Affiliate Marketing is a lot like a sea saw

At the start of the year I vowed to spend more time with my family and to start each day with the aim of adding at least one positive feature to one of my sites each day. I vowed to stop wasting time and to stay positive and on the most part I think I have achieved this.  A good (or bad depending on how you look at it) indicator is how I have spent my time more on my sites and less on this blog - on the whole this has paid off and commissions are on the up. But this is not an ideal solution.

This brings me on to my sea saw analogy. If you spend more time on one thing then it will improve and rise up and if you spend less time on something it will enevitibly suffer as a consequence.  Hence the lack of posts on this blog! (yeah this has suffered).

My advice is not to take on too much at once and really focus on one project at a time before starting a new one. Affiliate marketing is long term and you can not expect to make something work overnight. This is why it is important not to spread yourself to thin and only take on a work load you are comfortable with. I have five main sites that I work on each day, I add fresh content (or have it written for me) and make sure each site is ticking along nicely.

I used to try this with 20 plus sites and as you might imagine this really does not work. This balance will be diferent for each person but the main thing to remember is to focus on one thing at a time. Then your sea saw will be more in balance!

Popularity: 21% [?]

Keep On Top Of Your Commissions With Affiliate Widgets

If you are any thing like me then I am guessing you like to be kept up to date with your latest affiliate commissions and transactions. There are various widgets and gizmo’s that can save you time and deliver news, transactions, latest commissions and other info straight to your desktop as you are working!

Many of the larger networks including Affiliate Window, Buy.at and Paidonresults offer this service and I have taken the time to test them for functionality. There is also a service offered by affmeter that allows you to view stats from most of the major networks in one place. Here is a run down of what each network offers (in no particular order):

Affiliate Window Desktop Alerts

Affiliate window have designed a simple yet effective desktop alert that delivers your latest transactions straight to your desktop automatically. The software only takes a matter of seconds to install and once up and running delivers vital info via an unobtrusive (and small) pop up window.  There is even a sound effect when you receive a commission - Ker ching!

An added feature which I like is that the desktop alerts include the latest messages from the network and merchants, this means I can usually get the latest offers up on my sites as quickly as humanly possible - this is a nice touch that can prove useful in competitive markets.

The Buy.at Widgat

The buy.at widgat may have a kind of corny name but it is a really useful tool for checking up on your commissions. The widget integrates with yahoo widgets which is free to install and integrates with windows XP and vista and OS. It displays latest transactions,total transactions for that day, EPC plus a few other useful stats - the widget is useful but could be made more useful if it could send you messages from merchants, this on the whole is something buy.at could do better anyway.

Commission junction (CJ) also have a similar widget that uses the yahoo widget engine.

Paid on results desktop software

The paid on results desktop software is similar to affiliate windows, I have not used it really so can not comment further until I have tested it out - so watch this space.

Affmeter

Again this is not something I have used so can only report what I have been told or have read. The affmeter software is not free so that is a negative as as you have seen networks do offer free widgets and services. However this negative can be overlooked because the affmeter software gathers information from all the major affiliate networks automatically for you and sends you a combined report at a time period you specify. This sounds like a good idea and I think I will give it a try and let you know.

The main point that I wanted to make is that affiliate networks do have tools to help save you time, as you know time is precious! The more time I can save means the more time I have to spend on my sites - this hopefully will equal more commissions and more Ker chings! This article is by no means an exhaustive search of the widgets available (so if you know of others please let me know) but is designed to raise awareness of the labor saving widgets that may just give you the edge! Hope you found it useful?

Popularity: 65% [?]

If At First You Don’t Succeed

I am a firm believer of the saying if at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again. This is a statement that I apply to my affiliate marketing efforts and it is something that should feature prominently in yours! You see affiliate marketing relies on webmasters skills, ideas and ability to adapt to the problems you face during the day to day running of your site(s). It also relies on perseverance and patience.

Let me give you a personal example, I have a number of websites that operate in very competitive niches. If I had taken sites on their first months income alone and given up it could have cost me thousands in profit, Instead I have more often than not decided to trial and error different techniques to make sure the site worked for me. This taught me the valuable lesson of patience and the need to try different things before admitting defeat.

I have read a great deal of forum posts and have received lots of emails from people who have underperforming web sites and I always try to give the best advice I can. But one thing I can not give is determination or the will to succeed, so back to the point of this post (yes there is a point ), when you are feeling nothing is going your way with your affiliate ventures take a step back and have think about what you want to acheive and why, then try again! Never give up at the first hurdle.

I’d like to finish with some inspirational links to show you that your patience can pay off:

Kierons famous site point bank statement for one month:

Jeremy shoemakers huge adsense cheque:

Popularity: 40% [?]

What Is The Best Affiliate Niche

I have been involved in affiliate marketing for a few years now and one of the most frequently asked questions I receive is what are the best affiliate niches to base my site on? And the first answer I always give is . . ., Well that’s the trouble, there is no short answer as it relies on a number of factors.

One of the most important factors when starting an affiliate site is related to another question ‘is their a need for your site?’.  If there is no demand for the product you are planning to promote then their will be little value in running the site. So make sure their is a demand for your site before you even start, this can be researched by searching forums and the search engines, if someone else is running and updating a site frequently then their is a good chance they are making money from it.

Once you have identified a need for your planned niche site it is important to consider your interest in the subject, is this something you are passionate about? Or would like to learn more about, if the answer is no then running the site will be a chore and you might be better off choosing another niche - that said you can always outsource content creation to others if needs be.

After these first two tasks are complete you can move on to researching how you will make money from your site. You may choose direct ad sales, Google AdSense or other pay per click services - it is important to have an idea of what you could make.  Therefor one of your first ports of call should be the affiliate programs you are going to promote. Take a look at what forms of reward the sites offer, this will probably be a revenue share model or Cost Per Acquisition or a combination of the two (hybrid). Consider how much can you make per lead/sale or what rev share will you gain from each lead? Revenue is not the be all and end all in the affiliate world but as the saying goes ‘money makes the world go round’.

The most important thing to remember is that affiliate marketing is a diverse and not straight path - affiliate niches and programs are constantly evolving so it important you do the same with your chosen niche (like wise if you realise your chosen topic is a duffer then give it a go for a while then dump it and move on).

I said there was no straight answer, I could have listed a long list of sites who offer great commissions, but this would not work for everyone. Affiliate marketing should be a fun journey, so do your research, choose something that interests you and get promoting.

Online affiliate program

Popularity: 36% [?]