All Posts Tagged With: "Affiliate Marketing"

In my last post, I introduced you to one of my new sites, Iowa Guide, which was built using WordPress.    I’ve found whether I’m making a simple affiliate landing page, a static website, a content management system, or of course a blog, that WordPress is usually the best way to go.   Between the themes and plugins available, it is pretty quick and easy to get a site up and running in little to no time.

Okay, so I told you I picked up the City Revolution theme and set off to work.   After about a week of writing off and on for the site, I noticed I had a LOT of content, most of which can be found on WordPress pages.   That was the easy part since it was a local GEO domain and I didn’t have to research much to create the content!

Once you’ve got your content in place, the next step is usually to monetize the website.   The first thing I did was research payout percentages on affiliates.   In the case of Iowa Guide, I knew that these travel companies compete pretty heavily for affiliates, so I decided to start there.  Between Priceline, Expedia, and Travelocity, I had three good choices, but I ended up going with Priceline because they were able to build a page directly into my website (sort of).  This way visitors would be able to browse for discount hotel rooms from what appeared to be within my site.  You can check out the Iowa Hotels page and probably not tell that it is actually hosted on Priceline’s servers, because it was built around my site’s layout, including my menu.

With Priceline, I was also able to get affiliate links for their airline and car rental services, but at this time these links will take readers over to their site to search.   Hopefully someday I can do the same for both airlines and car rentals.

Once that was done, I then spent some time looking for other affiliate opportunities and found companies such as Ticketmaster and StubHub for people looking for sporting events and concert tickets.

Once the site is setup, or at least looking respectable, you can then start your campaigns to make some sales.   The travel industry is an expensive one to compete in, but the payouts are huge if you find a good niche.   Currently I’m using PPC to generate additional traffic, then attempting to funnel it to a Hotels page which helps make the sale, then send readers to the hotel page that Priceline built.   I am also going to be adding a post or two each week to grow the sites presence in the search engines and remind Google that the site is active.

A couple of emails and comments recently have come to me inquiring about why I don’t provide specific examples of my affiliate sites, BANS sites, etc.   While I certainly understand that it would be ideal if I provided specific sites you could click over and examine closely, there is actually a reason that I don’t.  Well, there are actually two reasons that I don’t, and I figured I would share them in this post.

1. Niche Theft - Maybe even more so than the Make Money Online niche, Affiliate Marketers (especially upstart ones) often take each others ideas.   That is why I stressed in my previous post how important it is to find people that you trust.   If I shared on this site which niche sites are making me the most money, I guarantee I would magically see several clone sites within a few days.  This is especially true for BANS sites, as it is pretty darn easy to mimic someone else’s BANS site because most of the changes will be in the stylesheet, which people ‘View Source’ and copy on to their BANS themes.
2. Experience - Trust me when I say that experience is HUGE in affiliate marketing.  In other words, no matter how much myself or anyone else helps you, you will only learn how to truly succeed through trial and error.   I would say 3 out of every 5 sites I launch fail, but these are the experiences that I covet the most and that motivate me to keep refining my techniques.

Though I encourage everyone just starting out to do plenty of trial and error, one thing I do recommend is once you find a niche that does well, or at least is profitable, attack that niche!   Make a cluster of websites in that niche before moving on.   An example would be if you find success in the Barbie (toy) niche, maybe launch a Barbie poster site, Barbie clothing site, and/or whatever other Barbie stuff is selling.   You could also inter-link these sites (as long as the content is similar) and benefit that way.

On a side note, I have launched a couple actual sites (not niche sites) and plan to blog about some of these sites here and what methods I’m taking to monetize them.  Hopefully some of you will have an interest in that.

You may have heard before about the four “P’s” of Marketing.   This is a common saying within the marketing niche to describe Product, Price, Promotion, and Placement.

This is something people will often think of when talking about marketing in our day-to-day lives, but I’ve found that it also extends itself well to internet marketing as a whole, and affiliate marketing specifically.

The Four P’s of Affiliate Marketing

1. Product - Researching and finding the right product to sell.  Would people want to buy this?  Is there are a lot of competition?
2. Price - This one goes two ways.  Is the product affordable to the consumer and is the affiliate payout worth your time?  Find a product that is in demand and that will pay you a decent share of the earnings (usually 20%+).
3. Promotion - Possibly the most commonly forgotten.  Most affiliate marketers use a variety of PPC tactics to get traffic, but there are also link building and article marketing methods to promote your new site(s).
4. Placement - Have you strategically placed your product on the correct domain name?  Especially when dealing with small niche sites, strong generic domains or strong keyword domains will go a long way to help you find success.

Many people think affiliate marketing is easy money.   In my June income report, I mentioned that I made around $2200.00, most of which was profit.   This was an accurate figure, but when you factor in roughly 40-50 hours a week working on it (on top of 40 hours at my day job), that only works out to about $10.00 an hour, which is nothing to get excited about.

The thing I like about this is that work I’ve done in the past continues to generate income each month, so the work I’m doing now will hopefully add to that income.   That is the brilliance of affiliate marketing, especially when a niche you find stays relevant for many years.

Overall, it is all about perspective and motivation, which is why I’ve worked so hard to set you guys up for success.  I have a bunch of things I’ve been trying, but have a lot more risk involved and I don’t want any of you to fail early on and get discouraged.   That is why my early focus has been on things like BANS and keyword sniping.   Things that at worst should make you your money back and help you get use to the world of affiliate marketing.