Hi Matt,
The problem comes with building sites, is that the more areas you cover, the less focus there is and it becomes harder and harder to get a good ranking in the search engines.
If you pick one small area, you can make your site the authority on your area, and as your site will be chock full of info about that area (hopefully!), you'll be rewarded with a good ranking. It also helps to convince the visitor that your site is trustworthy and can be taken as an authority. Anyone can whack anything they want on the internet, whether its true or not, and the general public are becoming more aware of this.
Cutting your teeth as an affiliate is much easier when you are concentrating on one small niche area, when you have more experience then you can start to expand. In the end you are going to earn more money by coming in at number 1 for a number of important keywords for a niche, than coming in at number 100 say for more general subjects.
It's a good idea to build a site about something you know, you've done the right thing there. But I would look at focussing on a single category, and even then breaking it down further. If I was you, then I would be looking to build a site about Mobile Phones, another about Televisions, another about DVD Players and so on, rather than attempt to have everything on the one site.
Say you took televisions, then again instead of trying to cover everything, try a single area that hasn't got as much competion. Drill down to Plasma Screens, or even just 30" Plasma Screens. The smaller the area your site covers, the easier it is to fill it with a load of content based on the subject, and consequently get better rankings in the search engines.
When it comes to affiliate sites, Google rules! PPC is expensive, and whilst you may choose to do it, you will still rely a lot of natural search traffic sent through Google. You've got to remember that when you launch a new site, you are competing with sites that have been there for years, with a big user base and many backlinks, as well as big retailers such as Argos, Dixons, Currys etc. You can't come in with an affiliate site about electrical goods and beat the likes of them in the search engines!
As a result, you need to think small, and really focus on one niche area and dominate the market for that. You can actually do well out of relatively small visitor numbers, as you'll get a higher conversion rate - you are offering people exactly what they are looking for, and you will get rewarded with their sales.
With your site at the moment, it's covering way too much, and as result the content is very thin. Take your mobile phone area, it's one page, and theres no where near enough content to be given a decent ranking by the search engines. The reviews are very short as well. If I came to your site looking for a mobile phone, i`ve got to admit that I`d go to somewhere where the reviews are a lot more detailed. They are relatively expensive, and it's not something i`d buy without checking all the details of the phone to decide if its any good, and whether it's right for me.
Plain listings of products, with a link to the merchant just don't work any more, due to the massive amount of competing sites on the net. You need to build a site with a lot of focussed content that really helps the user. The most successfull affiliate sites sell the user on the site itself, you need to make the user decide to buy the product on your site, and then go through to the merchant and buy it. When you have a page just giving a list of products with their links, you aren't offering the user any value, they might as well go straight to the merchant as otherwise you are just adding a step to the buying process for nothing.
On your affiliate site, you have the advantage that you have more room available to dedicate to a product than the merchant does, and you use that to your advantage to really sell the product and give extra details and photos etc that the merchant can't. It's this which persuades the user that the product is what they want, so that they decide to buy it.
Generally, the higher the price of the product, the more info you need to give. If you are selling a product at £20, then you don't need half as much persuasion to make a person buy it, as its low enough to be a spur of the moment purchase. The person can afford to hand over £20 for a product that they'd like, but may not necessarily need. When you are trying to sell a flat screen tv worth £700, you are going to need a lot more detail to persuade the visitor they are making the right choice. Its a lot of money to most people, and an amount they won't often pay for a product. As a result, they are going to be nervous about whether they are making the right choice, or whether they are going to waste their money, which they can't afford to throw away.
I think a lot of people put too much emphasis on the technical side with Affiliate Marketing, concentrating on the web site and the HTML etc too much. Whilst you need a decent site, and a good knowledge of
SEO to get traffic to the site, you need to put just as much into the Sales side. In the end, as an affiliate you're a salesman for the company. The actual marketing side is just as important as anything else.
Personally, I think you'd be best on focussing on the TV section of the site, and build up a good niche site with lots of content and reviews. Once you have that successfull and earning money, then you can start building sites to cover the other areas as well. You are much more likely to be successfull that way and get a decent amount of commissions. You could really do with a decent tv related domain name though, as Google gives a domain with keywords in a lot more weight, so look for something like plasmatvs.co.uk (You've got no chance of getting that one, as it will have gone long ago, it's just used an example).
I think if I were you, i`d leave your current site up, but start working on a new focussed site, and take things from there.
I wish you the best of luck with it, affiliate marketing isn't easy and theres a lot to learn, but it can be very rewarding - it's a great feeling when you make your first sale!
Re: Advice for someone new to affiliate marketing
