Ok, now what?

[ckw1969]

Good Afternoon, Everyone.

I decided to become an affiliate marketer a few months ago, but am really pulling through information and ideas now. I have already signed up for a few programs - I just need to get going. I have three topics that interest me: Spas, Wedding and Babies.

Spas are my passion -It's how treat myself when I have the money. I picked weddings and babies because of the sheer volume of things that follow and an interest (but not as strong as spas).

I need to:

1: Find out the competition on the three and see if I stand a chance as a newbiw (admission - I have never been or even have a desire to be married, but I finding wedding planning and its details very interesting)

2: Find more keywords for spas (this was doing a list in my head, not online) but I didn't come out with that much. (I literally just joined wordtracker's free trial)

3: Make the best decision with my results and/or start over - It took me WEEKS to come up with the list of three. How do I start over if the competition is too high or there isn't a big interest? What's the best way to even gage that?

4: Is three too big to start of with? Should I just I do one?

5:Finally what tools do I need to do all this?

Thanks for any and all comments and advice:

A little more background information: I was intending to set up a blog/site Maybe both) and go through the steps of wedding planning - I thought that would be a good way to "introduce the products". Same with babies - talking becoming a mom, or dad, what baby will need etc.

Interestingly even though spas is my biggest interest I can't think of the best way to set up the site.

And (If I can ask one more thing) - I just picked up Rosalind Gardner's book. Does anyone have any suggestions for more materials to read?

Thanks all,

Caroline

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Caroline, welcome to 5 Star.

It's normal to have lots of questions and feel a little overwhelmed when you are 1st getting started.

I'll try my best to answer some of your questions and hopefully others will chime in too, but for future reference you'll get the best results if you don't ask too many questions in the same post. Some people will read and not answer because they think it will be too overwhelming to try. Plus if you break it into a couple different posts you can make the title more descriptive to the type of Q which will get you more answers too.

#1 and 2. Here is a post that explains how to do KW research. Do it for each of your 3 niches.
You want to find the popularity vs competition.

http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5...forum/19326-help-finding-niche.html#post60768

#3 - You should be able to find a niche within those 3. Each broad niche may be too competitive but drill down as I explain in the post above to find a sub-niche.

#4 - I strongly recommend after doing the keyword research above, pick ONE niche and focus on it. Then all your KW research, site building, article writing, marketing and link building revolves around the one niche. You will get somewhere faster than you will if you scatter your efforts.

After you learn the ropes, using that one site as a learning pad, you may want to expand to another niche, but IF you do you'll know more about how to do it right. If you start with 3 niches you'll just lose time making all the same mistakes on all 3 sites.

ONE more thing, regarding picking the right 1st niche... AFTER you do the KW research think about the type of products you could sell and try to figure out if that niche would be good to make money with. For instance with spas, I can only think of one affiliate program. SpaFinder Affiliate Program. I'm sure there are others but there aren't a wide variety of products like there would be with wedding planning and baby gear.

#5. The short answer is, I think a Wordpress blog on your own domain is the best way to go (typically) for starters.

Tons of other ideas here: http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5...te-website-where-get-how-build.html#post10429 but you'll find the majority favor what I recommended.

BOOKS - Ros' book is good. I'd hold off buying another right now. Read all the stickies here in the newbie forum and then the stickies in the niche forum for starters. You can get most of what you need right here for free.

If you start reading too much you can get analysis paralysis. At some point you need to stop reading and start doing. Doing, making mistakes and learning from them will be your best teacher!

Hope this helps and best of luck!

Anyone else have any suggestions for Caroline?

 

[Cmoney]

Hi Caroline,

Congrats and welcome to Aff Marketing. To respond to #4- From what I have learned its best to start out with 1 plan/product, or whatever it is you are wanting to promote. Make that successful then move on to other ventures. I believe Ros says the same thing in her book, which is a GREAT book by-the way. It was my very first intro. to aff marketing.
She also says if one thing is not panning out dont be afraid to move on.

Your niche picks are great (in my opinion) babies, weddings. Forever in demand. Maybe you could even get more specific, a micro-niche, something where there is demand but not a lot of competition. Oh! search forums in your niche by entering into google [your niche+forum] and find what mothers or newlyweds are asking for, what there problem, etc.. Just an idea. Its a trick I learned when I was researching for my new E-Book, DebtSettlement4Idiots

Also, I started out with my own blog, made it look amazing, but because of the competition(Mexico Travel) I could not get any income from it, yet! that is. I have not dropped it, and I still work on it here and there. But I needed faster sales so I went to promoting other products like on Clickbank, and Amazon, and holiday stuff (Christmas, etc)

Tools: Wordtracker is a great tool, google's keyword tool is a must and is free, which is the best part.

I hope some of this helps... best of Luck

Craig

 

[ckw1969]

Craig and Linda:

Thank you very much for the welcome and the advice. I have already been approved to be a spafinder affiliate. I went to Affiliate Classroom and downloaded their "course" if you will. But it is indeed as you said, information overload. I also (don't laugh) signed up for at least 6 other affiliate programs so between reading their site data, Ros' book and Affiliate Classroom's stuff, my head has literally started to SPIN.

I have a friend who is a wedding planner, and on her website she has a boutique (which are her affiliates)for everything you need for weddings. Granted this approach might work for her because she's a planner but she gets a commission off of EVERYTHING that sells on this site. And there are 16 categories (from flowers, to shoes, to salons - literally everything you need for your wedding A-Z) This is what I was trying to recreate for myself with spas which I why I thought I could do everything, even though spas (or babies, or weddings)as a topic in and of itself is very broad. Am I off base?

Thanks again.

Note to Linda: From now on, I promise to limit my questions within my questions.

Note to Craig: I like that tip - thanks!

Caroline

 

[Linda Buquet]

I have a friend who is a wedding planner, and on her website she has a boutique (which are her affiliates)for everything you need for weddings. Granted this approach might work for her because she's a planner but she gets a commission off of EVERYTHING that sells on this site. And there are 16 categories (from flowers, to shoes, to salons - literally everything you need for your wedding A-Z) This is what I was trying to recreate for myself with spas which I why I thought I could do everything, even though spas (or babies, or weddings)as a topic in and of itself is very broad. Am I off base?

Each of her 16 categories is EXTREMELY broad and competitive. You'll do best as a newbie the more you focus on a sub niche or a niche within a niche. Don't try to promote everything you'll water down your efforts IMO.

 

[ckw1969]

Ok, Linda. Thanks for clearing that up for my mind.

Caroline

 

[Linda Buquet]

Here's a little broader strategy that still let's you focus on a sub niche, but gives you room to grow within the broad niche.

Let's say you focus on kids. You get a domain that is broad like allkidsworld.com
Pick one sub niche under children or one age group. Let's start with Toddlers. Set up a subdomain toddlers.allkidsworld.com. Focus everything on toddlers. Toddler parenting ebooks, articles about how to raise toddlers, toddler products like strollers, etc. So your subdomain is tightly focused on that niche. HOWEVER after you get the toddler niche built out and earning revenue then you could go on to babies or kids with disabilities or kids toys or some other kid niche.

 

[ckw1969]

Thanks, Linda!

I'll do the keyword search and see what I get and go from there.

Caroline

 

[ckw1969]

Just wanted to say thanks, again. I just went to Ros' site and realized that I am not ready at all to make a decision in any direction. She wrote a column that made me realize another passion I have.

At this point I think my first step is to see what my interests and passions versus what are the opportunities as affiliate marketing them.

Caroline

 

[Linda Buquet]

You are very welcome Caroline. Good luck with it and hope we continue to see you around the forum as you figure out which way to go.

 

[Bill7194]

For getting keywords, the tools listed below come in handy:-

freekeywords.wordtracker.com
adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
keywordindex.com
spacky.com