Steves Sunday Selection 5 December 2010

Have you seen Shark week? If not, it is a themed week on Discovery channel dealing with –you guessed it- Sharks.  Now your next question is obvious.

Steve, what the heck do Sharks and Shark Week have to do with Lifestyle Design?

Very good question, kind reader, thank you for asking.

The first reason was the realization that I wrote a couple of times this week loosely around the theme of Affiliate Marketing without realizing it.  Like Shark Week, I had a weekly theme.

I have stated many times in the past and a few times this week how I believe Affiliate Marketing, using either real world or information products is one of the quicker paths to making a profit online.  For a new person getting started in Affiliate Marketing, there are mistakes out there to be avoided.  One of the biggest things is –you may have guessed it- Sharks.

In this case I am not talking about the big grey, many toothed alpha predator of the deep.  I am talking about the nebulous, basement dwelling, alpha predator of the Internet; the people out there to scam a new affiliate marketer of a few bucks and take advantage of naiveté.

Do not get me wrong, I do not think that all Affiliate Marketers are Sharks, or even MOST.  But there are some.  I really do think Affiliate Marketing is a very solid way to make money.  It can also be one of the easiest; with blogging being one of the most difficult.  Though, more people are figuring this out and the waters are getting crowded, opportunities still abound.  Just remember to tread a little carefully in the waters of Affiliate marketing.  Always remember:  Here Be Sharks.

The Inspiration

Part of my reason for making my Sunday link post was inspired by a simple yet complicated question from Ryan on a very short and basic post on affiliate marketing that I posted yesterday:  “I’m new to affiliate marketing, what resources would you recommend for a beginner?”

I started trying to quickly rattle off a few good tools and resources, but decided it was going to be too long to drop in a comment and I could link together a few really good posts with resources.

Affiliate Marketing:  Niche/Research/Getting Started

The first thing you need to do in Affiliate Marketing is research.    This is likely the most important stage.  If you get in a niche that is too crowded, does not have enough traffic or does not have the potential to really sell you can make it hard to succeed.  For the first resource I will point you towards is my free eBook :  41 profitable niches.  I also have a very large and in depth post (4k words) scheduled for tomorrow that should cover everything about getting started that I do not cover in the eBook.

Now that you have an idea of how to get started here is a more in depth article that gives an overview of what needs to be done and what is involved with making money affiliate marketing.

Okay, enough self-promotion, this is supposed to be my Sunday round-up, and I have not done any rounding.

Everything you need to know about Affiliate Marketing

I do believe you could talk about Affiliate Marketing until you are blue in the face and not really give a person a great idea how to do it.  The reason for that is that it is one of those things you learn best by DOING.  That being said there are a couple of resources that are INCREDIBLY valuable.

A while back Pat Flynn and Tyrone Shum started a Niche site duel.  Now creating a niche site does not mean that you HAVE to do Affiliate Marketing NOR does it mean that as an Affiliate Marketer it is the only way to sell.   BUT setting up a unique site for your efforts is one of the best methods and really helps to rank it in Google.

I am linking the most recent (when I wrote this) posts from Pat and Tyrone.  I would recommend taking the time and reading and watching each and every post from both Tyrone and Pat.  They are very in depth and really show you everything you need to know to get  a Niche site up and running.

Pat:  Experiment and Income Update.

Tyrone:  Niche Duel First Place

If that isn’t enough to give you some great ideas, Alex also challenged Moon to a similar site duel that is also ongoing.  Here you get to see two more people and point of views who are also quite knowledgeable about setting up niche sites (which can be used for Affiliate Marketing)

Moon:  Niche Site Duel 04

Alex:  Niche Site Blueprint

Other Methods of Affiliate Marketing

As I stated creating a niche site is just one method of Affiliate Marketing.  I do believe that the BEST affiliate marketing will absolutely need a Niche site, landing page or some sort of online venue.  It does not have to be a separate page.  When I make a statement about how much I love Aweber for email marketing, I am, in fact Affiliate Marketing.  Now, I do not expect a ton of conversions from that link, though if you are looking for a program to manage your email marketing you could not go wrong by clicking MY affiliate link (wink).

The point is that you can affiliate market like that in a fairly passive manner and get SOME conversions over time.  The thing is that readers of this site are not targeted on people who want to get into email marketing but have not yet.  The people who read here who are interested likely already have Aweber or Mailchimp (which I understand is not bad either).  For those that do not have it, chances are they just are not interested yet.  Having a very narrow niche page allows you to hunt down that highly directed and specific traffic, who are looking for exactly what you are trying to give them.

So what are other methods?  Blogs.  Twitter.  Facebook.  And of course my perennial favorite: email marketing.  I am not going to go on too long about affiliate email marketing.  I have made it plain many times how important I feel building an email list is.  For niche site I would also create a landing page (as stated in my “making money” post above) to get visitors emails before sending them off to any affiliates.  If you have not started making lists (and checking them twice…it is getting close to Christmas) you should consider doing so soon.  It is a long term plan, but 2-3 years from now, when you have a 40,000 person targeted list, you will be damn glad you started now.

That is about it for Affiliate Marketing.  The only thing left is to drive traffic to your offer.  Lists are built in traffic you keep with you.  Large and Active targeted Twitter/Facebook friends lists are the same.  Pay methods like PPC and Facebook ads are another.  (When starting out I would avoid those, they can be great, but you can lose money if you do not know what you are doing.)

The four niche site contests that I linked go over how to drive traffic to a site (and the importance of it).  But having a basic understanding of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is also pretty important.  I am sure most of my readers have been here, but in case you haven’t check out Ana’s site which is constantly giving incredible updates about SEO and generating traffic.

That is all.  Hopefully those that are interesting in affiliate marketing got some good information to check out.  For those that aren’t interested in AM, I apologize for having a weekly roundup -that really wasn’t a roundup.  Of course I also hope that I created a little presell for my large and in depth post tomorrow, that should round out my Affiliate Marketing, “Shark Week”

Take Action. Get Results.