How I Grew A Niche Affiliate Site From $0 To $4,234 A Month In 5 Months

Grew A Affiliate Site From $0 To $4,234 A Month In 5 Months

Grew A Affiiate Site From $0 To $4,234 A Month In 5 Months

You’re probably fed up receiving emails approximately how you may get wealthy short via associate marketing – I recognise I am. Pay $10 or anything and you’ll get an e-book showing what they did and how you can ‘replica and paste’ your manner to achievement…. Blah, blah, blah

Well, it doesn’t work like that and the only character getting wealthy can be the individual promoting the useless data.

But the issue is, you could make cash from affiliate advertising. Good cash. The type that means you could quit your day job.

So, these days I’m going to proportion with you precisely what I did to take a one product niche affiliate web page from 893 traffic and $zero a month to 13,597 site visitors and $3,934 a month in just 6 months. And the best news is, in case you placed the time in, you can do it too!

Oh, and just to be clear… all that traffic became unfastened traffic from google’s organic search results. The most effective cost the website online has is website hosting at around $50 in line with month (I use Rackspace cloud web hosting, which isn't always the cheapest, but really worth every cent in my opinion).

And one very last thing before I go on… the entirety I teach is one hundred% white hat. No dodgy tricks. You’ll be building a excessive first-class affiliate website online on the way to rise up the search rankings and stay there, regardless of what the following google replace brings.

About Me

Firstly, let me tell you a bit myself.

The purpose I assume this is important is that I want you to be clean that the entirety I did to build the web page and revenue can be performed by you.

I even have 20 years revel in in internet advertising and SEO.

Is this an advantage? Yes.

Is it what made me the cash? No.

Well, at least now not immediately. Even if you have no revel in on the net it shouldn’t be an obstacle to building your personal high high-quality affiliate web site earning precise sales if you comply with my advice and placed the paintings in. And it'll take work… there ain’t no copying and pasting here!

Actually, let me caveat the above by means of announcing that the bulk of the work may be in that preliminary 6 month period. I now spend about 20 hours a month on this unique site and it continues to deliver in strong revenue month after month.

Choosing Your Product

Ok, first things first. You need something to promote. So, how have to you move approximately choosing the product on your area of interest associate website?

Here are my few golden guidelines, which I’ll make bigger on in a moment: –

1. The product needs to be famous
2. The product must be at a first rate price point
3. The product must be available from some of shops (with affiliate programs)
4. The product shouldn’t be oversaturated in the affiliate area
5. So, permit me move into more element.

Popularity

There’s no factor promoting something obscure that no person is interested by buying. Sure, you could make a few bucks by means of going for a micro niche, however for the actual sales you need something mass marketplace.

So how do you find this golden product? This fee generating monster!

Well, you might be fortunate and have enjoy of a famous product from a previous/present day job.

This become the case for me with this particular website. I used to be a retailer of the product, so I knew how popular it was, but that doesn’t surely remember in a manner. It’s quite simple to discover famous merchandise to sell whether or not you have enjoy in the niche or no longer. Here is one in all the quality approaches!

Amazon Best Sellers
Amazon is one among the most important retailers on the internet with UK income on my own of over £three billion in line with 12 months. They additionally have a quite sweet associate program, which gives up to 8% fee!

So, if a product is famous on amazon, you could be pretty certain it’s going to promote properly. But how do you discover the popular products?

Well, the good news is those lovely oldsters at amazon inform you!

Here’s how to find the golden nuggets!

First, navigate to a subcategory. In this situation I have chosen ‘automobile seats and accessories’ inside the Baby department.

On the left hand menu there could be a hyperlink for ‘first-class dealers’ (proven above).

You’ll now get a list of the quality selling merchandise within the category, ordered with the aid of popularity. And if a product is in the top 10 sellers in a class on amazon, then it’s secure to expect the quantity is there to start promoting it!


So, it’s smooth to locate popular merchandise, but here is where the other golden policies come in.

Price

The maximum popular product on this category happens to be a again seat replicate priced at £8.95.

At say 6% commission (amazon operates a sliding scale of commission from 5-eight% based totally on quantity) that’s going to give us approximately £0.44 consistent with sale (you earn fee at the net amount). Not wonderful, we’re going to have to sell plenty to make any decent cash.

So, how approximately the third most famous product, that is a car seat at £84.95? Well, at 6% fee we’re going to make £four.24 in line with sale – tons better!

For me a product at just underneath the £100 mark ($150) is good as it’s enough to internet you a good commission, however now not too high priced that you may should work mega hard to obtain any sales.

Oversaturation

So, you have a product (or some associated merchandise – say the pinnacle 6 automobile seats), which it could be worth building a gap affiliate website online round. Next, you’ll want to test whether the market is already oversaturated.

If you're looking to promote iPads for instance, you’re going to locate big competition and you are going to must paintings extraordinarily difficult to obtain any kind of scores. So do your research and take your time to discover a niche that hasn’t surely been absolutely exploited within the affiliate space yet. Trust me, they do exist!

There is of path a balance between locating a spot that you could exploit and also locating a product with a view to be famous sufficient to get the volume you require to make the web site a moneymaking proposition. Car seats turned into an awesome instance as they'll continually be in demand – after absolutely everyone are going to keep having babies, regardless of what takes place to the economy!

So, that’s some guidelines for how to choose your product. Back to the story of how I grew my very own niche web page!

Month 1 (June 2012).
The website have been up for some months, however at this point changed into essentially became just full of placeholder pages (getting about 5-10 traffic a day). June became the primary month in which I started to proactively work at the website, build visitors and monetise.

My affiliate website online runs on a custom CMS gadget I actually have designed, but on your own web page you can use wordpress, or your chosen content management package.

Ok, so a bit bit approximately the product I had selected to base my website online around.

It is a excessive quantity product inside the fashion/beauty area of interest with sales of round £150million according to year and a retail price factor of just underneath £100. It sells thoroughly online – I recognise because I used to sell it.

One of the most effective ways of monetising a gap affiliate web site is to offer fee assessment for a product. If you can presell it with a exquisite assessment and then inform the purchaser wherein they should purchase it for the most inexpensive charge, then your clicks are going to convert extraordinarily nicely.

So, I decided that each of my product pages (there are round 10 variations of the product) would have the pleasant overview at the internet and an as much as date fee contrast desk for 6/7 of the pinnacle retailers.

I actually have bolded ‘the high-quality’ for a purpose.

June became spent pretty much placing together noticeably exact product evaluations for every of the 10 products. Each of the critiques runs to 2,000 – three,000 words and covers the whole lot a customer could want to know approximately the product.

BoardHow did I write these opinions?

Well, I understand the product to an quantity from promoting it, however as a man whose morning regime includes rolling out of bed, into the bathe and out the door in five minutes, fashion/beauty is obviously not some thing I can write approximately from personal enjoy!

So, I did lots of studies.

I took one product version at a time and trawled through google and first of all collected all the capabilities and technical specifications for the product. Next I study each evaluate I could find – excellent and bad (honesty is a great component). I watched youtube videos. I examine what bloggers needed to say. I read and study and examine till I felt like I changed into an professional on the product myself. And simplest then did I start to write…

And I say write because writing is what I did. Not copying. Not scraping. Not spinning. Writing.

I had researched the product to this sort of degree that I knew the whole lot about it and will speak/write on it as an expert directly out of my head. It changed into smooth for me to sell the product as I knew all the pros and cons like the again of my hand.

I repeated the same laborious research process for each product version until I had precise, lengthy, compelling critiques for every of them.

I didn’t begin writing with a word count number in mind, however as I mentioned above, every of the reviews ended up strolling to between 2,000 and three,000 words.

The remarkable aspect approximately content material this period is you will evidently use plenty of various combos of keywords and phrases with out even having to reflect onconsideration on it.

Keyword research is treasured in certain situations, but in wellknown I am a corporation believer in write for your users, not the search engines like google and yahoo and the latest hummingbird replace from google has actually rewarded folks who write in this manner.

Google indexes text and with my 10 unique product evaluations in vicinity I now had between 20,000 and 30,000 words on my website online. By the stop of the month, this accelerated textual content content material by myself turned into enough to raise my site visitors from five-10 traffic a day to around 40.

So here are the stats for June: –

stats10

Unique Visits: 826
Commissions: £72.seventy one ($115)

Month 2 (July 2012)
So, I had some sales and visits. It was time to up the stakes!

I’m a big believer in the content is king mantra, so I brought a blog section to the website and commenced to add supporting articles. This is wherein you could truly start to build site visitors and additionally push site visitors for your money pages (or without delay to an affiliate offer).

What type of content works nicely?

Problem/Solution
Well, the tried and tested technique of figuring out a hassle and imparting a solution has been used in advertising and marketing for years and there may be a reason why. It converts!

Let’s say as an instance your associate website online is selling a tooth whitening kit. You would possibly write an editorial titled some thing like: –

‘How To Get Whiter Teeth In 30 Days Without Visiting The Dentist’

I introduced the bit at the stop as human beings hate touring the dentist right?

Your blog articles need to now not be sales heavy. Gain the believe of the reader with the aid of presenting high great content material which addresses their trouble after which just drop some properly positioned hyperlinks to both the product immediately, or in your evaluate page. First and final paragraphs work well.

You must of direction make sure your articles are nicely written, special, offer real fee and are truely specific.

Just as I did with my critiques for my blog posts I performed specific research after which wrote my personal articles, making them the pleasant for their unique subject matter at the net. If as an instance a publish become a tutorial, you can bet it changed into the most distinct tutorial at the net!

For more on writing articles/content material have a read at these posts.

How To Increase Your Blog Traffic With Compelling Titles
How To Write Content That Is Truly Unique
One post especially that I spent quite a few time on and keeps to be certainly one of the most famous pages on my niche web page became a detailed buying manual for the product.

The put up is approximately three,000 words lengthy and sincerely goes into nice element of what you have to search for when choosing the product, the variations between the numerous models, the blessings of buying online etc. Since I had executed so a lot research when writing the person product critiques this became smooth for me to write… I had come to be a actual expert on the product!

All in all I published 11 weblog posts at the website online in July, with every one running to a minimum of 600 words.

Some Initial Links
I’m now not a big fan of ‘building hyperlinks’ any greater, preferring to take a holistic approach of constructing awesome content material, networking etc (extra in my article approximately white hat link constructing), but to get this website online off the ground I would must come down from my moral excessive ground to an quantity and build a few initial clean to get hyperlinks.

I pretty lots simply submitted the web site to a few higher nice fashionable and weblog directories, picking up perhaps a dozen or so hyperlinks.

I also dropped a few into other websites I actually have get right of entry to to inside the equal (or similar) area of interest, perhaps another 1/2 dozen in total.

Finally I commented on some blogs which had commentluv enabled to create hyperlinks back to a number of my weblog posts.

And that’s it. Maybe 30 or so links in total over the month. Not the ones that would start to carry me real visitors, but enough to get a few extra eyeballs to the site.

So in July I had: –

Created a blog and added 11 articles
Built 30 hyperlinks to the web site
Continued to replace pricing facts for the merchandise
By the quit of the month the site became getting round a hundred traffic a day from google. Here’s the important stats: –

stats11

Visits: 2,283 (up 224%)
Commissions: £245.44 ($391) (up 237%)

Month 3 (August 2012)
Work on website online in August endured in a whole lot the same manner it had achieved in July. I persisted to create new content for the blog segment of the website online and introduced a similarly eleven articles.

With regards to the weblog, I experimented with topical content this month, i.E. Basing content/tutorials round modern-day news events. One of the articles for instance changed into primarily based around the hole ceremony of the Olympics.

This form of content is ideal for bringing in brief term visitors, however commonly doesn’t have the durability of tutorial/trouble based totally content. It’s always a great concept to have a combination of topical content and ‘evergreen’ content material for your website online.

I additionally began on my preferred approach of proactive link constructing; visitor posting.

Guest Posting

There is a few debate within the search engine optimization community about whether or not guest posting for links is white hat/grey hat and whether hyperlinks from guest posts will continue to bypass authority and assist your site’s seek engine rankings.

I’ve written notably on the remember in the past, but to summarise I agree with that whilst carried out proper, visitor posts are nevertheless a terrific, clean manner to build hyperlinks and sell your website online to new audiences. For greater on my mind and a way to get the maximum out of visitor posting, have a read at the following article: –

How To Succeed With Guest Blogging In 2014
I secured 2 visitor put up slots in August, each of which had a branded hyperlink (i.E. Nameofsite.Com) to the house web page of the site within the bio box and a contextual hyperlink to a product overview web page in the body.

So what did this do for my traffic?

Well, by the quit of August I was averaging around 125 traffic a day. So increase had slowed slightly, but changed into still on the right curve… i.E. An upward one!

Here are the stats.

Stats12

Unique Visitors: 3,164 (up 38%)
Commissions: £277.52 ($442) (up 9%)

Month 4 (September 2012)
I persisted to create fresh content material for the weblog, although this had slowed from previous months as I centered extra on off-web site search engine optimization. In general I brought 3 new blog articles over September.

I picked up the pace on visitor posting and secured 5 guest put up slots on correct satisfactory websites in my area of interest. 2 of those posts have been secured via myblogguest, which is a amazing provider for connecting those providing content material and web sites supplying a domestic for the content material. It accelerates the manner of finding web sites to be able to be interested by your content and outreach somewhat.

Update 19/06/2014: Unfortunately google took (unwarranted) action against MyBlogGuest, so it is probably not an effective manner to secure visitor posts on your web site. Read more approximately it here.

Natural Links
The virtually proper news this month turned into that the web site turned into beginning to gain a few natural hyperlinks, mainly to the high high-quality content material (blog) pages I had created.

Quite some of those links have been nofollow, coming from web sites together with ehow, however, I am a firm believer that those hyperlinks, while not passing pagerank immediately, help to boom your web site’s trust via giving you a herbal looking link profile.

Note: This is why it's miles so crucial to create, particular, excessive excellent content with actual price. It would possibly take a little time, however if it is good sufficient the content will in the end begin to select up editorial links on its very own and those are the hyperlinks so one can surely see your site rocket up the search scores.

I additionally managed to get a hyperlink to paste on the main page for my product on wikipedia (I positioned it there), once more true for consider in my opinion 🙂

Traffic persevered to develop and with the aid of the give up of the month I turned into averaging approximately 180 site visitors a day… but this was about to take a chunk bounce! My commissions also quite a good deal doubled, which changed into pleasing!

So September in a nutshell become: –

1. 3 new weblog posts
2. five visitor posts
3. some natural links
4. a wikipedia hyperlink
5. And the stats were…

stats13

Unique Visitors: four,047 (up 28%)
Commissions: £560.36 ($894) (up 101%)

[signup]
Month 5 (October 2012)
As we moved into the very last sector of the yr, things have been absolutely beginning to happen.

Right at the quit of September my traffic had taken a leap above the 200 traffic a day mark and it persevered to grow through the month, smashing thru 300 traffic a day at the 22nd and staying up there for the rest of the month (peaking at 329 on the 24th).

I didn’t do plenty on web site blogging this month, just adding the one article, but there has been a new product version launched, so I wrote up my specific review, delivered the web page and also created multiple guest posts primarily based round it.

Overall I secured a in addition 4 visitor posts over the month and persisted to select up some editorial (herbal) hyperlinks.

The multiplied visitors become of route which means accelerated commissions and by using the give up of the month I changed into averaging approximately £30 an afternoon.

October’s stats: –

stats14

Unique Visitors: 7,156 (up 77%)
Commissions: £824.29 ($1315) (up 47%)

A Quick Recap

Before I go on to November and December (that's where the actual kerching occurs!), I thought it might be suitable to do a brief resume on the paintings undertaken (with timings) and boom inside the first 5 months.

Work
Set up site for new format (8 hours)
Created targeted product critiques on every product (6 hours in line with product = 66 hours)
Created price evaluation tables for each product (1 hour in keeping with product + 2 hours according to week updating = 51 hours)
Published a total of 26 weblog posts (2 hours in line with blog publish = 52 hours)
Built around 30 initial links (directories etc) (16 hours)
Published eleven guest posts (with hyperlinks) (3 hours according to publish = 33 hours)
Fiddling approximately with the design of the site (8 hours)
Attracted editorial hyperlinks (thru excessive excellent content) (n/a)
Got link on wikipedia web page for the product (1 minute!)
Total time spent: 234 hours and 1 minute.

I advised you it wasn’t a duplicate and paste approach!

If we break up that into ordinary operating weeks (i.E. 40 hours) we are speaking five.85 weeks really worth of work, so let’s say I spent a complete of 6 weeks running on the website online over a 5 month length.

Traffic

So, I commenced off in June with a complete of 763 precise site visitors in step with month and by means of October I had 7,156 uniques, a increase of 837%… not awful!

Total specific visits over the 5 months: 10,257

Commissions
Of direction I wasn’t doing this for the best of my health, and even as it’s fine to see visitors developing the component I changed into truly involved approximately was boom in fee.

Well the web site had gone from earning £72.71 in June £824.29 in October, an growth of 1033%. Certainly a reason to be cheerful!

Total commission over the five months: £1980.32

So if we divide our general fee of £1,980.32 via the hours spent (234) this works out at a rate of £8.46 consistent with hour… so far!

So… to November!

Month 6 (November 2012)
As I said proper back at the start of this article, a whole lot of the paintings worried is the front ended and by way of this point, with the website online selecting up editorial links and the visitors persevering with to grow I didn’t need to spend a large amount of time running at once on the site.

Over the month I published 1 new weblog post and 2 guest posts. I did must do quite lots of updating on pricing as the traders I changed into selling battled to undercut every other (accurate news for me!) over the Christmas period, but usual I would say I spent maybe 30 hours on the web site over the month.

And the traffic…

Well I stayed above 400 traffic…

And then at the 18th I broke 500 traffic…

And on the twenty sixth I smashed through the six hundred visitor barrier (619 to be exact)!

And the commissions…

Well they were rolling in nicely, at a mean of approximately £40 in keeping with day.

Here are the stats for November.

Stats15

Unique Visitors: 11,837 (up 65%)
Commissions: £1,282.42 ($2,046) (up 55%)

Nice! But after 6 months of difficult paintings, the real payoff turned into approximately to are available December.

Month 7 (December 2012)
Ok, now for the literal cash shot!

They say that pics inform 1,000 words, so as opposed to waffling on, right here are the screen shots of the December income from each of the associate networks I was the usage of to sell merchants on the site.

Amazon Earnings

Amazon: £1,789.49 ($2,854)

affwin_earnings

Affiliate Window: £624.73 ($996)

Other Networks: £26.42 ($42)

Total commissions: £2,440.64 ($three,934 at these days’s rates)

Here’s the site visitors for the month. It became quite a lot similar to November. The record day become the 10th November, with traffic peaking at 658 site visitors.

Stats16

So, in a 6 month period the site had grown from $0 revenue and really little site visitors to $3,934 and simply below 12,000 particular visitors.

If we overall up the fee for the entire 7 months it comes to £5,703.38 ($9,103).

Not horrific for a site that's technically constructed round 1 product!

Let’s Recap How I Got There
So, a very last recap of what became done to develop this website online and how you can do the identical!

• Find a great selling product at an attractive charge factor, which is not oversaturated. Use amazon quality dealers to discover popular merchandise.
• The site is monetised through affiliate marketing with a detailed overview and fee comparison model at the ‘cash’ pages.
• The recognition of the web site is excessive best content with the most unique evaluations to be had, tutorials, a way to publications etc.
• Do not replica and paste!!!
• Ok, to build a few ‘nuts and bolts’ hyperlinks to get you off the floor, however don’t go crazy!
• Build a few better first-class links thru visitor posting
• Promote your first-class content material thru outreach/social media. Note that it is going to be less complicated to attract hyperlinks to content material which isn't always overly commercial. That’s in which the tutorials/how tos are outstanding
• Work hard!
• While I would simply don't forget myself to be an search engine marketing professional, I did not employ any shady tricks to get my website online up the rankings. I targeted on imparting true cost and high high-quality content material – the sort that google loves.

No need to move mad on hyperlinks, just get some correct great ones to support your pleasant content material and your web page will upward push up the rankings.

Remember I did this all post Panda/Penguin and in fact I in no way in reality worry about google updates as I recognise I play with the aid of the rules and at the same time as it can once in a while take a bit longer, once you get your ratings you will preserve them!

Here is one satisfactory very last screen shot showing the site visitors boom over the length 🙂

stats17

Over To You!
So, that’s the story of ways I constructed a website up from $zero to $three,934 in just 6 months. But enough approximately me… now it’s your turn!

There’s nothing to forestall you developing your own a success affiliate web page as long as you are organized to position the paintings in. There’s no magic, drag and drop formula, so if you get an email presenting you one placed it directly inside the recycle bin in which it belongs!

If you have any questions or remarks then please depart them below, I’d love to pay attention from you.

If you would like assist or advice on succeeding with affiliate advertising then sense loose to drop me an email and be sure to enroll in the blog via e mail for hundreds more helpful tips on search engine marketing and affiliate advertising.

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So, work hard and I sit up for hearing your own success tale!

Update 19/06/2014
My associate site in this examine keeps to rank well, with traffic and sales developing 12 months on year. I used a solid, white hat strategy, based totally on developing high satisfactory content and real fee, which means that I never need to worry approximately google updates knocking me down. Panda four.0 actually, introduced me multiplied visitors as did ultimate yr’s Hummingbird replace.

Guest running a blog has changed a bit in the interim (it nonetheless works well, but you have to be careful), so make sure to read my manual to guest running a blog in 2014 before looking for guest posting possibilities in your site.

And finally, for extra white hat hyperlink building strategies which you may use on your own associate site study my broken hyperlink constructing manual and additionally check out my new guide to creating Panda and Penguin proof affiliate websites.

Oh, I additionally found out the stats for December 2013 right here.

Recommended reading: I changed into partly stimulated to write this put up (despite the fact that I’d been thinking about it for a even as) by using an remarkable publish with the aid of Matthew Woodward on how he constructed a pinnacle 100 blog in 12 months. Have a study right here (after subscribing to my weblog of course! 😉