Don?t Put All Your Eggs In 1 Basket - Bad Advice for Affiliates

[Linda Buquet]

Do you find yourself so scattered on numerous projects you aren't having success with any of them?

Or are you just getting started and wondering whether to diversify and start a bunch of mini sites or to just focus on one niche?

Gyutae Park of Winning the Web just wrote an EXCELLENT post that you need to read if you feel like you aren't as focused and effective as you could be. Be sure to see the screenshots that show the success level of working on 3 sites at once vs starting one at a time!

<strong><a href="http://www.winningtheweb.com/eggs-one-basket-bad-advice.php">“Don’t Put Your Eggs In One Basket” is Bad Advice for Internet Marketers</a></strong>

"However, that’s not what I want to talk about in today’s post. Instead, I want to discuss a big misconception about the phrase, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” that a lot of Internet entrepreneurs have. What am I talking about?

A lot of smaller Internet entrepreneurs hear the advice about diversification and incorrectly apply it to their time and attention - something that they simply cannot afford to do. They go into a variety of different web projects at the same time in hopes of making money (e.g. PPC affiliate marketing, blogging, membership sites, consulting, and SEO). In essence, they spread themselves too thin and never get to the point of seeing success. Is this you?

The problem with diversification for Internet entrepreneurs just getting started is that time and attention are extremely limited. Without money to outsource common tasks, these people try to do everything themselves working on multiple projects - a recipe for failure."

<a href="http://flickr.com/photos/colleencurnutte/2245956923/"><img class="alignleft" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2017/2245956923_c4293ac35f_m.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="232" /></a><strong><a href="http://www.winningtheweb.com/eggs-one-basket-bad-advice.php">Read the rest and check out those screenshots</a>.</strong>

<strong>I commented on his blog: </strong>I try to explain this to affiliates all the time and advise to carefully research then pick ONE site to start on. After you get it to critical mass, start getting decent traffic and some sales MAYBE branch out. There is something to be said for diversification - BUT with planning and focus and with a one at a time strategy.

But I see so many start with this scatter gun approach. They are all over the place and wonder why they never get anywhere.

At any rate I’ll be linking to this post every time I get affiliates at my forum who start getting too scattered.

 

[undoIT]

Hi Linda. I absolutely agree. In my experience, once the aha moment comes for a website idea that could potentially earn some money, it is important to be diligent and focused on that idea, to bring it to a certain level of fruition. Then, when it is earning solid income or bringing in a good amount of traffic, it is okay to start branching out to new projects. There will be more time and resources, and less stress. Otherwise, it is too easy to get spread thin and end up not getting any results after having wasted a lot of time. It is a huge amount of work to build a successful website, and most beginners probably don't realize what they are getting themselves into.

Foresight and a fair amount of time spent analyzing whether there is earning potential, what the obstacles are and whether an idea will actually work is important before getting started. Even if the website doesn't succeed financially, you benefit from the learning experience and can apply the skills / knowledge gained to another idea. That in itself is a success.

 

[mikedelong]

Very true. The main reason is most of the internet marketers are only a 1-man team.( Thats what we want anyway, no staff, no office)!

Manpower are tight and thus time should only be spent on the potential lucrative project. Or until you are outsourcing.

With so many competitors online, you need to be the best to garner the most attention and profits.

I don't know for you. I feel that Humans are designed to focus on one task at one time. This is where the power of focus comes in and creates tremendous results at the shortest time.

Unfortunately, most cannot focus on one project. They are always looking in left and right for the next money making project.

Thus Focus everything you have on one project and you will have already beaten 95% of the competition.

 

[James Martell]

No Hocus Pocus, Just Focus

This is a topic that rings near and dear to my heart. I can't tell you how many times I have heard someone say "...my next website is going to be about..." when there first one is far from complete or profitable.

I think when I am elected king , I am going to allow everyone only one website. Doing this will allow everyone, myself included, to focus 100% of our energies on one website. What a different outcome it would be for all.

I was looking at a thread I was involved in almost two years ago on a similar topic " How to Start - when to Quit Day Job". I could add to the 10 points listed dramatically now that web 2.0 is in full swing.

11. Twitter

12. FaceBook/MySpace

13. YouTube/Viddler

etc, etc...

It is such a new era. The old micro site model needs to be put out of it's misery. Personally, I am down to working on only a handful of websites, and I am still pruning. I am finding it is so much easier and much more profitable to focus my efforts.

If I was starting over as a brand new affiliate just starting out ...I would work and focus on one website.

Here's an interesting question: How many websites does the Markus Frind, the $10,000,000 affiliate have...ONE.

James

PS - The "put all your eggs in one basket" comes from a famous quote: Concentrate; put all your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket... Carnegie, Andrew (America's first billionaire)

 

[Linda Buquet]

I agree James. I often quote your line when you talked about:
if you could start over you would have one site - just one.

 

[Bryan Zimmerman]

I think when I am elected king , I am going to allow everyone only one website. Doing this will allow everyone, myself included, to focus 100% of our energies on one website. What a different outcome it would be for all.

PS - The "put all your eggs in one basket" comes from a famous quote: Concentrate; put all your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket... Carnegie, Andrew (America's first billionaire)

I'm going to disagree with this. This is not directed at you, but just the whole idea in general. I think people are crazy for putting all their eggs in one basket! For a beginning marketer I think it is the worst thing you can do. I think one of the big reasons many new marketers get frustrated and give up on internet marketing is because they don't see any results. Here is an example that happens ALL the time.

A new marketer comes in and is all gung ho and ready to work. They spend their time researching a niche (which for new marketers, they always wind up most of the time getting into either "make money from home" or "weightloss") building a web page, blog, squidoo, or hubpage....or all four, submitting rss feeds, writing articles, blog commenting and everything else they are told to do. For weeks if not a month they bust their butt to try and make some money but nothing happens. No money, no new motivation no nothing. Maybe if they are lucky, they make a sale or two. But most times it's nothing.

How can new marketers be told to put all their eggs in one basket before they know the basket is worth a crap to begin with. I know from experiance that trying to make money from weightloss or "make money online" is very very difficult for newbie's. Those two niches are so competitive, if you do not really know what you are doing you will make nothing! But those two are usually the two that most new marketers pick to try out.

I would suggest BEFORE you build your "basket" you need to take some time and find out what is going to SELL FIRST! Pick 3 or 4 different products and write 3 articles per day for each one. If you cannot do that then write 1 a day for them. Through some links around Yahoo Answers, build a quick squidoo page and submit the rss feed. What you need to do is test, test, test. Once you have gotten a good amount of hops (700) through your affilate link, you will have a good idea if a product is going to be profitable or not. If you have not made a sale after 700 hops I would dump the product. I would like a product that sells at about 1-60. Even 1-100 I could live with. Most of the weight loss products, if not all of them, don't convert worth a crap. If your doing adwords then that is a whole different ball game. But if you are building virtual realestate then it's going to be tough.

Then and only then would I say to begin putting your eggs in the basket.

I think lack of results is the one thing that makes more newbies give up and quit than anything else. At least if you are testing out different niches by writing articles that go to a landing page, you have 3 or 4 more opportunities to make sales than if you just go with one. What if you get lucky and find 2 products out of the four that sell really well? Thats great. While your building your site around one, continue writing articles to them both. What if all four of them fail? If they do, at that point i'm going to be glad that i did not spend a lot of time building this vast virtual real estate that is not going to make me any money.

Just my opinion. But I've been pretty successful by doing exactly the opposite.

 

[ajcones]

Ouch!!! It hurts me. Thanks for the great advice. Yes, it's true. Before, I had only 3 sites in which I got a decent income, but when I started to add them and now it reached to 20+ sites, my earnings will decresed too. The simple reason is, I can no longer managed all the sites and I can no longer promote it.

Again, thanks for this great advice.

 

[Meanna Blog]

So how do you work out the best niche to be in?

 

[thehotspotguide]

Great advice but how do you know that the one site that you have chosen was the best decision like Meanna Blog said.

 

[Linda Buquet]

So how do you work out the best niche to be in?

Great advice but how do you know that the one site that you have chosen was the best decision like Meanna Blog said.

You can start off by reading the stickies in our Niche Marketing Forum.

1st read "How to Pick Your 1st Niche"
2nd read "How to do Niche Keyword Research"

 

[James Martell]

Develop an Audience Not Just A Website

Hi Bryan,

Generally I agree with you, however if the new affiliate spent much more time researching the topic before launching into the business, they would have a far greater chance at succeeding.

A new marketer comes in and is all gung ho and ready to work. They spend their time researching a niche (which for new marketers, they always wind up most of the time getting into either "make money from home" or "weightloss") building a web page, blog, squidoo, or hubpage....or all four, submitting rss feeds, writing articles, blog commenting and everything else they are told to do. For weeks if not a month they bust their butt to try and make some money but nothing happens. No money, no new motivation no nothing. Maybe if they are lucky, they make a sale or two. But most times it's nothing.

It's true, I see affiliates wanting to jump into the most competitive topics all the time, however if they spent more time researching the topic, which includes a hard look at the competition, they would have clearer idea of what they would need to do in order to compete. At that point, they can either decide to move ahead or research another topic.

You also said that "building a web page, blog, squidoo, or hubpage....or all four, submitting rss feeds, writing articles, blog commenting and everything else they are told to do" is also true. I think many lose sight or don't understand that it's not about doing those things, but rather, building pages that convert visitors into sales. The other items that include blogging, squidoo, (hubpages), submitting rss feeds, writing articles, blog commenting, etc. should be used to drive targeted traffic to the page(s) that are known to convert.

I would suggest BEFORE you build your "basket" you need to take some time and find out what is going to SELL FIRST! Pick 3 or 4 different products and write 3 articles per day for each one. If you cannot do that then write 1 a day for them. Through some links around Yahoo Answers, build a quick squidoo page and submit the rss feed. What you need to do is test, test, test. Once you have gotten a good amount of hops (700) through your affilate link, you will have a good idea if a product is going to be profitable or not. If you have not made a sale after 700 hops I would dump the product. I would like a product that sells at about 1-60. Even 1-100 I could live with. Most of the weight loss products, if not all of them, don't convert worth a crap. If your doing adwords then that is a whole different ball game. But if you are building virtual realestate then it's going to be tough.

I would suggest a another way to test conversion is to build a solid page and buy some traffic. It's faster, and usually less expensive. Once the page is complete direct targeted traffic to that page and manage your testing through Google's free website optimizer.

I would also suggest that there is another approach that affiliates should consider, and that is instead of focusing on finding a product to sell, they focus on finding a market to serve. This site is a great example of that. Linda is doing a wonderful job of serving the affiliate community, and she will never run out of products, services, conferences, etc. that she can recommend.

My wife's website, although still in its infancy, is another example of what I am talking about in finding a market to serve. She is building a community of moms who are dealing with children with epilepsy, and she is focused developing her chat forum, working with her bloggers, continuing to podcast, distributing press releases, distributing RSS feeds, etc.

She has also identified a number of merchants with products she plans to market on the site and through her podcast. She also has an ebook called "Getting Adam Back - A Mother's Triumph Over Epilepsy and Autism" that she is selling, plus some Google AdSense.

This is the type of website I am talking about when I am saying build one website. There is a lot of work to set it up, but now the moms are helping to add to the websites content with the site being up over 500 pages now. In a year, she figures to be around 2000 pages. She has lots of moms returning to the website, her podcasts are listed in 25 or so podcast directories, she's already received some media attention and her audience is growing.

It's a new approach to the find a product to sell approach, but it has a lot of longevity, and she is finding it extremely rewarding.

It's another approach to the business that affiliates should consider, and attempting to create more than one of these types of websites, unless they have staff in place, would be a mistake.

James

 

[Bryan Zimmerman]

Hey James,

Generally I agree with you, however if the new affiliate spent much more time researching the topic before launching into the business, they would have a far greater chance at succeeding.

I agree with you onehundred percent on this. The problem is that most new affilates do not get this type of advice. The "just take action" phrase is crammed down there throat from the start. They are not told that once you have done the research as you just stated THEN it's time to take action. I don't think new marketers really take the time to learn proper research or they cannot find someone to teach them and just jump in head first.

It's true, I see affiliates wanting to jump into the most competitive topics all the time, however if they spent more time researching the topic, which includes a hard look at the competition, they would have clearer idea of what they would need to do in order to compete.

The problem I see with what happens here is that many times people are told to get into what you know or what you are passionate about. This usually leads to people jumping into something that EVERYBODY knows, thus it is very competitive. New marketers are really not taught how to REALLY check how strong the competition is. They are usually told to throw some quotes around their keyword and check the competing pages. Checking competition goes much deeper than that. (you already know that but alot of people do not)

My opinion is if you find something that makes you oney, you will quickly learn to become passionate about it

You also said that "building a web page, blog, squidoo, or hubpage....or all four, submitting rss feeds, writing articles, blog commenting and everything else they are told to do" is also true. I think many lose sight or don't understand that it's not about doing those things, but rather, building pages that convert visitors into sales.

You are absolutely right! But there again the problem is new marketers are not taught that. They are taught to do this, this, this and this and you will make money. We all know it does not work like that. It's about testing your product first, then the landing pages, your sales copy and ect to see what is going to convert for you. If you send traffic to the actual product page and that doesn't sell, whats the point of building even one page around it.

I would suggest a another way to test conversion is to build a solid page and buy some traffic. It's faster, and usually less expensive. Once the page is complete direct targeted traffic to that page and manage your testing through Google's free website optimizer.

I totally agree with this point as well and honestly I think it is the best way to test. However, I would be scared to tell a new marketer to go in and begin an adwords campaign. Those things can get out of control REALLY quickly if you do not know what you are doing. Not only that, even if the product itself converts well, the landing page the set up be horrible and not take advantage of the visitors.

Most new marketers do not have the capital to spend, thats why I always suggest buying a domain name and redirecting it to your affilate link and just spend a couple weeks writing articles to it. The most it will cost you is $10.00 for the domain name and a little time. That is strictly my opinion though.

Linda is doing a wonderful job of serving the affiliate community, and she will never run out of products, services, conferences, etc. that she can recommend.

I am very impressed with this forum. I don't even know how I found it but I'm glad I did. I'm a member of a few of them and this one has the best feel of them all.

My wife also has an ebook called "Getting Adam Back - A Mother's Triumph Over Epilepsy and Autism"

Thats cool she is doing that. My wife works with autisitc children in the school system here in Florida

This is the type of website I am talking about when I am saying build one website. There is a lot of work to set it up, but now the moms are helping to add to the websites content with the site being up over 500 pages now. In a year, she figures to be around 2000 pages. She has lots of moms returning to the website, her podcasts are listed in 25 or so podcast directories, she's already received some media attention and her audience is growing.

It's a new approach to the find a product to sell approach, but it has a lot of longevity, and she is finding it extremely rewarding.

It's another approach to the business that affiliates should consider, and attempting to create more than one of these types of websites, unless they have staff in place, would be a mistake.

If this is they type of site someone is trying to build then you would definatly be better off just sticking to one site. Within that one site you will have multiple steams of possible income. So I would agree to keep all you "eggs" in one basket. It will take a while to get built up, but once it is it can be very lucrative!

For most people just starting out, they will go straight to clickbank and pick a product. My whole reasoning was directed at a person who is taking that route.

I think the problem lies that it is very easy to get not only the wrong information, but also information overload when you are first starting out.
Here is an example, how many people do you think have a line in their signature that claims you can make $5000,00 overnight?

But truthfully that person doesn't know how to really make money themselves. It's just a product they are promoting to make money as an affiliate. A new person marketing, buys that program through their link and thinks this is going to make them rich. Follows the program, spends a bunch of time on it and never makes a dime.

They get frustrated, go and get a bunch of advice from 30 different people, all with different methods, and then get even more confused. Now there frustration level is through the roof, they are out money and time. Then give up and quit.

The best thing a person can do in this business if learn how to test what works and what doesn't. Ultimately it will be your ability to know HOW to test things that will decide if you are successful in this business or not.

Bryan

 

[Niche48]

Totally agree with your comment on the gentlemans blog. At the end of the day, there really is no point in starting a handful of projects when one has not actually figured out what works yet. Take a project, get it to profitability and then move on