How do I decide on what area of affilating to focus on?

[shedokan]

Hello,
I am newbie at all of this, and I am not sure on which area is the best if I have only 60$(I know..).

I was thinking of making a website, but you only say how to make the website and not what's going to be in it and how to earn from it(Google Adsense?).

Or maybe sell products using adwords, but I don't know how to do that. forward to some page of my own? or directly to the product's page?

and I am not sure which of those will most likely to make my 60$ grow.

thanks.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi shedokan,

Welcome to 5 Star. Thanks for joining us.

Start by reading this to determine what area to focus on: <a href="http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/niche-marketing/5558-how-pick-your-1st-niche.html#post15325">How to Pick Your 1st Niche</a>

Then research and refine the niche with this info: http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5...ting/14441-how-do-niche-keyword-research.html

Then read all the stickies in the newbie forum. Lots of your questions should be answered and things should start coming into focus. Then ask more specific questions if you have any and we'll try to help.

 

[shedokan]

Ok so I decided on what niche to write in a blog about.

now how do I make money of it? just adsense?

 

[Linda Buquet]

You can also do affiliate marketing. Find products related to your niche and link to them in your blog. Read the stickies in the newbie forum for tips about how to get started with affiliate marketing.

 

[shedokan]

I've read all of the stickies and none of those gives advise on which affilate proggrams are better for beginners, they only say "go and find an affilate program", but where do I find those?

guess I'll be searching for those.

anyways thanks, but saying "read the stickies" isn't very helpful.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Sorry I didn't know you'd already read them and also you didn't ask where to find programs or I would have explained that.

The biggest affiliate network and easy to search is Commission Junction cj.com
You just type the type of products you are looking for in the search box or navigate by category to find products in your niche.

The other way is to search Google, like this: key phrase "affiliate program"

So if your niche was dog training you'd search for: dog training "affiliate program"

 

[shedokan]

oh, thanks.

sorry I didn't mention that, and I didn't know it was that easy.

I have one last question, do you know "Long tail treasure affilate E-course"? and if you do is it good?

thanks.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Have never heard of it. Be careful spending money on ebooks since you don't have much to spare. They ALL make it sound like they have the magic bullet. Many of them just regurgitate info you can find for free if you just look.

 

[shedokan]

Erm, no it's free.

I was telling about the money because I was unsure if I should use PPC to advertise products.

 

[Linda Buquet]

You could burn through $60 easily doing PPC and not make a penny if you don't know what you are doing. Best to get started driving free traffic and learning the ropes. Then if you decide to do PPC later you really need to study up on it. There is a lot to learn before trying it.

 

[shedokan]

Ok thanks, and actually making a website is the best for me because I am a Web developer and a web designer.

and I just want to learn affilating and how to bring people to a product.

thanks.

 

[Laura61]

Sixty bucks will buy you a domain name and a few months of hosting, but there are also ways to do affiliate and other kinds of marketing without a site. It just depends on what works best for you and your niche.

Read everything you can about affiliate marketing, if you're interested in that, and when you run across a program you're considering, be sure to Google its name plus "scam" to see what others are saying. There are things labeled as scams that really aren't but people say they are because they didn't follow the instructions. But if in doubt, you can always ask others, or just keep researching until you can make a confident decision one way or the other.

But as Linda said, all the information you'll probably need can be found for free if you don't want to pay for a course or program. It just takes time to assimilate it all.

 

[Kutaone]

It seems you already have a topic but I'll add my 2 cents anyways.

You don't have to pick just one affiliate either. You can choose more than one and see which one works better over time.

Don't forget to pick something that you find interesting. I'm finding out the hard way that the only way you are going to make any $$$ is to be persistent and put in a lot of hard work. If you pick a subject based strictly off of $$ then you might find it hard to write about day in and day out.

I knew I would run into this problem (I guess it's that ADD that we all have when we work in front of the T.V.) I made multiple sites since I knew I would have trouble writing about the same subject. (maybe that's bad b/c I have to split my focus.)

I have to preface this next statement by saying I am relatively new to this but I have found that my best traffic sources have been stuff that I have done for free. 60 bucks should be plenty to start with. I wouldn't buy any tutorials or "how to" books b/c all the info you find in the books is easily available on line for free. (A lot of it right here on this forum.)

The only reason I have spent more is b/c I got some help and some tutoring for web design and such. (I was too lazy to teach myself.)

One really nice thing you do have in your favor is you already have the web design part down. That's one less thing you have to learn. Hopefully that also means you have some background in SEO.

Good luck! I hope it works out for you. (and all of us.)

 

[shedokan]

Thanks, and won't it cost more to try different niches? don't I need a domain for each?

because people won't really believe if I have one domain for several websites, will subdomains work?

 

[Linda Buquet]

I really recommend starting off with just one niche. But you could have multiple related affiliate programs for that one niche. So again with the dog training niche example (not that it's great - just an example) you could promote 2 different dog training ebooks and a pet supply company.

 

[shedokan]

And how would I go and advertise a product? just write some blog posts to get the blog more famous and then post another blog post to advertise a product?

or just have it in the widgets area always visible like an advertiesment?

 

[Kutaone]

Linda has a really good blog that show examples of various affiliate marrketing sites you could check out for examples. You could also check out the site review section to see what others are doing.

Examples of affiliate sites.

And listen to Linda when she says only focus on one niche for now.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Kutaone, thanks for that link. Great resource for this post!

On blogs there are lots of ways to promote. Yes you can have an ad in the side bar or you can do a sales post promoting the product. But the best way is contextual links right in your blog post. If you are talking about how to do something, you link to a product that can help. Or you review a product or explain how to use it. So instead of a blatant sales pitch, you mention a product in the course of the conversation that could help the person reading about that particular topic.

You can do both. Have an ad in the sidebar, plus mention products in posts.

 

[shedokan]

Thanks, I feel now that I get what is affilating is about.

and do you think mail affilating is good?