I am right in the middle of preparing a report I’ll be releasing this week about how to leverage every article you write so that you can squeeze as much money out of it as possible. As a result of the research I’ve not had much time to think about a blog post for today.. (you didn’t think this was random did you!) So i thought it might be a good time to post an I wrote last year.

I wrote it at the end of October so you have an extra 5 weeks , pay particular attention to point 6, At the moment I already have 13 of the top 15 rankings in Google for a particular product I expect to be big this year. (actually as i wrote this I realized that this ties in quite nicely with the report I am doing)

If you would like to know more there is a video series available to WordPress Goldmine members

A week before Thanksgiving last year I realized that I had a major expense due early in the New Year and if I was going to pay that I wasn’t going to have any much needed Christmas cash. I had to come up with a plan. After a few hours of thinking and writing down ideas on a sheet of paper I had my plan.

8 weeks later I had earned over $20,000 in commissions and sold almost $250,000 dollars worth of physical products. My cash crisis was over. Not only that I had a blog that continued to earn me money throughout the year.

Here are 7 tips that will help you to earn money this Christmas. Although you’ll find that by picking the right products you’ll have a steady income throughout the year. So let’s get started.

1. Choose only one or two products and concentrate on them, learn as much about them as possible.

2. Use article marketing to promote the products, it’s cheaper and more effective that Pay Per Click

3. Create a blog, you can use a generic name but ensure that individual posts use the product name in full

4. Don’t use generic names in your posts, rather than use “Tissot Watches” use product names “Tissot T Touch Titanium”

5. Use big name retailers, people trust them so use Amazon or even eBay

6. Set up Squidoo Lenses and Hubpages. The more sites you can get into the top 10 of Google the more money you’ll make. I had 7 of the top ten spots in Google at one point last year.

7. Plan ahead, if the retailer sells out of stock you’ll need an alternative source of income so make the links easy to change. If this happens eBay or AdSense can earn you a lot of money. I made more commission from eBay than the retailer because after shop stock was gone people were selling at 3 times the retail price on eBay.

It really isn’t too late to make cash for Christmas, only yesterday I set up a new blog selling an in demand product. Check sources like amazons best sellers list or eBay pulse for products that are in demand. Also watch TV and magazines what is being advertised? There are thousands of products so you don’t have to focus on the ones that everyone else is, Remember there are over 10 million pages for the Wii Fit! So choose your product wisely

There are several ways that you can set up a website to make money for Christmas this year. My preferred method is WordPress as it ranks well in the search engines and it’s easy to set up and to tweak.

I hope you found that useful watch out for the report on Friday or Saturday

Last year I made more money in November and December than I did in any other 6 month period prior to it.  It set me up for my successful year ever plus this year the same sites I set up last year are already starting to attract a healthy income even before I’ve done any promotion of them. The main one has already had a couple of $100 days and I’ve not touched it since last November.

You are not too late to jump on the Christmas bandwagon. You’ll hear of people who set up their Christmas sites in June not me a week before Thanksgiving is more than enough. The secret is to focus on 1 or two products and aim to dominate the search engine listing for that product.

Last year with 2 articles, a blog page, and some social bookmarking posts plus squidoo and hubpages I had 7 of the top 10 place in google for 1 product. That was enough to sell over $250,000 worth of that product . Not bad when the commission was 12%.  When the supplier ran out of the product I just switched my sales links to ebay where people who had bought 2 or 3 items were selling them for 3 to 4 times what they paid for them.

There is nothing like the feeling of checking your income stats and finding you made $300 from a 2 day old blog post..it has to be up there as one of the best feelings ever… it’s even better when it happens every day but it never feels as good as that first time.

Here are some tips that will help you.

1. 1. Choose 1 or 2 products it doesn’t matter what they are, think of what people buy for christmas and stick to those. Don’t spread yourself too thin
2. 2. Watch TV read magazines and make note of whats being heavily advertised
3. 3. Try to use product names: Tissot Men’s T-Touch Titanium Watch will rank better than Mens Tissot Watch
4. 4. Decide who you want to sell through, you have a choice of merchants and affiliate networks CJ.com, shareasale, google affiliate network are great but don’t forget Amazon and eBay you might earn less commission but they are well known and customers are happy to use them as they are trusted..and when was the last time anyone only bought 1 item on amazon!
5. 5. Make you site/blog so that it is easy to swap out the links for another if the merchant sells out.
6. 6. Write or outsource articles it’s cheaper than PPC.  Each article I wrote last year earned me in the region of $7,000  even if you only earn $100 per article isn’t it worth paying $7 -$10 for it?
7. 7. Don’t overlook adding adsense to your site PPC advertisers bid big at christmas to get sales of popular products.
8. 8. Avoid the obvious products that everyone will be going for you don’t need to be in a competitive market there is more than enough money to be made on other products.
9. 9. Your aim is to get as many of the top 10 search results so don’t be afraid to get links back to your Articles on EzineArticles tools like gather, Zimbio and Digg can be very useful.
10. 10. When you start earning money reinvest some of it in services like UAW which will help increase your search engine rankings.

So there you have it 10 tips to help you to have a very prosperous christmas. I cover how I created and promoted my sites in more detail in WordPress Goldmine so if you bought it earlier in the year it’s probably time to have a re-read of it!

Finally If the only thing that’s putting you off of setting up sites for christmas is that you don’t like to write articles then visit www.articleandcontentsolutions.com. Allison wrote all my articles last year so she know how to write product articles. (can you write 500 words on an obscure product? she can!).

She’ll also write articles ready for posting to UAW.  I’ve negotiated a discount for readers of my blog so use the promo code:  “Mark Loves Allison” (it’s ok she’s my wife!) when you email her and she’ll give you a 10% discount