Letter from Phil...

getting your web site listed in a good position on Yahoo is one of the smartest traffic driving moves you'll ever make.

But it's not easy.

And you've got to forget everything you ever knew, or thought you knew, about Yahoo because they've just changed their ranking system. (and their billing system to a yearly fee).

So it's very easy to spend money with them and get placed in the wrong category, or so far down the rankings that no one will ever find you.

That's if you get listed at all.

With no promises of placement, never mind a good position, it's essential that you get your submission absolutely spot on.

I'm wary of people who charge you a fortune to advise you on how to get your site listed...if they're wrong you end up emptying your wallet for nothing.

But now a bloke I trust, Neil Shearing, has just got a new site listed in top spot in the category of his choice. And he's enjoying an instant traffic flow going from 0 to 100 visitors a day the first day he got listed.

So how did he do it? Well I can't tell you, but Neil can.

Neil and family.

With some help from friends with inside knowledge, he's worked out exactly how to get your own site in one of those prime spots...and no, it's got nothing to do with putting a 1, or AAAA in front of your domain name (that kind of thing stopped working years ago).

After finding out the secrets of the inner workings of the new Yahoo, Neil set out to get a site listed with them at number one in the busy business ops category.

It took him just 2 weeks from choosing a domain name to getting the top spot, and as he went along he wrote down exactly what he did, and also grabbed screen shots of every step, to make it really easy for us to follow.

He's just published it as a low-cost report that shows us exactly how we can do what he did.

You'll find out things like:

* why your domain name is important.

* how the rules have changed.

* what you can and cannot say in your site descriptions.

* how to get listed in your categories of choice.

* how to get found for your most important keywords.

Neil's report / ebook (Windows only) isn't just a book, it's a follow-the-steps blueprint to being listed. And best of all it's only $19 with a great money back guarantee if it doesn't work for you.

I've just finished reading it, and I've got to say that if you follow Neil's easy to follow advice you can't fail.

You can get it, or read more, here

You might have noticed the lack of ads...

A few weeks ago I wrote that I'd decided to accept advertising again.

" From next week I'm going to start running 2 small Sponsor Ads per issue - this is only 2 or 3 month trial, and I might stop running them after that."

Well the trial only lasted one week. Plenty of people sent money via Paypal and I had to refuse it all.

People just wanted to advertise crap, and I decided I didn't feel comfortable running it. All the ads people wanted to push were for complicated matrix type get rich quick, or get tons of traffic, programs.

If you want to get tons of traffic read Neil's special Yahoo Exposed report.

If you want to get rich quick buy a lotto ticket *. You've got a better chance of making it big than with those programs... which will just cost you money every month.

And if you want to make money every month do something like promote Roibot which pays you $4 a month for every person you sign up. $4 a month isn't a lot, but it can soon add up, and it sure beats paying $40 a month to be in a wacko matrix program.

If you want to give Roibot a try yourself it only costs $1 for the first month. With a guaranteed refund of your dollar if you don't find it useful.

( * disclaimer: I'm not suggesting you take up gambling...though come to think of it that's what you'd be doing by joining those weird matrix things)

Step by step guide to creating a mini affiliate site from scratch
Reprint by request from issue 183

Here's a quick step by step guide to creating a mini affiliate site from scratch. You can do it today in just a couple of hours or less. Here's my diary from earlier today (Aussie time)

11.45am: Logged into Commission-Junction to find a replacement cell phone program for my mini site http://www.cell-phone-free.com ( the affiliate program I linked to has been de-activated because of chargebacks)

I glanced at the new affiliate program listings and one jumped out as being a perfect subject for a quick new mini site.

"Amazing Cure for Bad Breath".

Tons of people have bad breath. Great topic for a mini site. Or is it? Depends on what products there are to sell, and how many potential online buyers there are.

11.47am: Followed the CJ link to http://www.orasweet.com/ which sells a new product called a tongue scraper, and pays 30% commission. Dismayed to find the product only sells for $3.50, which means it only pays a little over $1 per sale. But then I followed the sales links to find the site does an upsell on the order form, which makes it much more attractive for people to buy a $14 package or a $27 family package. This is more like it!

11.55am: But do many people look up bad breath in the search engines? Booted up Good Keywords and discovered that last month 3659 people looked up halitosis on Overture and 5176 searched for bad breath. Not too bad a number. Should be able to do something with those figures.

12noon: Visited Overture to see what people are willing to pay for high rankings on these search terms. If people are paying for ranking they must be making money from it. Discovered that 6 cents will get you 10th spot in Overture for halitosis, and 40 cents a click will take you to number 1.

I wouldn't recommend paying 40c a click for a possible $1 commission but 6 cents should be fine. It's hard to tell until the site has been running a while and you can analyze the stats.

Bad breath will cost you 74 cents for top spot, so that's out, but bad breath cure will only cost 21 cents. So that's a possibility, though 3rd spot is yours for only 6 cents so that's much more attractive.

12.10pm: Spend the next 30 mins checking out the opposition. Discover a site called tongue scrapers selling a similar but far more expensive product. It has no affiliate program that I could see. But more importantly found a number of other items to sell, or upsell from a mini site, including BreathAlert, an electronic
palm-size monitor that "detects and measures the presence of annoying or embarrassing breath odors."

Now I'm sure that lots of people who think they might have bad breath would love to be able to find out for sure with this product.

About to kiss someone? Check your breath...though preferably not in view of the person you're about to kiss ;-) Walking into an important business meeting? Check that breath.

In 2 minutes I discovered 2 affiliate programs you can sell it through. One at www.themall.com was terrible offering only 2 cents a click-though and no further commissions on sales. It also only pays you quarterly and then only if you've generated over $50 at 2 cents a time. The other at iGadget didn't look great paying only 7% commission on a $37 sale.

But it has possibilities. Ran out of time to look further. But odds are there are some much better affiliate programs around for this product.

While looking for an affiliate program for the BreathAlert I also found an Australian mini site selling both this and the tongue scraper. They're probably missing out on a lot of Internet sales because the products are priced in Australian dollars http://www.freshkiss.com.au/index.html , includes 10% Australian GST tax, and there's no order form for people outside Australia.

12.40pm: Look up available domain names, and ideas for domain names by using Name Boy which lets you enter both bad breath and halitosis. Available names, at the time of writing, include:

breath-fresh.com
awful-breath.com
bad-breath-cure.com
bad-breaths.com

a search at www.betterwhois.com revealed these available names:

my-bad-breath.com
problembreath.com
betterkissing.com

Incidentally the 2nd magazine article I ever got commissioned to write, back when I was 16, was about why people kiss. Took a lot of hands on (mouths on?) research.

12.55pm: Quick search on Google reveals plenty of info about combating bad breath, and researching then putting together enough content would be easy enough. There's also lots of info and some good graphics on the Orasweet tongue scraper site.

1.10pm: Lack of time means I'm not going to build a mini site on this subject. But YOU can, which is why I've written this article for you.

If you'd like to read a lot more about building mini sites, including much more detailed step-by-step help, you need my Mini site Profits book.