Forum Moderators: skibum
Most of use are also fomailiar with the old Type A/ Type B debate, and I think this post will be most relevant to Type A marketeers.
Basically, I'm now in the 4th month of an online affilaite venture. I believe it is highly successfull, but It won'T turn me into a millionaire. Also, I consider the market segment somewhat volatile, and as I'm in this fulltime, I'd like some security.
I've started with a Type A site in a sector I barely even knew existed, but by know have learned so much about it, I might pass a university degree without further study ;)
So, Making the odd $, more then pocket change, but less then riches, and considerign the fact that I could operate the site with jstu a few hours of maintenance per week, I'm contemplating my next move.
At times I feel like pickign the next money market and starting Type A all over. In another 3 weeks, I'd have doubled my income. I'd have to completely independent income streams (i.e. security) and it wouldn't double my maintenance time, just add a few %.
On the other hand, I've come across market segments, that overlap my first site. In fact my site covers some products of these other markets, but doesn't focus on them. So me second thought goes like this:
Should I evolve and fortify my position by buildign my second site in this overlapping market? It is sufficiently seperate that it would provide security (i.e. changes in the one market won't influence the other). I'd have start up content already from the original site, say around 5-10% of the pages form my first site would fit in this market. This second site would be sufficiently related that I can on-target interlink the sites (not with a many to many, but with in-context, on-target links on the relevant pages). And last but not least, I'd not have to relearn form scratch, AND I already have affilaites that I know convert and I could use straight away.
In fact, my first site overlaps at least two money markets that themselves over lap. These are all only about 5-10% overlaps, so are independent enough to provide security.
Also, I can already see the third tier, as these sites would overlap new markets, this tiem completely distjoint form my first site.
I could imagine buildign site after site like this, basing it on the expertise, affiliate connections, and linking power of my previous sites. All of these on-target and in-context. In fact, it seems to me this is the way About.com was originally concieved.
Is this a viable strategy? How do you plan your second site? All I know is that I rather have two site with half the income then one site with twice the income, for security reasons.
I'd value all your inputs, as I think thisis an improtant decission for me.
SN
<added>
>How do you plan your second site?
Mostly from the gut, but refine the idea by watching my logs and staying roughly abreast of the types of affiliate programs being offered.
For example, take pharmaceuticals and nutritional supplements. There is strong overlap, such as all the sexual augmentation stuff, or weight loss, but industry wide effects, such as the recent crack down on online prescriptions only affect one of the two. In a case like this I think the overlap can provide powerfull advantages, such as saved effort, while providing enough distinction to make them secure.
SN
Yes, I thought (and still do) about this often, much so about 9 months ago when I saw in the same place your in right now.
I came to the conclusion that I should have mulitiple steams of income that are generated from different affiate programs, different websites, as well as different types of marketing sites.
I think the more you can shake things up the "safer" your going to be in a shark infested arena such as affiliate marketing.
In the past 12 months these are just "some" of the blows that I have been hit with:
* One merchant did not pay me a dam cent for 4 months ... They owed me about $2500.00
* I lost placement (top 10) for a two word keyword pharase on google that makes anyone in the top 10k a month last spring. My monthly income was cut in half.
* Just last month I was hit by the google-no index via godaddy problem and had about 3 to 4000 pages dropped from google ... this is and was a terrible situation.
So those are some of the things that happened to me in this last year as a full timer in affiliate marketing. Funny thing is ... when these problems hit me I don't get that upset. I think you need to expect it and have a game plan set up so when the s%@t hits the fan you know it is time to pull the plug.
I do spend about 70% of my time pushing pharma, that does not mean you need to follow the usaprescription or escripts model... there are many great programs offering great drugs and nice price levels. Also some areas are not that saturated (for pharma of course) compared to the usaprescription model.
I guess I figured I had learned about from this business, enjoyed the reorders and "residual" aspect of these program and felt it was the best money in affiliate marketing that was somewhat "clean".
I still to this day spend most of my time with these programs but also get checks from lots of other programs that probibly add up for 3 to 5 k monthly. This system makes sense for me:
If pharma gets shut down I already have several sites working for me outside the pharma industry
while pharma is a live and kicking I am making great money with it...
Hope this helps ... by the way ... I quite last year on november 20 ;-)
Almost one year self employeed ;-)
Brian
Empty that webmasterworld email box silly ... can't send you a sticky back cause your full.
Brian
SN
Brian
Send me a sticky mail with your email address, that should do it... still can't reply to you.
Brian
but industry wide effects, such as the recent crack down on online prescriptions only affect one of the two
Yes, but apart from particular industry changes there are a lot of other risks, some of which are neatly summarised by Chef_Brian. So it does take some b*lls to give up the day job :-)
One could still diversify income by having different income streams for the separate site sections, rather than different income streams from separate sites.
One would of course be more at risk to the godaddy hosting type of google hit with one site. Guess the cost and maintenence savings of one site would have to be weighed against the increased need to keep an eye on things with everything under one domain.
Maybe a good plan would be to keep adding overlapping/related sections to one site until "critical mass" is reached. At that point folks would add *unsolicited* links just because it's a good enough and worthwhile site that's a good resource for their visitors.
Then one could add the various stand alone sites, linking to them from the main site. The main site could then pass along some page rank and anchor text to get the small sites started off right.
I find that I can still put in effort and get a significant payout. The traffic grows, the revenues increaase, and my reputation as a webmaster in my field is getting better.
I think I'll just keep grinding away in my chosen field until it looks like I've hit some kind of ceiling, and saturated my market - but I suspect that'll take my whole lifetime.
I think it's better to be big fish in a small pond than school of fish in a big pond. Bad analogy... sorry.
