Newbie here with a few questions

[NFG]

Hi everyone,

My name is Nick, I'm a 20 year old college student. I was introduced to the concept of affiliate marketing recently, even though its been around for probably over a decade now. I found it interesting, especially the potential to be so successful. I'm not trying to make a career out of this, if I can make $1000-$1500/month then I will be able to seriously cut back on the night job or leave it all together for the remaining 1 and a half years I'm in college. I have over 1 month of free time coming up for the Holiday break from school where I have alot of free time to dedicate to getting stuff up and running.

I just had a few questions I hope they arent too noobish. I've been doing alot of reading so I'm really starting to grasp the idea of how to get started.

My main question is this: I understand that many programs want you to already have an established website with good traffic or some similar terms. How am I supposed to have a high traffic website up and running before I'm in a merchant's affiliate program? I thought the process would be more like this(obviously I'm wrong): Join an affiliate program of my choice, build an informational website about selected niche which has articles that will contain merchant's links. Could someone clarify this ?

Example - if I wanted to work in the Automotive niche, should I build an all-around automotive information website FIRST with all topics automotive, drive some traffic to it, AND THEN join an affiliate program(s) and insert merchant links in the appropriate articles/different site pages ?

Second Question: Regarding site traffic: Do I really need to buy advertising such as Google Adwords or are there other free/less expensive ways for beginners with low budgets to get decent traffic ? Whats your advice?


Thanks, I'll be surfing through the stickies too, I've skimmed through some of them already and havent been able to find an answer to these questions. I really appreciate the help !

-Nick

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hey Nick,

Noob questions are welcome, but my carpal is killing so scuse the shorter than usual answers.

1) Don't need to build out a whole site and get lots of traffic for most programs. But having a starter site would help so a merchant can see it's on topic and not a junk site. (The bigger name brand merchants on big networks tend to be pickier and want established sites with traffic. BUT on the other hand even some big merchants are set up on auto pilot and accept everyone. So it just depends.)

So I'd be sure you have an about us page, contact us page, privacy policy/TOS page and at least 3 articles or pages of content for starters.

2) No don't have to do paid ads. The best FREE traffic is SEO. So that's another reason to get a site started. Learn SEO so as you add content you are building it well for people AND spiders so you can get free traffic.

So the content and the way you build the site sets you up to get traffic. Until you have traffic you won't have any sales. So that's why, build up some content before you even worry about applying to affiliate programs.

But again as I mention in lots of stickies it helps if your 1st niche is not super competitive so you stand a chance of ranking even though you are just learning how it all works.

 

[NFG]

Thanks Linda, your answers cleared up my confusion.....I'm still debating with myself whether this is worth a shot. I have about 5 weeks of free time coming up so I've been doing alot of research trying to get a plan together in my head so I know how I'm gonna go about it if I decide to take this up. Might as well give it a shot, cant win in this world without taking some risk. Worse come to worse im out a domain name, registration fee and hosting fee, so what....$30 ?

 

[robertcwik]

Nick,

Since you are starting, you are in a far better position than some of us, because you can use all the knowledge we have learned in the school of hard knocks. So here is my 2 cent.

Whatever you do, remember to concentrate on building your list, which will be your major asset, valuable far more than the website itself.

The automotive niche is huge, and I would say underdeveloped among Internet Marketers, so you stand good chance to make money online and offline if you so wish.

My start-up outline would be something like this:

A WordPress blog on your niche (rather than a static website, for the ease of use, update, and maintenance)

A free report on something you know is of value to people (I am not very much into automotive, but if someone offered me a free report on how to increase mileage per gallon, or how to properly care for my car during winter and just after, I'd gladly offer my e-mail).

A squeeze (e-mail capture) page where you offer your report in exchange for people's e-mail addresses.

A follow-up sequence in your autoresponder with about 7-12 messages (advice like, e.g. how to tell if your tire requires replacement; why check liquid levels; etc.) with your affiliate offer at the end.

The purpose of your blog is to provide value to your readers and present your affiliate offers.

The purpose of your squeeze page is to build you a list of subscribers.
The purpose of the autoresponder sequence is to provide value to your subscribers and build good relationship with them. Later on you'll be sending broadcasts or add more messages into the follow-up sequence.

I said that your list will be your most valuable asset and that's true. It is far more difficult to get a new customer than present your offer to one that you already have.
These will be the first people you will present your new offers to!

Initial investment? Ca. $10-$12/year domain name, ca. $48-$60/year hosting, $19/month Aweber (autoresponder account, first month only $1).

Wordpress is free, and you will easily install your first site using Fantastico in your hosting CPanel.

I wish you lots of success!

 

[rojkoserghei]

to obtain desired traffic:
1. Blog commenting
2. Forum posting
3. Social Book Marking
4. Article Marketing
5. Video Marketing

All the best!!!