How to get started in Internet Marketing in the cheapest possible way?

kobracai

Hello everyone, I thought I would ask for advice

I want to get started in Internet or Affiliate Marketing, something similar to what MSE is about or selling information products (I think the latter will be much harder given all the info available for free online).

Does anyone know any site/resource/ book on how to get started in the most inexpensive way? something that show the steps involved. Every time you google this you always end up with those dodgy flashing-dollar-signs sites that scream "scam" a mile off :eek: really hard to figure out the good advice from the bad.

I already started a site in 2012 but I didn't know what I was doing and ended up spending quite a bit of money and making none...

Any help will be appreciated

Thanks

Aquamania

kobracai wrote: »

Hello everyone, I thought I would ask for advice

I want to get started in Internet or Affiliate Marketing, something similar to what MSE is about or selling information products (I think the latter will be much harder given all the info available for free online).

Does anyone know any site/resource/ book on how to get started in the most inexpensive way? something that show the steps involved. Every time you google this you always end up with those dodgy flashing-dollar-signs sites that scream "scam" a mile off :eek: really hard to figure out the good advice from the bad.

I already started a site in 2012 but I didn't know what I was doing and ended up spending quite a bit of money and making none...

Any help will be appreciated

Thanks

I'm sorry, but I fear you are looking at this from entirely the wrong direction.

You will not make money from affiliate marketing but rather you need to offer something that brings viewers to you which can then be funded (and produce a profit) via appropriate affiliate marketing, such as MSE does.

An alternative approach if you don't have anything to offer is to operate like a cashback site that gives all (or at least most) of any affiliate revenue back to those that generate it for you.

SeduLOUs

As above. The easiest and cheapest way to get started would be a blog or youtube videos, but you need to offer something that is going to make someone want to visit your site and then click on your relevant links.

MSE is the perfect model of how it works extremely well. For most people, the idea seems simple enough but the idea is just not good enough to generate enough traffic to make anything.

It's best if you can find a subject that you are passionate and knowledgeable about, and preferably something that there aren't already a million successful sites about. Work on building a following first, and if you are successful in that, then you can start thinking about affiliate linking to cover your costs and perhaps start making a profit.

Bonzowaite

Aquamania wrote: »

I'm sorry, but I fear you are looking at this from entirely the wrong direction.

You will not make money from affiliate marketing but rather you need to offer something that brings viewers to you which can then be funded (and produce a profit) via appropriate affiliate marketing, such as MSE does.

This doesn't make any sense to me.

Lots of people make money from affiliate marketing and lots of people try it and fail - it's just like any other business venture. You need to do it well to succeed.

Small sites called "thebestlawnmowerreviews2014. com" with 5 pages of Amazon cut & paste nonsense are being hammered by Google, but high quality niche sites with lots of valuable information are doing just fine.

Bonzowaite

kobracai wrote: »

Hello everyone, I thought I would ask for advice

I want to get started in Internet or Affiliate Marketing, something similar to what MSE is about or selling information products (I think the latter will be much harder given all the info available for free online).

Does anyone know any site/resource/ book on how to get started in the most inexpensive way? something that show the steps involved. Every time you google this you always end up with those dodgy flashing-dollar-signs sites that scream "scam" a mile off :eek: really hard to figure out the good advice from the bad.

I already started a site in 2012 but I didn't know what I was doing and ended up spending quite a bit of money and making none...

Any help will be appreciated

Thanks

When I first started, I sat down and compiled a list of all my hobbies & interests (past and current). There were lots to choose from.

With a blog, you are going to have to write a lot of content about this subject so it helps to know a lot about the niche to start with. You can choose a niche that you are prepared to research thoroughly to become knowledgable about, but this is much more difficult and time-consuming obviously.

Once you have identified a possible niche, you need to do some Keyword and competitor research to see whether it is likely to be a profitable niche or not. There is no point entering a niche where Page 1 of Google is dominated by high authority sites that will be impossible to outrank - no-one looks on page 17.

You don't need to pay for a Keyword tool - they all offer free trials that will give you at least a year's worth of content ideas.

In terms of getting good rankings, there is no complicated magic formula - Just put your keyword in post title, first paragraph and maybe one more place if it fits naturally. Some people try to stuff dozens into the 1 post but that will just get you penalised for spam. [Text removed by MSE Forum Team]



Edit: sorry about the small image, but the forum is reducing it.

There is a great YouTube channel called Google Webmaster where Matt Cutts (their Head of Spam) explodes all of the SEO myths that do the rounds and gives you the inside view on how to get in their good books.

Mistral001

The Op is, at least, to be congratulated for having a go at affiliate marketing even though it was not successful. What went wrong? Did you listen to the crowd who said it was easy money etc? Well even some of the successful people probably did that.


However, I get from your posts that you really did not have a hard look at what went wrong with your first attempt. It could be something simple like not finding the right niche as others have said or trying to get business from the wrong type of business/people or it could be something more fundamental.

Savvy_Sue

Bonzowaite wrote: »

When I first started, I sat down and compiled a list of all my hobbies & interests (past and current). There were lots to choose from.

With a blog, you are going to have to write a lot of content about this subject so it helps to know a lot about the niche to start with. You can choose a niche that you are prepared to research thoroughly to become knowledgable about, but this is much more difficult and time-consuming obviously.

Once you have identified a possible niche, you need to do some Keyword and competitor research to see whether it is likely to be a profitable niche or not. There is no point entering a niche where Page 1 of Google is dominated by high authority sites that will be impossible to outrank - no-one looks on page 17.

You don't need to pay for a Keyword tool - they all offer free trials that will give you at least a year's worth of content ideas.

In terms of getting good rankings, there is no complicated magic formula - Just put your keyword in post title, first paragraph and maybe one more place if it fits naturally. Some people try to stuff dozens into the 1 post but that will just get you penalised for spam. If you don't believe that it works, just Google

...

Bonzowaite wrote: »

and you will find my 4 month old site sandwiched between Amazon and the manufacturer :j - I sold 8 of these $200 units last month.

That looks rather like advertising, please read the Forum Rules.

Bonzowaite wrote: »

There is a great YouTube channel called Google Webmaster where Matt Cutts (their Head of Spam) explodes all of the SEO myths that do the rounds and gives you the inside view on how to get in their good books.

SeduLOUs

I wouldn't really say it was advertising - poster has in no way attempted to actually promote the product (from the post I don't even know what the product is!), and there's nothing in the post to click on to actually buy it.

Poster has only posted a screenshot of a Google search result in an attempt to illustrate the positioning you are likely to need to have success, as well as much more helpful advice as requested by OP.

Savvy_Sue

SeduLOUs wrote: »

I wouldn't really say it was advertising - poster has in no way attempted to actually promote the product (from the post I don't even know what the product is!), and there's nothing in the post to click on to actually buy it.

Poster has only posted a screenshot of a Google search result in an attempt to illustrate the positioning you are likely to need to have success, as well as much more helpful advice as requested by OP.

I agree there was lots of helpful information, which is why I've quoted most of their post. It will be up to the Forum Team to decide whether or not it is.

Bonzowaite

I didn't for one moment think that my post would cause such controversy.

I think that the chances of someone on MSE buying a baby monitor via my site from a very poor image when it is only available in the US is pretty remote. But, if you want me to delete any part of the post I would be happy to do so. I deliberately avoided linking to my sites to try to get some cheap back links (though I suspect that MSE has "no follow" settings anyway).

I could just have easily chosen US car seats (I have about 6 x page 1 Google rankings for various popular US car seats as well as for a couple of UK car seats).

The points that I was trying to make were:

1. Niche selection and keyword research BEFORE you start is key;

2. You don't need to pay for Keyword tools when I know of at least 2 premium products that provided enough free trial access to generate content for many months (without needing to provide credit card pre-auths etc)

3. There is money to be made in affiliate marketing provided you try to create quality content and not just spam Amazon links on ugly "thin" sites. It is very hard work and many people don't make any money but then you could say the same of most businesses - look at how many offline start-ups go bust. The causes of failure are universal and complex, but to say that no-one makes money from affiliate marketing is incorrect. I have managed to make a few quid since I started part-time about 4 months ago, but I certainly wouldn't advise anyone to give up the day job (I haven't) or expect to make any money at all for the first 2-3 months.

4. You don't need to pay £1,000s to scammers trying to sell the latest bogus system to get ranked on Google - just follow a few basic techniques and you "might" get in their good books.

5. Don't listen to the rumours and myths about SEO and Google rankings when you can actually get that info for free from Google themselves via their YouTube channel.

Bonzowaite

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

I agree there was lots of helpful information, which is why I've quoted most of their post. It will be up to the Forum Team to decide whether or not it is.

Thanks.

One of the biggest mistakes that I see is people targeting very competitive keywords upon the basis that there are 50,000 monthly searches. They think "nice big pie and I want a small slice of it".

However, you will never get to page 1 competing against 500 other websites (where lots of them are high authority) and so you will get 0% of the 50,000 potential visitors. Far better to get page 1 for a keyword that has 100 monthly visitors than page 17 for a keyword with 50,000.

Finally, if you write naturally using good spelling and grammar (i'm sure that Google has an algorithm for evaluating this) you will also pick up bonus keywords along the way that you never even considered.