affiliate marketing

[SteveSPI]

Hello All,

Havent posted on this forum for a long time now.

Was thinking over xmas, that I could really do with an additional income (dont we all sometimes). My business is doing ok for itself, I am a systems accounted and work as a contractor. Been mainly based in and around the public sector for around 5 years and with the current market I have had to drop my day rate to keep myself in work.

I was looking at lots of websites (most trying to sell you a super dooper system) to make income from affiliate marketing. The websites promising you the world, but I know you are seriously unlikely to even make 5% of what they say.

Has anyone actually made a career out of this type of work? Was mainly thinking of setting up a website and reviewing accounting systems, CRM systems etc and put affiliate links and try to sell ad space on the site. Also publish articles with my reviews for software. I will try and think of other products that I have knowledge of that I would review and publish articles about.

As I said not really looking to make this a full time career thing, but just do it to make a little extra month each month.

Any comments or experience in this would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You

 

[jayfcf]

Ok,

I will try my best to help you with this.

I started out in affiliate marketing in 2007 after being made redundant and at first only "played around" with a few websites after getting started in affiliate marketing.

I signed up with affiliates4u.com and affiliatemarketingschool.com

both are free and are active forums that include tutorials, threads and have loads of people that want to help you get started in the affiliate marketing industry.

Every tiny bit of information you could ever need to know is on those two sites for FREE and if it isnt, or you cant find it, create a thread to get some great responses.

Dont ever pay to learn how to do affiliate marketing, the people that are making 100s of thousands do so by selling their "secrets".

I have earned some pretty decent money from lead generation, affiliate marketing and adsense over the last few years, its great to do and the buzz you get when you get your site click on adsense, your first lead or your first sale makes all the work worthwhile.

I would say go for it.

Since starting out in affiliate marketing and learning the ropes, I have moved on to build websites for businesses and get them ranked first page google, all the knowledge I learned about SEO in order for me to do this came from my early days of affiliate marketing.

Remember DO NOT PAY for SUPER DOOPER systems.

I am always here to offer you support and advice also.

Feel free to pm me at any time and I will steer you in the right direction.

Why do I want to do this?

I learned everything I know, FOR FREE, from people that were willing to teach me.

 

[SteveSPI]

What a great reply. Thank You.

This is why I joined this forum all those years ago.

Much appreciated.

 

[jayfcf]

Glad you appreciate it mate.

 

[Magsite]

I'm also an affiliate and a member on affiliates4u, however I have noticed it aint as good as it was.

Read, read, read, as its free!

I would also recommend acorndomains.co.uk which has a friendly atmosphere.

I did try starting a forum myself here residual income but Its been a struggle from the start.

In a nutshell, you might have to pay for the below

1. A domain name (about £10 for 2 years)
2. A hosting package (can get them for about £15 a year)
3. a template (There's a couple here http://www.residualincome.co.uk/minisite-templates/ )

 

[britishw]

Hi,

I've built up a a few affiliate based websites and sold them on so it is possible. When I first started I had visions of building a website, filling it with content and sitting back and watching the residual income come rolling in. Unfortunately to make any decent money you need to be constantly updating and reacting to events that happen around you.

I have a routine I do every day without fail and on my current site it also involves me going out, taking photos and interacting with the businesses that it benefits.


If I were you I would write down a list of topics you're interested in and then see if it's possible to turn that into an income.

For instance one of my first websites was a forum for man and van removals, lots of people out there doing it so lots of money I thought. In reality however once those visitors were attracted to my website there wasn't much that could be sold to them other than insurance through an affiliate related site. What I should have considered doing was generating leads via the web for removals that I could have then sold onto these members but I didn't have a long term plan and that was an error.

Get a long term plan and you need to look at things like:

1) how are you going to attract your initial visitors - is this by google rankings alone, social media, paid advertising

1a) when are you going to attract these visitors - target them to early with little content on your site that bores them then it'll be twice as hard to get them to come back.

2) how are you going to keep them coming back - fresh content, striking deals with suppliers for members of your website (are you prepared to pick up the phone)

3)capture their details, a visitor becomes much more valuable if you know where they come from, age etc - you can then target your marketing accordingly or sell the mailing lists.

4) write content to suit the visitor not to suit the advertiser - don't try and shoehorn an affiliate program onto your site because it's a close enough fit. it needs to be right for the people that visit your site.

5)think about offline advertising. Are their ways to drive customers directly to your website though traditional methods.

6) look at all forms of generating an income from your website. Affiliate marketing is good but are their other ways to bring in an income. Can you sell banner ads to relevant businesses, sell mailing lists. some of this will mean you going out or picking up the phone so don't be afraid of moving from behind the computer screen.

I've followed this forum & affiliates4u for a number of years and as other people have quite rightly pointed out their is a wealth of information freely available.

If you're the sort of person that has the commitment to do what appear to be daily repetitive tasks on a regular basis for months on end then go for it.

 

[SteveSPI]

Thank you for your reply britishw. I will keep all posted on how I get on.