How would you start again?

[Another Media]

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If you could travel back in time (with an eccentric old man with white hair and a time travelling car that used garbage for fuel) what 7 things would you give yourself a note of to give you a head start in the affiliate game? (and why?)

I think mine would be:

1. Start with one domain name and work at it. Make it a hobby site at first with useful information on something you enjoy and then work on monetising it when you have traffic coming. It's easier that way. (Godaddy for reasonable .coms and 123-reg for .co.uk)

2. Use Reseller hosting at first (might take you a couple of times to find the right one) - It's cheap, you can add new sites easily and offer your friends hosting to cover your costs. Once you are earning enough keep the reseller hosting on for friends, family and testing, then invest in something more robust / reliable for your money spinning sites.

3. Get something online. It doesn't matter if it's not perfect. If you don't have anything online it can't make any money can it? At least if you are online you are getting indexed, tackling the Google Sandbox, learning as you go and hopefully making some sales.

4. Buy an ebook on SEO. You'll learn the ins / outs quicker than you could by reading free information. Alot of info contradicts - buy the one that gets the best free press.

5. One your first site has made at least two sales (or made enough adverstising revenue to cover it's running costs) and has enough content to keep it going for a month build a new one. This way you know the first sale wasn't an anomaly and your efforts are on the right track.

6. Diversify. Have different kinds of sites, not just by topic but also the physical kind of site. Get white labels, get adsense sites, use product feeds, use blogs. You will find that search engines might favour one kind of site for 3 months and then switch to liking something completely different. Also use different methods of keeping people on your site. Run competitions, add a forum, offer stuff that is valuable to you like things you have written - html templates, logos you never get to use, vouchers that are no good to you, even stuff that you may think has no value. Chances are that someone is looking for something that you have to offer.

7. Build a brand, name, business or whatever you want to call it. Become an expert in something whether it be a type of site such as blogging or become an expert in developing knitting sites, or SEO. Offer some of your expert knowledge for free and you'll find that what goes around comes around. You will be amazed at the business free advice and time can generate.

Probably forgot loads so feel free to add your own. If I ever get amnesia and have to start again I'll at least have a bookmark to this post

[Mogga]

If I could time travel I'd be too busy for affiliate stuff


Well I know what I'd do - and that would be start sooner! act quicker and think bigger.

[Fraser]

Travel back 10 years. Buy all those domain names that were freely available then. Sit on them for 10 years. Sell them all. Retire.

[monk-i]

I would note down 7 sets of lottery results

Great post Dave.

I think that you have covered just about most of it

[renegade]

Definitely buy all those domain names then do exactly what I did the first time around only sooner and build a huge mailing list before opting in became an issue.

[altyfc]

If I could turn the clock back, I wouldn't do work for third parties.

We originally started doing web design and promo for other companies, with a few in-house projects on the side.

Over the years, I've been trying to limit the third party work and focus solely on the in-house affiliate projects. We're getting there slowly, but clients are a hindrance!

Aaron

[Azam.net]

Good point Aaron.

I agree with Joe and Fraser: I would definitely have snapped up all those short snappy domain names. But they were a lot pricier in those days and I had no money - for many years I used those free subdomain services - so shouldn't get too depressed when I see them selling for tens of thousands of pounds nowadays...

[essdeekay]

Forget domains,

I'd travel back to the '70's and lend "certain" people the money required to develop a little programme called DOS.

;-)

Simon

[Soniqhost.com]

If I could go back in I would invest in Microsoft and Wal-Mart.

[Sammy aff]

10 years ago I would have contacted Larry Page and Sergey Brin, offered them £5000 ish to help them develop their new fangled idea, who knows they may have given 20% of the yet to be formed company

And now I would just spend my time hunting down all you pesky affiliates

[Shane]

hmm Turn the internet clock back I'd set up something where by email had to be sent via my technology at an inconsequential cost of something like 0.001p for each email sent.

at about 30 BILLION emails a day around the world that would be about £30 Million a day trickling in to my own bank on my private island (Australia)

[renegade]

I'd travel back to the '70's and lend "certain" people the money required to develop a little programme called DOS.

Noooooooooo!

Let's take the opportunity to skip the whole DOS and early Windows clunkware and have a decent WIMP based pre-emptive multitasking OS. - Effectively the Mac OS for all hardware platforms - we're getting there gradually now Mac OS runs on Intel chips.

[smn2]

Regards aff marketing I agree with Mogga and Another Media,
though I do think you can still 'act quicker and think bigger',
now

Steve