If you’ve ever searched for the long-tail keywords in any market, you
may have encountered phrases in which a majority of the first page
rankings belong to Web 2.0 and social networking sites.

It’s becoming common knowledge that the search engines love to
rank Web 2.0 sites such as Squidoo, Hubpages, Propeller and many
others.

Here’s how you can benefit from this fact.

Perform a search for your long-tail keywords of choice. When you
find one of these keywords which rank on the first page, go to the
Web 2.0 site which is ranking and sign up for an account.

Now that you have an account at the site that is ranking for
your keyword, create a page on the site and use your keywords
when creating the name of the page.

Usually, the Web 2.0 sites will place your keywords in the url for
that specific page. Let’s look at Squidoo for example. When you
create a Squidoo lens, your page will look like this:

http://www.squidoo.com/your-long-tail-keyword-phrase

Let’s say however that your keyphrase is already taken
on the site. The site would not allow two people with the
same url so you would choose something similar. For example,
if someone has already used the key phrase with dashes in
between the words then you create a page without the dashes.

What will happen is that you will also rank below the page
that is already ranked. On Google, your page will be indented.
Google indents pages which belong to the same website but
have similar title tags. This method will generate some traffic
for you as you already know that the page has the ability to
rank well for that set of keywords.

Here’s a little tip that will boost your rankings even higher.

Many Web 2.0 sites have RSS feeds for your pages. Just take
these RSS feeds and submit them to various RSS feed directories.
This will generate backlinks to your pages and increase their
rankings.

Here is a small list of Web 2.0 sites which are very search
engine friendly. Look for these sites when using this strategy
for ranking your long-tail keyphrases:

Wordpress.com
Hubpages.com
Weebly.com
Propeller.com
Squidoo.com
Ezinearticles.com
Wetpaint.com

Searching for long-tail key phrases will uncover many more sites
which are search engine friendly.

By focusing your energy on just this one tactic, you can receive
some nice free traffic to your webpages.

Until today, the Wii is rarely found on store shelves because every unit that is placed on the shelves is quickly snatched up by consumers. Nintendo ships very few systems to retail stores. They are intentionally increasing demand by lowering supply.

They know that anything that is in short supply has a higher appeal.

Smart marketers have used this concept with much success also. I bet you’ve bought something from a limited time sale before even if you didn’t really need the product at the time.

You may have purchased something because you’re afraid that you’ll need it later on when it’s no longer for sale. I know of several membership sites which have opened up membership for just a few days. They open up a few slots for new members and then close down again.

Each time that they accept new members, they’re sold out. In the long run, they end up having more members join than if they accepted everyone all the time.

So consider this strategy when you’re launching a membership site. If you’ve got a product to sell then consider making it limited to increase demand. You would still have to drive targeted traffic to your offer because demand can only increase if there was demand to begin with.

The gist of this method is to upload videos to various video sharing sites online promoting CPA offers which pay you when someone submits their zip code or email address.

There are many affiliate networks which will pay you to from $1.25 to $3.00 each time someone fills out an email submit or zip code submit form. Just sign up for these networks, pick an offer and then create a video that is relevant to that offer.

Make sure to read the instructions pertaining to each offer to see if they allow traffic other than email traffic. If you don’t follow their rules then they have the right not to pay you.

Let’s say that there’s an offer giving away a free Super Mario Wii game in exchange for an email. One example of a video you could do is to video tape someone playing the game. The better your video, the more viral it will become and the more traffic you’ll receive.

You can also create a simple slide show video with music using Windows Movie Maker which is a free software found on most Windows computers.  What you want to do after you find the offer you’re going to promote is to register a domain name and redirect to the affiliate offer. It’s easier for the viewers to remember and type in something like yoursite.com as opposed to subdomain.yoursite.com or yoursite.com/subfolder.

The length of your videos does not matter as much as its relevancy to the offer.  Relevancy will increase your conversion rates on the affiliate offer. I try to make my videos between 30 seconds to 1 minute. At the beginning of the video I will show one slide advertising my site with a strong call to action. I will then show that slide again after the video ends.

There is a powerful and effective free tool that you can use to mass submit your videos to various video sharing sites online. Go to Tubemogul.com to give it a whirl.

Your videos will receive traffic from users surfing the video sites and also from search engine users if your videos are ranked for certain keywords. Use attention grabbing and relevant keywords when titling your videos. Also remember to add a lot of tags. These are keywords which you provide when submitting your videos to the video sharing sites.

One word of warning… I’ve seen some people recommend that you take people’s videos, edit them and upload them using your account. If you want to get paid from the CPA networks, do not do this even if you receive permission from the video creator. Being lazy can cost you in this case.

This method is a money maker in case you need extra shopping cash. It’s not a business. It’s easy to do so give it a try. You can make several thousands of dollars easy over the course of the year from a few hours of work.

You often hear that most people surfing the web are just looking for information. I don’t know the true answer to that but I don’t really care.

What I like to focus on is people who are in the buying process or close to it. Even if these people are the minority, they will still generate enough for you and me to make a full-time income.

For example, during the Christmas season, many more people are online looking for Christmas presents. They’re not looking for information. They actually have their credit cards in hand searching for a place to use it.

How do I find those people?

By targeting the same keywords they’re searching.

These keywords are product keywords. For example, someone who is searching for the Tassimo Hot Beverage System is closer to the buying decision that someone searching just “coffee maker”.

So what do you do with this knowledge?

Sign up for a publisher account with CJ.com

Search for publishers with a high network EPC. EPC is the green bar column next to each advertiser. The higher the EPC, the better.

Apply for a handful of those publishers’ affiliate programs. Then search through their product catalogue for a potential product to promote.

Once you find a potential product, insert the product name and its variations as quoted keywords into Google. When you find a product with under 5,000 competing pages indexed in Google then continue to the next step.

Now set up a landing page on your site promoting just that product. Use the product name as keywords in your title tags and meta tags.

Now generate some backlinks to that page with variations of the product keyword as your anchor text. Just a few quality backlinks will get you a top 10 ranking for a high converting keyword phrase.

It’s easy to generate backlinks from authority sites with the emergence of Web 2.0 sites. You can generate backlinks by writing articles and submitting them, posting comments on blogs, creating a Squidoo lens etc.

I know that digital products such as the ones on Clickbank.com often give you 50% or more commission as opposed to the under 10% commissions given by physical product merchants.

You should look at the overall picture though. There are a whole lot more niches for tangible products, which means there’s less competition for each niche.

You’ll generate a higher conversion on tangible products also. In addition, consider that physical products can cost up to thousands of dollars while digital products rarely surpass the $100 price point.

While I still promote digital products, I find that tangible products more often give me a higher ROI for my efforts.

If you need more clarification on anything, then post a comment.