Forum Moderators: skibum
Thanks in advance :-)
Good luck
If I might ask a few more questions ...
What content management system do you guys use to manage your affiliate programs?
On a sidenote, as person who is just starting out, I would like to know how long it took before your sites starting making money.
Again, is there an area ( or a keyword ), where the competetion is so tough that it is not worth entering into?
These are admittedly newbie questions from a guy who is just starting out. I am hoping to learn from this forum and your answers and hopefully make some money :-)
I keep things very simple, it's very funny.... years ago when I was trying to figure out this affiliate stuff and online marketing I spent much more on special software, books and other nick nack items that are not really needed.
You asked about content management, simple... I use email. What I have been doing for the last 9 or so months works well and keeps me on my montra which is keep things as simple as possible.
I simply create a folder in outlook and name it the name of the company I am "working" for. Then I just drop in any incoming emails into that folder that should be saved.
Another note, do save much of the emails that you exchange with a company. That way if they offer you some thing or tell you something via email you can save it just in case.
About making money, goals are very good. I have had goals for the last two + years. I am also proud to say I have been able to meet those goals each time usally far before my deadline. At the same time my goals are always very realistic and atainable.
When I got serious about two years ago I spent one year working on one site, staying very focused and I did not even think about the money for that first year.
Back then I count success by the amount of traffic my site was recieving. Thinking back that was a great way to start, as it is much easier to see traffic increase in the beginning of a new site than to see money. However, also note that being able to drive traffic is a key factor in making it with affiliate programs. If you can not get people to your site how will you make money?
Today when people are starting out I tell them up front that they should not even THINK about seeing any checks for atleast 6 to 9 months deepending on there experiance with websites.
Of course someone with an established site that just needs to add a good program will realize affiliate checks much sooner(3 to 6 months) than someone just starting out with no site and or idea about how to get started.
Think of affiliate marketing as the classic race between the hair and the turtle.
Cheers,
Brian
These are also useful for tracking different creatives to see how they pull.
On a sidenote, as person who is just starting out, I would like to know how long it took before your sites starting making money.
For the niche my site is in, it's one of the most visited ones on the internet. I get about 3 million page views a month. About a year ago I added a few well placed links for a couple of very good related books on amazon. They aren't really aggressive since I want to keep the overall look of my site clean, but they are very noticeable. While I've seen money every quarter from them, it's nothing to brag about. The average check (eft now) I see from Amazon is only about $50 a quarter.
When I get around to it, I'm going to setup some of those quick buy (or whatever they are calling them) links that amazon just started offering a few months ago.
The site just started as a hobby though and I tried using some affiliate links when hosting costs got out of hand. Then, thanks to fastclick, I have started to turn a very small profit... but that's never been my goal with the site. I'm rethinking that now though. :)
May be you have to put a big "Donate" button just to pay for your hosting and time?
