Attention: Affiliate Marketer
Hi and welcome to Things to know before You start an affiliate website
Here at Smart Laptop Lifestyle my aim is to help as many people as possible become financially free and showing that there are ways to create a laptop lifestyle.
When I first began I wanted to know how quickly I would start seeing results, I even tried to find ways that I could cheat the system and make it work faster for me.
This only cost me more time and made finding success online even longer because I would eventually have to go back to basics and start again.
I first want to start by saying that this is my opinion based on my experience and the research I have done along my journey.
I am not an expert yet but want to share what I have learned and what I am learning along my journey so that you will not have to go through the challenges that I had to go through before realising that there is a method to this and it works.
My aim here is to help you before you get started on your journey in affiliate marketing and if you are struggling and not sure which way to turn next.
Below are some commonly asked questions that I think will be helpful to you.
1. How Do I Find the “Perfect” Niche?
I would first like to start by letting you know that there is no such thing as a perfect niche and secondly if there was a perfect niche, I think that everyone would be doing it.
You may find a niche that is perfect for you. A niche that you can really get your teeth into and that you will enjoy working with.
The formula for a good affiliate niche needs two ingredients and these are You and an audience that is will to pay you.
These are important factors when you are adding content to your affiliate website. You will need to aim your content on what your audience wants. You are adding content for them.
Things to Think About When Thinking About Your Niche
Think about your passions and your interests, like hobbies. Think about what interests you have, that you think other people may also be interested in.
2. What Are You Good at Doing That You Can Share With Others?
You have something that you have always wanted to learn but somehow never found the time.
Write down all the things that you can think of that fit into these categories and you will start to see a list of niches appearing.
Make a list of the niches and then you can start researching your keywords and see which one will be the best one to get started with.
You can find out more about researching your niche keywords here.
When you do your keyword research you will then start to see which niche is going to be the best to get started with and know how big the market is for that niche. You will also see which ones only have a small following. This will save you a lot of time moving forward, because you do not want to spend a lot of time creating content for a niche with a small audience.
You are going to want to look for keywords that have high volume search traffic.
With the right training you will be able to learn a lot more about niche’s and traffic.
3. How Many Niches Can You Have on One Website?
In short you should only have one niche per website. This will keep the focus and make it a lot easier to manage your website.
If you have multiple niches on your website you will find it a lot harder to manage and to get constant traffic.
You could look at this way, you want to get focused traffic to your website and your audience are going to want to visit a website that is about whatever your niche stated it was about.
Let’s say that your niche was based on travel and you visitors came to your website expecting to see content on travel and instead they see a lot of other content on cooking and recipes, how long do you think they would stick around?
Unfortunately there are a lot of lazy website owners that want to cram anything and everything on to their website. The only way that this may work is if you have a well-known brand, or you have celebrity status.
4. How Many Products Can You Have On One Website?
The great thing is that you can have as many products as you want as long as they are related to your niche.
This is where you can get really creative. There are no limits.
You can find out more about ShareASale in my review article below.
What is ShareASale Affiliate Program?
Flex Offer is another Affiliate program similar to ShareASale. These are where you can locate tons of products that are relevant to your niche.
5. How Long Does It Take To Start Seeing Traffic to Your Website?
This is one of the first questions asked by new people starting in the wonderful world of affiliate marketing.
This is an important question and let’s be honest it one of the main reasons for getting into the world of affiliate marketing.
When I first started I searched and search for the answer to this question and could not understand why there were no straight answers.
I first thought that all I have to do was build a website share it a little on social media and watch the traffic flow to my new affiliate website. Job done.
WRONG….. The answer is it depends
Yes I have turned into one of those I use to search for the answer back in the day.
This is why? How Long will depend
First I will start by giving you some good news and that is that if you use the right platform and get the correct training your brand new affiliate website will get indexed quickly, by quickly I mean it could take a few days to a couple of weeks and believe me that is quick for a brand new website.
This is great news because this means that Google has acknowledged that your brand new website exists. AWESOME.
Also depending on the keywords that you are targeting you may also get ranked within Google quickly.
Right here’s the not so good news, depending on how you look at it. This is based on my research, reading other successful bloggers and affiliate marketers and listening to the experts and my own experience, on average 6 to 8 months before any of your content will reach its peak traffic.
Yes a good part of a year. I must state at this point that if you are looking to build a successful online business then this is not that long when you start to look at the bigger picture and remember that this is not a get rich quick scheme but instead a life changing project that could develop into very successful income stream.
So instead of letting this information put you off and letting it frustrate you, look at it this way. Your brand new affiliate website is like a pregnancy, and it takes time from the moment of conception to the actual birth. It is going to take time to build your website, and when you think about it in this way, I hope that I have given you a better understanding of the reality of the time it will take to build your online affiliate marketing business and that this is just the way it works.
I would also say at this point that those that do not succeed in this business are those who give up.
In building your affiliate website you will need to be adding content and building your brand. This brings me to adding content to your website.
6. How Many Blog Posts Do I Need to Have on Your Website?
As I mentioned earlier, this brings me to adding content, adding blog posts. But before I get into this I want to repeat that building a successful affiliate marketing business is not a get-rich-quick scheme.
I would say give yourself a good year of committing to your project, like I mentioned about how long it will take to make a baby, and then you have to care for that baby by feeding and doing everything else that is required.
It will take Google around 4 to 6 months to really start ranking your posts so the more blog posts you have the more variety you will be giving your target audience. (Your readers).
Around the year mark you should be having a steady flow of traffic which will grow from there. This is exciting because a steady flow of traffic means you will be making some money at this point. YAY. Then it will grow from there.
BUT………
Going back to the question of how many blog posts so you need to have on your website? For Google to start to notice your website as a serious contender you will have to have at least 30 high quality articles and anything less Google is not going to bother with your website.
If you look at it this way, there are many people out there starting websites and then giving up after a few months and Google are very clued up on this and for this reason it is important to keep adding content to your website and focus on this project for a good year and show Google that you are serious about your online business.
For this reason Google will only start to take your website seriously when you hit a good number of posts and having at least 30 articles will put you in good standing for getting ranked within Google.
I stress at this point that these articles should be of high quality to start getting some traction.
I will say again that because there are new websites coming a going each and every day and because some people are not willing to put the hard work in that is needed to build a successful online business. Google are saving themselves a lot of time by taking notice of established websites that have 30 or more articles.
Now 30 articles may at first sound like a lot to write, but when you look at the bigger picture you will see that this is one article a day in a month.
I am not saying that you have to write one article a day, because this is not realistic for many people and it is more about consistency and persistency and most bloggers will write 2 to 3 articles a week and some may only be able to get one article a week done.
But the key here is to be consistent and persistent and just keep going and whatever you do, don’t give up.
It is more about getting it done than how quickly you get it done. It is your business and it is important that you set yourself realistic goals and that it blends into your lifestyle so that you will be able to stay on track.
7. Have Patience
This point is normally left until the end but I thought I would mention it now. Because you are going to need patience with yourself. WHY?
Because we are our biggest critics and this business is going to need patience because this is a new online business for most people and within this time of building you will also be learning a lot about your new business and about yourself.
So be patient you will get there.
Another thing that I would say about being patient and not being hard on yourself whilst you are building your website, is that quite often people will underestimate what you can actually accomplish in a day.
If you know how to plan your blog writing you will find it a lot easier to complete a blog post, you never know you may even surprise yourself.
One thing that I found out after writing a blog posts for while is that you get better at it and you find your flow.
It is like anything in life, the more you do it the better you get at it.
With planning your blog posts you will start to accomplish more and staying focused and committed to your project before you know it you will have 30 or more articles on your website and this phrase of your work is done. You are now a serious contender. YAY.
8. How Long Does Your Blog Posts Need to Be?
When you are start affiliate marketing you will soon learn that content is your business.
When it comes to Google they will rank good quality content and the only way that you less that good quality content is rank is when there are no other alternatives.
So what do we call good quality content and how can you achieve this?
Firstly you want to write content that is aimed at your target audience and should be on what they are looking for. This may appear obvious but this is not always easy to accomplish when you are starting out because, how are you going to find out what your target audience wants?
A really good way to find out what they are looking for is to see what your competition is writing about, and this may not be so obvious at the beginning.
When you see what you competition is writing about, it is time to get creative and find out how you can write content that is better.
If you notice that their content is say 500 words long then write 1,000 add more value to your information. If their content is all words and no images then add relevant images to your content.
You can also learn how to create videos to add to your content.
So going back to the question of how long does your blog post need to be, well it depends and to be honest I cannot answer this question for you. Just make your content good quality and better than your competition. Get creative.
I personally write to suit the topic, some require say 500 – 800 words and others require more say 2,000 plus.
Just make sure that you are adding value to your affiliate website and you can’t go wrong.
9. Do You Have To Spend Money on Paid Ads?
No you do not, especially when you are starting out. Although you can make money with your first website you are really spending most of your time learning about online business and what works for you.
There are many people generating money with their websites without paying for Ads. It is not necessary when you are starting out.
What I do not want you to do is start spending money on your website when you are still at the learning stage. Get to know your niche and when you are more experienced then you can make that call.
Spending money on promoting your website is not guaranteed. But once you start getting free organic traffic to your website you will learn a lot more about online marketing.
10. Should You Set Goals?
As I mentioned earlier setting goals is a must for your affiliate marketing. Setting goals will help to keep you on track and keep you driven from getting up early in the mornings to working late into the night.
Your goals should be the thing that is your motivation to do whatever you need to do to make this happen.
I would also say that you should focus on things that you can control when setting your goals, such as how many articles you are going to write in a given set time period.
So that’s it
Final Thoughts….
I am so glad that I am able to share this information with you, because I had to learn this whilst building my first affiliate website and if I had known this before I would have reached my success earlier.
I can understand that all this information can be a little over whelming, but it is better to know all this information before you get started so that you will have an honest expectation on what is to come and what it takes to run a successful affiliate business.
The Great thing is that you can now can maintain the correct mind-set to become a success in this business and you know how long it will take realistically.
As I mentioned earlier that many people fail in this business because they give up, so all you have to do is stay focused and stick with it and success will come.
If you want to get started with your affiliate website for FREE and get help in doing so then click the image above. When you become successful you can thank me later.
I look forward to seeing you on the other side.
Thank you for visiting Things to know before you start an affiliate website.
Here at Smart Laptop Lifestyle I want to help you succeed and thank you for reading this article.
If you have any questions or just want to leave me a comment, please feel free to do so, I would really appreciate hearing from you.
See you soon
Thank you
Jennifer
