One of the first things that became apparent to me when beginning my affiliate ventures was that tracking is the most important aspect in this industry. In the beginning of the journey you track the source that your website visitors have arrived from, all the way to relying on the program you promote to track the sales that those very same visitors have later partaken in.

I’ve been diagnosed as having stat OCD by my colleagues, so it was no surprise when I quickly noticed a flaw in most affiliate systems. Despite being able to see the clicks you’ve sent programs, you can’t see which source those clicks originated from; therefore struggle to be able to optimise your traffic sources effectively. You may know that you send a particular program 500 clicks per month, but if you know where the visitors that make these clicks come from then you’ll be able to target them more aggressively.

We’ll talk more about the benefits of tracking these clicks later, for now however I’m going to show you how you can begin tracking outbound affiliate clicks through Google Analytics as a goal.

How to add tracking:

1. To start simply enter into the site profile which you want to track and click on the settings section in the top-right corner.

I have always been a more active affiliate marketer than “true” business entrepreneur. I appreciate the anonymity that affiliate marketing provides me. If a customer does not like the service or product sold through one of my affiliate websites, they do not complain to me! Instead they direct their complaint to the company providing the “true” service or product.

But on the other hand as an affiliate you are very reliant on your merchants, you also forego that extra potential profit that you could make distributing your own products or providing your own service. In short although I have always concentrated on affiliate marketing I believe offering your own service is not only a more stable business model but also allows easier exponential growth.

The three levels of online business.

There are a number of online business levels that can be considered; by this I mean you can freely choose your participation level in your business. Each have their advantages but for the most part these advantages have a “yang” negative.

Affiliate

By trading as an affiliate you are in effect marketing another companies product or service in return for a predetermined commission on a per lead, per sale or percentage basis.

Advantages

• Core business is marketing.
• Easy & cost effective market testing (can change market focus quickly & without substantial investment).
• Little if any investment in technology (payment processors, stock control systems, etc)
• No Investment in stock, labour, or premises required.
• No customer contact required.
• No servicing requirements.
• The ability to sell services or products from already recognised corporate brands, rather than an offer from an unknown entity (often helps make the sale)

Disadvantages

• A reduced profit margin from what would usually be expected if you were providing the service or product directly.
• A much reduced opportunity for repeat business (if at all).
• Increased difficulty in obtaining acceptance from the Google search engine to take part in PPC advertising.
• Difficult to create a brand when not marketing your own product or service.

Outsourcing

The term outsourcing is perhaps misleading, although probably factually correct. What I refer to is those businesses that either outsource the service that they claim to provide for profit or alternatively dropship goods. This term would probably also fit well with many white label solutions. These businesses all “mark up” the product or service that they in reality purchase from someone else as part of an ongoing agreement.

Advantages

• Core business is marketing & Customer service.
• Easy & Cost effective market testing (can change market focus quickly & without substantial investment).
• No Investment in stock, labour, or premises required.
• The ability to build a brand & benefit from repeat customers.
• The ability to easily get acceptance from Google to run a PPC campaign.
• You choose your own “mark up” & profit margins.

Disadvantages

• A reduced profit margin from what would usually be expected if you were providing the service or product directly.
• Inability to control product or service quality, and risk potential loss of custom as a result.
• Time spent dealing with pre-sales questions, and support
• Inability to compete on price level due to the increased outsourcing costs (when compared to providing the service yourself).
• The need for a business address & contact telephone number (that must be covered during business hours).

Full Service

This service is as close to a brick and mortar business as any online business can be. In many cases this set-up will require an office and the necessary skills to provide the service offered. The profit margins will be highest, and should be large enough to enable the company to offer an affiliate program of their own, or have dedicated resellers.

Advantages

• Core business is marketing, customer service & service delivery.
• The ability to have complete control over your brand, and service quality.
• The ability to setup and run an affiliate program for your service.
• The ability to recruit resellers.
• Benefits of repeat customers.
• The ability to build a brand & benefit from repeat customers.
• The ability to easily get acceptance from Google to run a PPC campaign.
• You choose your own “mark up” & profit margins.
• The ability to compete with well established companies & brands.

Disadvantages

• Time spent dealing with pre-sales questions and support
• Time spent processing orders & maintaining your service.
• The need for a business address & contact telephone number (that must be covered during business hours).
• Possible required staffing costs.
• High advertising costs to maintain business & cover higher expenses (Premises & Staff).
• The need to ensure that your offering is both competitive and full-filled by skilled diligent staff.

The above guide is by no means complete and is only meant to provide some food for thought, and help you decide what form your new online venture should take. Remember that just because you start as an affiliate, reseller, or full service business does mean that this is how you will have to continue for the longer term. Although it is probably much easier starting as an affiliate and working your way up than the other way round.

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The promise of this article is that if you avoid making the 3 common mistakes listed below then you will dramatically reduce your learning curve in affiliate marketing, and are much more likely to see results — sales — sooner rather than later.  You will also save your time, energy and money by not flogging a horse that was never alive in the first place.  Most importantly you will reduce the likelihood that you will be like so many other beginners and give up before you even get started.

1. Don’t choose the “make-money” niche…

This a very common mistake made by complete beginners. They see all the get-rich-quick ebooks and courses, see how much they are selling and claiming to make in profits, and so assume this must be where the money is. If you choose this niche you are almost guaranteed to fail because you are literally relying on fraud to make money, and unless you have a proven career as a fraudster you won’t be able to compete at this late stage.

There are perhaps some ethical considerations here too?! Beginners who try this route often rationalize their behaviour with the belief “I’ll learn how to make money online by teaching others how to do it”, which is of course nothing but a subtle pyramid scheme, reliant on a constant supply of new suckers to keep money flowing to the scammers at the top. In any case, even if you have the best of intentions and genuinely want to help people you simply cannot learn how to make money online by teaching others – you have to learn how to make money online for yourself FIRST! Otherwise you are a fraud just like the rest of them.

When I see these make-money scams I am always reminded of those adverts you used to see in the classified sections of newspapers, the ones that say things like “learn how to make £2k in 1 week, just send £5 and a stamp addressed envelope to the following address…” And then the person would receive a letter In reply telling them to “run an advert in the newspaper saying ‘learn how to make £2k in 1 week, just send £5 to the following address” and on and on it goes, waiting for the next batch of suckers to keep the system moving. And guess what those guys are doing these days? Selling get rich quick schemes online, of course.

One possible exception to avoiding this niche is if you already have proven success at making money online and you think you would enjoy teaching others how you did it. However, in this case what you are actually doing is creating knowledge and systems that others can use to build a REAL online business, not simply showing them how to “make money online” using the latest sneaky trick, with a cash-grab mentality.

DO NOT TRY TO SELL “MAKE MONEY ONLINE” PRODUCTS IF YOU ARE NOT MAKING MONEY ONLINE!

2. Don’t jump on the bandwagon of what is popular right now; avoid “me-too” sites…

Many beginners are tempted to choose their first niche based on what is popular and doing well right now. Examples of these are voucher code sites, cheap flight tickets, huge comparison sites and weight loss. You see the massive amounts of traffic they get, you hear rumours about how much profit they are making and think “gee, that looks like where the money is, I think I’ll start one of those websites.” Then the typical newbie goes on to replicate the exact style of website used by the top few sites in that niche, then copies their marketing and copy, and sits back expecting traffic and sales to come rolling in. And when they inevitably don’t then they give up affiliate marketing and go buy the latest “magic bullet” info-product and probably go on to make the exact same mistakes all over again.

Jumping on the bandwagon and copying one of these successful large affiliate sites is a flawed strategy for a number of reasons. First, they have a massive lead on you as the top sites in every niche will be several years old. By the time you could get to their level of content and links guess what? They’ve spent the last few years growing and expanding and you are still miles behind them in the rankings!

Second, related to this is the fact that what is fashionable today might not be fashionable and popular in a few years time. Something similar happens in the Hollywood film industry. When a certain genre of film becomes popular and does well at the box office, then the studios are inundated with copycat screenplays trying to jump on the bandwagon. However, the time from script to release is usually several years so by the time the movie is in the cinemas the fashion will have changed completely. Writers who go for “me too” ideas invariable are of less quality because they are not following their passion and true interests. The exact same thing is true in affiliate marketing – how passionate are you really about flight tickets or voucher codes?! Dream about them every night do you? Always wanted to be a voucher salesperson when you grew up?

Third, there is simply too much competition! No one has a hope of becoming the authority site in any of these mega-niches unless they have a HUGE amount of money to spend and are happy to wait for several years, or have the capital to buy an existing website and improve it. Most of these big affiliate websites will have a team of people working on creating content and making deals with merchants, and another team of people building links and doing search engine optimization, not to mention huge budgets to spend on things like Google Adwords.

Fourth, the customers in these niches are pretty well served by these websites, many of them are excellent at what they do, so there is very little space for someone new to add value to the industry. In order to make money online with affiliate marketing you need to create value for other people. This means a useful website with useful information, a site that solves their problem. Now unless there is a major problem unresolved in these industries why would internet users not just use one of these long established and proven websites that appear in the top search engine results? And why would other website want to link to you if you are just a “me-too” site with no added value for THEIR visitors.

DO NOT CHOOSE A NICHE JUST BECAUSE IT IS FASHIONABLE AND LOOKS LIKE A MONEY SPINNER!

3. Don’t choose a topic you have no interest in or knowledge of…

The only exception to this is if you are prepared to pay other people to create content and build backlinks for you right from the start.  I will assume that this doesn’t apply to 99% of beginners who are looking to make some money before spending a fortune on outsourcing and hiring staff. If you choose a niche that you have no passion for, no interest in, or no knowledge of then you are likely to give up quite early, long before you start seeing some decent results.

With most affiliate sites, especially content based sites, you are going to have to write massive amounts of unique content on a regular basis (often daily), and you will also need to roam the internet finding similar websites to get links from. In other words you will have to immerse yourself in this topic for months and years. If you pick something you are bored by just because you think it is where the money is, then you will of course bore yourself on a daily basis!

There are VERY few people with the consistent self-discipline to make themselves work on something they have no interest in over the long term. Usually you will hit a plateua, sooner than you think by the way, and if you have no passion for the topic then you will simply give up and do something else. It is a much better idea to choose something you have a genuine interest in, if possible, and try to find the sweet spot between following your PASSION and a niche that could actually MAKE MONEY. Choosing a niche that has these 2 features is an art not a science and with many people it might take a couple of attempts to get it right.

Now, I am not saying that it is impossible to make money in a niche you have no interest in – I do this successfully in the finance niche – but it makes it a hell of a lot more difficult than it needs to be. My website in the finance niche was given up on and left for dead for over a year because I got bored of the topic. It has only been profitable since we started spending money on paying others to build links and write content for us. And even then we only risked spending money on it because we knew from an (expensive) Adwords campaign that it had potential to be profitable in the organic search results.

Some of the most successful affiliate sites are run by people who are passionate about their topic. Many bloggers make money online by promoting affiliate products in their posts and articles. For example, if you have a passion for mixed martial arts then how much easier to write about it every day and make some money on the side by linking to online shops in your adverts, or to specific gear in your product reviews.  You don’t need self-discipline in this case, you will WANT to write about it anyway!

DO NOT CHOOSE A NICHE YOU DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT!

Conclusion

For your first affiliate niche it is vital that you can get some results early on – i.e. get some sales and make some money! – so that you are motivated to continue and don’t give up at the first few problems. There is no bigger incentive than some money in the bank no matter how small and no matter the niche – most beginners have a nagging doubt somewhere in the back of their mind that it might actually all be a load of bollocks and it’s impossible to make money online.  Immediate results are the key to motivation, not complicated systems of time management or ebooks promising the “hidden secrets the gurus don‘t want you to know.”

QUESTION: what is your biggest problem or frustration when choosing a niche?  Please leave a comment below and we’ll see if we can help…

The main interviewee is Matt Mickiewicz; co-founder of both SitePoint and Flippa. Zac Johnson Tyler Cruz, who I have both know through the world of blogging (cheesy but true!) also speak in the webinar.

If you have been buying and/or selling websites over the last few years then you won’t find out anything new however I’m sure you’ll enjoy the video nevertheless. Those who are new to website trading should make a point of viewing it as it’s a good introduction to it.

Current State of Flippa

I was an actively SitePoint member for a few years since around 2001. I was very active on the SitePoint marketplace from it’s launch and have made a few sales through Flippa too. My two biggest sales sold for a total of $100,000 but I’ve sold dozens of smaller websites too (particularly in the beginning). Therefore I feel I am in a position to commentate on the state of Flippa.

Without doubt, Flippa is massive. It is sure to be one of SitePoints main earners (the other being 99Designs) and from a business point of view it is very successful.

Unfortunately, from a user point of view it has got worse and worse over the last few years. The marketplace gets more and more listings every month however the vast majority of listings are for small websites which make no money.

It is still the best site to buy or sell a profitable website. There are filters to help you find larger websites though so few are sold there compared to lower end websites; which makes finding a bargain almost impossible. From a sellers point of view this is obviously ideal.

Selling websites at the lower end of the market is much more difficult as the market is saturated. Too many people are looking to flip turnkey websites with relatively few buyers. I have no interest in making money from selling to this end of the market as a business, however I have used Flippa (SitePoint) for years to sell websites that I no longer have time to use. I am unable to do so now because of the sheer volume of other listings. In my opinion, it isn’t worth selling cheaper websites there anymore.

If you are only looking to get a hundred dollars or so for a website you can’t update anymore, their fees represent a large chunk of your profit. A basic listing costs $19 however the listing gets no exposure unless you spend another $30 – $40 on upgrades to promote the listing. I chose not to upgrade my last listing and as a result my listing only got 64 views (and If I sold the site I would have had to pay an additional fee). This is not sour grapes but rather an indication that it isn’t worth selling websites under $500 on Flippa anymore as they don’t have the traffic or the buyers to justify the price. You’d be much better listing your site for sale on dozens of webmaster related forums instead.

I do believe that it is in Flippas best interests to rectify this issue. Flippa are always boasting about the large sales which are made through their marketplace but the truth is the matter is the majority of listings end with no sale and frequently no bids either. They still get at least $19 from every listing so perhaps they don’t care. I have no doubt that many websites don’t sell as they offer no value or are way overpriced however if they continue to offer no return to the lower end of the market, the sellers will go elsewhere.

I’d love to hear your opinion on the Flippa marketplace? Do you use it as a seller or a buyer or both? Do you think the service suffers from the sheer volume of listings?

Thanks for reading

Kevin

I’ll be first to admit that I held myself back. I could have done much more sooner, but I listened to the bad advice and ignored the good. I was lazy, and the bad advice was by far the least work and therefore the route I always took. Looking back it was obviously not the right choice, and what is so annoying- is that in the back of my mind I knew it. I wanted success but made excuses, and was just simply not willing to put the hard work in. The first step is always the hardest!

The first step is always the hardest for a number of reasons, not all of which you can control. It is hard because you doubt that it is possible, doubt that anyone (even the bloggers you read) are really making a living online, and because you are new to this online world doubt that you have the ability to make it work. Believe me, the hurdles don’t stop there.

Most affiliates give up within the first 6 months (if they last that long), and then the balance (bar a few determined souls) give up within 12 months. I almost packed it in on a number of occasions, but always found my way back. I was pretty determined, but lacked confidence that it would ever work out for me. I had also never met anybody that had made it work, nobody in person, nobody I could 100% trust. It is a hard way to make an easy living, and trust me it just gets harder. When you are eventually making money and pack in the 9 to 5, you have to make money. Any consideration that this is a hobby, or that there is a way back no longer applies. If you want to eat, you need to work hard.

The main hurdle you will face is the feeling that you are not getting anywhere, and that your chosen website will never make money. Let me tell you a secret: chances are Google won’t even acknowledge your website exists for a minimum of three to twelve months. That’s right, you have to fight your way out of this sandbox and onto people searches.

sandbox – your site stays there until it gets mature enough to be allowed to the Top Positions club. Although there is no direct confirmation of the existence of a sandbox, Google employees have implied it and SEO experts have seen in practice that new sites, no matter how well optimized, don’t rank high on Google, while on MSN and Yahoo they catch quickly. For Google, the jailing in the sandbox for new sites with new domains is on average 6 months, although it can vary from less than a month to over 8 months.

Getting out of the sandbox

Getting out of the sandbox is easy! You wait. But you don’t wait by twiddling your thumbs and putting nice pleats in your hair – you start building the machine that will eventually take the world by storm. Here’s where it gets easy.

There are only two things that must be done on every new website. These are the same things that need to be done on every website full stop- whether new or old. Yeah sure there are other things that you can also do to gain exposure, and improve your site as a whole, but there are only two things that MUST be done above everything else. The two most boring tasks known to mankind, which inadvertently are the two tasks that every lazy want to be affiliate marketer really doesn’t want to do. Write content and build links. If you have a good (or even half decent offering) and you do these two things you will make money. If you don’t believe it, maybe you should be promoting something else.

**NOTE**

Seriously! Would you buy this sh*t?

I would like to add a note at this time. I DO NOT promote Clickbank products. I personally prefer to promote real tangible items that people want and are looking for. I do not need long sales copy, these people are already looking for what I am selling. I cannot promote Clickbank products because I do not believe in the products enough.

I am running a marketing business, and I would like to sell to the converted rather than have to convert the customer before selling. In addition, I like to sell products and brands that already have massive advertising campaigns ….trust has already been established with the customer , they are searching for the product and are just looking for someone selling it. DO NOT let the high commission rates of Clickbank fool you into thinking you will make more money promoting their products, chances are you will convert 1% of what you could with a tangible branded product that people are actually looking for.

Yes, it is possible to make money with Clickbank….just a lot harder!

In conclusion:

• Choose a niche & Build a website
• Write a lot of quality content often
• Build some links to your website (don’t build 1000′s a month, 20 – 100 should be fine to begin with)- THATS IT!

YOU WILL SOON BE GIVING UP THE 9 TO 5.

Please link to this article and help me get the truth out there! Lets stop SCAM artists taking advantage of people looking to better themselves.

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