Absolute Beginner Questions - Have I got this right?

[darrinm81]

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Hi Everyone,

I have been looking at numerous online ideas and it seems that 'affiliate marketing' is a smart way of generating revenue from your website. I have been reading this forum and other websites and think I finally get the idea.

Could someone confirm my understanding is correct? The reason I ask is because there seems to be lots of information but trying to summarise what I have read.

Starting Point:
1) I setup a website as an affiliate or publisher. Website may be a simple Wordpress blog or a self hosted, web designed portal?
2) Website may be anything but it contains "links" provided by an affiliate network. If you have a good site, you may be able to go direct to merchant?
3) Visitors or customers visit my website.
4) Visitor clicks on link.
5i) Visitor makes a purchase. I may get paid a commission from the affiliate network (who is paid by the merchant/brand) - if paid by sale.
5ii) Visitor visits linked website but makes no purchase. I may get paid a commission from the affiliate network (who is paid by the merchant/brand) - if pay by lead/click.
6) Hope that steps 3 - 5 continue and increase in volume. I get paid more commission.

Growth:
1) Website is established but I want more traffic and more conversions.
2) I look at SEO strategies to boost traffic.
3) I look at conversion optimisation strategies to boost conversions.
or
4) I create another website.
5) Repeat 4 until I am earning enough revenue and profit.

I imagine that depending on your abilities, you could probably derive some income from this method. If you build a great website(s) and establish a large following you could make this a full time job.

All sounds feasible but what worries me that some affiliates have 50+ websites. Does one really need to go to this effort to boost income? Could a couple of websites linking to higher margin products/services pay better dividends?

Thanks!

[darrenb]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

Your understanding of affiliate marketing as detailed in your post is correct.

In answer to the two queries raised:

I imagine that depending on your abilities, you could probably derive some income from this method. If you build a great website(s) and establish a large following you could make this a full time job.

Yes it is perfectly possible to make affiliate marketing a full time job, many on here do just that.

All sounds feasible but what worries me that some affiliates have 50+ websites. Does one really need to go to this effort to boost income? Could a couple of websites linking to higher margin products/services pay better dividends?

There are a couple of ways that people do this.

1. Create small niche type mini sites that have low competition, these are generally easier to rank but have low traffic volumes and require less work. The advantage being that you are not putting all eggs in one basket so to speak.

2. The second option is to tackle a large site or two with the aim of taking on a larger/more popular area that has more scope to expand.

Obviously each have their own advantages/dis-advantages.

Hope that helps.

Darren

[accelerator]

Affiliate marketing is simple, but the term sounds complicated. In essence, you put links on your website and get paid if someone clicks on that link and then buys something from the destination website. The affiliate network is just the middleman that makes joining new advertisers easy.

See this resource site for more.

[opensesame]

Darrin,

Every affiliates task is to rank as high as possible for a keyword term in Google and then make the products on the website relevant to that term which in turn generates sales.

So if you ranked for 'wireless keyboards' you would then push a range of wireless keyboards on your website.

To rank for a certain keyword you need SEO, there are a few things SEO's will put in place they think Google takes into account when working out where to rank your website.

One of the major SEO benefits you can have is a EMD (exact match domain). You can expect a massive jump in the SERP's (search engine ranking positions) to not unheard of Page 1 off the back of the EMD alone.

Finding a decent EMD is like good dust, finding a EMD that generates 50,000 searches a month will either be in use or brought by a domain broker.

But finding an EMD that gets 1000/3000 not so difficult so that's why you find lots of affiliates have lots of websites, because most of the sites they have are EMD's (I have some of these also).

If you check the domain selling section on this forum your notice a lot of affiliates selling a domain which mentions search volume and the fact its a EMD, your also notice some affiliates moaning about domain brokers because they buy EMD's and resell at a lot higher rate.

So its not the fact they choose to have 50+ websites, its there only choice from the EMD's available, trying to rank for a keyword without an EMD would be a lot harder work.

[darrinm81]

Thanks for all the responses. Some real useful replies. I am glad I understand the main elements of affiliate marketing!

I read everywhere about finding a small niche. I assume this is to stand out from the crowd of other affiliates? If one was to build a good 'compare the market' type website or popular 'news feed' type portal. Would this be useful in attracting traffic away from competitors? I see plenty of affiliate websites that look so average and flat - do these sites actually generate leads and commission (ie do looks matter)?

It feels like a good domain name and some paid SEO techniques and you can ramp up your visitor numbers. Does a good landing page help or is it useless without a good SEO and domain strategy?

[MonetiseDave]

All of this is true, but you may also want to consider not having a full website at all! No need for SEO, no Google Panda worries (or the next anti-affiliate algo), no being in the hands of search engines (who generally do all they can to disrupt affiliates who they see as offering little value to their users).

How?

Well, there are umpteen traffic sources out there (pay per click, cost per impression, pay per view, email lists, etc) and many ways that you can send traffic directly to an advertisers website (or even better, to a landing page that can pre-sell the advertisers page).

The idea is that you buy traffi and generate leads/sales for the advertiser but the affiliate commission generated places you in profit. Once you have a profitable campaign, you can scale it to other traffic sources.

This is simplified explanation of course, but I am sure you get the basic idea...

[Fitness Coupons]

All sounds feasible but what worries me that some affiliates have 50+ websites. Does one really need to go to this effort to boost income? Could a couple of websites linking to higher margin products/services pay better dividends?

Thanks!

Depends what you're looking to do. As a starter I'd look at getting one site set up and spending a good few months building the pages, getting the SEO sorted and looking to drive commissions even before thinking about another site. I've been in the A.Marketing world for a year now and only have one site which I have built up month upon month as my knowledge has improved and I've gone from making about a tenner a month and no rankings to £300-400 a month and many pages high up in Google.

I enjoy focusing all my efforts on the one site to make it the best it can be but then again I also have a full time job so I don't have time to manage more sites. If you have the time, after a few months you could look at setting up one or two more sites but remember Google likes quality sites rather than throwing a couple of pages on and expecting it to rank well and gain good commissions.

[darrinm81]

All of this is true, but you may also want to consider not having a full website at all! No need for SEO, no Google Panda worries (or the next anti-affiliate algo), no being in the hands of search engines (who generally do all they can to disrupt affiliates who they see as offering little value to their users).

Dave - I am not sure I totally understand. Are you suggesting you simply buy advertising on other websites that contains your affiliate code (eg banner advert)?

I imagine that advertising costs would eat into profit (if any) but is an alternative to creating your own website?

[darrinm81]

TC - Thanks for the reply. I am looking at starting small, at least to first understand the mechanisms and tools needed to grow bigger.

The monthly figure you quote. Is this commission revenue or profit (ie revenue after costs)? Are you paying for any traffic etc to see growth from £10 to £300?

[opensesame]

His talking about instead of ranking in search engines, pay for advertisement space on other websites, which link to your affiliate site, which could then convert into a sale on the merchants site.

So if you sold computer games, then an ad on gamespot might generate relevant traffic that would convert.

[Fitness Coupons]

TC - Thanks for the reply. I am looking at starting small, at least to first understand the mechanisms and tools needed to grow bigger.

The monthly figure you quote. Is this commission revenue or profit (ie revenue after costs)? Are you paying for any traffic etc to see growth from £10 to £300?

I don't pay for any advertising, purely commissions from organic search / tweeting to my Twitter followers etc. It can take time to build up a good profile of Google to rank well and you learn more and more as you go along to improve your site (or sites). For instance, I made nothing for the first 4 months and now I'm finally starting to see some good returns and have learnt so much about A.Marketing, web design and SEO in the last 6 months. It's all a learning curve which is why when starting out I'd advise concentrating on one site and then moving on once it has been established.

[darrinm81]

Thanks again for the responses. Some good points being shared.

I still have plenty of research to do, but have a list of some good ideas.

My next steps are likely to continue with the research, setup a WordPress page and trial some affiliate networks.

Once I am familiar with the mechanisms I will look into a domain name (.co.uk and .com).

My thoughts for now are a single landing page that showcases a set of associated products. Users on the landing page can follow the links to affiliates, leave comments and link page via social media etc

Every day/week/month I would either change the landing page or add others showcasing the products.

Depending on traffic and feedback, then I will explore growth opportunities.

Apologies for the posts - I know you are all thinking that these questions have been asked a thousand times!

[louisscd]

You have got it right brother and with hard work and some time you will have no problems. One thing I will say is that instead of sedning traffic/visitors direct to a sales page you should send them to what is called an opt in page. This is a one page website designed to build a list of subscribers to an email mailing list. This way you get to send advertisments/emails to your captured traffic (much more powerful)

good luck stick at it