Getting started in Affiliate Marketing

[TomCat99]

I am a new affiliate marketer. Like most new marketers I have spent all of my time researching monetization and affiliate networks but now it is time to get specific...My goal is to put up a site by the end of next week about a subject that has potential for ad revenue and affiliate revenue. I need help choosing that subject. How **specifically** should I do my research? I need to find a low competition subject with high cpc ads and good affiliate programs. What tools, secret lists, and research methods should I use to uncover the topics that I should use for my future sites? I often hear people say, "find a niche that you can own." YES THAT IS A GREAT IDEA; I GET THAT, NOW PLEASE TELL ME HOW TO DO THAT. What discovery techniques can I use to find a niche that is underserved? Once I have some niche candidates what metrics tools are available to me to evaluate the feasibility of my candidate subjects? The key here is to discover niche markets that I may never have even known existed, and then to be able to evaluate those markets…how do I do this? If you know of good keyword tools, brainstorming tools, page rank tools, max bid tools…and anything else that you can think of that might be useful during this discovery process please guide me to them.

One thing that I am thinking might be useful is some kind of report that shows thousands of high traffic keywords, their max bids, and then the number of competing pages for each keyword…does something like this exist? I don’t want to have to type in keywords to check them…I want a tool that can show me the 10,000 most searched keywords for this year, or of all time, or from last month, or something like that…I want to see them in a list that I can scan with my eyes and then decide if any one of the keywords on the list could be developed into something useable…If you know of any tools that I can use to go from not having a clue what I want to build a website about to having a great topic that will probably make money that is what I am looking to find. Also, people often tell me that I should start with things that I am interested in…well, I am interested in making money online, web design, and computer hardware.….all topics that are not anywhere even close to being niches. Today I almost succumbed to the notion that I could build a website about making money online and develop it as I develop…I now realize that would have been a drastic mistake because the competition for the “[specific keywords removed]” keyword series and the “[specific keywords removed]” keywords is fierce. I have decided that I must find different niche topics that interest me, but that I need to choose them based on a balance of their potential and how much I may like or enjoy them.

Some things that I can see myself doing are hardware reviews and software reviews…are reviews the best way to make affiliate commissions? Are their other ideas that I should think of like how-to sites on certain subjects, or info sites about certain topics?…I am so frustrated trying to find a starting point…Experts, please help me figure this out.

[edited by: jcoronella at 9:25 pm (utc) on June 17, 2005]
[edit reason] Please no specific keywords. [/edit]

[ronin]

Hi TomCat99, a couple of points:

I need help choosing that subject. How **specifically** should I do my research? I need to find a low competition subject with high cpc ads and good affiliate programs.

If it were as easy as painting by numbers, all the opportunities would long since have vanished. Think creatively and laterally, combine two niche ideas that you have, see what you come up with.

Don't get stuck in the trap of "paralysis by analysis". My website today is not at all about what I thought it would be about when I started it. If you never start your website, you'll never realise that the idea you thought had great potential would never have worked or that the idea you had barely given the time of day to would be fantastically successful.

At the end of the day, it's about your ideas. As I said at the start, if there were a foolproof way of discovering underserved niches, there really wouldn't be any left.

A good place to start might be something that relates to your offline interests - please not making money online or building websites, almost everyone involved in affiliate marketing is interested in making money online and building websites - which isn't currently available online and that you, yourself, would find useful.

... and, yes, reviews are one good way of making money through affiliate programs.

[TomCat99]

Thank you for the reply. I think that reviews would be one good way of making affiliate money, what are some others? There must be some main categories that can be asigned to affiliate marketing strategies. The categories that I think I have identified are:

Content Sites
Review Sites
How-to sites
Forum Sites
Blogs

Are there any other major site aproches that I am missing? I bet there are several...what could they be?

Of these which ones are the best aproach for low maintence money makers?

[TrustNo1]

Yes, there are others. It seems like you're looking for a dot to dot blueprint and that you want it all to work right now. It's going to take time, patience, trial and error, a lot more reading and then it still might not work out. You're just going to have to try to pick up what you can, jump in and try. It's not something somebody can figure out for you, what works for me might now work for you.

[TomCat99]

Yeah I know, I need to get started soon...today. When ronin said paralysis by analysis he hit the nail on the head with regard to how I feel right now. I know I am going to sail anywhere the wind blows once I get started, I just don't want to make a mistake and try to start by mistakenly heading upwind.

Do you think it would be better to build one or two larger sites with frequently updated content or…hundreds of smaller sites diversified over different topics that are more static?

[Nefig]

Static sites won't work in a long term perspective, I'd go with 5-10 larger sites and update them constantly. That way you will actually create something valuable and Google as well as other traffic resources will like you and feed you. May be, feed you good :) So try not to analyze what you have not done yet, start small and grow, try to learn and implement something new each week, if not each day and you will succeed!

*I should do the same, I should do the same* - I just started recently, and completely paralyzed :):) But I have 2-3 ideas I'm actually working on. But If I were my boss, I'd fire me - hard to do it part-time, my work is killing me :) Anyways, good luck!

[Hiccup]

The best way to get started is to get started.

Stop reading, stop analyzing, stop procrastinating. The faster you build something the better your chances of getting a sale are. You can plan and worry about small details until the cows come home, but you will not make anything doing that!

Pick something, (anything that people need to solve their problem), and build it. There is no right way, not very many wrong ways, (debatable) and a whole bunch of schemers just dying to cash in on your search for the perfect site. Don't be a sucker. Success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Go build a site now and don't post again until it's done.

[David Bowley]

I agree, it's great to do a lot of research. But researching does not get sites built. Furthermore, you can research for a few weeks only to find that when you build the thing it's a completely different niche to what you projected and you end up researching "on the job" so to speak.

" I often hear people say, "find a niche that you can own." YES THAT IS A GREAT IDEA; I GET THAT, NOW PLEASE TELL ME HOW TO DO THAT"

Passion is the answer. Find what you are interested in and know a hell of a lot about (or would happily find out this info) and make a site about that. So you like making your birthday/christmas cards for example - make a site about that.

But before you do, there is one bit of research you should do - and that's to make sure that the site you make will have sufficient demand. There's no point in supplying lots of juicy info if no one is after it.

Good luck.