Hey hey everyone, and greetings from beautiful Coffs Harbour, NSW. I am currently answering Ask Kirstys from the back of my smashing wee camper van over a nice beer at the end of a days driving.

Now, the above title isn’t the only question I was asked for this particular ask Kirsty, but I’ve decided to feature them together as they are all related to that time when you are choosing your very first niche and working out what offers you should feature, and how you should present them.

Now, I must apologise to Nick H who asked these questions. It’s taken me over two weeks to get around to answering. Sorry Nick, but I got there in the end

Hi Kirsty,

Nick H

OK, I will answer these in turn!

When do you decide to call it quits on an offer or niche?
Generally speaking, I tend to give a niche 500 clicks to cut the mustard. However, that depends on how much I am paying per click and whether or not any sales are being generated at all. If there’s been absolutely nothing after a couple of hundred clicks (and where I’m convinced I’m covering all bases) I tend to call it quits. I do imagine this is much more cautious than a lot of affiliates… but its never done me any harm.

If some sales are happening, but you aren’t making a profit, it’s important to analyse what has been selling.

One thing I do always say to would be affiliates is that it is VERY important to track which keywords are converting when trialling a new niche. I don’t think I have ever found more than 4 or 5 niche areas where SOMETHING didn’t make me a profit. Sometimes a single search term can convert and provide a good EPC whilst the rest of the campaign, possibly hundreds of key terms, is a dodgy load of old poop.

It seems like you promote most of your offers through bigger sites with plenty
of content and several pages, is that right?

Hmmm…. yes you do need a reasonable amount of content to create a site that Adwords will like. However, that does not necessarily mean you need to spend huge amounts of time creating a site that really works. I’ve created sites in a single day around a small range of products (or even a single product) which are perfectly acceptable for Adwords and bring in a decent EPC.

I would recommend that a newbie try to identify a single product that they feel would convert well and creates a mini site around it. An old site of mine http://www.vaginaldilator.co.uk converts really well, has a decent amount of info and works fine for adwords. It was quick to make, ranks well in search engines giving me free traffic, and didn’t take much longer to create than a single page Yahoo effort.

Admittedly Yahoo can be a reasonable way to test things. However, I rarely do this and I think you’d end up spending a lot of time working for very little traffic. I’d recommend spending a wee while extra on your content to get a few hundred percent more visitors from Adwords. I’ve also found that not all niches convert well on Yahoo, probably due to their slightly different keyword matching techniques.

Do you find that the EPC that the Networks report is accurate enough to base
your max bids on?

Gah… no, not really. EPC is an average, and like all averages can be skewed by many factors. EPC can be artificially inflated by heavy presence of discount code and cashback sites. Also, if the merchant is allowing brand name bidding that can also make things look healthier than they will be when you give their products a whirl.

Similarly, the EPC can be lowered by the presence of one or two low quality affiliates who are sending less relevant traffic in high volumes to your target merchant.

As you are likely to be looking at promoting a small group of merchant products the EPC data won’t be terribly accurate. The best thing to do is follow these steps: -

- Work out what you think the average basket size for your product grouping would be.
- Ask the affiliate manager for a rough idea of the conversion rate. If this isn’t forthcoming… sit down and ask yourself if you think the EPC data you are seeing really is accurate. If it seems to good to be true - it might be.

What I think I’m getting around to here is…. yes, there is an element of “finger in the air” with this one. Unfortunately the only thing that will help you with this is trial and error and the application of some common sense. Eventually, you will get a “feel” for what is going to work and which sites will convert.

The most important question to ask yourself is “Would I Buy From Here?” If it’s a no - stay away!

I hope this helps…. good luck!!