hey everyone my name is mike and in this
tutorial i'll be showing you how to make
an affiliate marketing blog this is
something i love talking about and i've
done quite a few times in the past we
have countless different websites on all
different topics pretty much anything
you could think of and it's a great
thing that you can eventually automate
hire writers for you so you don't even
have to be a good writer and even more
than that you don't really have to have
any kind of prerequisites at all you
don't need any coding any computer
background you don't need a writing
background it's really a great way to
get started that has a relatively low
barrier of entry so in this tutorial
i'll be showing you first of all how to
make the website and like i said don't
worry about the coding there's no coding
at all it's just drag and drop it's as
easy as really making a powerpoint for
that matter and so i'll show you how to
do that a very very easy and effective
way and also the way that most people
actually do this which is not the way
you think most people do it then we'll
get into how to set up the affiliate
part of it how to get the affiliates how
to get the commissions how to negotiate
them and how to have the best rates
possible and then of course we'll talk
about how to optimize this and automate
things in the long term so that whether
that is getting writers for you or maybe
you write for yourself regardless we're
going to talk about how to rank better
in google how to in the long run like i
said essentially get more traffic with
less effort overall so there's a lot to
talk about in this video we're going to
start off on my laptop but i want to
mention a couple things ahead of time
first of all we don't sell a course at
no point in this video i going to cut
out or omit any information and tell you
to pay for a course we don't believe in
courses we believe in free information
and so
this video should tell you everything
that we think you need to know to build
an affiliate marketing blog secondly
there is a lot to talk about in this
video we're going to cover a lot of
information so i recommend you take out
a notebook and start taking notes on
this or otherwise if you have like an
ipad or another device maybe watch the
video on one device and and start
building your website next to me side by
side so you can follow along the steps
there's also speed controls on here
sometimes i do talk a little bit quickly
or if you want me to talk faster you can
either replay this slower or faster
youtube has a little gear icon and you
can change the playback speed from there
so that's i think everything i had to
talk about before we get started let's
head over to my laptop and get started
with the first step here so making this
website we like to use a software called
wordpress wordpress.org not
wordpress.com they are different and
this is the way that actually most blogs
out there most big blogs actually make
their website so a lot of people think
that you could go with squarespace or
wix or a lot of the quick website
builders and while they're all great
when you're making a larger scale blog
not only are they more expensive they're
also generally less scalable so you're
not quite as efficient with making more
blog posts you can't get as many plugins
you can't get as many integrations and
so there is a reason that a lot of
people use wordpress not only can it
scale and it's very very affordable as
well but it also is very customizable
and it's really not that hard to use i'm
going to show you everything you need to
know in this video so to get started
with this let's go to centralmedia.com
hostinger that's h-o-s-t-i-n-g-e-r
hosting here there's also a link in the
top of the description click on that
link that'll bring us all to the same
starting point so that should bring us
to this page right here don't worry if
the pictures look a little bit different
that changes from time to time but on
the top you should see something that
says hosting so right off the bat a
hostinger does host a lot of different
software's out there so wordpress and
some other ones as well we want to just
work with wordpress if we click on
hosting we can go down to wordpress
hosting it's optimized for wordpress and
now we can click on start now that'll
bring us down to several different plans
here and it can look confusing don't
worry i'll walk you through it you have
four different options and of course the
first one is the most affordable the
last one is going to be for when you're
a much larger website these prices are
also based on paying for more than just
a month at a time and i'll mention
exactly what that means in a second but
of of all of these i would say the most
popular one the wordpress starter is
probably the one that makes the most
sense for you to do so if we scroll down
you'll see that you do have more storage
with this you are able to have more
monthly visits with this it does come
with a free email so when you're
reaching out to affiliates you can be
mike at centralmedia.com well you can't
but i am that right now
we can also get a free domain with this
you have unlimited bandwidth and other
things like that these are all going to
be very very important but if you're
really on a tight budget the single
wordpress website can still get you
started
so you can definitely don't feel bad
doing that but like i said i recommend
going with this one it's only three
dollars a month we're going to select
that and that'll bring us to ask us
essentially how long we want to have
this and as i mentioned if you're paying
for four years you're getting a pretty
substantial discount from 1249 a month
down to just three dollars a month so i
always do at least 24 months if not 48
months so right now there is actually a
promotion going on that you can get 2.99
per month for 12 24 or 48 months
sometimes that's only for 48 but like i
said i usually recommend going with 48
anyway and as you can see here you don't
actually get the free domain for the
first year unless you go with at least
12 months they don't want to giving a
free domain for a whole year when you
only pay for one month of the website so
let's go with 48 months for now we're
going to go down and create our
wordpress account so i'm just going to
type in my email my credit card
information and submit the secure
payment now that we've done that we can
just click on start now it's going to
walk us through some of the basics of
setting up this website we can skip this
if we want it's just going to kind of
make it easier for you in the future but
like i said it doesn't really matter
that much i'm going to say i'm creating
this for myself i'm building it myself
this is going to be a blog
and i know what i'm doing this tutorial
should hopefully tell you what you need
to know so now we're going to create our
wordpress account this is different from
our hosting our account remember
wordpress is like a microsoft word it's
a software on which the website is being
built hostinger is where the website is
being hosted it's kind of easy to
remember those with that analogy there
and that's essentially like where the
website's being saved it's being saved
on a server so when somebody logs on to
see your website they can go hosting or
has their servers online and they can
view your website so wordpress is going
to be a different account we're going to
make that right now we don't need to add
woocommerce don't select that and we're
going to say continue do not forget this
password you need this to log into your
wordpress account and i'm going to go
down here and instead of choosing a
theme or template they like to show you
templates we're going to choose one
later on i'm going to show you how to
get one that is really really relevant
and also gives you a full template
that's super easy to use so i'm going to
say skip i don't need one of these
templates claim a free domain this is
free with what we purchased so we might
as well do this right now anyway i'm
going to select that and let's just say
the name of my blog is going to be
santrell
urban
urban gardening
central
urbangardening.com
that's going to be a lot better it says
it renews at 13.99 a year that's fine
that's not really the best domain you
want something a little bit easier to
remember but for the purposes of this
tutorial this is just a demonstrative
website so it is available we're going
to say continue if it's ever not
available you can always go to google
domains and it's really a great tool to
help you find some other domains that
are similar and might be more available
so we're going to click on finish setup
you want to make sure the server
location is at least close to wherever
your target demographic is so they have
the fastest load speed so if you're
writing and you're using a vpn or if
you're in another country and you're not
where you're actually going to have your
audience like if you're talking about
texas real estate and you're blogging
from like you know somewhere else in
europe you're going to want to make sure
that you have the servers close enough
to texas so that makes sense for you now
the primary details choose the country
i'm in the united states uh united
states of america personal say next step
so now i'm just going to enter my
contact information now the domain is
being registered to me uh it should only
take a minute for this to actually set
up they're adding the finishing touches
right now so now that we get to this
point there's two things that we want to
do before we actually edit the website
so if we click on manage site the first
thing is we need to have daily backups
so if we scroll down here you should see
first of all if there's errors on here
about not pointing to your domain that's
totally fine it takes a little bit of
time until the domain you can see right
on top domain status waiting for
activation so make sure that you go into
your email and you actually verify that
if they send you a verification link and
then second of all it's just going to
take some time until it actually points
to that so from here like i said two
things we need to do one of them we need
to set up ssl which should kind of
automatically do that but we're going to
want to make sure that it actually does
that correctly and second of all so
there's ssl right there second of all we
want to set up daily backup so if we
click on backups you never know when
something is going to go wrong with your
website especially as a novice you can
break your website and rather than
trying to rebuild your website or trying
really hard to recover it from something
else a daily backup is just such an easy
checkpoint that you know you're making
your website and then you save it the
next day you break your website you can
just roll it back to the day before and
everything is exactly the way it was so
i've used that so many times when i was
getting started with wordpress so
convenient and i kind of still turn it
on anyway just out of habit because you
never know when you know some updates
gonna fail and your website breaks
anyway so we can add daily backups for
two dollars and nine cents per month
like i said it's totally worth it in my
book for four years or you can actually
even do shorter times as well it doesn't
really matter it's always charging the
same amount so i'm going to complete the
payment on that one and now we have
daily backups like i said so convenient
but let's go back and actually enable
ssl that is going to be the little lock
icon you see on the top and that's
essentially whenever somebody goes to
your website especially if you're
selling anything you really require it
for that but that's saying that
everything's encrypted which is kind of
a basic standard practice these days for
a safe website in general and so when
people don't see that
essentially your browser is going to
make a big deal out of that if somebody
goes to your website and instead of
seeing the lock like most people don't
look for the lock but what browsers do
is it says not secure really big and
that scares people that makes them think
that you're going to download some kind
of virus on the computer people don't
understand what that means and so having
ssl so important it's best practice
anyway so we need to enable that so if
we go back to hosting where we were
we can close out of that we can manage
our website and as we go down we should
see new ssl so if we go down to ssl it
might say that it failed if it didn't
actually finish this activation yet
there we go it's failed but eventually
once the activation it takes a little
bit of time sometimes a couple hours and
then it'll actually say successful we
should be fine with that so if we type
in our domain central urban gardening
dot com slash
wp-admin so it's wordpress admin easy
way to remember that click on enter and
this will take us to a wordpress login
page so now i'm going to sign in i'm
going to say remember me so we're going
to log in right now all right so here we
are on the wordpress dashboard now
there's a lot going on here but i
promise i'll walk you through everything
on the left side and how to actually
clean this up because one of the first
things i like to do is to get rid of a
lot of the junk that it gives us right
off the bat so the way we do that is we
start off with the posts on the left
side click on posts they give us one
little blog article we're going to
select that go to bulk actions move to
trash click on apply and then i'll get
rid of that now the same thing we go
down to pages it gives us a couple pages
here we can select them go to bulk
actions move them to trash apply there
we go we get rid of that now we still
have a lot of plugins on the left side
and essentially with wordpress a plugin
is like like an app on there right so if
wordpress is ios then these are apps on
there so we can go down to plugins and
we don't need a lot of these like
they're great they're powerful right but
you don't want to have too many plugins
because first of all that's more more to
update more to keep up with second of
all it's more surface area for attack or
for just things to go wrong in general
for your website and so we can get these
back as we need them what i like to do
is go through them select the ones we
don't need i'm just going to select all
of them except for
analytics by wordpress monster insights
like i like that one google analytics is
good but let's get rid of all the other
ones oh and we're going to keep hosting
her as well so get rid of all these
other ones select all of them we'll go
to the top first we're going to
deactivate these say apply it's going to
deactivate them and then if we go to
inactive there were two that were
already inactive that's why i'm doing it
like this we can select all of them
click on bulk actions and go to delete
click on apply and that will get rid of
all seven of those and now you'll see on
the left side it gets so much cleaner
look at that we don't have anything
cluttering up the left side now just on
the top the first four are essentially
how you interact with people visiting
your website through posts blog posts
media through pages like cornerstone
pages and comments then here's how you
kind of customize the look of your
website and then these bottom three here
are really more about the back end stuff
that's going to be a one-time thing so
if we go to settings we can touch on
that right now starting off with the
site title i'm going to leave it as
central urban gardening sometimes the
default is just like whatever.com so
make sure it looks a little nicer and
then our tagline we don't want it to say
that so we could say uh learn how to
homestead
let's just say um growing
uh vegetables i don't know say something
like that uh let's get rid of the
punctuation there and then down here
right now it's still http
i'm not going to change that yet because
sometimes hostinger does take a little
bit of time until the ssl is actually
set up with that so sometimes it takes
you know a couple hours until that's set
up on the back end so we're going to
continue editing our website but maybe
in a day or two days go back to here or
maybe even later today you can go back
and you want to make sure that ssl is
set up so if we go to hosting we can go
to manage
the domain right there and if we go down
you'll see ssl down here so ssl if you
click on that that'll tell you right now
i think it's still failed because it's
not actually pointing where it should if
we click on install ssl it either works
or it doesn't and if it doesn't right
now
then come back later and do that right
but sometimes when you first set it up
it doesn't work so that's why i
recommend don't mess with that yet but
eventually you can force ssl on here
down here we have the date the time i'm
going to save changes that all looks
good to me if we get on to writing not a
whole lot i want to change here
reading there's nothing there
discussions fine media is fine
permalinks you do want to change this
you want to make sure that uh you have i
usually use post name i think that just
looks the best instead of having some
kind of date or or having the day name
whatever numeric i don't do that with my
blog posts i think that it's easier for
google to understand as well as for the
reader to understand as well as for me
to understand when you go to a link it's
central urbangardening.com
how to grow
in march or whatever i don't know
whatever it might be the name of the
blog post just makes the most sense to
me
going down here we can say save save
those changes and that's really all the
settings i wanted to point out so now we
can start talking about how to actually
design this website as i mentioned
before there are some tools to make it
incredibly easy so we're going to start
off with a theme then we're going to get
a template that has a builder associated
with it and then we can go and simply
drag and drop and we'll already have a
big template there so there's not going
to be much we actually have to do so
let's go up here to appearance and we'll
see theme so we can click on themes and
from these themes there are three that
are already there we're not going to use
them we're going to go to add new and
we're going to look for astra astra
is a really popular one
we can go and install that and like i
said astra is one of the most popular
ones on wordpress which is one of the
most popular website building
software's on the internet in general so
this is you're in good company if you're
using this which means it's robust and
it works really well with a lot of other
things so now we have to actually
activate that it's not enough to just
install things with wordpress and we're
ready to go with this now from here you
can see that on the top you should see
this little banner that says did you
know astra comes with dozens of
ready-to-use starter templates you can
either click on that right now or on the
left side we can actually go over to
astra astra options
and we should see over here install
importer plugin
so we will actually be able to do that
we can click on install importer plugin
and that will activate that as well and
that will get us started with what the
next steps actually are so we can say
build your website now they're going to
ask us if we want to use one of these
three elementor is the right answer for
this video and now we can choose from a
lot of different ones we have a lot of
different templates some of them are
paid you can see premium ones right
there but there's an abundant abundancy
of free ones as well so we can actually
sort them if you want from
all or premium i think they used to have
free on there as well whatever we can't
sort them the way i was thinking we
would but let's go through these and
search for a starter template that makes
sense for us we are a blog and i want to
be like a food blog maybe travel it's
more like a garden blog so what if we
just say garden
blog let's see what we have for that one
see if anything pops up so we have a
couple that kind of makes sense this
one's a business magazine nothing
nothing that's really really similar
like i was hoping for but instead we can
just go up here let's say blog and let's
just say we are a travel blogger that's
going to be similar enough we can show a
lot of larger photos on that style so
we're going to travel blog see we find
that's not what i want for this
maybe something along the lines of this
one's kind of popping out of me right
here so maybe we'll go to this one we'll
click on this and it's going to show you
a little bit of what it looks like um
well i don't know why they chose
that uh the parallax effect but whatever
it's kind of cool i guess i'm going to
get rid of that guy down there
and of course the other thing to keep in
mind is you can change anything on here
the text the literally anything you want
to change this is just a starting point
so you want to look at something that
has a generally similar layout to what
you want and so for me i don't want this
one let's find another one this one
looks good i think this one actually
looks pretty good this will work for a
little gardening blog we can show some
pictures of a garden and things like
that so we're gonna go with this one now
we can upload our file here for our logo
if we don't have logo we can do that
later which i currently do not have a
logo for this so we will do that later
so we're going to say skip and continue
we can choose our color scheme this is
gardening so we want a lot of green
based stuff we can choose a font that i
think would make the most sense for us
and of these
i kind of like that one there actually
so we'll say continue and then we can
tell they want to know a little bit
about us and what plugins we actually
want so leave all of these down here
selected that makes sense
i don't want the newsletters though so
i'm going to get rid of that one and
type in my information right now now
it's going to take a couple minutes to
actually go and build the website but
you'll see at the end of this we'll be
able to go to
centralurbangarden.com or whatever your
domain is and you'll see a full-blown
website ready to go and all we need to
do would be to change some of the text
and the images to our own stuff all
right now we can go and view our website
we'll click on that all right
so like i said there is our website it's
it's really
there's not like we just have to change
the pictures and what the words actually
say but in general it's really a step in
the right direction here so from here we
can go and we can start editing this
website so if we go back to wordpress by
clicking on the little wordpress icon
there we can go and choose an individual
page so if we go to pages uh i will
start off with the homes the home page
now we have a lot of other pages we
don't necessarily need right now we can
change what they say later or we can
delete them you already know how to do
that let's go to home and go to edit
with elementor don't click regular edit
if you do it's going to have you do some
you're going to edit a little
differently and i'll show you that in a
minute but
elementor is how we want to really edit
this now the way elementor works is with
the section layout so you can see a
section is outlined in light blue it's
kind of hard to see right here let's go
down and see
this section here we can see this
section outlined in blue starts up here
it goes all the way down to here and
everything in that section has the same
you can have a background for that you
can have you can move the entire section
up and down and so we have all these
little strips all these little sections
and within a section we have rows and we
have columns right so uh within right
here we can see we have one column is
what this one is and and then down here
we have an intersection with three
columns in there and they have uh
elements within that as well so we've
got an image a little
text thing and then a little more
basically a button down there as well
and so if you go down here you can see
that we have you know quite a few
different uh sections on here and we can
edit each one individually but let's
start off with the very top one we're
going to start off by clicking on the
six dots and then on the left side will
bring us to our editor for this section
we can change the background and really
everything you could imagine about this
but let's start off with the photo in
the background in order to change this
one we'll go over to style you see we
have an image right there delete the
image first of all and you'll see it
just brings us to some color and we'll
talk about what that color is doing in a
second that's actually a background
overlay but if we go and click on add a
new image i'm going to upload some files
right now and in fact while we're at it
we might as well upload all of all the
images we have that are related to this
blog you should have maybe five or ten
images that you can use throughout your
blog images that you took or images that
you were allowed to use for some reason
this is a demonstrative website so i'm
not actually publishing it but we're
going to select some files here now for
the top let's go with the i don't know
maybe this photo for example insert the
media and now we have a background for
the top and there is that background
overlay so if we click on background
overlay right now it's just green and we
can change that to
maybe a lighter green would be a little
better or we can just change the opacity
of that as well so darker or a little
bit lighter having some tint to that
kind of makes the text a little bit more
readable so i'll leave it probably right
around there now that's the first
background we can change the text here
by double clicking on that highlight
that and let's just call this santorel
central urban gardening and if we click
on the little pencil icon that'll allow
us to edit this little element being the
text this is actually a heading right
here and so we can change essentially
how it's lined up so if we want it to be
centered we want it to be left justified
we can go to the style and change some
more advanced things about this like how
much space we have all the way around
there how wide how wide it's allowed to
be and things like that i'm going to
leave it actually exactly as it is i
think that looks pretty decent and then
down here we can have a little subtitle
so if we click on this we can say
actually i don't even think we need that
let's just click on that and get rid of
that all together so we just right click
on this one and go to delete that
section now we have a button down there
now the button this is pretty
self-explanatory you click on it it'll
take you to whatever link you want and
so on the left side you can see we
currently don't have a link but we do
have a symbol there which is essentially
going to allow you to use what's called
an anchor now we can link this right now
to any other page we want so if i want
this to link to let's say our youtube
page
we'll go to youtube.com central
media so now it's going to link to
central media's youtube channel the text
we can say watch
our videos maybe that would be what you
want to do if you're trying to drive
traffic from your blog over to a youtube
channel but one thing to keep in mind
when you're making this website that you
want to make sure you have a congruent
across all the different pages goal for
your website are you trying to drive
traffic to a high converting page
probably right are you trying to drive
up social media are you trying to
grow an email list what are you trying
to do and so if your goal for example is
to have a cornerstone page that is maybe
top five uh different seed companies or
top five like you know planting tools
that you might need for gardening then
you want to drive a lot of traffic to
that page and have a really high
converting page so with this one right
here i'm just going to leave this is a
home page it doesn't really matter quite
as much being that it is a blog you're
more likely going to want to have some
relevant articles popping up up here and
there are some really great things we
can show you on how to do that but for
now let's just say watch our videos sure
maybe that's what we're going to do and
we can close out of this here and
continue going down to build out the
rest of this page so down here and again
this is going to look pretty familiar
where you can simply click on what you
want
and we can see on the left side we can
change the image let's change the image
to maybe some tomatoes right here we can
say that this is going to be let's just
say read more about our
our best tomatoes so if we go to the
nine dots on the top right there we can
go and click and drag a heading now
let's add a heading up here and let's
just say read and we can click on this
and say maybe this is read more and then
over here maybe we have a different
article and this one let's just go and
change the media for this one to uh
maybe some lettuce right so we can say
urban gardening tools and this could be
these are our essential there we go so
maybe that's another article right there
this one doesn't have a button so we can
simply duplicate this if we like this
button we can right click on that we can
duplicate that button and again click
and drag it over to say right here we
can have right there we can say read
more and again any one of these you can
customize so let's dig a little deeper
into customizing the buttons for example
if we click on the buttons we have three
tabs we've content style and advanced i
show you a little bit about what each of
them does already but kind of
summarizing what each one is content is
going to be what's actually visible to
or like what's written there essentially
how the text is laid out
style is going to be more about the
colors and the shape of everything and
then advance is going to be the spacing
how it interacts with other things if
it's showing up for mobile for desktop
for tablets or all three and so starting
off with the button on content we
already changed the text we didn't add a
link to this one but i showed you guys
how you could add a link just type
whatever link you want in but let's
actually add um i mean for the sake of
example let's add an anchor here so i
can show you how an anchor works we'll
do that in just a second let's say that
this is going to be center aligned
actually was better left aligned the
icon we don't have an icon right now but
you could add one if you wanted and of
course the button id is not something
i'm adding right now but if we go over
to style this is where we can choose the
color of the button when people hover is
anything going to be different about the
button a lot of times you can invert
like a white and green or to switch
whenever you hover over that
right here it's going to darker green
that also works very well we can add a
radius on there so a border radius maybe
we want like a
5 or 10 pixel radius on there so 10
pixels there we go a nice little radius
on the button instead of being so square
but given that the theme of this is very
boxy and very square i would probably
rather have no
nothing change with that but something
to note is the little chain icon here
will actually link all the values
together so if you click that and get
rid of that you can only have a radius
say on the top right so if you want to
have like 30 pixel radius on the top
right you have a little bit of a rounded
edge there a little slope so that's a
way to be a little bit more creative if
you're trying to do that obviously not
necessarily with buttons but with
pictures that's a really common thing
people like to do and of course if you
click on the photo up here you will have
the same tools you can add a radius to
say one corner so if that's your style
definitely go ahead and do that let's
click on the pencil again continue on
with this the padding and like i said
everything around there
i don't i'm not going to add any padding
to this because i think it's pretty well
spaced as it is but if you wanted to add
some padding we could add a lot around
there to change the size of the button
so i'm going to undo that
simply by clicking history we can go
down there and click right here that's
where we were last and we can say update
that'll make sure we're saving
everything and keeping it where we were
now the history button i just showed you
on the bottom uh hopefully you guys can
see that on this yeah you can see that
so that right there is a super powerful
tool so if you ever mess anything up you
just go back to you know undo as many
steps as you need to all the way back to
the beginning of the session when you
logged on so let's click the little
history button to get rid of that again
let's actually go back to
actually so let's click on the pencil
icon to go back to where we were and we
can go over to advanced here's more
margin and padding so again padding is
kind of redundant here and here but
margin is what you're seeing on the top
we have 20 pixels of margin above it and
nothing below that if i wanted to put
anything below there i'd probably want
more space so on the bottom i want to
make sure that's also 20 as well other
than that we can change you know some
real advanced things on here you
probably don't need to worry about right
now but what you probably will want to
know about is the responsive section so
if you overview this let me let me show
you how to do this real quick if you
click on the responsive mode you can
view this on the top as a mobile site so
in mobile if you decide you know what
that's just like too many articles being
recommended right there let's instead
get rid of this entire column right here
or maybe just get rid of the picture get
rid of whatever you want to do let's say
we want to get rid of the column we can
click on this little column that's going
to bring us into the settings again go
over to advanced go to responsive and
from there we could say let's hide this
on mobile when you're on mobile you
don't need to see that entire column
this entire section is now grayed out
obviously when they visit it's not going
to be grayed out it's just going to be
missing altogether but it's showing you
because when you switch between to
desktop then it won't be it's actually
going to be existing there so that's a
really powerful tool if anything doesn't
look right on on tablet or on mobile
it's very easy to just hide it there and
show something else there instead so
that's essentially how you'd go about
editing some of the fundamentals on a
page let's go down and see what else we
have i want to get you guys a little bit
more familiarized with how elementor
works which by the way as you start to
get more advanced with this i do have a
full tutorial digging through all the
little nitty gritty details of how to
use elementor how to use every single
one of these i recommend checking that
out in the future but hopefully for now
today this should be everything you need
to know to build your website and get
off the ground let's talk a little bit
more about adding a new section you know
i said i was going to go down and start
talking about these this is kind of what
i just showed you how to change
so it's not going to be a whole lot
interesting there i will change those
images but let's say we want to add a
new section we can click on the plus
icon between the two sections where we
want to insert it so if i click on plus
we can add a new one and you can either
add one from a template we don't have
any templates yet we can add one from a
starter template so that's going to use
the starter plugin that we got from
astra before and if i just i'll show you
for demonstrative purposes we can go to
blocks and we have a lot of different
options here you can go and see all
types of blocks from contact us to forms
uh to you know doing all types of things
like that and a lot of you know common
layouts are going to be found here and
it can save you a lot of effort and a
lot of time so let's just say maybe this
one looks really good for us we can just
view it first of all and say you know
what i really like that we can import
the block and that's going to be used
right here now i'm not going to do that
right now because i want to show you
some of the tools we have available to
build it from scratch so on the left
side like i said if you click on those
nine dots you'll get all the different
elements you can add and we have them in
different little categories so we've got
the favorite ones we don't have any
favorites saved yet we've got the basic
ones which you will be seeing right now
everyone has access to those if we go
down to pro upgrading to elementor pro
if you go to centralmedia.com
elementor you can upgrade to elementor
pro it's a really powerful tool you're
able to do a lot more with that
to customize your website even more but
like i said the free version already
does a pretty decent job should
definitely be getting you started
so from here you can see we can add uh
like a heading for example so if we want
to call this section let's just say our
our top articles
i don't know maybe something like that
that's probably not what i would
actually add there but let's just you
know for the sake of example let's do
that and then we want to add you know
three little things below that maybe
four columns below that click on the
nine dots and we want to add an
intersection here so a section within a
section
click on that and if we click on the
little six dots we can change how this
is actually laid out so if we click on
structure down there we can see well
right now it's 30 it's 50 50. that makes
sense you can actually also click and
drag this back and forth 50 50 is
probably like the most the easiest way
that i would go about doing this but
let's say we want to add even more
columns than that we want more than just
two sections there let's go about doing
that so there are several ways you could
do this the easiest way for me is to
actually just right click on the little
column icon and just duplicate the
column so you have three let's duplicate
it again and have four columns there
that's going to be good that's a good
way to add four different of our top
favorite articles so going back to the
nine dots on the top we can go and add a
little subheading down here so click and
drag a heading actually the best way to
do this would be to make one and then
duplicate that four times and then
change them it'll save you work so we
can actually do that instead but this
should not be an h1 heading there's
different or h2 right now there's
different levels of headings and that's
going to really interact with your
search engine optimization your seo so i
don't want this to be h2 i'd rather this
be like h3 maybe even h4 but it's just a
subheading underneath your h2 which is
underneath your overall heading which is
an h1 so the number is just kind of the
tiers down the hierarchy uh for how
important it is but also how large it is
on the screen so from there we can go
back and add maybe a text editor under
there we can add a button under there
and we can add maybe something else so
you get the idea of how we're going to
click and drag and edit things over
there but the other things we do have
like i said as you start to get other
plugins we have more functionality so
wordpress forms wp forms is a plugin
that came with this theme
and if you get other ones out there you
can get different elements that can be
clicked and dragged in very easily and
so if we want to add like a form down
here we can very easily add you know
we're gonna have to set this up but i'm
not gonna do that right now you can set
up a form and collect you know emails or
names or phone numbers or whatever it
might be and that's a great way to build
for example an email marketing list for
a campaign that can recover even more
affiliate marketing revenue for you so
if you scroll down beyond the pro
section you get to general and there are
quite a few elements you can add here as
well so if we want like a progress bar
we can go and add that one maybe like
right here for example and you can have
multiple progress bars that could be for
say a personal resume or something like
that if you find a place to add that
into your blog it's kind of a fun little
thing you can add a fun little element
that you know shows some animation on
your on your screen or on your website
that makes it a little bit more exciting
other than that you can read through
this on your own time and figure out
what each of these are like i said i
have a full tutorial on how to use them
so that's all you know i don't want to
waste too much of your time on this
right here this is just your homepage
this is your landing page here let's
talk a little bit more about actually
making a blog post in general and in
order to do that we have to go back to
wordpress so we're going to exit this
right here so if we go back to wordpress
you can just exit to dashboard or you
can click on the wordpress icon do
whatever get back to here essentially
and so from here like i said we already
talked about pages we have one page
there you can edit other pages by just
clicking edit with elementor and before
we go into editing posts i want to
really quickly mention what it what
happens if you click on the regular edit
button it's not actually a bad thing you
have to do this it's important if you
click on the regular edit button this
will show you essentially nothing about
your page so if you end up here by
accident edit elementor will give you
where we were but the column on the
right side is actually very important so
this is going to show you the visibility
of your page if any pages are private
maybe if you're building a new page and
you didn't want to put it out yet you
can make it a private page the template
of course is going to show you be shown
down here monster insights you could
exclude this from tracking if you wanted
to i don't really think that makes sense
for this page the permalink is going to
be essentially nothing because this is
our home page but other pages would be
santro urbangardening.com about would be
the about us page the featured image is
something that we didn't actually set
yet so if somebody's googling this on on
mobile or sharing the link somewhere we
do want to have a featured image so we
can say that maybe uh let's just say
this one right here would be good for
our brand maybe for example so that
could be our image there as far as
discussion goes we could allow or not
allow comments on the homepage i'm not
allowing comments and then page
attributes i'm not changing anything
there but eventually we will have quite
a few more tools here when we actually
go and enable a new plugin called yoast
seo
we're getting a little bit ahead of
ourselves here so i'm going to click on
update and i did say that the first
thing we want to do is start making some
blog posts so blogging is obviously
going to be your bread and butter while
you kind of have good cornerstone pages
your homepage and about page maybe like
something that you keep updated about
your top picks or whatever that could
maybe be a page but your blog posts in
themselves are going to be what you
create a large library of and these are
going to be probably your primary source
of traffic where most people are
googling something maybe like how to
grow tomatoes on a deck right and then
you would have a blog article about that
hopefully you rank high in google and
we'll talk about how to do that in a
minute and then they'll go and you know
read through that article and then
within that article the goal is to
essentially have affiliate links in
there that can drive you know traffic
over to a product they buy the product
and you get a commission from that so if
you're not familiar with affiliate
marketing essentially that's the way it
works you are marketing basically for a
company basically for free as well until
somebody goes and buys the product and
then you get a commission from that it's
really the way most of the internet
works that's why so many blogs are free
and so people can just go and click on
the link order their product at no extra
cost to them the the actual creator the
author will get paid then and it's a
very lively ecosystem on the internet
with that happening absolutely
everywhere so continuing on here if we
go to posts you'll see that we can go to
add new we deleted the hello world post
before and now the new one let's add a
title so what was the title i said a
minute ago i think i said how to
grow tomatoes
on a deck
now of course you're wording on this and
everything you will want to really
optimize that figure out what articles
are doing well what wordings are being
searched for what wording has not really
been targeted in the past and what do
people want to actually find so the
closer you are to the exact search that
somebody's typing in the more likely you
are to rank above competition so for
this right here you could continue just
making your entire blog post right here
i don't recommend that at all we do have
elementor so we do have some template
kits as well but like i said let's go to
edit with elementor and start off from
there they're giving us a really a blank
slate here and we can eventually make
some templates so that it's easier every
time you write a blog article there's
already the same header the same
template it's easier to work like that
but the first time around you're going
to have to build some from scratch
essentially so looking at this we can go
and add elements just like we did with
the actual home page the original page i
was editing but we do also have some
other things as well because this is an
article we can add things like for
example if i type in author you'll see
we have an author box we can add that if
we go down to site you can see that we
have quite a few pro ones here as well
so you can have like an author box maybe
for example
you can have a featured image you can
have
archive title page title you can have
some more interactive things so if you
change like the title of the blog it'll
change here as well i mean it's already
going to do that up there but you know
you can customize it a little bit more
so let's just say for this one we want
to start off with
maybe a large image up here so we could
go again if you upgrade to elementor pro
you're going to have a lot more out of
this but we're going to go and add an
image up top and then down here we can
add some text
just to get a general layout we can have
an intersection down here
so let's add an intersection then and we
can add some text on the left side
and then we can have some text on the on
we can add an image on the right side
image on the right side actually i
really don't like this gigantic image up
here
let's get rid of that one let's delete
that and so we can have some text here
let's get some dummy text to really fill
this out
there we go
and then below that we can have some
more text but maybe this is going to be
a full width text if you just hover
right down here so you see the wide blue
bar let go there's some full text we can
add some more down there and so
obviously formatting is going to be you
know depending on the style of your site
you get the idea of how we can go about
doing this but the most important thing
when you're working with an affiliate
website or affiliate blog is you want
your affiliate links to be in here they
have to be clickable right and so what a
lot of people do is you'll highlight the
text so if we just go to this right here
we can highlight some text we can
highlight text over here rather so we'll
click and highlight say this text right
here click on the link and this can be
where you paste your affiliate link now
there are many places to get affiliate
links one of the easiest or one of the
most common ones to get started with is
actually amazon affiliates so if we open
a new tab and go to amazon affiliates
amazon affiliates you'll see that the
amazon or sorry amazon associates is
what they call it amazon associates
is the affiliate program with amazon so
their affiliate marketing you can
essentially find any product on amazon
get a link for that and then you'll get
between i think one and three percent
commission for that which like i said
when you're getting started off you're
gonna have smaller commissions but
eventually you can find other things
that have higher commissions you can
work directly with manufacturers you can
even have sponsors commission
commissioning as well that will pay you
a set amount of money to have a link in
your you know their own link in your
article for a certain amount of time in
addition to having affiliate links in
here a lot of people link out to other
articles on their website or other
articles on other websites as well
these are called backlinks when somebody
else makes a link and links it to you
it's one of the ways you can rank higher
on google when you start to essentially
gain credibility so let's say for
example maybe some you know big news
outlet say cnn for example wants to make
an article about things you can grow on
your back deck and they view you as an
expert maybe they'll email you and say
hey we really want a quote from you
on our article here and so you can give
them a quote they can give you a link
they'll link to you usually and that'll
come back to here and that way google
they don't want to show bad essentially
bad sites to people they don't show bad
pages to people without getting too deep
into how google works there are many
different tools for example moz does a
great job of explaining this every year
with different outlines and best
practices but one of the things google
does is essentially they don't always
trust new websites right because anyone
can make a malicious website they can
make 20 a day go out and attack people
and if that's showing up high on google
people are going to click on those and
say you know what google's not good and
they're not going to like google and
they're going to stop using google
google makes less money so google wants
people to rely on them they want to be a
good reliable search engine so that they
can show more ads they can make more
money ultimately the user gets a better
experience they get more money and the
way they do this is by having a system
that slowly builds up trust with
different websites so when you're a new
website
they don't trust you right away they
don't know enough about you but they do
trust cnn they do trust some of these
other big websites out there they do
trust cnn to be a legitimate website
that is not going to be scamming you out
of your money or hacking you or or you
know giving you malware so that's why
cnn will rank high when you search for
cnn
but if you search for my website it's
unlikely to rank high right now until
you get that back link when a website
with a high what's called domain
authority links out to you then that'll
boost you a little bit you know because
it's essentially a token of credibility
where google says oh this website that
we view is very credible is saying that
you're uh credible as well
you know that's boost you a little bit
and you get enough of those and
eventually google will view you as a
credible website and of course this will
help you rank higher in google that's
the more all that story there now with
this i think you guys get the idea of
how you can go about building an article
so we can go and publish that when we're
ready or we can save it as a draft this
one is obviously super
uh not done at all right now so i'm just
going to save it as a draft but you get
the idea it's all the same tools that
you have available and you can build out
your entire article like that so let's
click on the
top left we can go to exit right here
and that'll bring us back to our
wordpress dashboard click on the
wordpress icon
and there we go so now we have an
article now we have our home page as
well as a couple other pages and on your
own time you will want to go back and
change the other pages the contact the
amenities the rooms whatever other comes
with your with your template so
continuing down the left side we've got
our posts we've got our pages i talked
about media that's not really anything
that exciting that's just like the
images that you upload if you upload all
of them right here files images videos
whatever it's easier when you build your
website you can just pull from your
media if this tab didn't exist i don't
think it'd really be that different of a
workspace to be honest but you know it's
kind of convenient to have everything in
one place comments as you write more
articles if you have comments enabled
with them which most people do then you
will be able to interact with comments
here you'll be able to filter out the
spam comments and i would recommend
getting a plug-in
like one of the ones we actually removed
but there are so many other ones out
there that can filter the spam comments
for you and it just makes it a lot
easier because there are so many spam
comments out of spam commenting bots out
there elementor settings we don't need
to worry about that templates like i
said this is something a little bit more
advanced i'm not going to cover it in
this video but eventually you can make a
template for a blog article and i know
i'm going to cover this very briefly
right now i know i said i wouldn't but
just really quickly if we go to add new
you can make a new template and so this
could be a new page it could be a new
section it could be a new landing page
and then if we go down to plugins there
are quite a few plugins that are super
super beneficial most of them are free
or freemium really where they're free to
use but you can upgrade to
much like elementor you can upgrade and
get more functionality out of them so
the first one i want to recommend is
actually called yoast which is yoast seo
we'll search for yoast
yoast
just like toast but with a y there it is
with five million active installations
super popular it's a great tool that can
kind of audit what you're doing and give
you the resources you need to rank
higher in google
by correctly populating your metadata
and what i mean by that is we'll
activate this and you'll see we'll go up
to our post right there our blog article
and it'll show us what we're missing if
it's readable what needs to be improved
maybe we have long run on sentences that
just make it less readable maybe our
images don't have alt text so google is
harder for google to identify what our
article is about maybe we don't have any
keywords consistent or maybe we have too
many keywords and that's a red flag for
google and so all this kind of back-end
stuff that a lot of people would
typically hire an seo expert for and
would charge thousands of dollars you
can kind of get most of it done on your
own just using something like yoast seo
and like i said if you read through the
moz annual report of what google cares
about this can really help you a lot so
going back up like i said if you go to
posts you can see yoast will give you a
lot of tools so if we go to regular edit
not edit with elementor we scroll down
you can see yoast shows up down here and
we could say if this one is how to grow
deck tomatoes
or tomatoes on a deck maybe this could
be deck tomatoes
deck tomatoes hit enter and it's going
to tell us first of all what it looks
like in google when somebody searches
for this but also it's going to tell us
like how well we're doing with this the
readability fine whatever but it's going
to give us suggestions down here and say
you know what you don't use your
keyphrase like anywhere obviously it was
all latin dummy text so that's true also
we don't have outbound links we don't
have internal links we don't have a key
phrase in the title introduction we
don't have all this different stuff and
so it's going to make it a really useful
tool for you to figure out make sure
you're doing everything right all the
best practices to rank in google and
most importantly it also gives you the
ability to change the url slug so your
url you know central urbangardening.com
what and so right now it's just the
entire title but we could just call this
one deck
tomato
guide deck tomato guide maybe that's
what we want um and so that way we have
deck tomatoes deck tomatoes guide maybe
something like that that way we have our
key phrase in the slug maybe that's
helpful for some people at least to
remember what this is and we can change
things like our meta description instead
of just pulling a random set of words
from our article maybe we can have
something in here that says this is a
guide to growing the absolute
there we go so that's going to show up
in google instead of having some random
text from your article and of course it
shows us that we don't have an image
there we can go to desktop results and
see what that looks like as well so
yoast seo a super super powerful tool
i'm just going to publish this article
anyway it's definitely never going to be
found but we'll go and publish that
nonetheless let's go back to where we
were in the wordpress dashboard and so i
want to talk a little bit more now about
the different outlets you can go to to
get some affiliate links so like i said
amazon associates is a super popular one
that's one of the big ones that people
get started with another one people use
is called planet howl uh this has a lot
of different brands out there i've
worked with them in the past and so
they'll work with like best buy hp
sephora samsung target a lot of these
big box stores that you can buy a lot of
stuff from but also of course they have
their online retail as well so if it's
not something that sells directly from
amazon or if you want some you know a
lot of these do have a higher commission
or they'll have different promos you can
work directly with that i'll have a link
to that in the description actually
we'll have a lot of links in the
description so make sure you go down in
the description and i'll have a list of
a bunch of different affiliates that you
can actually get started with and how
planet howl is another one of course on
top of that we have impact radius or now
they're just called impact so impact.com
if you go to impact.com this will have
links to this as well this will have
partnerships with more brands that i
mean like i said they do have products
on here but impact is in my mind it's
more for like software-y kind of stuff
right but you can work with adidas or
airbnb like that's the kind of thing i'm
saying about like airbnb type stuff or
uber things like that mcafee those type
of things are what i would expect to
find on impact
whereas planet howl would be more like
product and retail type things but
regardless walmart is still on impact
we've got ticketmaster you can see as
you know the little thing rolls by a lot
of different options there so impact.com
super powerful and really a big network
as well they're also very easy to work
with i find that their analytics are in
depth easy to make sub ids for different
articles
because as you of course this is very
important as you make more articles and
as you find more affiliates the data
that you collect is going to be very
important that you keep it organized so
you can figure out what articles are
converting well because if everything is
going to the same exact affiliate link
you know how many link clicks that's
getting but you don't know from which
article it's really coming from and
there are tools to find that out but
it's just easier if you have sub ids for
the affiliate links and once you set up
impact it's really pretty obvious what
that means but essentially each link you
can have a sub id that categorizes it
internally within impact that maybe this
is for that article and then the same
link for a different article the same
link for another article so it's just
way easier to track and really the
fourth one i wanted to mention is cj
so cj is right here
they used to be called cj affiliate but
now it is called cj kind of simplifying
their name and this is a lot like impact
honestly so if you're looking to promote
uh you know some like turbo tax type
things as you can see right there
or hotels for example they do have a lot
on here as well so between these four
there's really a pretty limitless
library of different products and
services you can promote on your
affiliate website on your affiliate
marketing blog so obviously there are so
many different affiliate networks out
there depending on the niche you're
getting into those are all great tools
to get started with but you know tons of
other ones as well those are just ones
that a lot of people do end up working
with in addition to that i want to talk
about some of the tools you can use to
really automate and boost your own
website here the first one there's
actually quite a few from google so i
want to start off with the google based
ones they're free and obviously one of
the big goals
of a blog is to rank on google that's
really where you're probably going to be
getting a lot of your traffic unless
you're something that gets shared by
email or on facebook or something like
that but i think for most people a blog
like a blog is really going to be found
on google or at least that's the primary
goal one of the most passive ways if you
have good content so to rank higher on
google we really want to start off with
google search console and then google
analytics those two combined gives you
so much insight into how you're already
ranking on google where your traffic's
coming from and then what people are
doing within your website are they
reading article after article are they
getting through one article and they end
up clicking on a link and going to a 404
page like you it tells you kind of what
people are doing on your website which
is super super informative so in order
to do this we do already have monster
insights right there which makes it so
easy to set up google analytics so let's
go to launch setup wizard and that's
going to ask us some really basic
questions and make it so easy so we are
a publisher we're making a blog we're
going to save and continue down here we
could get a license key we don't need a
license though so if we want upgraded
pro we can i'm just going to say connect
now i already track a bunch of other
blogs so i'm not going to mess up that
analytics by signing into google here so
instead i'll just show you i'm going to
cut right here i'm going to show you
another so when you actually get it all
set up and you sign into google
analytics this is what it would look
like this is an older blog from a pretty
long time ago when we started it
you start off and when you connect it if
you have any traffic in the beginning
it'll show you how many page visits you
get per day and you can see over time
it's starting to grow and you can really
dig into an audience overview down here
as well as the traffic the source the
referrals where things are coming from
and it's a great way to figure out like
what's actually working on your on your
website where the traffic is so in what
country
what device they're using you can really
find a lot of in-depth analytics here
which is why it's called google
analytics and again this is an entire
tutorial for another day to dig deep
deep into this and figure out how you
can optimize based on that but that's
one of the first tools i want to talk
about the next one like i said is google
search console so going back to where we
were so from google we could just look
up google search console
google search console and that'll take
us to search.google.com
search dash console slash about and we
can just click on start now and once
again i'm not going to sign into google
i'm going to cut over to another account
that i already have
it does take a little bit of time to set
this up you have to you know do some
stuff with your dns and stuff like that
but it does give you instructions
google's really good about telling you
exactly what you need to do step by step
to actually get that set up so i'm going
to go and show you now what it looks
like on the inside for another search
console that i have set up with another
blog so here's again an example from
back in 2020 a blog that we started in
the beginning uh it starts off with like
almost no traffic over time it will pick
up and you will notice like you might
say oh that's not impressive at all well
this i mean the world of blogs and
google is just very very different it's
a lot more of a mature industry right
now so it's not at all like what you'd
expect with some social media where
things just suddenly hockey stick become
viral and come crashing down and go back
up a lot of times with blogs it's all
about the long game it's going slow and
gradually building up your library
getting more backlinks building up a
website that over time can get more and
more traffic can rank in google and
consistently earn you more money with
affiliate link getting more traffic on
there and so one of the most common
things we see as i mean nate's mentioned
it in previous videos as well we see a
lot of people that will start a blog
starting kind of website and they'll go
at it for maybe one or two months maybe
three months and they'll see no progress
they'll get frustrated and they'll still
have you know maybe like a couple maybe
a hundred or a couple hundred visits and
then they'll just give up and then maybe
a couple years later they'll say you
know what
i really thought i had a blog and
they'll go and sign on and they'll see
that it actually grew substantially
larger than it is and they'll wish that
they kept pushing and making blogs so
with blog articles it is a long game if
you find the right niche that it you
know is very unsatisfied on google like
a lot of people are looking up and not a
lot of people are finding articles that
are good then that's a great opportunity
and you want to make sure that you're
pushing for a long time on that and
don't expect to see too many results
too soon like i said it's not going to
be an instantaneous thing but patience
is the biggest virtue in this industry
here another tool i want to show you is
one related to what i just mentioned
being searches on google and this is
so
trends.google.com and this is absolutely
the most powerful tool out there in my
opinion whether you are investing or
selling e-commerce items or making a
blog article this is the this is the key
to what the world is looking for and the
world uses google or at least a lot of
the english speaking world uses google
of course other some countries use their
own things google's such a common one
that you can figure out what people are
really looking for and so if we think
people are looking for deck tomatoes we
can type in type in deck tomato we can
say that we could say patio
tomato and you can see side by side
which one has more searches so here you
could say patio tomato might be a better
article than deck tomato maybe people
aren't growing tomatoes on a deck maybe
it's more of a patio maybe it's a porch
let's look up that one
and you can see that people are growing
different things in different areas and
it also tells you where people are
searching these so of course this is
common in the northeast where a lot of
people have smaller apartments i imagine
if you live in nebraska or north dakota
south dakota you're not living in a
small apartment where you need to have
patio tomatoes you probably have a
larger property and so that's going to
be all really important information for
you and so i think that this tool right
here not only can can you do an a to b
comparison and figure out what people
are searching for but it also suggests
other similar search terms down here so
patio tomato varieties is another one
maybe people want to know that and on
top of that if you actually just go to
google i recommend doing this in an
incognito tab so you don't have google
being influenced by your previous
searches but you can also see what
google recommends as well so if we say
tomato
or if we say patio tomato plants we
could say planter seeds varieties
determinant or indeterminate plants near
me these are all things that people are
searching for and so they might be good
things for you to actually write
articles about so maybe what is the
difference between indeterminate and
determinant which one's better better
for growing on a patio what are the best
varieties it's all very useful for
finding the best article titles
the next great tool i want to talk about
is called semrush a lot of people call
this sem rush but apparently samarash
calls it semrush so that's what i
started calling it and so if we go to
centralmedia.com
slash semrush
you can get started on on semrush and
it's really a super powerful tool where
you can look at what your competitors or
what other blogs are doing what they're
ranking for whose backlinks they're
getting what kind of articles are doing
better than other ones and you can
really get so much insight into so many
other websites as well as into your own
as well and as it says right here you're
really getting measurable results from
that so if you are data driven which i
mean i am i think it's a really good
habit to be as well then you'll be able
to really dig through this figure out
what's working and so you're just
getting so much vision through
an otherwise opaque wall that is the
internet right so if you can't you can't
just go to a website and figure out what
kind of traffic they're getting but this
tool right here does allow you to do
that also ahrefs is another competitor
so if we go to
ahrefs.com you can see that they have
really similar stuff i'll actually log
in and show you guys what these tools
look like um but a third one of course
is actually a free one that is from neil
patel who is a bit of an seo expert if
you haven't heard of him go check out
his stuff as well and so he has a one
that's called ubersuggest he's going to
search on brave here instead of google
but ubersuggest is a free keyword tool
this one is a lot more limited but it is
free a good way to start at the very
least but let's take a look at semrush i
have an account with them and i'm going
to show you how you can actually utilize
them so if we want to write an article
for example let's go to google and let's
just say we want to write an article
about
growing
growing
[Music]
indeterminate tomatoes let's just say we
want to grow indeterminate tomatoes look
up that and you'll see that right here
we have the first ranking article is
this one and like i said it's just a
regular blog you can go down i bet they
have affiliate links in here
they also probably have a little
disclaimer up at the top about their
affiliate links very very common and as
you go down you can see best tasting
tomatoes they're linking out to other
articles they're linking out to the
heaviest another article the heaviest
tomato they ever grew
and a lot of stuff like that but let's
just say we want to know more about this
oh there it is they want to
get you a free vegetable garden planner
there we go so that's how they're
collecting their emails very interesting
well if we copy the link to this article
so let's copy this and let's go over to
semrush and from here we can enter
domain a url or a keyword i'm going to
start off with this we're going to say
search and from here you can see that
it's telling us that this domain home
homefortheharvest.com
is getting a lot of traffic and they
grew a lot in the past year but it seems
like they had a little bit of a drop
since july to august and actually
they're still dropping now so that's
also good insight to see if you're
seeing a decline is that industry
industry-wide or is that something that
is specific to your articles maybe
you're being out-competed by one
specific thing so this is also super
good to look at and i recommend looking
at so they have a good a pretty a pretty
decent 50 domain authority score and
it'll tell you what yours is as well as
you start to you know get more backlinks
get more traffic make more content out
there it'll tell you you can see some
progress along that track as well but
within here we can go and look at
compare domains we can look at a growth
report but if you go down here this is
what's so interesting you can look at
what their traffic what the source of
their traffic actually is we can go to
desktop or by mobile this is very
interesting you can see each one
individually going back to desktop
though let's go down here and see what
their top organic keywords are this is
so important so you can see that they're
getting a lot of traffic 22 000 clicks
by looking up types of apples so this is
actually huge because they're getting a
lot of traffic from that and so you can
go and view the details on all of these
and see where they're actually getting
traffics from so they're getting plant
puns for some reason people are looking
that up and going to them and if we go
to this you'll see that it links to that
article how much traffic they're
actually getting on that article and so
it might give you some ideas of what
articles are working well for them what
are not working well what kind of
articles you can kind of make to compete
with them and you can kind of figure out
you know you can work backwards and look
at what articles are doing well what are
what articles probably have affiliate
links you can go and check that out for
yourself by looking at the articles and
then what are the rates on those
affiliate links so if they're selling
like really really cheap things if it's
some kind of you know tiny little garden
shovel that's like two dollars three
dollars they're probably not getting
that much out of it but if they're
selling like big rototillers that are
over a thousand dollars and and people
are buying this for the for their garden
and they're getting a lot of traffic to
that article that could really be a cash
crop for you and now the very final tool
i want to mention in this video this is
to actually find more people to write
for you
fiverr tends to be slightly lower
quality more like quick little gigs uh
that'd be great if you're trying to make
a logo or something like that
canva.com is a great way to make your
own logo i have a tutorial on that as
well but
the one that we would probably recommend
besides just going out and finding them
on your own which would be great is
actually going through upwork upwork's a
pretty easy way to find some pretty
reasonable
and capable people you'll see the
reviews on there how well they did and
you can find writers or people skilled
at different things and so
finding ghost writers like that can be a
good way to get started and like i said
ultimately if you're able to put out job
postings or find people that can write
for you through word of mouth or
referrals that's a great way to really
build up a library that you're not
always writing all the time because
ultimately the goal is to scale your
blog as you start making more money you
can hire more people to do more writing
so you can spend more time of your own
time looking for new articles and things
like that so with that being said
there's a lot to talk about in this
video hopefully you took notes hopefully
i didn't talk too fast for you but if
you enjoyed the video consider liking
and subscribing i'm mike o'brien from
central media thank you all for watching
i wish you the best of luck with your
articles and your blogs please leave a
comment below and let me know what kind
of blog you're writing thanks for
watching and i'll see you next time