OK, so I recently had a bit of an e-mail from Dave who has been working really hard at affiliate marketing for around nine months.  He’s put in a huge effort, but he’s still not really earning that much.

I’ve had to alter his question a little as he doesn’t want to publish his sites, so I’ll add in some descriptive info to give you the rough idea of what he’s been up to!

Dear Kirsty,

I’ve done 50 sites up to now, i get a couple of hundred quid a month, which is nice, don’t get me wrong.
But as you well know this is something I want to do full time, SO i’ve got up the game a bit. I think its down to be not hitting the right products.

All of my sites are based around a price comparison model. They do bring in a trickle of money, but its consistency Im after, because Im trying to do this as a full time career. I can go days without anything then, maybe I’ll pull in 10 or 20 pound in. Its nice but with the amount of sites I have I would have thought I’d be close to matching my current salary so I can quite my day job. I started these in January, so I am fully aware its only been a few months for some of these sites, maybe i’m being too impatient?

**Kirsty’s note.  Dave has created a series of sites based around product groups with domains such as Brand-Name-Product-Group.co.uk.  They’re all decent looking sites, and he has put in a mammoth effort creating unique content.  He has also spent a bit of time building links to some of his sites and has a small but promising inbound link count.  All of this work has resulted in very low traffic and not a lot of sales!

Well, Dave… this is a most odd happenstance but it is one which I am sure many affiliates can identify with. So I’m going to try and take you through where I think things may have gone a wee bit wrong. I’m thinking that somewhere along the line you’ve missed out a fundamental step in understanding exactly how the revenue generation process in affiliate marketing really works.  If you’d really gotten a grasp on how to identify revenue bearing niches and followed a solid process, you should really be doing very well at the moment.

I’m inclined to think that what is happening is you are using a scattergun approach. I don’t really think this is a terribly good idea for someone trying to learn how to make money.  I can see why you’ve done this mind you, as just about every wealthy and successful affiliate you read about speaks of their many hundreds or thousands of affiliate sites.  However, every one of those sites will be about a product or group of products they already either knew or had a very good idea would bring in money. I think it is very important for an affiliate to make sure they have learned the revenue generation process through completely before they start to replicate their site and revenue generation technique.

I’d say that is probably the fundamental issue that is hampering your own efforts in this case.  Rather than working out how to identify a good product, structure a landing page that will work, and effectively hone your revenue generation process, you are simply creating site after site in the hope the money will come in.

It is clear you are prepared to put in the hard yards getting your affiliate empire set up your sites and content are a testament to that, so perhaps it would be a good idea to get back to some affiliate basics. Here’s a handy dandy guide to honing your affiliate craft!

Identify Your Affiliate Niche Effectively
Now, I can see you’ve identified several (50 actually!).  But how have you done this?  What was your research process, and how did you determine that here was a product which is popular, and which would convert at a good rate.  A fundamental misconception that many new affiliates fall into is that a product or product group has to be high value to make a profit on.  This isn’t really the case.  Often cheaper product areas have  much, much higher conversion rates… particularly if you have taken the time to research and identify a very strong merchant in this sector.

I’ve written a few niche identification guides, perhaps they will help: -

How to Find Your First Affiliate Niche

Use Your Passions To Find A Niche

How To Brainstorm Interests To Find Your Affiliate Niche

I think the best single bit of advice I can give you in this scenario is to perhaps have a better idea of where the money is before you put considerable effort into building a site.  An ideal way to do this is to try a bit of direct to merchant PPC within areas and on products you think can work.  Loads of people seem to think that this isn’t allowed any more since Google changed those display URL rules - but it is!  Sure, some merchants don’t want you to use it, and you will have to compete against other affiliates and the merchant themselves.  However, I often find that niche terms at the product level are easy to get enough traffic for to let you see if your hunches about a red hot affiliate niche are on the money or not!

Build Your Site
I know that you already have a site building method in mind, but have you considered that darling of all affiliates, Wordpress?  This has the added benefit of being blog based, a medium which Google seems to love. It also gives you the ability to create a very smooth, professional look for an extremely low cost.  Check out my guide to building a Wordpress site and applying effective SEO to it: -

Wordpress 101
Monitor Your Stats
It’s really important to ensure that your site is working as you think before you write it off as a dud.  Grab yourself a Google analytics account and make sure that your site is in fact ranking for search terms that are really relevant to the product you are pushing.  If you’re getting loads of traffic and it just ain’t converting… it might not be the fault of your site, product, or merchant. It could in fact be that the terms your ranking for are a little off target - and this can really impact your ability to make those visitors convert to affiliate cash.

What to Look for in Your Stats

Check out where your traffic is coming from.  What search terms have people used to arrive on your site?  If your site is selling apples, and you’ve somehow contrived to rank number one for “citrus fruit” but are nowhere to be found for “apples” it might explain why your site is not performing.  In this case you’ll need to…

Work At Your SEO
I suspect something you may be doing is not following a traffic generation process that is actually effective before moving on to your next site.  This might explain why you’ve created so many sites and so little traffic and sales.

Don’t get me wrong, I know you have been trying hard. A strong SEO site can generate good traffic, but it takes time.  Up to 6 months sometimes.  This might seem like an awful lot of effort, but if you have effectively identified your niche you should be pretty darned sure that your effort will pay you handsomely!

In Conclusion…

• Use a solid process to work out which niche is worthy of your sterling efforts.
• Create a site, and use it to create your iron clad revenue generation method.
• Work out how to effectively drive traffic to that site, and really use it to hone your SEO skills.
• Once you have done this, you can repeat your winning formula as much as you like, and your income will grow.

I think what this “Ask Kirsty” illustrates is that affiliate success is really about understanding every step of the revenue generating process fully before you move on and replicate a business model. Getting a solid basis upon which to build your effort is the key to the often mysterious affiliate world.

Good luck Dave!