Posts Tagged Affiliate Niches
Your Niche Expansion Map – Or How to Pinpoint More Affiliate Cash!
Posted by Kirsty McCubbin in Affiliate Marketing on January 27, 2010
So you’ve found that first money making idea, you’ve exploited it for all it’s worth and now what? Back to square one eh? Lost and desolate in the affiliate wilderness without so much as a blinking map to lead you to that next oasis like pool of lovely money.
But like most navigators of any kind, you’ll probably know exactly where you are with your current niche. Time and time again I see people forging out on their next venture, which ends up being completely different from what has been recently successful for them or something related that has been chosen without reference to their current position. This is a recipe for getting lost in the affiliate wilderness good and proper. 
With this in mind I decided to provide an outline of how to engage in a bit of what I like to think of as “Affiliate Orienteering” – a great way to make sure that your next big idea is located in a more educated way than sticking a pin in a map!
Think About WHY Your Most Recent Venture Was Successful
If It’s a Single Product…
- Why did people buy it?
- What features did it have? For example, a while back chocolate fountains were suddenly all the rage. People bought them because they were a great food related novelty, a nice way to finish off a dinner party with some table top cooking, or an interesting feature on a party buffet, some of their popularity came from the “staying in is the new going out” vibe that has become popular in recent years as the cost of living has increased. They also got a lot of coverage on the telly and in glossy magazines.
- Was it a standalone product? Or are there any accessories for it that you might be able to promote? Are there any similar products that are cheaper or have slightly different features? i.e going back to our chocolate fountain idea, could you sell posh chocolate fondue sticks and recipe books as an addition to your current site?
- If it was a product with a specific purpose (like a chocolate fountain) what else is there out there that will appeal to people for the same reasons as they rushed out and bought a chocolate fountain? With that in your mind, do a bit of research. The best place to start is probably the merchant or merchants you’ve already had success with. If I’d had a big success with chocolate fountains I’d immediately look at other single purpose cooking gadgets, particularly ones that might get wheeled out at parties.
- Here’s what my list of next niches to explore would be:-
- Fondue sets
- Stone Grills
- Popcorn makers
- Pizza makers
- Indoor BBQs
- Any other single purpose food gadget I could think of.
Armed with my list, I’d then approach some merchants and just plain outright ask them about the performance of any products they stocked that were on my list. Questions would include: – “How do these sell?”, “Do you find these convert for you?” If they’re not converting now, will they convert at Christmas?” and finally “How many do you sell?”
If It’s a Broader Niche Site…
You’d follow the same process but the selling features would be more general. Questions you’d ask yourself would be as follows: -
- Can I make a similar site and target a different country?
- Can this product area have variations that appeal to a different group of people? i.e. I created a successful womens underwear site and then used a similar structure to create an underwear resource for men.
- If your site converted really well, why do you think it converted well? If it was targeted at a certain group of people i.e. silver surfers and you successfully created an appealing resource for them to use – have a think about what other product groups appeal to them. After all you are already well experienced at selling to them.
Your Next Niche is Never as Far Away as You Think…
The majority of the successful niche areas I’ve tapped in the last few years have been related to one degree or another. I’ve found that once you start to follow a “mapped approach” that creating useful resources that add value to the user and convert well gets easier and easier. I suppose the best anology is that I have gotten familiar and comfortable with my local neighbourhood meaning that these days I very rarely need to use a map at all. I just know where I’m going.
This post is from: Kirsty's Affiliate Marketing Guide - Affiliate Stuff UK
Your Niche Expansion Map – Or How to Pinpoint More Affiliate Cash!
Ask Kirsty – Why Isn’t My Affiliate Site Ranking?
Posted by Kirsty McCubbin in Affiliate Marketing on September 3, 2009
An interesting Ask Kirsty this week from Patrick who has spent a fair bit of time recently setting up an affiliate site in a niche that is of strong interest to him.
Well i finally got my first website finished last week after accidentally stumbling upon the area of affiliate marketing a few months back and being hooked on it ever since. My first site is something small and of personal interest to me: – www.manchester-united-shirts.com
The site is simply selling the manchester united football kit in its various forms. Once it was finished i went to the add url section of google and submitted the site. After a few days it then appeared on google when i searched site:manchester-united-shirts.com. I also submitted an article on digg as i had heard that would also help with getting it indexed. My problem however is this; it doesn’t seem to appear on google when i do a search for any of the keywords, such as manchester united shirts, manchester united kit, or michael owen manchester united shirt. Its not even on page 20 or less! I haven’t tried ppc yet as i was hoping on getting some organic traffic first. I know i need to try and get some back links to my site so my question to you is this; why is the site not appearing on google for any of its keywords, and how can i get some decent backlinks?
Patrick then sent another mail saying…
I tried my hand at PPC as this was the obvious way of getting the site noticed for my chosen keywords. I achieved great success with this method as i made my first sale and had a click through rate of about 14%, with an even higher conversion rate. However, what became apparent was that although my ads and site converted well, the cost of getting traffic there in the first place, ie, the keyword cost, meant that i was only actually breaking even in terms of profit.
Thanks a lot for your time and keep up the hilarious yet informative blog posts. Kind regards, patrick.
Hey Patrick,
First off, congratulations on putting such a great looking site together. I think it’s pretty good looking and would definately be attractive to Manchester United fans.
Why Isn’t Your Site Ranking?
Although your domain is keyword rich that is not going to be enough on its own to have your site ranking. Hyphenated domains don’t seem to have the same strength as those without hyphens. However, that needn’t stop you ranking for your desired search terms. Going forward I’d suggest you do a bit of work trying to get some backlinks (which I’m assuming you already realise as you’ve also asked about that!).
You will need to put a bit of time and effort into getting your site where it needs to be. With that in mind, I suggest that you try and add a little bit of Manchester United related content most days. Being seen as a good information resource on the club and in particular their shirts and strips will help you no end.
I think the reason that you are not seeing much in the way of rankings is that there’s so much buzz around the club. Do a search for “Michael Owen Manchester United Shirt” and the search results are absolutely stacked to the brim with authority sites. I think to get traffic you will need to sit down and have a real brainstorm about some less competitive search terms that might bring in some traffic.
Avoid the big names like Owen and Rooney, perhaps try to concentrate on building some content around phrases that don’t mention names and topics all the newspapers are likely to be reporting on. For example, if I were the owner of your site I’d write about: -
Manchester United retro shirts or Man U retro shirts
Manchester United 1977 shirt
Man U 1977 FA Cup Final shirt
If you take a gander at the search results for these terms you’ll see affiliate sites popping up here and there and not a lot in the way of your Daily Telegraph and Wikipedia type stuff. Targeting the long tail when a site is new can bring in some much needed traffic and revenue early on.
How Can You Get Some Backlinks?
I think in this case the best thing to do would be to try and locate fan sites and perhaps other affiliate sites. I’d start looking by making highly targeted product related searches like the ones above and looking at who was blogging about them and featuring them on their sites. Drop them a line and ask if you can have a bit of an exchange, you could also widen this activity out to other teams. Also, add a post to the A4U Link exchange thread and see if you can locate some people with sites relevant to yours.
Link building takes a lot of time and effort, but you’ll reap the rewards handsomely if you put some effort in.
Making PPC Work
I reckon that you need to be targeting the long tail. Clearly your site does a good job of pre-converting if a good proportion of your visitors that actually got through to the merchant made a sale. However, 14% of traffic getting through to merchant is a little too low. This means your search terms are either too general or your landing page is rubbish (and I don’t believe its the latter).
On my own sites, I manage to push through around 80% of the traffic that hits my PPC landing pages to merchant. Often more. I do this by sending highly targeted traffic to highly targeted pages. Of course this reply is largely guess work as I don’t know what keywords and products you are targeting.
I hope all this helps you out Patrick, and if anyone has anything to add that might help Patrick please do leave a comment as the more people we have talking about the Ask Kirsty’s the better resource this site will become.
This post is from: Kirsty's Affiliate Marketing Guide - Affiliate Stuff UK
Ask Kirsty – Why Isn’t My Affiliate Site Ranking?