Hello affiliate world from South Carolina

[Redness44]

Hello all,

Bryan here (redness44). I've recently been introduced to AM by a friend that's been doing it since 2002. He suggested becoming part of affiliate forums to get good info from experienced marketers. I love what I've seen so far and can't wait for the initial learning curve to be over. Obviously I have LOTS of questions.
Maybe I can start now with this one;
I've been told that a low percentage of people make money at AM, and even fewer earn a living.
1) Does this statement hold true?
2) If so, does anyone know why? (could it be as simple as lazyness?)

Thanks for your time!

 

[onlinemallrat]

Hi Redness44 and welcome!

You asked

Maybe I can start now with this one;
I've been told that a low percentage of people make money at AM, and even fewer earn a living.
1) Does this statement hold true?
2) If so, does anyone know why? (could it be as simple as lazyness?)

1) I'm sure there are a lot of marketers out there who are struggling. I started out 5 years ago with my first online mall and getting traffic was a very frustrating so so I would say that your first question holds true in my opinion.
2) As far as why? For me it was as you mentioned, a learning curve. my first site was basically a banner farm! When someone wants to shop online they will go to their search bar and put in say...BestBuy....The BestBuy home page will be at the top of the search usually and there will be litterally hundreds of thousands of others following. Where am I in that mess? unknown! About a year ago I found out that content, key words and text is important. I changed the site and added things like "BestBuy Outlet' in the keywords, title text, body text and footer text. Now I went through my entire site doing this for almost all of the 250 merchants I publish and went from 500 to 600 hits a month a year ago to over 3000 hits a month today. I am now working from home with 4 websites. There is a LOT of work involved in getting there soIf someone is lazy...Yeo that could be the problem.

Hope this helped, Good luck and perservere
Tom the online mallrat

 

[seo-affiliate]

Hello all,

Bryan here (redness44). I've recently been introduced to AM by a friend that's been doing it since 2002. He suggested becoming part of affiliate forums to get good info from experienced marketers. I love what I've seen so far and can't wait for the initial learning curve to be over. Obviously I have LOTS of questions.
Maybe I can start now with this one;
I've been told that a low percentage of people make money at AM, and even fewer earn a living.
1) Does this statement hold true?
2) If so, does anyone know why? (could it be as simple as lazyness?)

Thanks for your time!

Bryan,

Welcome to the forum. As to your questions:

1. Yes, I believe a small percentage of people make money in affiliate marketing, and mostly because of the ease of entry into the business. It generally doesn't cost anything to join a program and say you are an affiliate marketer. Because you have no investment, it is then easy to give up - nothing risked, nothing lost.

2. Here are a few reasons that I believe most people fail in affiliate marketing:

- Lack of focus. They try to do be too many things to too many people.
- Lack of education. The don't take time to learn how to market their program, and therefore do not make sales.
- Lack of knowledge. They try to sell a product or service that they have no real world knowledge of, and therefore are not convincing enough to elicit a sale.
- They don't treat is like a real business. Affiliate marketing is big business, and being a successful affiliate marketer requires that you treat the venture like a business. This means, having dedicated work hours and a game plan for reaching your target market.

At least that's my two cents.

Best, Anthony

 

[Redness44]

Thank you 2 for your thoughts. It, somewhat, confirms what I was thinking. If I didn't know someone that has personally had success with AM I would probably think all this hype is one big "work-at-home" scam, so I could see how it would be easy to give up. It is very frustrating sitting in front of the computer for hours, then going to bed feeling like I've accomplished nothing when others make it seem so simple. I work a full-time job which gives me limited time to put into this. My ultimate goal is to achieve a level of success that will allow me to quit working for "the man" and work from anywhere in the world with my wife right by my side

Thanks again!!

 

[Ron Bechdolt]

Hello and welcome to the forum. A couple of great questions and I see folks here are already trying to provide their input.

Great to have you on board!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hey Bryan,

Welcome to 5 Star. Thanks for joining us.

It's true there is a low % of success. For many it's lack of aptitude, attitude or lack of commitment.

Many times though the problem is picking the wrong niche. Lots of people start with make money online, Internet marketing, fad diets, dating, finance or other extremely competitive markets. They can't compete with thousands of pros that already know how the game is played. When they don't see success right away, they just give up.

So my advice - really research and find a good niche FOR YOU. No one can tell you what the best niche is, but we can give you ideas about how to find and research it. Then once you are sure it's a good one, FOCUS on it. It's easy to get distracted so you really need to work on laser focusing. Those are a couple of my start up tips.

Read all the stickies in the newbie forum for more ideas about what to do and what to avoid. Then read "how to pick your 1st niche" in the niche marketing forum.

Hope this helps and best of luck!

 

[Redness44]

Thanks to everyone for your input.

Linda, with regard to your comment below.

Many times though the problem is picking the wrong niche. Lots of people start with make money online, Internet marketing, fad diets, dating, finance or other extremely competitive markets. They can't compete with thousands of pros that already know how the game is played. When they don't see success right away, they just give up.

Fitness is my passion, so I picked that as my niche. It seems quite competitive and apparently falls into your "fad diets" category. I'm going to follow your advice and search through the other forums and then I'm certain there will be even more questions than I already have. I'll be looking forward to everyones experienced advice.

Thanks again.

 

[Linda Buquet]

If Fitness is your passion then you can stick with it definitely. Just start with a niche within the niche. So focus on Fitness for pregnant women or a specialize in a certain type of exercise - just for starters. Once you learn your way and gain some traction you can branch out into more competitive areas of fitness.

When I mentioned fad diets I'm talking about when everyone jumps on the Hoodia or Acai berry train, it gets super competitive. But if you can find a smaller niche within the fitness niche then that would be fine.

Here is a keyword research tool that tells you what people are searching for. The most competitive topics are on top so try to find something toward the bottom of the list.

Fitness - Wordtracker

Exercise - Wordtracker

Then you want to search the keywords you pick to see how much competition there is. So go to Google and do a search like this with allintitle: "key phrase" in quotes.

Example: allintitle: "female fitness" 11,400 competing pages. (Just an example, not saying it's any good)

So just keep digging in Word Tracker to find good key phrases that aren't at the top of the list, then check in Google to find the competition. Work til you find something that's fairly high in WT but low competition in Google.

This thread explains in more detail.
<a href="http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/newbie-affiliate-forum/11829-best-5-star-tips-how-posts.html">Step by step Key word research to evaluate niche</a>

 

[Redness44]

WOW! I can't thank you enough. I can already tell that this forum is going to be my new best friend.

Bryan

 

[Linda Buquet]

You are very welcome Bryan.