SEO Copywriters: How to Use Your Skills to Make Passive Income Online as an Affiliate Marketer

If you’re an SEO copywriter, you have all the skills you need to make passive income online as an affiliate marketer. I know, I’ve been doing it since January of this year (learn more about me here).

And, now is the perfect time. Why? Because it’s summer, when things are traditionally slower for freelance writers.

My Foray as an SEO Copywriter into Affiliate Marketing

For those who are not regular readers of my blogs/websites (ie, InkwellEditorial.com, InkwellEditorial.blogspot.com and SeoWritingJobs.com), let me digress a bit.

As many of you know, I’ve been writing and self-publishing ebooks since 2004. This is what kinda got me hooked on making passive income online. The profits from these are steady and pad the dry spells that are part of every freelance writer’s calendar (although since I started doing SEO writing in the fall of 2007; I stay busy practically all the time).

Affiliate Marketing as Retirement Income

Making passive income appeals to me as a freelance writer because I’m like, “One day, I’m gonna want to retire as a freelance writer. What if Social Security isn’t around? What if I haven’t saved enough to give me the lifestyle I want?”

Waiting until I’m 65 or 67 to retire has never appealed to me. I want to be young enough and healthy enough – and still cute enough – to rock a swimsuit for heaven’s sake. I’ve been working since I was 11 years old; I sure as hell don’t plan to be working until I’m almost 70!

For all of these reasons, affiliate marketing appeals to me. It’s a way to make a consistent income – no matter how old I am – and with relatively little effort (which leaves time for a real life).

I started with one product in January of this year. I promoted it using article marketing, which I talked about in the post, Article Marketing or Free Classifieds: Which Works Better to Promote Affiliate Products?, on BloggingTips.com, a blog I wrote for for over a year.

Promoting this product was so successful that I was hooked for good on affiliate marketing. Since January of this year, I’ve consistently averaged $100-$200/day as an affiliate marketer. Now, this brings me to the details of the title of this post – how to use your skill as an SEO copywriter to make passive income as an affiliate marketer.

In the post, Article Marketing: The Plan I Use to Bring in $100-$200/Day (another one of mine on BloggingTips.com), one of the commenters wrote: 

. . . newbies shouldn’t forget things such as SEO’ing their articles, CopyWriting, Resource Boxes and of course the content itself – all these things will determine how much money you make at the end of the day.

My Affiliate Marketing Plan

1. Go to Clickbank and Choose a Product: Why Clickbank? Because it is probably the largest affiliate network on the web. While there is a lot of junk there, there are also some very good products to be found (I sell my SEO copywriting ebook there).

Clickbank also pays out every two weeks (love getting those checks in the mail!) and they handle all of the administrative paperwork for you. It’s also free to sign up and you can get started immediately.

There are a lot of good, reputable affiliate networks out there though – eg, CommissionJunction.com and PepperjamNetwork.com are two more that come to mind.

Choose Products with Good Sales Records: On Clickbank.com, for example, they have a way for you to measure this. It’s known as the product’s gravity score (highlighted in red below). The higher the gravity score, the better the product sells.  

I read someplace (couldn’t find the article again to save my life) where one affiliate marketing expert said that you should choose products with a gravity score of at least of 20 or higher. So that’s what I look for – in most cases (more on this below).

 Xbox 360 Repair Guide - New Promotional Videos For Easy YouTube Sales. New Automated Google & Yahoo Tracking. We Average A 1/5 Conversion Rate. Let Our Affiliate Page Be Your Blueprint To Commissions! This Product Sells Itself. Don’t Double Your Stocks W/ Forex, Triple Your Money By Selling This Guide! Our Guide Converts! $/sale: $18.43 | Future $: - | Total $/sale: $18.43 | %/sale: 75.0% | %refd: 85.0% | grav: 116.89

2. Start Promoting:

(i) Traditional Article Marketing: I use Article Marketer to distribute my articles. They are distributed to article directories, newsletters, blogs and offline publications that sign up to receive free content.

(iii) Press Release Site: I also submit the articles I write to PRLog.com, a free press release distribution site. Now, although the articles are not press releases, PRLog accepts articles as well. And, sites like this get a lot of search engine juice. Many times, when I type in a keyword phrase to see where/if my article/website is popping up, the article I submitted to PRLog will show up on the first page of results.

(iii) Free Classified Ad Sites: I also submit my articles as “ads” to free classified ad sites. Well, really only Backpage.com. I used to submit to Craigslist, but I find backpage so much more user friendly. I’ve had such success marketing on this site that I actually wrote an ebook about it, ie, Backpage.com Sales Guide:  How I Make $100-$150/Day Promoting Affiliate Products Using This FREE Classified Ads Site.

So you see, one article can get you a lot of coverage – if you use it right.

3. Use SEO When I Write: Now this is where your skill and knowledge as an SEO copywriter can really pay off for you. I use SEO tactics in all of my articles, eg, keyword density, consulting GoogleTrends and Google’s Keyword Adword Tool to find high-traffic keywords and profitable niches, selecting the right anchor text in my article and resource boxes, etc.

Many affiliate marketers know nothing about SEO – which means you can really sell a lot of affiliate products, even in crowded niches. And, all because you know how to drive traffic to your site/blog/affiliate landing page.

4. Vary Marketing Methods: I market different products in different ways.

Blog: For some products, I’ll throw up a blog (ForeclosureBusinessNews.com);

One-Page Site: for others a one-page site (repair-credit-easily.info);

Review Site: for others a review website (TwitterProductReports.com) and

Landing Page: for yet others, I just drive them to the product’s landing page (the one published by the products’ creator; with my affiliate link of course).

The method I choose depends on the product, my level of interest in it, my freelance writing schedule and the income potential. I’ll usually test a product for a week or so just by placing ads on backpage. If it shows promise, then I may pour more time into it.

Remember above when we talked about using Clickbank’s gravity score to select products? If I have a real interest in a product and I think I can make money with it, I ignore this. Passion for a product can overcome popularity in my opinion – if there’s a market for the product.

Also, for my review site, TwitterProductReports.com, I ignored this rule of thumb. My goal with this site is to give feedback on Twitter products, no matter what their gravity score is. My team and I will be reviewing more Twitter products and adding them to the site frequently. We’re building an authority Twitter product review site. Right now, you’ll find product fact sheets on the Top 10 Twitter products there though.

Is Affiliate Marketing in Your Future as an SEO Copywriter?

If you decide to pursue affiliate marketing, remember, as an SEO copywriter you have a leg up on most of the competition. During this, the slow summer season, is the perfect time to start looking into affiliate marketing to make some extra income.

Good luck, and feel free to comment here to let others know how you’re coming along. The feedback would be greatly appreciated.

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P.S.: Learn how to make $100-$250+/Day as an SEO Copywriter.

Copyright © 2009: Yuwanda Black for SEO Writing Jobs. This article may not be reproduced or redistributed without the express, written consent of the author.