Beginners Guide to Affiliate Marketing

SunnySusie

The Ideal Host
I'll risk throwing in another couple of host suggestions, both are at the "cheaper" end and have worked well for me. I like that they have low entry level packages that can be upgraded if and when your site takes off. This keeps the barrier to entry at a minimum, by going with a company that offers a low start out package you aren't stumping up a big risk. Check out uk2 or eukhost.

The down side of this is that an early investment can be quite motivating! But still, this is MSE so a cheap low cost option might be a good start. Again, I don't want this to turn into an advert, but I find support to work fine, they will install things like WordPress for beginners, their uptime is plenty good enough for an amateur, and the options to scale out later for a reasonable price are all there.

And finally, plenty have proved that you can host a site on blogger.com or wordpress.com just fine. If you don't like the technical side of things then they are worth a look. Note that they are more restrictive as to what affiliate links you can use. iirc blogger is probably preferable from that point of view.

Niche Sites
And thanks to the above poster regarding targeted content. I hope that I at least hinted along similar lines in the early post but if not then it's an important point. Targeting the right topics and covering terms that people will be searching for is critical for the amateur. In my day job, we can put out a press release that will be picked up by the national press and gain us 1000's of targeted inbound links for a generic term. This is why the company I work for is on or near the top of every affiliate marketer's dream search term. You and I just can't compete with this from the comfort of our home PC.

An amateur needs to go for less competitive terms and this will mean targeted "niche" pages. Rich long articles work wonders for "long tail" search terms. These are all the millions of unique queries that people enter every day. Finding your own angle on existing topics can work wonders, so there is no point chasing "car insurance" but a colleague of mine did very well by building a site round a particular car model. And guess what, all his forum members renew their insurance through his links each year. A guaranteed income for the next 10 years or longer. Others have built websites around helping convicted drivers get back on the road, etc...

Like I said earlier in the thread, if you are already an expert in your field, perhaps you're a butcher, or a flower arranger, or whatever then you can probably write endlessly on your favourite topic, put up pictures, upload videos. Not only are you sharing your passion, meeting people with the same interest, but as the site grows you get to make a small (or maybe large) income...!

tameem

Thanks for this topic and value info. i want to add that clickbank is good for affiliates and vendors

irace

I like the sound of this but not 100% understanding it.

I've tried making websites before using free ones like synthasite/yolasite and wix, what makes wordpress / blog sites better for this? Surely blog sites are more limited to normal sites?

I keep hearing 'niche' this and that for choosing what your website is about, what type of niche is best?
For example heres a few ideas:
1. Music Players (eg Stereos, HiFis, MP3 Players)
2. MP3 Players Only
3. An Apple iPOD
I hope I've made that clear enough so that you can see I have a general niche (music players), a categorised niche (mp3 players) and a specific niche (the apple ipod).

Say I am only using Amazon affiliate scheme.
Would I be better off having a website/blog affiliate linking to many music players, a few mp3 players, or just one or two variants of apple ipods?

littleearner

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StaffsSW

irace wrote: »

I like the sound of this but not 100% understanding it.

I've tried making websites before using free ones like synthasite/yolasite and wix, what makes wordpress / blog sites better for this? Surely blog sites are more limited to normal sites?

I keep hearing 'niche' this and that for choosing what your website is about, what type of niche is best?
For example heres a few ideas:
1. Music Players (eg Stereos, HiFis, MP3 Players)
2. MP3 Players Only
3. An Apple iPOD
I hope I've made that clear enough so that you can see I have a general niche (music players), a categorised niche (mp3 players) and a specific niche (the apple ipod).

Say I am only using Amazon affiliate scheme.
Would I be better off having a website/blog affiliate linking to many music players, a few mp3 players, or just one or two variants of apple ipods?

The outline of your suggestion is correct, with apple iPod being the specific niche, and the one that you should pay attention to focusing on, however MP3 players, and iPods in particular are ultra competitive, and one I'd stay well away from. You will be competing with the brand name itself, the major online retailers, shopping comparison sites and a billion other small scale retailers and blogs.

However, it's not all negative. Before the iPhone was released in the UK, I created a website that could tell people where to source iPhones for import. I registered a stunningly apt domain name, used a standard wordpress blog with customised layout, and obtained about a 30 pre-written, public rights articles that I put on the site for keyword content. I added a number of links through to the merchant and took a £20 commission on each phone sold, but I also had affiliate links to early app stores, ringtone sites etc.

I little bit of basic SEO knowledge, a couple of "grey" hat methods of indexing, and I earnt my first commission within 12 hours of the site going live. For around 3 weeks I was taking over 3000 hits per day from natural searches, I had top placement on google on countless related search phrases, and i was converting visitors into sales at a spectacular rate.

However, O2 and Carphone Warehouse were awarded the UK distribution contract, and them and their affiliates had a much larger SEO budget than I did, and within another 3 weeks, I was down to single figure daily traffic - but by then I had made the money.

Unless you can be one of the first to target something as popular as new model ipods, it's something best left to the big players.

irace

thanks for the reply, yeah the ipod was just an example

SunnySusie

Steve makes a good point, and I think I mentioned it earlier too. My biggest success to date was also getting in early on a new product. I managed to hold onto that lead by converting people to forum subscribers, so I still get 1000s of returning visitors each day, plus plenty of new people who google "product + forum" before making their purchasing decision. I also get to sell accessories to existing owners, and if there is a product upgrade one day then I'm hoping that will be a nice pay day... we'll see! Running a forum is extra work though (moderating disputes, removing spam, monitoring illegal content, etc), it can be fun but one is enough.

The other thing about brands is to watch out for trademarks. Some people are happy to build sites with trademark names but it's not something I do. You may get a scary legal letter coming your way and if you are an amateur part time builder then this is not something you want to worry about. Anyway, I'm no lawyer so you'll have to seek your own advice on that!

How niche is niche?
This is a difficult question to answer and if there was a formula I would give up the day job! You want a balance between a topic that has enough interest and something that isn't too competitive. Something that isn't really worth the big boys chasing but is still worth your time. It's hard to know really.

I tend to look for terms in the google keyword tool - https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal - that have a 1000 or so searches and a CPC of a pound or so. I use this to indicate that there is some demand and there is some value to that topic. The site should be taken as a rough guide only! I then look in google to see who is ranking already, if there is an awesome site dedicated to that topic then I'll move on. If the number one ranking is from a generic article site, a random forum post, or yahoo answers then I'll be thinking that a whole site on this topic should be enough to get onto page 1, with some nice inbound links to take me to the top! In fact, if I do a google and find there isn't a site dedicated to what Im looking for a little alarm bell goes off these days! I'm sure we've all done it? Desperately trying to find something but there just wasn't a site that helped? Could be an opportunity...

Unfortunately it can often be trial and error and when you find a nice unexploited area you tend to want to keep it to yourself lol!

irace

what does CPC stand for?

competitionscafe

irace wrote: »

what does CPC stand for?

Cost per click - it's a figure for Adwords advertisers to estimate their costs per visitor but can also be used to give (a very rough) idea of how profitable certain keywords may be for adsense purposes.

"Estimated Average Cost-per-click (CPC)
The system predicts the average cost each time a user clicks your ad on the associated keyword. The cost is specific to the position range shown in the Estimated Ad Position column.

Several factors are considered when making this calculation, including the quality of your campaign. If you're not comfortable with the estimated average CPC, try optimising your campaign. "
From: https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal

SunnySusie

Sorry, thanks for providing the explanation.

So yeah, the CPC is the amount that an advertiser pays for that click, for some products this can be tens of pounds! Car Insurance is the classic example. So if you ran a site about car insurance, people would have to buy your traffic at around £10 per click - obviously very lucrative! But highly competitive, so not something an amateur should go into.

That said I have often thought that if you are a super car nut then you could build a forum around a particular model and then get your members to buy insurance through an affiliate link each year. With a few thousand loyal members it would be a nice income. People would come to your site because of your maintenance videos, modification guides, repair tips, etc. It would be much more focused than a more generic car forum, would have a strong community spirit amongst the owners, and although many models now have such forums - there are still plenty of gaps for budding affiliates to fill! (if you end up doing this, a link of thanks back would be appreciated !)

What else do you need to know about CPC?

• I will also add that Google gives you an average CPC value and as an adsense publisher you only get a % of that. So just because the average is £10 per click it doesn't mean you'll ever see that
• The CPC you get is also dependent on the quality of traffic you get. If you get a million untargeted people coming to your site becuase of a funny photo you put up - this is a bad thing! Google will server 10,000 ad impressions and get no click throughs, Google will then think your site's traffic is poor and will pay you much less per click than the average. It is far better to have 10 hits with a 20% click rate than 1000 hits and 0.2%. The reason for this is obvious, the system would breakdown if publishers were able to send over poorly converting untargeted traffic and Google would lose advertisers. The whole quality system they have implemented is a cunning safeguard.

So some of my sites have very few visitors a day, if any, but the ones that do arrive are highly targeted and much more likely to click through. This is good for me, the visitor, and it's good for the advertiser. Win-win-win. And I get a pound or two in the bank. Not a lot, but multiply that by 365 days and 10 sites...