If you could give one piece of advice to newbies

[workingNOMAD]

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I have been in the game a few years now and make a decent living from affiliate marketing. At the beginning I spent ages looking for ideas, niches, combing through forums like this etc.....and feel I wasted a fair bit of time.

Forums like this are very useful but you have to make a start sooner than later!

So with that in mind my piece of advice to people thinking of starting out is....

Do not to procrastinate over considering ideas and website building. Pick an area that interests you and that is commercially viable and get a site out there as soon as you can. Don't wait to take that first step and don't be afraid of making mistakes. Too many people never get out of the blocks because the are afraid their idea might not work, or the market too crowded etc

The sooner you get your sites out there, the sooner you will learn about what works and what doesn't, and the sooner you can reach your goals.

In this game you rarely waste time by creating content.

Finally you must believe you are going to achieve your goals. My goal was to give up my full time job and be able to work from a tropical island. There is nothing more satisfying than achieving a long term goal.

Now stop reading and start building! :tup

[aaclapham]

Try to do a joint venture with an established affiliate as you learn loads :tup

Most newbies are too afraid to ask and never get off first base. I spent 12 months treading water before I had my first decent sales.

[accelerator]

Don't try to address a big competitive market and be too general, instead precision focus on a small niche that relates to a product that sells well over the internet.

If you are looking at Google keyphrase data for a particular market, don't try and go for the top result, but instead choose a result that is further down the page where you have a reasonable chance of achieving 1st page of Google.

Oops - that's two bits of advice.

Rgds

[IntroSites]

i agree, start with a smaller niche site, move to a larger target when you feel confident you can make it work

[BigMick]

Take action today and stick to one idea at a time.

[Lawcom]

When you start out, go with a topic that genuinely interests you and you will enjoy building..

Follow your instincts, it's your idea, everyone will have an opinion but ultimately you'll learn by doing it and not by reading about it..

Enjoy it !

[alphawave]

Learn some HTML/CSS and basic SEO too

[dvdbargains]

Try to do a joint venture with an established affiliate as you learn loads :tup

Most newbies are too afraid to ask and never get off first base. I spent 12 months treading water before I had my first decent sales.

Good advice aaclapham, and as such I have posted a new thread asking if ay affiliates would be interested in a joint venture.

I need some experience to help me take my ideas further.

[Dazza30]

If you intend to rely on google serps for your traffic you need to research and add none copied (unique) content to your site.

Also read either or both of these basic search engine optimization guides,

free seo guide | seo advice | smingle

http://www.google.com/webmasters/doc...rter-guide.pdf

[Ditzy]

There's a bit of a misconception that those of us who work in affy marketing sit in front of the TV all day and do very little while the money rolls in ... my advice would be to recognise that fact that you get out of this what you put in

[aotagain]

Treat it like a real-world business - go through all the steps you would if it were - except buying stock of course !