Amazon Affiliate Case Study

Step 4 – Contact Potential Sellers

Now that you have found a few websites that meet the criteria set in steps 1 to 3, it is time to start contacting the sellers. 

Initially ask for restricted access to the website’s Google Analytics. Check whether the trend matches the one provided on the listing. 

Check the different parameters and whether the traffic trend is increasing in volume.

At this point, you can start making offers. 

Tips:

• Offer a 24-36X price initially
• Let them know you are willing to negotiate
• Negotiate and try to finalize a “Buy it now” price at the start of the auction
• Do not wait till the end of the auction (to avoid a bidding war)

By following the steps mention, you should be able to filter a few websites and receive the seller’s final “Buy it now” offers. 

Pro tip: Let the seller know that you are really interested in buying the website but will need restricted access to the “Google search console” (GSC). 

I have managed to get this access many times and it is the only sure way to check whether a website has been penalized or not.

If the buyer does not know how to give access to GSC, guide them and they will be willing to follow in most cases.

For your peace of mind, you can also check out the website history to determine whether it was used for spam. For this use wayback machine.

Second, you can check out if the domain has changed ownership more than 3-4 times using whois.net. 

Also, make sure the quality of the few backlinks is good using Ahrefs or alternatively, check the spam score using Moz (optional).

Step 5 – Final Buying Decision

At this point, you can be certain that you have found genuine amazon affiliate websites but not all such websites are worth buying. 

You need to make sure you are buying an ever-green affiliate website either it is a niche website or a generic website. 

What I mean is that there are websites that are primarily based around a certain product and at times these products have been in trend for the last 2-3 years.

But that does not guarantee if that trend continues or fades out like “fidget spinners”. 

In this case, it is always better to stay with an evergreen product i.e. skateboard that will last longer and keep on generating passive income.

At the same time, future buyer’s will need the same assurance.

Moreover, you need to analyze the competition in the specific niches of the websites selected. 

Note: Considering the parameters stated, you can make a purchasing decision. If you are not sure about making a certain purchase, you can contact me and I will help you out (free of charge). Also, I can help you build an affiliate website for free and in return, you can let me write about your website in my blog (of course no private information will be disclosed). We can then show the results on this blog so other readers can benefit. Therefore, let me know if you are interested in such an experiment. 

After buying the website, check how to outrank your competitors for specific terms/keywords. 

Outranking your competition

Outranking your competition for certain keywords is easy and kind of exact science and it should be your aim for the first 3 months.

All you have to do is provide a better article than them and wait. Google algorithm will put you ahead of others if you follow the following: 

1. Word Count

Hands-down the easiest way to rank your articles above others on the google search.

I experimented with 5 different lengths of articles for an amazon affiliate case study:

• 500 Word (Short Review)
• 1000 Word (Long Review)
• 1500 Word (Standard Article)
• 3000 Word (Detailed Guide)
• 6000-10000 Word (Complete Guide)

In 2021, you can safely say that writing a 500-1000 Word affiliate article has a really low probability to get ranked. The only way to rank for such an article is when there is literally not a single article about the topic on the entire web. This is still doable for a single product review of a product that just came out. But remember this will not be an evergreen article since a newer/better product will replace it. 

Secondly, 1500 word articles are good when you have little to no competition for a keyword but a 3000-word article is where it starts to make a difference.

Moreover, writing a 6000-10000 word article on a long-tail keyword that has little competition is a sure way to win the first spot on google.

2. Page Speed

Check the page speed of the top 3 results and see if the page speed is low and whether you can surpass their page speed. I have done this multiple times by hiring a page speed optimizer for a specific post from Fiverr (for only $5). 

In the example shown the page speed is rather low for a mobile page and since mobile traffic has surpassed desktop traffic in 2021, your aim moving forward must be to have well-optimized websites for mobile users.

Recently, I ranked my articles with zero domain authority (DA) above my competitors like BuzzFeed.com, PopSugar.com, and People.com (all with DA > 90) by merely increasing the page speed, adding the keywords naturally, and increasing the word count from 1500 to 8000 words. Note: They had not mentioned the keyword once in their articles.

One such article is earning $600/month. Let me know if you are interested to learn more about this. Feel free to contact me at info@bosanx.com. 

3. Keyword Density

Check the number of times they have used the keyword you want to rank for. Use chrome extension “surfer” to determine this.

In the example shown, even though NYtimes has mentioned the keyword twice in their article, has a slightly higher word count, and have roughly the same page speed (upon inspection), they still rank below other website articles.

Reason: Number of backlinks 

That brings us to the overhyped but deserving king of the SEO world.

4. Backlinks

If you have a higher word count, better page speed, and properly optimized on-page SEO (most importantly keyword density) and you are still ranking below other articles. Well having fewer backlinks is the number one reason for your lower rank (assuming you have well-written content). 

There are many ways to overcome this. But let me give you a piece of advice that will save you a lot of time and probably avoid failure.

I would recommend if you are not earning an income enough to replace your 9-6 job, you can reach this goal without any backlinking. 

Backlinking is the number one reason why beginners lose hope in building an affiliate website. For two main reasons:

• They buy backlinks from Fiverr or low standard SEO companies 
• They do outreach themselves and do not find success in outreach

I do not recommend getting backlinks when you are just starting out. I know many people including me who have earned a 4-figure income without ever building a single backlink. However, when you want to target a 5- to 6-figure income then backlinking becomes crucial. 

And since affiliate marketing is a marathon and not a sprint, you need to aim at reaching a sizable income before thinking about backlinking and competing for bigger/more profitable keywords.

Note: If you still want to do outreach that is successful then contact me and I can teach you for free and provide you a template that works for my affiliate websites.

How do you outrank without building backlinks? 

I came up with my own strategies that perhaps others might follow also. 

Go after keywords nobody is going for

The secret lies in the fact that the SEO tools we use are quite inaccurate when it comes to traffic estimation. What do I mean by that? Well when you search a certain term on Ahrefs/ubersuggest or other tools, they will give you the competition for different keywords and total traffic. 

The competition is relatively a trustable parameter but as for the traffic estimation, the numbers are way off. 

And since everyone is using the same tools, everyone is trying to rank for the same keywords.

But there is a pool of keywords that nobody competes for and these are keywords with so-called zero “0” traffic and zero competion.

Guess what? That is where the money is made for beginners as the traffic estimation is just plain wrong.

I found keywords that have consistently earned me ~$100/month for a single post where, for example, Ahrefs showed me 0-100 traffic. 

Search for your niche’s “main keyword” on Ahrefs and then filter results by the term “under 50, under 100, under 200, under 500, etc”. 

When you find long-tail keywords related to your niche, filter the results by 0 keyword difficulty (KD) and check out the keywords that have 0-500 monthly traffic. 

If you do not have Ahref then a free option is google trends.  Click here. 

Now that you have some keywords, you can manually check the competition.

Evaluate the competition

For evaluation, let’s choose a keyword e.g. “Best RC cars under $100”.

Upon google search, the following results for the top 3 position appear:

As you can see the top 3 websites have not used the keyword even once in their article body.

Also, notice that topspeed.com has more backlinks and a higher domain rank (shown via Mozbar another life-saving chrome extension) but still ranks lower for this keyword because it has a lower word count, page speed, and most importantly the keyword is not mentioned in the article title.

I personally recommend everyone to use Yoast SEO plugin to optimize the on-page SEO of every article. 

Now would I go for this keyword? Short answer: Yes. 

I would make an article that is 6000 words, has higher page speed, is optimized for keyword density and other parameters using Yoast plugin. 

After that, it is a waiting game. 

However, I have other techniques that guarantee my success without spending extra money on creating long-content. 

My SEO Tricks that work

(When you are starting your amazon affiliate journey)

1- Common Sense SEO (CSS)

SEO tools do not display a lot of keywords that are being searched (especially keywords that have relatively low traffic). 

In our example, Ahrefs gave us the long-tail keyword “Best RC cars under $100”.

Although, as shown previously, none of the pages were properly optimized for that keyword, we still find that Google has indexed a lot of pages/posts with the exact keyword.  

To search how many times an exact keyword has been used on the entire web, search the long-term keyword with “” Quotation mark. 

A whooping 11600 RESULTS appear with the exact keyword.

Now slightly change the price and check the exact results. I found only 3 results!

This is my SEO trick that is based on common sense.

Now since none of the tools mention this keyword that does not mean that no one will search this keyword.

It is common sense that you will get traffic from this new keyword. Since the probability that people are searching this term is close to 100%. The traffic won’t be huge but will get you started on your amazon affiliate income.

And the good news is that not many websites follow this technique. I came up with this technique on my own but I am pretty certain other people would have come with this same technique on their own since it is basically common sense. 

Nonetheless, it has given me quite a lot of success since I literally have zero competition as everyone is busy using tools. 

From there you just need to scale your income by publishing more articles following this technique. 

2- TikTok as a Research Tool

Even though I am not a big fan of Tiktok, I have to accept the fact that Tiktok has established itself as one of the most popular apps of the decade. Its popularity grows each day and it defines the collective culture of Generation Z around the world. 

Therefore, TikTok can be used as a market research tool that gives you an idea of what keywords to rank for (before they show up on SEO tools).

To stay up to date with the product trends, you can search relevant search terms with hashtags i.e. #amazonproducts #bestproduct #products2021 #amazonfinds, etc.

3- Flippa: Keyword Research 

I frequently use flippa to search for keywords that other amazon affiliate websites are ranking for.

To find high traffic keywords with low competition, you need to search the term “amazon” on flippa:

Visit listings with earnings less than $500/month so that we can find websites that have low domain authority. 

Manually search the long-tail keywords of the listing’s page:

Search the selected keywords on google to check whether you can easily rank for these keywords. 

As you can see in the image below, a website with a domain authority of only “16” is ranking for this keyword.

Note: The website has not mentioned the exact keyword in their article. Therefore, this is an easy keyword to rank for.

Conclusion

Now that you know the different strategies on how to rank higher, you can increase the traffic of the amazon affiliate website you bought from Flippa.

Make sure to optimize the speed, improve the theme visually, improve the content, and add more content using the keywords selected (by the SEO techniques mentioned previously). 

Hopefully, you will increase your revenue and then sell it on Flippa for 2400% profit or keep it for yourself to earn consistent passive income.