If You HAD to Start Over - What would you do Different???

[Billy Kay]

When I started out, everything was new. There were no guides, no tools. Everything I learned was thru experimentation, trial and error.

Nowadays, anyone with access to the internet can make a site. Enter "red shoes" in Shareasale make-a-page, and you have a full pre-coded red shoes product page. Enter your affiliate ID and your banner location in some programs, and it generates an entire website for you. Want to have an always updated page that never requires updating? Use a "widget". Don't know html? There's zillions of places to get free website templates.

A lot of new people who use just these new easy ways, don't succeed and get frustrated. I think it's because they don't do the basics - everything seems to be handed to them.

What good is a make-a-page shoe page if one of the links isn't working and they don't know html to fix it?

And if they made a site that offers every shoe Payless has - wouldn't the actual Payless site be more professional anyway? Has anyone told them they'll have a million competitors doing the same exact thing? They don't know that a niche site like "red shoes for tall women" would be better.

I could go on, but there's no substitute for experience. You have to be a master of many things to be a successful affiliate. You have to be a webmaster (no broken links/know how to cloak or redirect links), a site designer (your site has to be appealing), a graphics artist (your logo and icons), a marketer, a customer service manager, an SEO specialist (you need traffic - and the RIGHT traffic), a networking pro (you have to deal on a daily basis with hundreds of merchants) ...

And all of these things come from... just doing it. Every day. See what works and what doesn't work If something's working, you need to improve on it and exploit it.

[KirkhamsEbooks]

How would you buy links?

Rick

[Linda Buquet]

Really great points Billy! Affiliates have to really be multi-talented in so many areas.
I guess that's one reason I'm not off being a full-time affiliate.
I don't think I could be organized enough
or patient enough.

[GettingRicher]

I would have done a lot of reasearch before making my moves. I lost a lot of money on buying products I never used or products that had a free alternative.

[Darwin]

When I got introduced to IM it was via using adwords. That seemed to be the main thing, not marketing a product but using adwords. Then I was like a kid in a candy store. Wow, wow, wow. I can do that, I want to make money like that. I ended up getting overwhelmed and thinking really need lots of disposable income to make it. But I stepped back, observed, read and now I would have started as I am doing now, Crawl, Walk, Run. Build a good foundation, get smart on marketing, best business practises, research, content, relationships and building a good foundation and expand from there. So if I had to do it all over again I would begin at the beginning as though I am in Kindergarten or a Froshman and learn and expand.

Darwin

[unique]

If I could start all over again I believe I'd try a niche in insurance
I would read more forums and less squeeze pages and paypal wouldn't dance
I'd still like blogs because writing is fun but I'd spend more time on one
I'd spend more time on creating links and generally getting things done

I'd run a mile when I saw a guru and ignore all pop up ads
for experience has taught me more than tips from all the marketing lads
If I could start all over again I'd learn seo first not last
But had I done this I may never have learned the rest of what's now in the past

[Linda Buquet]

Cute unique! Your answer in the form of a poem!

I LOVE that this great thread continues to grow
with everyone's feedback and contribution!

[frugalwench]

Originally Posted by webshack

I would have concentrated on the keyword density on my pages more than the actual design itself, or in getting any type of traffic... I finally found that out after I had a very successful traffic-selling site about three years ago, (which I got disgusted with because of PP's policy of automatically honoring all refund requests for all "virtual" goods or services). Also, the text in "alt" tags for your images is MUCH more important than what you might think. You can also name all of your images with long hyphenated keywords and/or phrases.... I'll post more stuff when I think of it...

Good advice. I'm seeing that I probably need to do that as well. I'm also not sure about my niche. I'm combining my two passions, frugality and gardening, in one site, concentrating right now on the gardening.

Also, I would like to say that if you're on a blogging or article site, it is easy to get sidetracked by discussions in the forums, or by reading other blogs, articles, when you should be spending that time building your content. If I could do it again, I'd have about 20 more pages on my niche content! The key, I think, is to get focused on your niche, and try not to get distracted by other topics.

[frugalwench]

Originally Posted by Raspie

When I first started in the internet for E-bizz I was, like a lot of people I guess, drawn by the idea that internet could make anything possible and for free... So I started with free web-hosting, free advertising, free traffic, free , free, free... Did it get me anything? Yes ! Of course ! A lot of work and some results... The moment I had made a little money I considered to reinvest a little and at that moment it grew so fast that I looked back and realised this : If I had invested this to start-up I would have been a lot further by now...

So I can agree with a previous post about not only focussing on free traffic, but it goes a lot further than that... Free software, free hosting, you can find almost anything for free on the internet. But the internet is not different from the real-life business world : you need to invest to really become succesfull.

That is my modest opinion: I would invest faster. Not a lot however. But a minimum. In my case that was 200$...

I'm at that stage now, where I want to invest something, but I'm going to build a lot more content first. I think that investing right now would be folly, before I have more to offer. I think that the old cry "CONTENT! CONTENT! CONTENT!" is still true today. If you have nothing to offer visitors, no matter how much you invest, you won't make any money. You have to have enough to make them stay on your site and want more.

If I could do one thing differently, I would not start on a blog or article site. I would maybe build it as a free website, then buy some space and transfer it, but it's a pain trying to get content from my blog sites to real site pages. A lot of "copy and paste" and rebuilding entire pages, which is entirely too time consuming. I'm wasting time now doing that when I could be using that time to monetize and build traffic.

I would also make a daily time management plan, as to how much time I was going to spend on each task daily, such as how much time marketing, how much time building content, etc. I started out trying to market before I had much to sell. I think I'm heading in the right direction now, but it's cost me 5 months of time. Still, at least I've caught on after 5 months instead of a year.

[KirkhamsEbooks]

Wouldn't you want to slowly add content to your permanent site?

Rick