Web pages, how many??

[jmw]

I am so intrigued by all this affiliate marketing and so overwhelmed with all there is to know. But I am eager to get started but confused as to what direction to go in.

I understand I need a web site....but how many websites?

I find that when you try to sign up with an affiliate management....havent yet.....they ask you for your url......how can I get started in this without yet having a website set up.....or do I just set one up with nothing on it......are these places going to approve your site with nothing on it yet or are they just looking to see that you have a website started?

If I want to market health care products and then I want to market diet products I am thinking I need different web sites to do this, correct? So lets say you can have Jenny Craig and South Beach Diet on one website or would you have a website soley dedicated to one or the other? I 'm thinking one website, because if one didn't work you would get rid of it. Right?

Does the domain name need to have something to do with the products I want to market in order to find my website in a search or is the search more directed at the content page?

Also, pay per click? How expensive is this going to get? This makes me nervous not knowing if people are just clicking and not buying when I have to pay for all those clicks. Maybe I am just not understanding this yet. Anyway, as you can see any help will be appreciated. Thank you.

[Edwin]

Originally Posted by jmw

I am so intrigued by all this affiliate marketing and so overwhelmed with all there is to know. But I am eager to get started but confused as to what direction to go in.

I understand I need a web site....but how many websites?

Start out with one!

I find that when you try to sign up with an affiliate management....havent yet.....they ask you for your url......how can I get started in this without yet having a website set up.....or do I just set one up with nothing on it......are these places going to approve your site with nothing on it yet or are they just looking to see that you have a website started?

If I want to market health care products and then I want to market diet products I am thinking I need different web sites to do this, correct? So lets say you can have Jenny Craig and South Beach Diet on one website or would you have a website soley dedicated to one or the other? I 'm thinking one website, because if one didn't work you would get rid of it. Right?

Find a uncompetitive niche - try to find a product or service where you can earn commission with not much competition in the search engine results.

And then i don't mean...okay...let's get you to dive straight into it!
I'll do an example of what you can do.

I see something in the sidebar here, let's take "Musical Instruments" - that term would probably have some high competition but imagine it is not, and working my way down...who knows something interesting comes up.
What matters is the approach, you can use this on every niche you can think of.

1: Go to this traffic estimation tool to find out if there are any interesting numbers in traffic.

Let's see what we got?

musical instruments 31411
ludwig musical instruments 5778
trumpet musical instruments 5108
violin musical instruments 5077
guitar musical instruments 2686
mandolin musical instruments 2478
tab musical instruments 2369
lefty musical instruments 2175
prs musical instruments 2144
hobbies musical instruments 2078
marshall musical instruments 2070
carvin musical instruments 2035
banjo musical instruments 2022
vox musical instruments 1984
fender musical instruments 1943
drums musical instruments 1875
electric guitar musical instruments 1831
gibson musical instruments 1800
accordion musical instruments 1778
bass guitar musical instruments 1734
guitars musical instruments 1670
clarinet musical instruments 1648
flute musical instruments 1539
peavey musical instruments 1525
wolfgang musical instruments 1521
ibanez musical instruments 1494
gibson les paul musical instruments 1466
tascam musical instruments 1410
bass musical instruments 1364
roland musical instruments 1350
tube amp musical instruments 1347
electric guitars musical instruments 1338
fender telecaster musical instruments 1333
les paul musical instruments 1255
microphone musical instruments 1243
drum set musical instruments 1243
boss musical instruments 1208
keyboard musical instruments 1187
telecaster musical instruments 1187
gibson sg musical instruments 1185
accordian musical instruments 1166
kramer musical instruments 1164
fender stratocaster musical instruments 1163
yamaha musical instruments 1153
epiphone musical instruments 1135
homemade musical instruments 1123
bass drum pedal musical instruments 1089
piano musical instruments 1049
used musical instruments 988
kay musical instruments 977
left handed musical instruments 939
sampler musical instruments 935
taylor musical instruments 930
mesa boogie musical instruments 926
esp musical instruments 884
acoustic guitar musical instruments 866
classical guitar musical instruments 854
fender jazz bass musical instruments 849
speakers musical instruments 832
gibson les paul custom musical instruments 808
flutes musical instruments 800
martin acoustic guitars musical instruments 792
fostex musical instruments 784
rocktron musical instruments 782
mackie musical instruments 780
behringer musical instruments 772
fender amp musical instruments 772
mesa musical instruments 757
silvertone musical instruments 753
mixer musical instruments 753
vintage guitar musical instruments 751
martin musical instruments 732
jackson musical instruments 727
bass amp musical instruments 705
drum sets musical instruments 703
crate musical instruments 698
string bass musical instruments 683
dw musical instruments 680
keyboards musical instruments 675
mixers musical instruments 664
violins musical instruments 654
acoustic guitars musical instruments 654
pearl drums musical instruments 651
mandolins musical instruments 648
speaker musical instruments 646
list of musical instruments 639
piccolo musical instruments 633
project musical instruments 630
tama musical instruments 627
cello musical instruments 625
guild musical instruments 612
antique musical instruments 608
pedal steel guitar musical instruments 598
indian musical instruments 596
fender bass musical instruments 582
alesis musical instruments 579
dbx musical instruments 579
ampeg musical instruments 570
organ musical instruments 565
drum machine musical instruments 564

So i just picked one phrase with some estimated traffic on it.

That phrase would be "banjo musical instruments" - it receives 2022 estimated searches, you can bank on it that that number is even higher though.

Now to check out competition!

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,790,000 for banjo musical instruments

So you would say - Hold On! - Isn't that too competitive?
It may or it may not be, so let's dig further because the regular results don't tell you a lot about the actual competition.

Remember that the amount of pages you're up against is not in that number you see above.
Your competing at a SEO level so what do SEO's do?

Right! They optimize their page titles.
So let's see how many pages there are with optimized page titles?
With the phrase banjo musical instruments inside the title?

Results 1 - 10 of about 223 for intitle:"banjo musical instruments"

Hey Hold Up! - That's a lot less

Now of those 223 pages you're seeing right now doesn't mean that all 223 are hardcore SEO's trying to rank for that phrase.

So how many SEO's are trying to optimize for that phrase?
No way you can tell of course, what you can observe if there is heavy usage of anchor keywords.

This means having the phrase banjo musical instruments in a working link?

Anchor keyword links are an important part of rankings so if you see a whole lot of results when checking how many of those links there are it would mean there is still a lot of potential competition, it could be coincidence but in a lot of cases these anchor keyword links are being made with a purpose...to rank for that keyword, so the more results you see the more people are trying to rank for that phrase.

So let's see?

Results 1 - 3 of 3 for inanchor:"banjo musical instruments"

Nice one!

That's a nice result - this is a uncompetitive phrase.

Now build a site on that topic - is banjo musical instruments available in a domain?

Let's see?

BanjoMusicalInstruments.net is available

Now - i said i got the idea for "Musical Instruments" from the sidebar remember?
Check out the program!

Affiliate - about - zZounds.com

Sounds good to me...no pun intended

So what do you have now?

1: You found a traffic keyword.
2: It's not very competitive - hardly...
3: You have a aff program you can use to turn those visitors once you have the #1 spot into buyers and you can earn some nice commish

Does the domain name need to have something to do with the products I want to market in order to find my website in a search or is the search more directed at the content page?

It helps in terms of SEO and Click through rate in the search engine results.
Plus you can if you have solid keywords directly aimed towards your target niche the possibility to obtain direct navigation traffic.

Also, pay per click? How expensive is this going to get? This makes me nervous not knowing if people are just clicking and not buying when I have to pay for all those clicks. Maybe I am just not understanding this yet. Anyway, as you can see any help will be appreciated. Thank you.

Could be expensive, could also not be.

Learn about quality score and Adwords in overall - learn SEO and you'll get there where you want to be.

You homework for today - learn SEO - start here today!

[jmw]

Edwin Thank you for taking the time to reply. Jmw

[Edwin]

No problem

I hope you take advantage of it

[joniki]

To answer your example about the Jenny Craig / South Beach Diet example.

You do not necessarily have to have seperate webpages for programs within the same niche.

AN effective method is the "review site" where you can compare and make recommendations on different products within the same niche.

This allows visitirs to get a side by side comparisons of different products that serve the same purpose. The great thing for you is they are all your affiliate programs so you win either way.

This is also nice for the customer because they can choose what works best for them.

I word of advice on this method. The top rated product will almost always sell the best so keep that in mind if you choose to build review sites.

[jmw]

Thank you both. I can hardly wait to get started. jmw

[Linda Buquet]

Wow Edwin,

Nice long detailed answer. joniki, you too!
Thanks both for jumping into help.

Agree that finding a less competitive niche when starting out is important. I'll add that there could be 2 strategies depending on your skill, commitment to the particular market and some other things.

One way to go would be to get the very specific niche domain, example littlebluewidgets.com. Then only focus on that one specific thing.
But then if that doesnt work out, not much else you can do with that domain.

The other way to go is to get a broader domain name you can use for other RELATED products or topics. ie bestdarnedwidgets.com. Then on that domain you still only focus on and start with "little blue widgets" in the beginning when you are new, but can expand later to electronic widgets and red widgets.

Having all kinds of computer probs. Need to log off and do some virus scans.

[Reynolds]

I don't know if I can add anything to the excellent advice you've been given, but I'm a typative (not talkative) person so I thought I would respond as well.

I always use keyword rich domain names for my websites. But, like Linda says, I wouldn't make it to specific to a product. Try to put the main keyword you are using in your url...it will help. But, if you can't find one, don't worry too much.

I mean, look at ebay, amazon, craigslist, yahoo, and google. None of them have keyword rich domain names and they certainly aren't hurting for traffic!

[jmw]

Thanks for all the info. My brain is overloaded with so much information.

Just a question about web pages. What happens when you try to apply to be an affiliate with a company, but you are just starting and you do not have the website built yet? Do they take you anyway.....don't they want to see what youe site looks like? Is it catch 22? You need to promote a product, but you can't yet link to that product... photos...until your site is actually in place????? Confused. Are they simply interested that you have a url in place, then the actual building of it will come in to play?

[Linda Buquet]

Well it depends. Lots of different possible scenarios.

Many programs on the big networks like CJ are on auto-pilot and they auto approve everyone without checking your site. This is actually a bad thing cuz it means they arent screening out the bad guys. But some you can get into easy.

Bigger brands that are well managed want to see a site and some are pretty picky. They want a site that has some content, PR, Alexa and is tightly related to the niche.

Some networks or in-house programs have an open field where you can explain things like the fact you will build out the site after you get approved.

ALL THAT SAID here's the bottom line. Having links up won't do you any good until you get lots of targeted traffic. You can't rely on affiliate links and banners either to give you all your content. Build the site, generate content, start marketing and getting traffic before you even worry about joining affiliate programs.

You can't add the pretty wall paper and granite countertops
until you've laid a solid foundation and have the house built. Make sense?