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

Pay-Per-Click Search Engines: I want to research and submit bids for keyword placement at Overture, Bay9.com and Findwhat among others. The most popular keywords can be expensive, but my theme-based site is working a niche and I have hundreds of less popular keywords I can bid on. Because I'm paying for clicks, I want to be sure my title and description really relate to keyword I'm bidding on and are completely relevant to my site so that they only attract highly targeted traffic.

Major Directories: Links to directories will bring some traffic and help my link popularity. Directories don't use spiders. Real people review pages and decide what gets listed. Luckily I've loaded my site with lots of great, single-theme-focused content. To be listed at Yahoo I need to decide if it's worh $299 for my business listing. It's unlikely that I'll be able to submit for free, as my site will be generating income. I can submit to Open Directory for free and to Ask Jeeves by telling them what question my web page answers. I'll automatically be listed at AOL and Netscape when I submit to Open Directory.

Less effective but useful methods of promotion: First there's "word of mouth", which I'm certainly going to get because I'm delivering great content. Second, I'll eventually add a newsletter subscription to my site. And I'll probably use some of my great content as articles to submit to other people's ezines. Perhaps I'll do some offline advertising as well.

Once I've done most of above, I'll analize my traffic, checking click-ins and click-throughs. I can create special tracking links to measure success of my efforts. I'll build on what works and improve or get rid of what doesn't. I now see beneficial results of building a theme-based site. I'm working a niche and getting highly targeted traffic. I offer my visitors valuable content and deliver them to my merchants in a ready-to-buy state of mind. My site scores with engines, my visitors and my merchants. And all that spells WEB BUSINESS for me. Now, I think I'll kick back and start thinking about my next theme-based site.......

Trouble coming up with a theme? Maybe I can help. Send me an email. mailto:yourhelpline@mail.com