[AdJumpCM]

This is geared towards newer affiliates, as experienced ones may find it rather repetitive.

Every day I get hammered by affiliates that want to know what programs are hot, which ones to promote, and what the response is like. Whether you're popping campaigns or actually integrating them into your content, it's important that you know which ones actually convert, right? Well, not unless you're actually going to promote the offer effectively.

Think of it like this: let's say a dating offer comes up at $4.00/lead and you want to start running it. What are you going to do?

Do you:

1. Set up a massive PPC campaign with every possible variation of the term "online dating" in the keyword list?
2. Hit up sites like myspace or facebook and try to spam as much as you can before your accounts get banned?
3. Create a carefully constructed website designed to showcase the offer as passively as posible?
4. Do nothing and fantasize about money?

The reality is that only one of those options has longeivity: option "c". Creating a website (or landing site) is quick, attractive, helps lower your CPC bids via high quality score rankings, and displays the offer in a way that is both attractive and effective. Design the site properly and it may even become well known for its content and design and, GASP, perhaps start even generating natural traffic.

The fact is that all the good websites have gone. Affiliate marketing, as an industry, has exploded in popularity thanks for a variety of reasons and, as a result, billions of throwaway sites have been created with the sole purpose of promoting affiliate offers. This is all well and good until you consider the fact that nearly all of these sites are poorly designed and are good for literally nothing.

If you want your site to continue to generate revenue in the long term you need to lay out a game plan:

• How are you going to generate traffic?
• Where is that traffic going to come from?
• How are you going to monetize the site OUTSIDE of the affiliate offer you're pushing?
• Where does the value lie to the consumer?

Adequately answer those questions and you have a winner. Remember, it will take you a few attempts before you hit the nail on the head, so keep your chin up and head held high.

What many newbie internet marketers don't realize is that people place a lot of value in websites that they deem "resources" and will visit them quite often. Why do you think blogging has exploded in both popularity and revenue? Developing a base of people who continually visit your website is kind of like setting up a safety net: if all traffic generation methods were to stop working tomorrow you'd still have those X,XXX,XXX amount of people that would visit your website every day.

Stores that exist in the real world thrive on that kind of business, so developing that kind of following for your website only makes sense. Good luck!

[Donuts]

Some other related articles to this
http://tropicalseo.com/2007/is-your-...10-point-quiz/
http://www.sugarrae.com/how-to-survi...ate-evolution/

I summarize all that you said, and that my linked stories said, as...

Build sites that have value.

When you focus on anything else, the outcome is usually fairly limited in terms of income and often, it's lifetime is fairly short as well. Diversified, sustainable income means building layers of long term valued channels (sites, projects, consulting gigs, etc). The best way for an affiliate to do that is to build a quiver of sites that have real value. This also opens up many available promotional and traffic techniques, depth means many things work. A valued site will like many types of diverse stuff thrown at it - seo, ppc, tv ads, radio spots, viral, social, newspaper, word of mouth.

Build it (to fill a need) and they will come.

[AdJumpCM]

Exactly. Build with intent, and build with value in mind.

[wethead]

Good post and thanks for sharing , for the last three years I have been building all those sites and 6 months ago I decided to change it up and build something with way more quality,

SO , I do agree with you 100%

Thanks again for sharing !

[persistent]

This is great info for a starting out new person.

[mick.import]

thank you Donuts great link

[Cheesehead]

Personally, I think that we often have things wrong: We find a product and then build a website around it where as perhaps we need to first build the website and then worry about the product. I can plead guilty to being down the first road, with little success.

[MichaelColey]

Product first, website second. Website first, product second. I still think neither is the right way.

What you really need to start with is a problem that people are trying to solve. The find the products that solve that problem and build a web site around that.

For instance, if a family of five or more is trying to plan a vacation, many hotel rooms only accommodate four people, so they have a problem. Someone who builds a site that makes it easy for larger families to find affordable rooms that would accommodate their family could really build quite a niche site. A similar situation would be people who travel with their dogs.

Think about your hobbies, interests, health issues, family situations, etc. What's frustrating or hard to figure out? Build a site that solves those problems.

That's building sites with value. And it works very well.

[ParadigmWilliam]

I like option D

I like to find a problem first or an untapped niche and build a website around that. I find that after awhile I start to get a lot of organic traffic and when an ad campaign comes that matches that site I am all ready to go.

[BlogBonnieBlog]

I agree with Michael - find the problem, give them a solution. Then natural traffic follows. Learned that when hunting for domain names too -- see what words people are using to find your type of site, then build your domain name around that.