Getting Started In Affiliate & Internet Marketing
Your First Six Month Roadmap
By Brian Johnson
Getting started with affiliate marketing can often seam overwhelming, it is often hard to know where to start and how to begin to "market online". With thousands of affiliate programs, different marketing strategies and countless people trying to pull you into their program how do you know where to start, or how to start for that matter?
This article was created to give those wanting to get involved in this exciting business a 6 month road map.
Take The Long Road Approach
You know the ads, the "get rich quick" and "how to make $10,000 in your first 90 days".... you will want to get that thinking out of your head first. Do you know anyone to ever make 10 grand in there first three months in a business, especially one that anyone can get started with for less than $50 bucks? Instead understand that anyone that makes serious money in this industry has been at it awhile, the work their business like a business and treat it as such. By understanding that your going to have to learn the ropes you will not be setting yourself up for disappointment weeks later as your wondering why your not selling any products or services.
Basic Skill Set Need To Do Well Online
- Ability To Create And Maintain Your Own Site(s)
- Hosting Of Your Own Websites
- Get Proficient With Email
Grasp Basic SEO Strategies & Online Marketing Ideas
If you already have several of these skills and online tools mastered you will have an easier time during your fist few months. I recommend people start off by creating what is known in the industry as a "content site" this type of a site is also known as a hobby site. Pick any topic that appeals to you, could be your love of fishing, sewing, football or baseball or what ever. Anything you enjoy to do you can create a website about.
During this time your goal over the next three months is to:
- Increase Your Sites Web Traffic Week After Week
- Create A Memorable Site Created For Your Visitors With Their Best Interest In Mind - This means no pop up, hard navigation, crazy flashing banners or anything related to making money.
- Understand How People Use Search Engines & Learn Which Terms People Are Finding Your Site For and Increase Those Numbers
If you follow those basic understanding Over the next several months you will learn the most important aspect of online marketing (driving targeted traffic to ANY site you create). Most people get it wrong with online marketing... they think HUGE NUMBERS of visitors to there sites will generate income. That is false and simply not true, have you ever searched google for a particular topic and ended up on some unrelated site? If you did I bet you were off that site faster that you can count to three.
Lets say someone is searching for "Britney Spears" and ends up on a webpage about bamboo "spears" ... do you think that person is then going to buy a bamboo spear ... LOL ... the answer is of course no.
However that is how many people try to drive traffic to there site and then hope those people will act in some way, weather it is by subscribing to a newsletter or buy a product or service. Until these people learn that sear numbers do not equal dollars they will always be scratching there head.
The "trick" (it's not really a trick) is to drive as many "targeted" visitors to any site you ever create. Weather your website is a hobby site about your favorite rock -n- roll band or a commercial site that sells high end watches, targeted visitors will always treat you right.
Spend Your First Three Months Creating Your Hobby Site
Now that you understand about targeted visitors and just what type of visitor you want at your site you can spend your first several months of your "online affiliate marketing career" crafting a site that will have them coming back for more and telling their friends. It will be much easier to learn about keyword optimization while creating a site about outdoor fishing than creating a sales site about "selling viagra" ... while prescription drugs are incredibly profitable you need to practice and perfect your craft before you jump into a highly competitive arena like prescription drugs, credit card or loans.
Things To Watch For As Your Traffic & Site Grow
- Site Traffic & Referral Logs
- Visitor Feedback
Traffic & Referral Logs
You will want to be able to monitor very closely any site you ever build,
you should be able to know how many visitors visit your site daily, where
they came from, if they have ever visited before and most importantly
what keywords they searched for when finding your site (if they came from
a search engine of course).
Visitor Feedback
What type of feedback are your visitors giving you, do people enjoy the
site and the content. Do they find the navigation is tricky and hard to
understand. Take this information and use it to your advantage.
Phase Two - Your Money Making Commercial Site
Once you have spent some time working on your hobby site and you have learned some of the skills talked about above you will be much more prepared to jump into the competative affiliate marketing field. You can take the knowledge you have learned and apply it to a commercial site such as a dating site, prescription drug sales site, a book review site or any other marketing plan you have in mind. Again the most important thing to consider is "how will you drive targeted visitors to your site.
Do yourself a favor before you choose your next program to promote or site to create. Take a look at the supply and demand. Try to find a product or service online that has an existing consumer base with little or no competition. Study the various programs that look appealing to you and then make a list of your top 10 programs. From here you can take your list and run a handful of searches on google to get an idea just how many other websites are catering to this program or sector. Take a look at the google results below:
- Searched the google for dating:
Results 1 - 10 of about 46,200,000 - Searched the google for viagra:
Results 1 - 10 of about 16,800,000 - Searched the google for car parts:
Results 1 - 10 of about 8,850,000 - Searched the google for tractor parts:
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,080,000
From the data gathered above we can better understand the competition among those websites and pages selling viagra, dating site subscriptions, auto parts and tractor parts. It is easy to see see that tractor parts has the least amount of competition and would be easier to get a higher ranking on the popular search engines simply because there are less sites than a viagra or dating site. That being said it is also important to try to understand just how large of a consumer base each industry has. I think everyone would agree that car parts outsell tractor parts hands down.
You can use a service called wordtracker to automate this process, I use wordtracker myself to find niche areas, it won best affiliate tool on abestweb.com in 2002.
Put In The Effort If Your Going To Be Looking For Results!
Once you start your second site you will surely after days, weeks or months see a new program released or feel you have uncovered a "better niche area" and want to start another site for that sector. However, before you start another site for any new program or sector make sure you have put in the effort to truly see results. Don't expect to be able to put four of five hours into a site and have that site generate thousands of dollars worth of commissions for you. Like anything worth while it does take work, If you know that going in and are prepared to put in the time to create a memorable site chances are much better that you will see hundreds to thousands of dollars worth in commissions monthly. It is easy to get caught up in chasing different programs without having an impact on any simply because your not putting forth the effort in anyone area or program. Don't make that mistake, I see it too often!
If you make it this far you will be past the affiliate newbie stage and ready to take on the world. It was only a matter of months for me personally when I reached this stage before I quite my day job, since that time I have never made less than $10,000 monthly. Follow your dreams and be willing to put in the effort to see them become a reality. When your ready to choose you second sales site stop by my top programs, you might find a winner that makes sense to you!
Brian Johnson used to be a pro-chef. But now he earns six-figure income per year with affiliate marketing. Brian promotes products like anti-spyware software and tangible products from CJ.com, Linkshare and more.
Visit his website where he shares tips and tricks to affiliate marketing - http://www.my-affiliate-programs.com