Find a Gap in the market

June 17th, 2009 Affiliate Blogger

One of my biggest challenges as an affiliate is finding a gap, if you look at the internet landscape there’s alot of opportunity, but you’re also playing against some very big and experienced players, as such lots of these players are focused on the bigger more competative areas  and verticals, and it would be foolish and a massive waste of resource time, sweat and tears trying to compete.

If you consider how people search in search engines, they enter specific words that relate to what they are looking for, this is the generic search, i.e. they are looking for a topic e.g. cars. with each additional adjectives and other descriptive words help to refine the users search and display more targeted sites. Once you start looking at product codes and model numbers you’re well within the niche.

As the search becomes more specific, the users ‘buying cycle’ also changes, its safe to assume the more concisely someone is searching, the more likely they are to be interested in buying that product.

Now, in response to this theory, most merchants (retailers) and large affiliates focus on the generics, this is where the volume of users is and as the search gets more niche the volume of searches begins to dwindle, but this is inversely proportionate to the conversion rate, afterall if I’m looking for Cars, I’m doing research, if on the other hand I’m looking for Red Aston Martin car dealers in london, I’m most likely looking to buy a Red Aston Martin, it’s logical.

So, whats an affiliate to do? You can’t fight with the big boys inthe generic, but this is where the bulk of the traffic is. If you go too niche, there’s hardly anyone looking. But, right in the middle there is a Sweet spot where smaller affiliate can still gain some ground.

Here’s where it starts to get a little complex, every affiliate has a different method and techique, so there isn’t a right way or a wrong way, and it can’t really be replicated, all you can do is follow the theory and principles.

For me, i focus on  a  more generic niche such as one with two- three keywords, eg. red sports cars, from here I then use the site structure and page structure to target the niche-niche e.g. red sports cars aston martin. Other affiliates will only focus on red sports cars aston martin and create a seperate site for each, and thats totally fine, I just don’t have the time, technical expertise or money to be buying and setting up millions of domains like that.

The golden nugget of all this is keywords govern everything online, and finding and using the right keywords is what makes affiliates millionares. Ultimately the silver bullet for any affiliate is understanding how consumers search, what consumers search for and how to get your site to position one, page one for that term, and thats really the game of affiliate marketing in a nutshell.

first, you look for a subject, find the niche terms, pick the ones which have good volume and low competition and thats the gap where money can be made, its the kansa city shuffle, everyone else is looking at the generic.

Posted in All articles, Niche Marketing, SEO | 2 Comments »

Why I got into affiliate marketing

June 16th, 2009 Affiliate Blogger

I’ve always been entrepreneural even from a young age when i got caught selling baseball cards in school. Leaving Uni with not much of a degree in graphic design i was at a loss as to what to do with my life, it dawned on me i wasn’t much of a graphic designer and my design skills were best left to gather dust. It was at this point I fell into affiliate marketing, I was an avid fan of the internet anyways having been a moderator on  a fairly large internet forum, so I knew my way around and in my youth i had created a geocities site before. So I jumped at the chance of a Job when an opening at an affiliate network became available. (I’d got this job through a friend).

After over 9 months learning the ropes and understanding affiliate marketing I was also looking at how much some of the bigger affiliates were making and seeing their sites it seemed like such an acheivable opportunity. I found myself wishing that instead of worrying about dating, instead of worrying about skateboarding and music, I should have been doing this affiliate marketing thing-a-ma-jiggy.

It wasn’t until I moved to another agency and discovered Squidoo that I really began being a part-time affiliate. At this new job I was in control of an affiliate site, so my understanding of SEO and PPC grew from here, without this knowledge I would have been gropeing around in the dark. Using Squidoo, I ended up creating quite a few test sites, none did really great, but i did get some google adsense commission which proved the concept and allowed me to understand the basics of what it was like to be an affiliate.

In October 2008 I started my real adventure as a part-time affiliate, I’d discovered Wordpress by this point and acquired top-notch webhosting from Netmotivated (a company I heavily recommend by the way),  and I’d started to understand SEO and Niche marketing, an area that I’ve decided to focus on. It seems strange but every thing prior to October 2008 was testing and learning.

My first big break came when I discovered a niche as a result of an article in The Sun, what began as a small blog has now become the authority site on the subject and now earns me a consistant income every day of every month, totalling £xxx each month. This was the proof of concept, whilst this blog was fantastic it still needs constant updating and traffic has begun to reach its limit. Furtunately I’ve dedicated more resources to aquiring new domains and exploring SEO further, this has ment that I now have a portfolio of over 70 domains and over 8 active sites.

My second renaissance was when a niche site i created ranked in google in 6 hours, and made a sale worth £xxx within the week i set it up.

My hope, now that I have the knowledge and experience as a result of my professional life and my hobby, is that i can begin to grow this success to earning me a substatial passive income i can use to fund my retirement, or better yet allow me to transition from being a part-time affiliate to a full time affiliate…that would be nice.

Posted in All articles, Monthly Goals, Niche Marketing, Other Stuff, PPC, SEO, Wordpress | 2 Comments »