what was once gold and then died on you?

[rfung]

I keep gearing questions towards you the pros because you have such an enormous amount of knowledge, so apologies for the spotlight.

I was wondering if the experts(and even nonpros) could share stories of what was once a gold mine for them but due to oversaturation or other market conditions, it no longer is, how long did it last and when it finally was over, how did you react to it?

Just idle curiosity to see some of the history of affiliate marketing. Learn from the past, I say :)

[teenwolf]

I would guess that a lot of people here have experienced this up-down-goldmine-gutter scenario that you mention. Personally, I have experienced this a couple of times. Once it was due to oversaturation, once it was due to a search engine change.

My advice? Always think of the worst-case scenario. Take the doomsday approach. For example, if organic is working for you at the present time, maintain it but spend most of your time focusing on ppc (or another form). Or vice versa. If one product or niche market is working for you, maintain it but spend your time focusing on a new product/market/site etc.

Prepare for oversaturation goes. It will probably happen. The best way to prepare for it is to make your product better and better. Never get content. Quality wins every time.

[antoine]

I used to earn $1.70 a lead for sending people to free sweepstakes. The sweepstakes were managed by a subsidiary of excite.com and the affiliate network they used was onresponse.com

It wasn't a huge goldmine or anything, but I had one poorly designed website earning 2-3 k a month. I dont do sweepstakes anymore, the best offers available are like $0.15 a lead. The ones i promoted were cool. Someone had to fill in our form and they could win free pizza for a year, a trip, a laptop, etc.

Antoine

[juice]

how do you find these more obscure affiliates?

i know about the big 3 affiliate groups.. but finding the smaller niche type affiliates seems very random..

do you find that when you're trying to come up with a new site idea that you find a niche then you find affiliates that fit it.. or do you find an affiliate you want to work with then find a way to promote it?

-tom

[HeyJim]

yes.

[Chef_Brian]

Costumes last year:

25k within one site built in 20 hours

Costumes this year ... maybe about 2k with about 5 domains built in about 45 hours

......

Generic viagra about two years ago ...

over 50k with one site built in about a day ...

Always try to find profitable areas online via "traffic on the web" I like to start hunting down programs based on what I feel might be strong traffic areas online first. Once I feel I might have found a niche online with a nice traffic ratio I then look for a merchant to match the traffic. This approach has always done well for me. I will say though with the new algo at google it is getting tougher and tougher. Where as once I could buy a domain ... crank out a site and have a nice traffic level in a couple of months now takes much longs and makes getting into these niche areas a bit tougher.

Ah ... the good ole days ...

Cheers,

Brian