During the planning stages I had been warned by Kevin Muldoon of WPMods that working while travelling could be tricky, and although I listened I am not sure that I realized just how true this would be. Kevin had traveled across Thailand when he was the owner of bloggingtips.com (later purchased by Zac Johnson) and had struggled to maintain the website while away, so his concerns were backed by real experience.

I knew that if the trip was to be successful my business would need to grow or at the very least maintain its current income, and although we were traveling we would need to put in at least a few hours a day to do this.  My biggest fear was the internet connection.

We arrived in Bangkok in January, and had pre-arranged to take a short two week break before finding an apartment and getting down to some serious online marketing. Bangkok is an amazing place, it really does need to be seen to be believed. We stayed in a cheap hotel on Khao-San Road and remained there for around 4 nights before flying to Krabi and traveling onto Rally Beach.

I think arriving in Rally beach was probably the first time I really thought WOW! The views were amazing, the water a beautiful light blue, and the warming thought that if I can continue to maintain my business I could (if i chose to) live here forever. I always knew I wanted my business to be successful, but it was not until this point that I fully realized why. Floating in the water discussing SEO while sipping a beer truly beat the ass out of my old 9-5, and I knew I wanted it to continue.

Following our trip to Krabi and Koh Lanta, our friend who had come over for just two weeks headed back to her 9-5 in London; we flew up to Chiang Mai in the North.

After 3 days in Chiang Mai we decided to find an apartment. Lesson 1: Never look for an apartment until you know the area.

We found an apartment that seemed to accommodate what we were looking for, it had air conditioning, a decent sized kitchen, swimming pool, 2 bedrooms and plenty of room for those long pondering walks around the apartment. It didn’t have good eateries or bars nearby so we needed to get a Tuk Tuk every night (or phone a delivery from Meals On Wheels) – lesson learned!

Our lease on this apartment was for three months, and we wanted to get as much work done here as possible as we then wanted to travel to Vietnam where we were to meet Kevin Muldoon from WPMods for a month.

Our main priority was to work on a backlinking campaign for our loans comparison website, so we set to work. Only 3 weeks after arriving in Chiang Mai our website had hit the 2nd position for our main keyword in Google. This we believe was due to a mixture of increased backlinking and a penalty that appeared to knock the original number 2 out of SERPS altogether – whatever the reason we were willing to accept out new found fame.

Things To Take With You

1. Travel adapter- you will not be able to get this there.
2. Extension cable that will ensure that you can use a number of computers at the same time- you will not be able to get this there.
3. Backup credit card.
4. Online banking (a must)
5. Skype headset.

Following our stay in Chiang Mai we traveled to Vietnam to meet Kevin for a month (I will leave this for a different post), but on our return we decided to go to Koh Pha-Ngan to see out the rest of our time. We opted to live outside Haad Rin (famous for beach parties) and in Thongsala where we booked into the Lime & Soda resort.

Me at Lime & Soda having a beer!

Being in Thongsala gave us the opportunity to experience some small town living in Thailand and gave us the opportunity to finally concentrate on some work. We ended up staying in Thongsala for approximately three and a half months which is surprising really considering we were managing to run up bar bills over an evening of more than £300. Thailand is not as cheap as it is given credit for.

Thailand Living Costs

Thailand is well known for cheap living, but it is probably no longer as cheap as you would expect. Before we went we attempted to find out the true costs of living, but this information is not as easy to come by as you would expect, so I will provide you with some information here.

Place to stay: Expect to pay anywhere from £7 to £15 per night for a bungalow (or £600 per month if you want an apartment like we had in Chiang Mai)

Beer: If you drink Local beer you will pay approximately £1 per beer, but if you drink cider (like i do) expect to pay up to £4.50 (all imported)

Food: Sure you can go to the market and eat for £1, but it is probably best to factor in £10 per day for food.

Cigarettes: A lovely £1 per packet

Conclusion

I should have probably spoken more about the actual work we were doing, but to be honest that would be the boring part. If you are planning to move to Thailand make sure you have more money than you will need. There are definitely cheaper places to visit – but overall it was an experience that I would never have had if I had not decided to be an affiliate marketer, and I am exceptionally thankful for it.

Let’s look at the types of content you can create and how to best utilize them.  Not all content is created equal so knowing where you can get the most exposure which the least effort is key to maximizing your time and getting the amount of traffic you need.

Blogs – The first and most common way people create content is through blogs.  This can include blogs hosted on your own domain, blogs hosted on another domain from your main business and blogs hosted on 3rd parties such as blogger.com.

If you plan on hosting your own blog then most people agree WordPress is the right platform for you.  WordPress allows for easy management of your blog, optimized SEO linking structure and ease of use with themes and plugins.  You should use your keyword research as a guide to what kind of posts you write.  For example if you have a fishing website and one of your keywords is “fishing rod and reel combos saltwater” then you might want to write a post with reviews of those items that you stock.

Video – Video is king online.  People love to sit down and watch a video about something as opposed to reading a whole lot of text.  Video also creates a unique opportunity for your potential customers to see your products and services in action.  The best way to get your videos out there is to use YouTube.

Not only does YouTube have millions of daily viewers and allow you a simple way to embed your videos on your blog it also is great for SEO and ranking.  Just like with blog posts you should consider your keywords when writing titles, descriptions and tags.  Using one of your keywords in your title will go a long way in helping you rank for those words.

Press Releases – Press releases are a great way to get your message out.  They do differ from other kinds of content in the fact that they don’t last as long.  With most content you create it is there forever doing it’s job day after day press releases offer more a big boom and then die off a bit.  They are still extremely effective and you should consider doing one for your business.

Not all press releases are created equal and you need to understand this to be sure you get the kind of exposure you are looking for.  The first kind of press release is what is considered a traditional press release where your press release will actually be submitted to traditional media such as TV, newspapers and radio stations.

The second kind has been born as a result of the internet and is mostly composed of networks of sites that publish this kind of content.  You will end up on blogs, article sites and other internet properties that feature press releases.  Both can be useful but you need to consider what you really want your press release to do to decide which is right for you.

Social Media – It would be foolish for any business in this day and age to not realize that social media has to be part of your content creation.  You should create unique content for your social media accounts in the form of updates and also use your social media sites as a broadcast channel for all of the other content you create.

You can even automate this process.  Use a free service like HootSuite to manage all of your social media accounts.  You can schedule posts, send posts out to all your accounts at once and even set up your blog to automatically post to all of your accounts when you write a new post.  Social media is essential but can also be time consuming so using tools like this can make it much easier for you to manage.

3rd Party Sites – There are many sites on the internet that allow you to create a “page” where you can add text, links and pictures such as Squidoo.  Creating many of these pages that point back to you is a great way to get incoming traffic.  If you are using these sites and optimizing them for your keywords you are piggybacking off the sites popularity to bring traffic to your own site.

One way people accomplish this is by creating what is called a linkwheel.  This concept relies on the fact that you are making sure your company is represented on as many authoritative sites on the internet as it can.  There are many sites like this on the internet just Google linkwheel and you will find many sample lists of sites you can use as a reference.

Creating good content for your website to bring in the traffic you need does not happen overnight.  The good thing about content though is once you create it then it is there so each piece you create is another brick in the empire of content you are building.  As you add more bricks you add more traffic.  This may start off as a slow process but overtime you can build a ton of completely passive traffic sources that send you traffic day after day.

Mark Molina is a home business owner who blogs about home based business opportunities, internet marketing and how to make money online.

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.

[signoff]

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…