Steps To Starting Your Own Authority Site

If your reading this post you’re most likely on the same journey as I am, trying to figure out how to make money online. In my case I’m attempting to replace my current 9-5 job income so I can find some form of freedom. 3k in consistent monthly income would allow me to stop working for someone else, run a business from my computer and start crossing off some of the items on my bucket list. In your case perhaps you would be happy with an extra $500 or $1000 per month to help with bills or maybe your like me and you want to make major changes.

Whatever your goals may be im going to share with you exactly how Ive reached the level Im currently at. I’m still new at this and im only bringing in between 2k and $2500 per month but I’ve met lots of people who are making a full time income doing what I do so I know it works and my hope is that you’ll take this information and start researching and asking questions and then jump in and get started yourself. With that being said I’ll begin with how I got started.

January 2014

In January 2014 I got the bright idea to start recording my daily trading videos so I could go back and re watch them to see where I needed to improve. To make things easier on myself I decided to put all of my videos on a blogger blog to keep them organized. This worked out well for me and in a short time my little blog started to get 10-20 hits a day from other traders interested in what I was doing. Shortly after that the vendor of the system I was using told me that he was starting an affiliate program and asked if I’d be interested in joining. I agreed, got an affiliate link and added it to each post that I had put out. To my surprise that same week I got my very first affiliate sale. I made a $100 commission and I was hooked from then on. I purchased a blogger theme and started testing other systems. You can check my income reports to see my progress since January.

The method im describing is starting an authority site or review site. For me I started my authority site in the trading niche but you can do the same in any niche you have an interest in. There are very successful authority sites in the Internet Marketing Niche, health and wellness niche, weight loss/gain niche and many others. I would say it’s very important to choose something you’re genuinely interested in or passionate about, I personally enjoy trading so I don’t view it as a job to review different systems and answer emails from people about anything trading related. I don’t want this post to be too long so below I’ve split everything up from the first step to the last.

Step 1: Choosing your topic

As I stated above its important to choose a topic for your authority site that you’re genuinely interested in. When I was getting started I was influenced by sites like smartpassiveincome.com which is in the internet marketing niche and as I continued researching I found sites in other niches such as simplysnare.com in the drum niche and slowcarbdietexperiments.com in the health niche. Take a look at all of those examples and get a feel for what their trying to accomplish with their posts. You’ll notice that simply snare was created by a drummer and slowcarbdietexperiments was created by someone who was documenting their diet and exercise results. In other words they were both passionate about their subjects and were in a position to offer genuine assistance to people who were interested in drumming or dieting and exercise. The first thing you’ll need to do is decide what the focus of your blog will be. Once you’ve got that move on to step 2.

Step 2: WordPress or Blogger

In my opinion there are 2 main choices when it comes to starting your blog/authority site, WordPress or Blogger. I created my trading site with Blogger because it’s the platform I was familiar with. My second site, the one your on right now, was created with wordpress. I’d say their both simple platforms to use but if I had to start over I’d go with a self hosted wordpress blog. If you ever decided you wanted to sell your site blogger/blogspot doesn’t give you that option but with a self hosted wordpress site everything is under your control so you can do with it as you please. Also simple tasks like adding a popup or masking your links are much easier using wordpress, most functions are. Again there’s nothing wrong with blogger and I know plenty of people who use it, myself included. This is just my personal opinion.

The template im currently using for my blogger site can be found here: Blogger Template and the template I used for this wordpress site can be found here: WordPress Template. When building your site your going to want a Logo, the logo on this site and my trading site are both ready made logos and you can get more info on that here:  99designs . They have options for just about any niche. If you choose to go with WordPress i highly recommend self hosting with BlueHost. Thats who i use and i’ve had nothing but good experiences with them.

Step 3: Building your list

List building is one of those things I wish I had started from the beginning. The more people you have on your list the more people will know about the great new product or service that you just tested. As long as you’re providing relevant content your list has the potential to purchase from you over and over again. This is why its so important to build a relationship with your list by sending out quality content and answering emails quickly when they come in.

There are several options when it comes to growing your list. Solo ads are one option that I’ve tried. You will basically need a product to give away, a landing page that talks about your free offer, like this http://best-onlinesuccess-secrets.com/squeeze/fb/ and an autoresponder service to capture your leads, I use getresponse. To find solo ad sellers I used a site called udimi.com and there are sellers there for just about any niche you can think of. I’ve found most of the vendors there to be honest but there are a few that will do things like use a bot to send fake clicks and sign ups to your offer. If you come across these people you can easily report them and get them banned.

Another option, which I prefer, is to use a pop up on your website. For example 10 seconds after a person lands on your site a pop up like the one below will appear with your free offer.

You can also place a signup form at the bottom or top of each post you make on your site. The picture below is an opt in form that would go at the bottom of your blog post.

and you can even place an opt in form in the side bar of your site as seen below.

You want to give people as many opportunities as possible to join your list. Also you want to be sure that you only send them quality content related to the subject of your blog. You can use Fiverr.com to get your landing pages, pop ups and opt in forms created cheaply. That’s what I did.

 Step 4: What to post about

What you post about will depend on what niche you choose. The main idea is to provide value and not come across as a salesman trying to convince your readers to purchase something. When you do reviews they should be honest, pointing out the positives and negatives of the product or service. In my niche I’ve found I get the best results when I show real proof that a trading system works. I do this by recording every day of my testing so people can verify the results for themselves and validate my reason for giving a positive or negative final review. In this way I don’t have to try to convince anyone of anything. They simply watch my videos and see me profit from the market each day and if they decide they want to do the same they click my link for more information. This has worked over and over again with each new system I test. Sometimes systems fail my testing and this is fine, im honestly happy to save my readers time and money they would of otherwise wasted. Showing the failed systems also builds trust among my readers.

If your in the diet and weight loss niche your readers should know what your goals are and you should be documenting your progress and work out routines. You should mention the products that you’re using in your journey to lose weight, diet pills, protein shakes, jogging shoes etc. whatever has been helping you on your journey can be given an honest review. Post about how happy you are to of ran 2 miles for the first time or how hard it was to avoid the cake at your boss’s birthday party. Be as real as possible and share your struggles and successes with your readers. You’ll be surprised how many people are able to relate to what you’re going through.

I hope this gives you some idea of what you should be posting about on your authority site. Your main goal should be to help people who are on the same path as you are, whether it’s to find financial freedom, to lose weight, to gain muscle, to beat a medical condition, to travel the word or even to become a better poker player.

Step 5: Incorporate your affiliate links

This step is pretty simple. Personally I place my affiliate links at the beginning of my youtube video descriptions so people don’t have to scroll down to see them. I also place an affiliate link on my website in every post that I make about a specific product or service. If someone has the desire to get more information or test any product on my site I make it as easy as possible for them to do so.

Step 6: Getting Traffic

Getting traffic to your authority site can take time depending on what method you use. There is the option to use google adwords or bing and pay for ads or you could simply use solo ads but I’ll focus on the Free options that I use. Youtube sends me the majority of my traffic. Youtube also tends to rank on page 1 of google faster than my blog posts so using youtube for traffic is a no brainer. If you don’t have any recording software you can use the free software that I use. Its located at http://www.bbsoftware.co.uk/BBFlashBack_FreePlayer.aspx . This software is easy to use and makes it easy to upload to youtube. I will typically list a few keywords under my youtube description and also in the tags section when uploading videos.

Another good option that I’ve used is to find forums devoted to your niche, join those sites and start participating in the conversations. Answer questions where you can and start new conversations yourself. The real key here is to put a link to your website in your signature. Your signature will be present under any post that you make on most forums. For me I did this with as many trading sites as I could find. I joined them all, put my link in the signature area and started participating in conversations. I was able to send lots of traffic to my site that way and you can do the same.

In a nutshell People will visit your site, read your posts and reviews and if their interested in a product or service you represent they might click on your affiliate link and purchase. That’s how we get paid.

Step 7: Repeat the process

Once you’ve completed your first review or test simply find the next product or service that you’d like to feature on your site. You can use the exact same process for your next review that you did for the first. In time your site will grow and it’s very possible that you won’t even have to pay for the products your reviewing. Companies will be more than happy to let you try out their products or services in exchange for the ability to be featured on your site and marketed to your list. Again this will only happen after you’ve built up a following in your niche.

I found that once I completed my first review each one that followed got easier and easier. I’m sure you’ll notice the same. At this point I rarely pay for trading systems since lots of vendors in my niche know about my site now. When a new trading product is released I’ll send an email to the vendor asking for a copy to review, ill also mention my site and my list to show im an authority in my niche.

That simple email almost always works because the vendors can see the benefit of giving me free access to their product or service. The benefits being more potential sales and more potential clients to market to in the future. You can do the same for your niche after your site and list grows. I really hope this post has been helpful and has given you enough information to get started on your own Authority Site. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to send me a message thru the contact link above and ill get back to you asap.