A keyword search should give me lots of ideas for related topics for my theme. OK, it threw up some weird, totally unrelated stuff, too, but I'll just ignore that. What I want are keywords that suggest a topic that I can write (or find) valuable content about. For example, my search on "Italian cooking" brought up "lowfat cooking". Hmm, hadn't thought of that, but a lot of Italian recipes are low in fat, so perhaps I'll write a page on this topic. This is called a keyword-focused page, and once I have 10 or 20 of these, I know that anyone searching for these and related keywords is going to find my site.

Great, I've got a site based on a theme that I know about and/or interests me. (If we're talking Italian cooking, we're talking PASSION!) I've packed it with valuable content on topics closely related to my theme. My visitors are going to love it, as are search engines. But, well..... what about me?

Oh, did I forget? I do love Italian cooking, but I'm building this theme-based website to earn income. So, at least some of my pages will offer valuable content that is also designed to presell. Presell what? Any product, program or service that I represent as an affiliate. Of course, product, program or service needs to "fit" with content and theme of my site. My "Italian cooking" site will include a page on "lowfat Italian cooking". Within my valuable content, I will recommend a favorite cookbook on lowfat Italian cooking and provide an in-text link to a bookseller who will then sell that book to my visitor. Content on Italian wine will link to a merchant where my visitor can mail-order Italian wines. Etc, etc.

How do I find products, programs and services I want to represent? That is topic of Part 3 of this series. Trouble coming up with a theme? Maybe I can help. mailto:yourhelpline@mail.com

Technique 2: I'll do a search for each of my keywords, plus word "affiliate", like this... +Italian wine +affiliate. Or I can try this... affiliate wine. What will come up are either merchants with affiliate programs or content sites that are affiliates. Again, for merchants, I'll see if I like their product and affiliate program. For content sights, I'll check their links.

Technique 3: Now I'm going to check directories. There are a lot of affiliate program directories out there. I'll check with a few of best, like AssociatePrograms.com, Refer-It.com, CashPile.com and Associate-It.com. The directories list programs by category, so I'll go right to catagories that fit my site theme and see if there is any program I like. They often have reviews as well, which I'll check.

Technique 4: One more thing I could do is to join affiliate networks. These networks provide merchants with affiliates and vice-versa. It's a good place to get exposure to a wide variety of merchants. I'm sure to find some I haven't run across already, so I'll check to see if any programs are featured that will work for me. I can join Commission Junction, BeFree, LinkShare, and/or ClickTrade.

That took a bit of work, but now I'm ready to narrow down my choices and weed out merchants with less than great products, or poor affiliate programs. I'm going to be pretty particular. The products I choose to represent will reflect on me. And quality of affiliate program will be reflected in my commission checks. I want my visitors to be happy and come back to my site. And I want fair compensation for delivering such valuable, presold customers to my merchants' sites.

In part 4 of this series, I'll explain how best to build a theme-based site. Questions? mailto:yourhelpline@mail.com