't enough time in the day.  My value add would continue to go down.

And then there is another very interesting phenomenon in the industry of building referral or review sites.  In the short period of time that I've been active in this effort, I have been offered hundreds of aids in the form of WordPress themes and software modules to game the Google search engine.  In the area of themes alone, the same people offered me the "last theme you will ever need" until a week or two later when they have the next "last theme you will ever need".  I have a couple of themes I've never even installed!  (This is an indictment of only one person - me.)

When I started really studying sites, there weren't many that offered top notch reviews of the entire niche marketplace.  They offered no more than samplings in the niche.  I wouldn't want to trust them.  I even found a site that had computer generated review text.  I could tell it was computer generated because the English was mechanical constructions and the very same nonsensical review appears for many products.  

I'm sure people are making "insane money" as they say in the business.  In my final and very personal analysis, I have come to the conclusion that the review site is not for me.

Zig when others Zag - I decided I needed to look at my own core competencies and beliefs.  I believe I can write and am getting better at it; and I believe that Amazon is one of the most amazing product delivery engines of our time.

Long story short - I will write for Kindle Direct Publishing and use Amazon Affiliate marketing tools to offer Amazon products whenever my readers visit one of my sites.  

Today my toe went into the water and I published a children's book, "The Day the Apple Bopped Darby on the Head".  You can buy it on Amazon at this link.

I answer all personal email if you'd like to use the contact page here. 

OK, now it's functioning, but a rash of details are upon me.  I'm using a home page plus posts for my structure.  So now I need to refine the home page, complete a minimum number of review/posts and critically important - work on the SEO for the home page and each post.  

Now in a bare-bones manner, I'm working on functionality.  I have ...

- Home page creation including featured products footer (Carter theme)
- Post a product
   - Get the picture
   - Write a review
   - Link to the Amazon sales site

I was a little surprised that the Featured Products footing seemed to require that the product picture be in the first line of the post.  But I like the style to have a left justified photo and right side review.  And excluding the window dressing on the post is a nice feature of the theme (the date, comment count, etc.)

Next will be to build quality in product postings, then detailed SEO, then...

I'm looking forward to being able to really study the product category I chose.

I wrestled with the theme question for the last several days.  I'm now loading the Matt Carter theme that Holly used as her example in the video.  I'm now exploring.

http://mattsmarketingblog.com/wordpress/affiliate-wordpress-theme/

7/19...

I'm happy with Matt's theme and believe that the installation video was effective in describing how the theme is used in a referral site.  Pressing on.

Catching up now...

-Purchased my Domain and Hosting at GoDaddy where I have other domains and hosting.  

-Easy addition of WordPress with GoDaddy routines similar to the ones Holly saw with her hosted site.

-Then looked at Holly's suggest, "SuperPress", and bought it.  With no experience with WordPress this tool gave me some confidence.  I cleared the demo pages and posts, and then added stock pages for comments, contact, etc.

Now I'm at the stage of needing a template.  I want a theme to again make it easier for novice work with WordPress and to get moving.  I'm looking at the WordPress Review Theme (.com)  which Holly and others have suggested if I'm OK with buying a theme.  It's $40 for the original theme and four 'bonus' niche themes.  I'm also looking at Matt Carter's free theme which is the one Holly installed on the videos. 

Note: It turns out that my WordPress is publishing the site real time.  That is, when I added the comment page and went to the public entrance to my site, it was there.  That's fine for now but I wonder if changes can be staged for release.  I feel a hardbound WordPress manual in my future.  I do see that posts can be time-stamped for release in the future.

Picking a product was a difficult matter, but ultimately I've done it.  Picking a domain name followed quickly with the help of reviewing keyword work.  I've always been a GoDaddy fan but as I look HostGator (a Holly suggestion from the notes) I am researching it.  They have an interesting plan with an unlimited number of sites for about $100 a year.  It seems that ultimate financial success will require many sites, so I'm asking GoDaddy for their alternative.

I'll be moving on to the site activities prior to writing the product reviews so I'll be leaving the exact sequence Holly describes.  

BTW, I bought the Azon Conversion Mastery videos that Holly recommended.  Well worth it in the discussion from a very active business man.  He recommended very forcefully to remain quiet about actual products one is working on.  Following that advice, I'll stick to the technicalities of my journey.  I'm looking forward to WordPress.

The search for key words starts with a proposed product.  I found this a bit intimidating as I thought up and discarded product after product.  The solution was to simply "get over it".  I have a lot to learn in the whole process and getting stuck here is a mistake.  There is no question that the selection of a product and a key word set that has high potential of success is probably the most important aspect of the process.  Next would come the site itself.  But I'm also convinced that true success will only come with a dozen or more good sites.  That said I need to learn the process and get on with it.

I chose Market Samurai since I happen to own it and Holly gave it high marks.  She also described a nice bit of the operation.  And finally, Market Samurai allows me to store "Projects" for each of the key words being analyzed.  Holly described keeping copious notes on her analysis, but I suspect that the Samurai project relieved a lot of that.  You can even export table of information.

My analysis produced many good key words.  I wonder what limit might be practical for the number of key words.

Circles within circles. 

The matter of picking a product is again a chicken and egg situation, particularly for the uninitiated first timer.  The videos introduce the subject with searches by product keyword in Amazon.  Enhanced with a list of selection criteria like retail price thresholds and number of reviews,  Holly discusses guidelines from her experience.  I believe that the criteria may be one of the true diamonds of the lessons.  While some of the criteria can be stretched, ignorance of them can only be solved by learning from wasteful mistakes.

The example Amazon searches were for products pulled out of the air, washing machines and coffee makers.   Where these ideas came from was a matter left to us.  I think this prompts some pondering, and some embellishment based on videos that are coming up.  The pondering part is that I must learn to look at the world with a new sensitivity.  Everything I see should prompt a "How did they find that?" and "Is that something that people would turn to Google to find?" and  "Is this a commodity product or would comparative ratings be important in to the buyer?"  

As for the upcoming videos, when we consider keywords, Google search experience and competitive search results, we will return to Amazon to look at products.  The final selection of target products and defining search data will be an iterative process.   

There's a bit of chicken and egg in the sequence of setting up a referral business.  Future steps range from picking a product group for referral to setting up a WordPress web site.  What order is right?

I believe the Affiliate program setup belongs first for reasons I'll describe below.

There were a few things I ran into that I had not anticipated when I started down the application.  The first one was that Amazon would not accept an affiliation with a person from Colorado!!  (And a few other states.)  It turns out that Colorado had a law dealing with sales tax that Amazon found onerous.  The law was killed two months ago.  To get around this problem I used a friends address in Georgia and I'll reset this when the state list on Amazon includes Colorado.  It is my suspicion that if you're in a state that has such laws, everyone gets over it and gets around it.  Like Colorado, the consensus is that such laws are unconstitutional.  Judge for yourself. 

I also bumped into the requirement to enter my web sited name.  The fact is that the web site name and everything else is in the future - the chicken and egg thing.  I happen to have a few web sites so I used one of those.  I don't know if the site is actually checked or not.

The process also requires a taxpayer ID and a deposit account.  Amazon will send a check but that costs $15 per.  The direct deposit is free, but you need to name an account.  Forewarned is forearmed.

So if you need to enter website information, why not set up the web site and then go to the affiliate application?  I can think of a couple of reasons.  First, when I set up the web site I want to be able to actually build in the links that are part of being an affiliate.  I don't want to go back if I don't have to.

But more important, I am seeing a wealth of information that is available about the Amazon program and products.  This is only available after you apply for affiliate status.  As an information junkie, I'm very please to wallow in the Amazon pages for affiliates.  I think it will add to my preparations to build my sites.  (Yes, plural sites.  It's clear that one cannot stop at one.)

So, if you persisted to this point, you see I'm rightfully branded as anal.  But thank goodness Holly kept it simple.  Got me going.  


(24 hours later -  just checked my mailbox and I'm an approved affiliate!  I was concerned because the application asked for my web site.  I haven't begun that one.  I used dbmurphyusa.com as above which has nothing to do with the program.  They happily approved me and I haven't a clue what was checked regarding the site. )