Where are you?

Affiliate Marketers

[Kerrace Alexander]

I have spent the past three weeks on the net and most of the affiliates I have found are in the areas of Webdesign or affliate marketing, I would love to get some input on affiliate marketers offering products from other general interest sites, and making good income.

I know your out there maybe I'm looking in the wrong places.

[JamesR]

Hi kerrace,

Many affiliate marketers making good $ want to protect their investment by not broadcasting what they do. Maybe that is why some around here haven't come out of the woodwork?

[Mike_Mackin]

dittto

[mivox]

Yup... even the most helpfully-minded, wonderfully open webmasters community is going to get all hush-hush once you wander too close to their pocketbooks. ;)

Finding good affiliate companies sounds to me like it's a trial and error kinda process... unless you do find the rare webmaster who's willing to spill the beans.

[eljefe3]

Yep,

If the secrets were told, the $ would dwindle in a hurry. However, there are a few general categories which seem to do well. In no particular order I know of travel, health, telecomunications.

If you started doing specific lookups at goto.com for affiliate related topics/products, you would get a good idea of what sells by how many affiliates are bidding on a particular product/industry and what the price is.

[rcjordan]

Apparel and sporting gear are reported as having strong online sales. I tried them and was disappointed with the results. But I know of others who claim to be doing well.

One thing that I should mention here, "making good income" is a relative term. Affiliates may rave about how successful they've been and you later find it was $35/mo. At $2k-3k per month, you may find the affiliate ranks pretty thin (and less talkative).

[msgraph]

Most of the affiliate companies that paid extremely well have since closed their doors....(cough cough) MP3.com. But hopefully some of them will open their doors again some day.

[Drastic]

I would like to add to the dead-on comments above, and expound on this statement by rcj:
>..reported as having strong online sales. I tried them and was disappointed...

What works for others doesn't mean it will work for *you*. Your own talents, design skills, communication methods, interests, style, and various other factors will influence how successful you will be on a given topic.

For example, I have tried several programs that a close, local friend had great success with. (I know, I saw the checks.) They did squat for me. And the same goes for some programs I have had success with - zilch for him. This has even proven true, in a couple instances, for different affiliate programs in the same niche.

Another thought to bear in mind: If you keep trying to find out what to do by looking at success of others, you will always be chasing ideas that someone else made a killing on, because they did it first. I believe it was Webguerrilla that made an excellent post about this point somewhere, but can't find it at the moment.

The affiliates who really make it work are the ones who find the niche(s) that have yet to reach their full revenue potential, not during or after.

[startup]

I have two sites that compete with each other, site A was doing so well I built site B for more top ten listing. The affiliate programs on both sites are the same. Site B has what I call a different "tone" to it, by this I mean it is more techical in it's approach to the topic. Site B now gets more hits than A ,but site A out produces B by a margin of almost 3 to 1.

Its not what you say it is how you say it.:)

[Kerrace Alexander]

Thanks for all your great feedback.

Thanks for providing me with a better understanding as to why you can't find the affliates out there, and rightfully, so why work so hard to have someone else chase your success.

I will keep you all posted and let you know how I am doing once I am up and running.

cheers

kerrace