I was going to answer this on my intro thread, but wanted more people to see it. Honestly, any advice is good advice. I've read some great advice here already, but this is what I'm actually looking for, so point me in the right direction, please. I am basically a writer. I'm studying copywriting so I can write great squeeze pages. I can build a tolerably good website, with the help of a great site builder or content management system, but I'm more of a blogger. I'm sort of obsessed with templates, and make lists of features I like on all the best sites, and those I don't like. For instance, IMHO (not being a designer) NBC's new news site layout is HORRIFIC! Whoever designed that should get their license-to-design taken away. It is what I call "visual noise," and it gives me a headache. I'm reading books on affiliate marketing, but a lot of it is old, since I can't afford a ton of new books right now. I downloaded everything free that Seth Godin has on his site (a lot is outdated, but lots of good basic knowledge there), and I can't even remember all the rest of the free books I downloaded. Every time a marketing "guru" offers something free, I download it, so I know most of the basics. I haunt free ebook sites and Amazon for free marketing books. I get about 10 newsletters from said gurus a month, and read and take notes. I find a lot of GREAT stuff in newsletters, so if anyone has a good newsletter, let me know and I'll sign up. I read a multitude of articles on what the best affiliates are, etc., but I've been turned down for all of them. I closed my blog and am setting up a completely new site with everything that I've read I need to get affiliates, so any advice there is welcome. I'm thinking of outsourcing the actual content on the site to concentrate on affiliate marketing. I know some excellent writers who are reasonable, but I can't afford anyone to do the marketing. My niche is lifestyle and I tend toward the areas where I can sell products, like health, beauty, home interior design, gardening, and DIY. That's what I know best, so want to do a little budget stuff and a little high-end. My favorite site to emulate is Apartment Therapy. They don't cater to any one segment. They just put ideas out there and let you do it however you want. So I'm learning, learning, learning, and need to start doing, doing, doing, but honestly don't know where to start. I need a place to get affiliate ads that doesn't require a PR3 or better, but where you can actually make some money. I have Amazon, but need to learn to use it better for selling high-priced items. So any advice is welcome. Thanks in advance!
AdSense bases approvals at least partly on quality content and the amount of content. Amazon has a decent affiliate program too. There are many ways out there to monetize a site or a blog that don't depend specifically upon Page Rank. In fact, from what I've been reading, Page Rank is not considered to be as important as it used to be.
I have adsense and Amazon. I'm looking for others, because those two just aren't very lucrative until you have a lot more visitors than I have.
I feel your pain! I did affiliate marketing for a number of years and loved it but then Google made some changes and all my wages went down the tube. So disheartening! I never did go back and relearn everything as I just couldn't get my stuff to rank anymore after that. I know others that were hit just as hard as I was, have regained their incomes... so there's got to be a way to do it but I went back to network marketing and am loving it... One door closed and another opened for me. I used to use cj.com, shareasale.com etc as you can find larger commission stuff on there, but even then, it takes a TON of traffic to make any decent money, so I would say work on your traffic first. It used to be that it worked best to leave affiliate links OFF your sites and articles until they rose in the search engines but I don't know if that still holds true or not. I do know that Robin with Pajama Affiliates knows her stuff and can help you - she is one of my friends that has come back and is making good money again after being hit hard by Googles changes a few years ago.
I have found one of the biggest mistakes that affiliate marketers make is their niche is just too broad. Lifestyle is very broad. If you want an authoritative site, you would need to narrow that down. Lifestyle for who? What kind of lifestyle? Health and beauty for example is not related to gardening. Relevance is big now with the new Google updates. I have a friend in healthy and beauty and she was spinning her wheels until we narrowed down her niche. She narrowed it down to skin care. I asked, skin care for who. She narrowed it more so now it's skin care for women over 40! There are thousands and thousands of affiliate programs and it's growing and growing as more and more people take their business online. I often just Google what it is I am looking for with the words affiliate program behind it and ta da!
