First (pretty dismal) attempts at affiliate marketing

[al2004]

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I've been lurking around the forum for a few weeks now, and this is my first post. I'm quite new to all of this, so please make allowances for me!

Only a few weeks ago, what I knew about website design-and-build, HTML etc, FTP, search engines, affiliate marketing, etc, etc, etc could be written on fag-packet.

In only the last few weeks, I've :

Cobbled together two websites, starting - believe it or not - with MICROSOFT WORD! (I like to think that there was method in my madness, though; good way of learning HTML from scratch, etc).

Uploaded these sites, and gone some way to getting them on search engines.

Tried out various HTML editors, and upgraded one of the websites using a trial version of one of them.

Learned enough of the ins and outs of affiliate marketing to at least make a start.

Joined with merchants from (so far) Affiliate Window, Affiliate Future and UK Affiliates, and placed text links (mostly) / banner ad's and 'content units'.

(By the way : I'm not sure I'd be okay about providing the URL's just now, because right now I'm thinking that they're probably not presentable).

One of the websites is more of a 'niche' site (although, at present, it's an area I'm not very active in), but I've done next-to-nothing on it for a few weeks. Instead, I've been recently working long hours over many days to get my first attempt at a shopping portal site up-and-running. But, with the benefit of that wonderful thing called 'hindsight', I now think it might've been a more productive use of time and energy if I'd worked on the niche site instead. The shopping portal is getting very little traffic, and the visitor stats show that no visitors are browsing around the site or clicking on links. Very disappointing. I'm not saying that I'm about to give up on it, but I was hoping/expecting to be earning some small amounts on commissions pretty-much from Day 1. (Naive of me, I know).

So, I'm left wondering what my approach should be now. Persevere with the shopping portal? Shelve it for now, and have a re-think while I get on with the niche site (and possibly additional niche sites)? Give up on the shopping portal now, and don't return to it (far too much competition, etc). If I divert attention to the niche site, what sorts of merchants can I advertise there? (ie. Since it's such a niche site, I'll probably be very limited in what products/services I'll be able to advertise, so the commissions I'll be able to earn may be very limited).

Sorry, partly thinking aloud and partly crying out for help/advice! Interesting / challenging / etc as the last few weeks have been, and determined as I am to continue to plug away at this, I'm getting impatient to see SOME commissions.

Any advice / anecdotes / moral support along these lines would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you, and Kind Regards
Al

[ChrisM]

My approach has always been to work on whichever project interests me most at the time. It does tend to mean its much longer before any one project gets finished, but you can see when I'm interested in something and when I'm not in the end product.

I think (hope?) most people start out seeing commissions trickle in slowly - I remember having to wait two months to reach the minimum payout of 20 quid when I started! I might have to sue myself under minimum wage regs.

If you believe it will happen it most likely will, especially if you're interested in what you're doing. Hey, I'm sat here writing another website I came up with at lunchtime and its 2am! It's either confidence or blind faith - I've never been brave enough to work out which.

Good luck with it - my advice would be go with whichever option motivates you more.

C

[Aquanuke]

I did this for many years before making any money, it was probs because everyone (parents) was telling me that I would never earn any money from messing around with computers that I stuck with it during the first 3 or so years.

I dont imagine many could make as many mistakes as I did at the beginning , so dont think you have to wait 3 years for your first sale. But when I started there was bugger all affiliate programs anyway. This was way back in the alladvantage days.

Anyway concentrate on your SEO. ie url's with the product names in it, good title tags, good use of keywords in a page, get inbound links, if your using dynamic pages try to make them look like static pages etc etc..

Good Luck!

[SillyJokes]

Shopping portals are 10 a penny - you'll have to produce something really spectacular to make any headway with that.

I'm more interested in your niche thing. The best thing about the internet is that no matter how small your niche there are people interested and you can reach them. There's less competition for the surfers and you can really get into your subject.

Good luck.

[drivetowin]

Niche is best - and don't be convinced that niche can't make money - one of my niche sites contributes by far the highest percentage of my revenue.

[al2004]

Thank you all for your much-needed advice.
I'll inevitably continue to try to get the shopping portal working how I'd like, but for now I think I ought to take a few days to think about (a) niche site(s) and concentrate my efforts on it/those. Thanks again.

[Ecco]

I dont imagine many could make as many mistakes as I did at the beginning

Oh, I don't know about that Aqua... 3 years sounds about right for me too

[lowndsy]

The thing is, those first attempts will still be around in a years time when you will be much better at this lark, and they will have had more time to be linked to. My fave site was dead for 5 months and I forgot about it and then one day it made £300 out of the blue, just because it had achieved some good SE ratings. That's why I don't delete sites - you never know which ones will take off without your help.

[ianm]

Originally posted by lowndsy
The thing is, those first attempts will still be around in a years time when you will be much better at this lark, and they will have had more time to be linked to. My fave site was dead for 5 months and I forgot about it and then one day it made £300 out of the blue, just because it had achieved some good SE ratings. That's why I don't delete sites - you never know which ones will take off without your help.

Very true - I get about £100 a month from a site that I haven't touched for 2 years. I keep thinking that I should update it, but I know that if I did it would probably lose the positions that it's got.

[al2004]

I can't believe I'm even mildly excited about this, but on Day 2 or 3 in the life of the most recent version of the site, I've had.....wait for it.....TWO clicks on text-links! No conversion (yet?), though.

Sad as this may seem, I regard it as a small step in the right direction. I've been getting mildly frustrated (even though it's 'early days') that the visitor stats have shown that visitors have not ventured beyond the home-page. Until today, that is!. The text links that've been clicked are embedded on pages that are accessed via a drop-down menu from the home-page. So at least one visitor has been sufficiently interested in what the site has to offer to go browsing.

I stand by what I said previously about concentrating more now on creating and maintaining niche sites. But I'm a tad more encouraged today (because of my two........count them.....one, two!.......clicks, and your advice) to plug away with the shopping portal. I appreciate that there's fierce competition with these, but I reckon that it'll work at some level.

Thanks again
Al

[5starAffiliatePrograms]

Hi Al,
Sounds like you are off to a great start!
Affiliate marketing is very hard to get started with and overwhelming to learn, but if you devote the time and energy it can be very rewarding. Too many think it's a get rich quick, throw up a couple banners and then give up when that fails.

This is one of the best threads I have seen for getting started with affiliate marketing. It's 2 pages long and just jam-packed with tips, tools and resources. If you study everything suggested in this one thread it will get you off to a really good start!
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=21311

Hope this helps and best of luck!

[al2004]

Thanks for that. I've read the thread, and it's set me thinking along the right lines again, I think. Thanks again

[Dynamoo]

As a rule of thumb it might take several weeks (maybe up to two months) to get a new site fully indexed by search engines, so traffic will always tend to start slowly and then should pick up.

However, I agree with the comment that shopping portals are ten-a-penny, and that themed niches are the way to go. However, sometimes it's useful to have a generic shopping site for exploiting new niches as they come up.

[theWizz]

Hi there!

I pretty much had the same approach as you when I got into this biz a few weeks ago - "build a shop/store and earn money!" But it doesn't really work if you don't get any visitors.

After a while, I stumbled upon a great book called the "affiliate master's course" by ken evoy. When I started reading (it's a free ebook - you can do a google search for it), I realized that I started this the wrong way. I needed to create my keyword-rich, high-profitability-potential CONTENT first, and lots of it, and then, I can get some traffic and hope to generate some sales by actually PREselling my visitors (i.e. getting them to like & respect me) and not trying to SELL anything.

Anyway, go grab the affiliate master's course - it explains things better than I can

[skip]

Hi, it depends on how your shopping portal is created really - does it have individual product pages listing product details or is it just listing shops?

I've done "portals" before based on csv files from merchants and from them created html pages of eaceh of the products. This should give you targetted traffic - if a browser searches for a particular product and find your product pages they're a lot more likely to click on the merchant link to find out more info.

If it's just a list of shops by categories then I would have a re-think to be honest!

My 1st affiliate site was a sexshop listing site - I was under the wrong impression that sex sells on the internet - well, that might have been the case 5 years ago but 2 years ago when I started it was way too competitve!

If anyone wants a luagh at my 1st attempt goto www.sexshopsdirect.co.uk - haven't updated it since Nov 02 but it still makes £40/month somehow - one day I might update it with csv file from a single merchant but so much more to do.

My advice though is niche niche niche!!! My first affiliate niche site still makes a good income so go for it!!

Last bit of advice is to find partners for your niche site too - decide on the niche and then find the merchant partners - contact them, discuss your ideas and ask for their help with content and images etc. They should be more than willing to help - if they're not then don't deal with them!

All the best and good luck

PS - my 1st commission was for £12.50 and within 1.5 years gave up my day job!