Niche sites, merchants on niche sites, etc

[al2004]

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Further to my recent post re my first attempts at affiliate marketing (shopping portals versus niche sites, etc) :

I'm considering my options for my first niche site(s), and have some half-baked ideas (too early to describe them to experienced affiliates, for fear of being shunned! - Just joking).

Apologies if the following seems really dull of me, but I'll ask anyway !

One of my (many) concerns / uncertainties is :

Am I right in thinking that it's only ever worth starting to go down the road of creating a niche site (on some subject-matter I'm interested in and / or knowledgable about) if there are merchants currently available via Awin/Aff Future/UK Aff's/etc, and that these or other similar merchants are likely to continue their involvement in affiliate marketing?

I have some ideas for niche sites, but am struggling right now (possibly due to a lack of imagination, lateral thinking, etc) to decide what products / services I could market via the sites, without marketing products/service that are only related to the subject-matter of the site in a very vague way. (And if that's what I'm thinking now, should I take that as a sure-fire sign that I need to come up with some other ideas?!)


Could anyone advise me : exactly how tenuous can the relationship between site subject-matter and marketed products/services be for a niche site to be worthwhile building in the first place?

(I think I'm asking the above because I've learned my recent lesson well; although I intend to persevere with it, perhaps it wasn't really the greatest idea I've ever had to make my first attempt at affiliate marketing a shopping portal! I'm asking for clarification on the above so that I'm more clear about what I'm doing from the outset, if I decide to go ahead).

Also, can anyone advise me whether I should even attempt to join affiliate programs outwith affiliate networks, if I can't find suitable programmes on the networks.

Thank you, and Kind regards
Al

PS. Spot the newbie!

[Keith]

Books, no matter what the subject matter there is usually a lot about it in print.

[smn2]

Hi,

If it was me, I'd build a great site then worry about
how to make money from it afterwards. New merchants,
new opportunities to make money (e.g. Google AdSense),
come round all the time. It is very difficult to second-guess.

And if you have several merchants in mind now, who's
to say that they won't stop performing (or simply cease
the program) by the time it comes to putting your site
live?

Create a really good site, that stands on its own
then think about making money. (You could poll your
visitors about what they'd be interesting in buying,
and - if your site was well-targeted - you may even
be able to approach a suitable merchant, and arrange
a private affiliation if they didn't operate an affiliate
program at the time.)

This may be a tad idealistic, and you may need to earn
money NOW.

However, if you can create a site without worrying about
making money from it straight-away, it would be a good
sign that you were interested (even passionate) about the
site. And I think having passion for a site, rather than having
passion for making money from the site is important, and
a good indication that your site will be around in the long
term.

Anyway, I'm rambling now. That's what I'd do - build the
site, worry about making money from it later - and what
I intend to do for my next content-site.

Cheers,
Steve

[skip]

I agree with smnash in many ways, however, it depends why you want to build a site - to make money? If that's the case it's all about partnerships.

The way I do it is to find a product/s in niche and then promote them with direct google adwords for a month to see what the demand and conversion is like. If it works out then I contact the merchant and talk to them about what I have planned. Most merchants should be keen to help you build a site around their product/s, if not - then don't deal with them.

They should be able to help with content/images etc and some I've found will even link to you to get that site indexed sooner.

2 approaches - both valid IMHO

Good luck

[brent]

Yep...I think smnash is on it too.

I would not make the mistake I made and build 6 sites all at the same time.

Build one really good site on a topic you are some what familiar with.

After that you will have the experience and confidence to build sites in topics you know nothing about!

Brent