Getting Started Help

[Drew66]

I have been reading into all of this for a couple days and I'm starting to get the basic idea of how affiliate programs work, however I can't quite get the full picture of how to get started. From my understanding I should:

1) Create a website corresponding to a niche

2) Contact companies in order to promote their products on my site

3) Work on the site to get hits and traffic in order to make more money

Is this the right general outline of getting started? I made it very broad, but that seems to me like the way to just jump right in. If there is anything I'm not getting please let me know.

Thanks.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Drew,

There are lots of ways to get started. I'll add a couple points/changes.

1 a) Maybe you already know the niche you want to target, but if you don't niche research and keyword and competitive research need to come before you start on a site

1 b) Site OR blog. Many find a blog is easier, Wordpress is free and search engines seem to like blogs better than sites.

2) Work on site content 1st, then work on getting traffic.

Do this before adding affiliate links because until you start getting lots of traffic you won't make any sales. Building the site, content (articles etc) and getting traffic are the foundation. Plus doing the above will make it easier to get approved for affiliate programs.

3) "Contact companies in order to promote their products on my site"

Well, not exactly. Normally to start - you'd join a network like Commission Junction or Google Affiliate Network which each have hundreds of programs. You pick 1-5 programs that directly relate to your niche and apply with a web form through the network.

So in a VERY abbreviated nutshell that's the most basic, typical way to get started.

Hope this helps!

 

[cherie27]

Linda, you provide a good info about affiliate marketing for newbie.

 

[Niche48]

agree with Linda.

Niche research is critical.

You need to look into the demand and supply of the niche and also determine how lucrative it is.

There are loads of posts on this forum telling you how

Also getting affiliate links is really simple

Look at places like clickbank and commission junction

They are affiliate networks that have tons of product under one roof

There are other networks as well but none comes to mind at the moment

When building your site, pay attention to the quality of your content. Must be useful and informative. You build a loyal following that way and credibility in your recommendations

Oh and finally, if you have definitely decided to go into affiliate marketing, don't let a few knock backs put you off

Work at it, keep tweaking and learning and applying

It takes time for it to all come together and start generating you an income but it is well worth the effort

Good luck

 

[genuwine4532]

answers

You got the steps right, here are some tips to help with niches and keywords, this should be the first step always.

There are 3 main factors that can influence what niche you select.

1. Consider your interest and expertise.
This can be important, considering the amount of work involved with marketing and creating a successful Internet business, if you can avoid adding research of an unknown niche in order to create good content on your website then it is best to do so.

2. Check out the competition for a niche and look for micro niches
This can be crucial to your success. Many major niches like laptops for instance have a lot of competition, usually you can find some good keywords or micro niches under the main niche that will still be searched for but have a much lower competition.

3. Is your niche profitable, can it be monetized and is there a demand?
Obviously you do not want to build a niche site if there is nobody searching for it or the products that you may promote within it. You need visitors and sales in order to make commissions, and evaluating the demand is the way to determine, or predict how many you might possibly have.

Some great free tools to see what the hot searches on the web are:
Google Trends and Top Searches - Shop at mySimon, these are good if you really have no idea what niche you want to get into, if you all ready have a general subject follow the keyword research steps below..

Get a feel for the hot items within the niche and what people are talking about and buying by checking out these resources:

--Read Industry Blogs ? Search in Google by entering ?blog + your niche? Check out the top blogs in your niche.

--Visit Niche Forums - Search for ?forums + your niche?
See what people are talking about within your niche on the top forums. Find out who the customers are, what they want, what they need, what are they looking for, what are their biggest fears and difficulties etc?

Keyword Research

This part is very confusing in the beginning, but a niche is mainly the theme/subject of your website and keywords are just how the niches are searched for by Internet users. So in order to have your site show up properly in search engine results to get traffic you need to choose keywords wisely, considering number of monthly searches AND the number of competing sites.

For example, if my main niche is weight loss then my keywords will revolve around weight loss, and I will do my keyword research by entering the main keyword weight loss and then seeing what keywords people are searching for within that main keyword/niche. Usually you can find some good keywords or micro niches under the main KW that will still be searched for but have a much lower competition and are easier to rank for in SERPS (search engine result pages)

Good Free Keyword Research Tools
Free SEO Tools & Search Engine Optimization Software
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Free Keyword Suggestion Tool From Wordtracker

It is a good idea to check the results against several sources as no keyword tools are completely accurate, and use common sense, if a keyword sounds too weird or uncommon for someone to search for then it probably is a fluke.

You want to have a couple of "sitewide" keywords that are you main ones, and then choose keywords for EACH sub page of your site, like "weight loss tips" maybe my main keyword, and then I will have three pages of written content, with keywords like, "how to lose 10 pounds" or "fast weight loss", as per the keyword tool results, make sense?

Competition from other websites is another crucial factor of your niche/keyword research.

The best way to gage the competition is by doing a simple search in Google like this: allintitle:?keyword? (the allintitle and quotes narrows the results to true competition of websites that actually have that keyword as the title of their site as opposed to just a mention somewhere within their content), and then seeing how many websites return in the results.

Good Rule of Thumb
You want to have at least 10,000 searches combined for all keywords within the niche and less than 500,000 search results in Google. If you are new to this business, I would even suggest less than 250,000.

Choosing Products
This part is easy, since all the products you want to promote should revolve around your niche. The biggest merchant variety is with:
Commission Junction
ShareASale - (good one, easy to use interface)
There is an affiliate program for almost any products!

Now that you have your niche, you can build your site and then work on traffic!! FUN!!!

 

[kbhuffaker]

Wow Drew66, you have really received some great advice with just these few comment's from the others. I must tell you that I had the same questions when first starting out, and still do to some extend as I try and apply some of the ideas mentioned. I think my biggest question was if I needed a full blown Website or could I just use a blog. I'm using a blog for my landing page now and that seems to work just fine. Plus it's much easier for me to work with the blog. I do wish I would have spent a little more time up front on getting researching my keywords, but at the time didn't know I needed to. I've found that the keyword research can guide you into your niche and really give you a good kick start. Also that adding backlinks are really important for driving traffic to your site.

Good luck and just keep with it.