Mark continues his series on niche selection and keyword research by tackling the question every affiliate marketer faces: how do you know if a keyword is too competitive to win? He also shares a motivational message from Andrew Hansen about the dangers of quitting too soon and gives a progress update on his Forever Affiliate 20-site experiment.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
- How to evaluate keyword competition beyond simple traffic numbers
- Why the number of referring domains matters more than total backlink count
- How anchor text distribution affects rankings in a post-Panda and post-Penguin world
- The three affiliate marketing courses Mark recommends and how to choose between them
- Why quitting too soon is the most common reason internet marketers fail
Episode Summary
Choosing an Affiliate Marketing Course
Mark responds to a listener question about which course to buy by outlining three options. Micro Site Profits from Internet Business Mastery teaches fundamentals through building AdSense sites. Forever Affiliate focuses on affiliate products that pay high commissions. The Internet Business Mastery Academy is for people who want to build an authority brand in their niche. Mark's advice: pick the one that matches your interests and budget, commit to it fully, and stop buying new courses before finishing the first one.
Don't Quit: Andrew Hansen's Motivational Email
Mark reads an email Andrew Hansen sent to his coaching students at the five-week mark. The message is universal: the initial excitement of any new venture fades, obstacles pile up, and small decisions to “take your foot off the gas” snowball into quitting. Andrew's core point is that the people who push through this inflection point are the ones who succeed. Mark connects this to his broader observation that most internet marketing failures are really just people who stopped too early.
Keyword Competition Analysis
Mark digs into how to assess whether you can actually rank for a keyword. The key factors are search volume (enough traffic to be worth pursuing), competition strength (who is currently ranking and why), and the quality of backlinks pointing to competing pages. In the post-Penguin era, the number of unique referring domains matters more than raw backlink counts, and anchor text distribution is critical. Branded links and naked URLs should far outweigh keyword-targeted anchor text — anything else looks unnatural to Google.
Mark recommends tools like Keyword Canine, Market Samurai, and Majestic SEO for competition analysis, but emphasizes that no tool replaces actually looking at the first page of Google results and understanding why each page ranks where it does.
Key Takeaways
- Keyword competition analysis requires looking at who ranks on page one and understanding their backlink profile, not just checking a difficulty score
- Referring domain count is a more reliable competition metric than total backlink count
- Natural anchor text distribution means branded links and naked URLs should dominate your link profile
- The biggest threat to internet marketing success is not competition or bad luck — it is quitting during the inevitable motivation dip
- Pick one course, one method, and follow through completely before considering alternatives
What's Changed Since This Episode
Mark recorded this in 2013, during the aftermath of Google's Panda and Penguin updates that upended the SEO world. The principles he discusses have largely been validated, but the tools and tactics have evolved significantly.
Backlink analysis has become far more sophisticated. Tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz now provide Domain Rating, Domain Authority, and detailed link quality metrics that make competition assessment much more reliable than it was in 2013. The concept of referring domains that Mark highlights has become a standard metric in modern SEO.
Google's algorithm has continued to evolve well beyond Panda and Penguin. The Helpful Content Update (2022), multiple core updates, and the integration of AI into search results have made topical authority and genuine expertise far more important than backlink manipulation. E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) is now the framework Google uses to evaluate content quality.
The micro-niche site strategy Mark describes — building 20 small affiliate sites — has largely been replaced by a focus on fewer, higher-quality authority sites. Google's repeated algorithm updates have systematically penalized thin content sites, making the “spray and pray” approach increasingly risky. Modern affiliate marketers typically build one or two comprehensive sites with deep topical coverage.
Market Samurai was discontinued. Keyword Canine is no longer available. The competitive analysis workflow Mark describes is now handled by Ahrefs, Semrush, or similar all-in-one SEO platforms.
Resources Mentioned
- Ahrefs Keyword Explorer — modern replacement for the keyword competition tools discussed
- Smart Passive Income — Pat Flynn's online business resource
- Moz Link Explorer — successor to tools like Majestic SEO for backlink analysis
- Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast
Related Episodes
If you found this episode helpful, you might also enjoy:
Listen and Subscribe
Listen to Late Night Internet Marketing on Apple Podcasts or subscribe at latenightim.com/internet-marketing-podcast/. Have a question for Mark? Call the digital recorder at 214-444-8655 or drop a comment below.
