New to Affiliate Marketing ? some very useful tips for you

smingle · 25-01-08

Hi,

I thought it could be a good idea to start a thread with some useful tips for newbies to affiliate marketing. (maybe even sticky it ?)

I get lots of PM's asking questions about certain things all the time, and obviously alot of others on here get asked similar questions very often also.

So as we are a close community who work together, I thought it would be a good idea if those people who consider themselves to be successful at affiliate marketing could post just 1 or 2 tips in this thread to help all the newbies out ?

If you have any information which you think is relevant and helpful then please add it in this thread

My first 3 tips are these :

1. If you are targetting google.co.uk for the main stream of your traffic, always buy a keyword rich domain name which ends in .co.uk.

If your chosen domain name is taken in .co.uk, check on google to see if there is a site already built and established on the domain. If there is not site built and established on your preferred domain name, then look to see if the .org.uk is available.

From my experience, It is alot easier to rank a .co.uk or a .org.uk domain name on google.co.uk, than other extensions such as .org or .net (sometimes even .com)

2. It is always a good starting point to buy a domain which "does what it says on the tin" and is a phrase which a user is likely to type into a search engine.

For example, if you buy a domain called loans4u.co.uk it will be harder to rank this site quicker than if you buy a keyword rich domain such as ineedaloan.co.uk (ineedaloan.org.uk is available at time of me writing this) as your domain name alone will give you extra brownie points.

It is very unlikely that someone will type into google "loans 4 u" but there is a very good chance that some would type "i need a loan"

3. Don't jump straight into the deep end. It can be very demotivating to start off in a massively competitive market (loans, holidays, diet products etc) and achieve no results as you will be dealing with big established websites who have been around for years.

If you choose something more niche such as size 10 clothes (www.size10clothes.co.uk is available at time of me writing this) then this is very specific as someone is specifically looking for "size 10 clothes" and this will have less competition and be very narrowed down, which could increase your sales rate.

Ok thats enough from me for now, I have toyed with the idea of starting a blog but I don't really have the time

Feel free to add your own tips to this thread and hopefully we can help out some of the newbies and help to make them successful also

Cheers

simplexrichard · 25-01-08

Hi There,

I was hoping you could help me. When you have a site that is up and running and you are looking for affiliates to sign up to, where on this forum do you promotte it (start a thread)?

Thanks
richard

smingle · 25-01-08

Quote:

Originally Posted by simplexrichard

Hi There,

I was hoping you could help me. When you have a site that is up and running and you are looking for affiliates to sign up to, where on this forum do you promotte it (start a thread)?

Thanks
richard

Hi Richard

You are supposed to use this forum http://www.affiliates4u.com/forums/a...-managers-hut/

Tt is not as busy as the affiliate marketing lounge, so you may get a better response if you posted it in the affiliate marketing lounge to make people aware of your affiliate program and then any further posts were made in the link I posted above.

Hope that helps

JayFCF · 25-01-08

Quote:

Originally Posted by simplexrichard

Hi There,

I was hoping you could help me. When you have a site that is up and running and you are looking for affiliates to sign up to, where on this forum do you promotte it (start a thread)?

Thanks
richard

The best bet is to approach the Administrators on this site.

I think Matthew Wood is one.

simplexrichard · 25-01-08

thanks very much

JayFCF · 25-01-08

A great tip to newbies - The three R's

Research, Research and more RESEARCH.

In my experience its best to build a site about something you know alot about.

It will stop you becoming bored, will allow you new pages, which will inevitably help you get linking partners, but also will keep you motivated to carry on.

Keep your site focused on the original idea. I once read the best two word phrase I've ever seen in the A4U forum. "Think Small" Thats genius in my eyes.

Small is better focus on one or two products and go all out in making your visitors believe they are the best products in the world, with thorough reviews, star ratings the works. Target your site specifically to these. For example if you where number one for boys toys on google you'd get many visitors but they would be unsure as to what they were looking for exactly. However, if you were number one for "Action Man 2008 premium addition" (I wonder if it exists?) you'd get less traffic but the visitors coming would be wanting that prodeuct so you'd be far more likely to get the sale

Any questions folks (affiliate related) send me a PM.

Cheers

JayFCF · 25-01-08

By the way great thread

smingle · 25-01-08

Hey Jay,
Glad to see everything I taught you has sunk in now

JayFCF · 25-01-08

LOL,

Cheers pal. im sure i could teach you a trick or two now though. (or maybe not)

smingle · 25-01-08

Nice to see that the domain names I provided as examples have been snapped up today - size10clothes.co.uk and size10clothes.com have both been taken today lol

So own up and tell me who it was

(you can PM me if you are shy) if I didn't have so many other domains to develop I would have done that one myself.

Come on there must be some 'real' affiliates willing to add to this thread too

stu-art · 25-01-08

I'm only a numpty (noob) but I've learnt some important things.

Always check the merchants sites are working properly.
I recently sent some traffic via PPC to a merchant only to discover the 'update cart' button was giving an error - meaning you couldn't remove items from your basket.

If your sites or landing pages wouldn't convince you then why should they convince others? Goodbye is only a click away.

Think outside the box at all times. Put yourself in the punters shoes. Always try to think "If I was a consumer, what would I be looking for on this page, what questions am I likely to have, what reassurances do I need?"

Don't let your first failed experiments in PPC get you down.

Ask questions.

Try and leverage the knowledge of other around you (friends and family) to develop niches. Failing that, the net contains all the info you'll ever need.

Actually try the things you learn, don't just think about it!

Stu-noob

sgpratley · 25-01-08

I wrote a post here about how to research domain names
The Online Marketing Blog | Building an Affilistore Travel site #1 - Choose a domain name

The Overture tool I mentioned is pretty wonky these days, but if you sign up for a Yahoo account (hint, look at the homepage of that blog!) You can get some numbers on how popular each phrase is by setting up a test campaign and dumping a list of keywords in there. Google has a similar version but it's rather vague.
Wordtracker also has UK data, but I think you need to subscribe to get that.

Some of the best sites are focussed on just one product, great for SEO, great clickthrough rates, and probably get you double the conversions you'd see listed in the network for that merchant.

As long as there's a program, you can never be too niche!

Matt Seigneur · 25-01-08

Some tips i'd give newbies are:

Dont go for a market too generic, narrow it down, (ie. not "shoes" but "nike air jordans" for example, not "holidays" but "weekends away in spain" or whatever!) and make sure your domain name reflects this. The tighter focussed the better!

Again, might not be as many searches per week/month/etc but you can be sure that visitors will most definitely be interested in your site, and therefor more likely to buy through you..

You can sometimes get some ideas just joining affiliate networks, drilling down a few categories and seeing if anything specific jumps out at you. Then do your competitor research, use goodkeywords/google keyword tool/etc..

For content you can use rentacoder.com and pay someone to write the content (making sure it is unique and quality), then obviously get started on building links to your site once the content is finished.

This saying is one that's stuck in my mind and applies to newbies suffering from paralysis of analysis ......
"You dont have to get it perfect, you just have to get it going!"

JayFCF · 25-01-08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matt Seigneur

This saying is one that's stuck in my mind and applies to newbies suffering from paralysis of analysis ......
"You dont have to get it perfect, you just have to get it going!"

Great tip mate.

I like it