So we have hosting setup, domains purchased, WordPress installed, WFReview installed, and our data file ready for import.  (You’ll have to add headers to your Shareasale CSV file.  The files come as pipe-delimited .txt files from Shareasale, you simply need to load the .txt file up into excel, import appropriately by choosing Delimited, then using the “|” symbol in the ‘other delimiter’ field, copy/paste headers from Shareasale, and then save it as a CSV to your PC.  Simple as that!  If you have questions,  out video tutorials on www.reviewpluginforwordpress.com details how CSV files are to be used.

Getting your CSV file perfect is the MOST important step.  Garbage in, garbage out.  Make sure the CSV has the basics:  Line breaks, headers, UTF-8, saved as comma separated (not tab, semi-colon, space, or any other character, it MUST be comma delimited.)

NEXT: Tutorial: Getting started with WFReview Part 4

You’ll need the following to get started:

1. Approved merchant offer from sharasale.com (or another network with datafeeds).   Some of the merchants are instant approval; others never approve applications, and the rest take days or even weeks to approve applications.  Diversify and apply to many merchants who have products related to your niche until you have at least 3 merchants you can get datafeeds from.  (Hint: Make sure you have a shell site built AND registered with ShareaSale BEFORE you apply for a program.  Populate it with generic data, including articles and any content that would show a merchant affiliate manager that you are a serious web site.  Just get something in there so the affiliate manager for the merchant can visualize the type of site their products will appear on.
2. Datafeed for your merchant/offer.  Some merchants do not offer datafeeds, be sure to apply to merchants that DO in fact offer datafeeds.  You can search only those with datafeeds to make it easier to identify datafeed merchants.
3. Domain name.  Now here is something you CAN use GoDaddy or Namecheap.com for.  Any domain will do, but consider that targeted keywords in the URL make a big difference when you’re trying to rank your site.  Namecheap is who I recommend.  Get WHOIS protection AND an SSL certificate with your domain purchase for about $9 when you buy with a coupon, so find this month’s coupon!  SSL and Whois protection is important for a few reasons, so get them both with the coupon.
4. Hosting.  This can be a cheapo account, but I highly recommend not using Godaddy, Hostgator, or other high-volume-per-server shared servers.  WFReview has a hosting service that utilizes a WFReview/Wordpress optimized server farm and it’s a LOT faster/scalable and inexpensive than using one of those other services.  If you’re going to import more than 10,000 products, probably better to use a VPS or dedicated server.  Our hosting packages at WFReview can handle much more data than a shared account on GoDaddy or others, it’s a good idea to use us for at least your first site so you have no issues with traffic or latency on the server.
5. WFReview 3.0 or later
6. A copy of WordPress 2.8.6 or newer (WordPress MU works as well, and if you’re experienced with WPMU, WFReview works flawlessly with it, consider using it to scale out in the future.)
7. Any SEO plugins you wish to use. (XML-Sitemaps is essential, the others you can choose on your own!)  Also check out the Related Posts plugin, it absolutely makes a HUGE difference in conversions.
8. Setup a Google Webmaster Tools account.  This allows you to submit sitemaps and view rank data for your pages/keywords.  It’s free and it gets results.  You can submit up to 50K pages in a single Sitemap, and here you can specify multiple sitemaps.  Sitemaps are XML files that tell Google where to look on your site for content. It’s not a guarantee that you’re page/URL will get ranked in Google’s search results, but it does help!
9. Setup a single trial account at www.sheerseo.com .  You will use this to monitor rankings for your top keywords.  The trial account is SUPER limited, but it gets you in the mindset of thinking rank.
10. Get a free account at clicktale.com.  This will allow you to see where visitors are clicking/engaging on your site. This is important early on to gauge where people are first trying to look, allowing you to modify your theme/layout to get a lower bounce rate.

You’ll want to complete the steps above in order, though if you already have datafeeds and hosting, it’s not imperative.  I recommend following the order above.

Before you proceed to Step 4, you want to get all the hosting setup, WordPress installed, and WFReview installed.  Make sure the site comes up when you go to it in a web browser.  Also make sure you have a local copy of the Shareasale merchant datafeed on your computer.

NEXT: Using WFReview To Make Money With Your First Website PART 4

Because WFReview imports mass quantities of data (From CSV, or comma separated values, files) I want to identify affiliate programs that offer datafeeds. Datafeeds are files that contain the product information I want to use. For example:

Each row is a unique product column is a unique part of that product.  We call the rows “records” and the columns “fields”.

Using this format, we are easily able to use WFReview to import this data.  Since we can use the product name as the title of our posts, the image URL as the photo in the posts, the price as the price field in our posts, and the productAffiliateURL as the LINK (important!) in our posts, 99% of the work is done for us.

This specific feed for Mac Memory has over 38,000 products in it, all relating to memory for Mac (and many other high end) computers.

IMPORTANT:  I look for a few things in my datafeeds, primarily MODEL NUMBERS and specific brand names and model numbers.  Both large images AND thumbnail images, good descriptions with HTML, and current prices are very important too. Shareasale.com does a good job of keeping things in order.

Why is that important?  Because people who search for <brand>  <keyword>  <Model> (example: Mac memory 4L84H) are a LOT more likely to be either comparison shopping for a purchase, or looking to purchase a hard to find item online.  In our case, we have Mac memory, which is good because there are a LOT fewer Mac repair centers/technicians than there are PC techs in the United States.  This makes it easy for us to find highly motivated buyers since users will be looking for deals online vs. a repair center locally.  Better to have 5 motivated buyers find your site with 4 making purchases, than it is to have 20,000 people just browsing your site and none make purchases.  We’re providing a solution to the buyer’s problem by offering the exact thing they want and an immediate way to get it!

NEXT: Tutorial: Getting started with WFReview Part 3

This tutorial is free, if you paid for it, get your money back.

FACT: You will NEVER make a dime buying products that tell you how to make a dime. If you don’t grasp this or embrace it, stop now, you’ll never be successful online.  You have to take some time to think of a niche you want to earn with, then GET OUT and DO IT!   Better to have TRIED and failed 1,000 times than to never have tried all.  Don’t buy e-Books, don’t buy coaching  (unless it’s a hardcore technique that’s gotten rave industry reviews from authority marketers, more on that later) and MOST CERTAINLY don’t think that Internet marketing as a full time job or an 8-5.  If you want a full-time income from IM, you’ll have to grind it out HARD for a few months/quarters until sites start ranking and collectively increase in revenue.  This tutorial is meant to help you get to that point: Where you work for yourself and make a good living doing what you love.

Where the hell do I start? The first step is where most people (myself included at one point) really struggle.  I want to do amazing sites that will rake in the dough, but I have no idea where to start and what I should be doing (and not doing!)

STEP 1: Decide what you want to sell/promote

This is one of the most difficult decisions for a newbie because you have no idea the grand scope of the industry, what networks offer what offers, or what kind of history different offers have.  You need to be able to make money without spending money on traffic, so you need to pick a very SPECIFIC niche that you want to create a site for.  ‘Electronics’ is waaay too vague. ‘Televisions’ is waaay to vague, ‘HDTVs’ is waaay too vague.  You need to find the lowest common denominator in a niche.  For example:

• Television remote controls
• Camcorder batteries
• Wedding night lingerie for tall/short women
• Bamboo ceiling fans
• Keyboards for the disabled
• Computers for Preschoolers
• Etc.

Don’t try to create a ‘one stop shop’ for every aspect of your niche when you’re starting out, you’ll never drive any sort of quality TARGETED traffic.  It’s the targeted traffic that makes you money, not the massive collection of meagerly linked products on your web page.  The people who are your ‘targeted traffic’ are looking for one thing and one thing only, and they usually have their credit cards out ready to buy.  Design your site to accommodate these people, and allow them to easily find exactly what it is they’re looking for.

Before you start crying because the million dollar idea you thought you had was just crushed, don’t think that you can’t do what you originally came here to do.  Start a “project idea” document in Word and keep track of your ideas. Once you gain experience and have some coin, you can try the higher risk ideas out. For now though, you’re a broke little monkey and need to concentrate on providing very specific products that are going to be easily found by people looking for exactly what you are selling.

We’re going to pick on products for Mac users: specifically, replacement memory.  This is what our entire site will be featuring, nothing but memory for Macs.  40,000 pieces of dirty, sexy, memory for Macs.  The site is http://www.macmemorystore.com and they are a merchant on shareasale.com.  At the time of this writing, their 7-day EPC (earnings per click) was $166.00 and the 30 day was $62.69.  This means they’re getting sales and the dollar amounts of those sales are relatively high.  DO NOT ASSUME THAT BECAUSE A HIGH EPC EXISTS, YOU WILL PROFIT.  You need to TEST TEST TEST every single offer yourself.

Why is this a good idea?  First, if you are going to want to earn a commission off of a product you sell online, you NEED to be signed up with an affiliate network.  These networks are the middleman between the merchant (the guy offering the product) and the affiliate (You, the person wanting to sell the product for a commission.) and are fairly easy to get signed up with.  You should apply to the affiliate network and get accepted before going to step 2.  Most people choose to apply to affiliate networks because they find an offer that they want to promote and it happens to be on a specific network.  Look at www.offers202.com for a good list of offers and networks.

The network I am going to use for this site is Shareasale.com.  It has a huge supply of merchants with datafeeds.  (Datafeeds are downloadable files that have most of the product information from the merchant.  The parts of the information such as Product_Name, Description, Image_URL, Price, etc. are all in a delimited format, which allows you to import into WFReview or Excel.)

All I have to do is download the datafeed then import the feed as posts into WFReview. It’s a little more involved than that obviously, with adding headers and filtering out any products you do NOT want in your site, but for the most part, it works very well, is very fast, and gets results.  Plus this Mac Memory Store feed has acceptable descriptions and default product images so my posts end up look really good!

Click here to apply to www.shareasale.com / www.commissionjunction.com / www.linkshare.com / www.EWAnetwork.com

NEXT:  Tutorial: Getting started with WFReview Part 2