Question:
Hi,
I understand affiliate marketing and driving traffic to a site. I already have a business plan set but I need $2500.00 to get started and cover all my costs. I am unemployed and my credit is not good so I am stuck. Is there a way to start out with no investment online and with hard work and patience build a financial foundation online so I can invest in my website? I have tried various ways to make money online from online surveys to getting my term papers for sale but none of them really took offf for me.
Alfredo
Hi Alfredo,
Sorry it took me kind of long to answer, I get a lot of emails so sometimes it takes couple days to answer all of them. As far as I understood from your email you’re familiar with affiliate marketing and looking for ways to make money online and have a business plan in place and will need $2500 to get started, but currently don’t have sufficient income stream to support your business ventures, right? I don’t know exactly what is your business plan is but I can tell from my own experience that it is entirely possible to start online business with limited finances without large investments (I started myself on “shoestring budget”). I think the best way for me to help would be if I can take a look at your business plan or you can elaborate about it little bit more. This way we can leverage information and knowledge you already have and I can spot some possible issues or provide less expensive alternative. This way would be the fastest way for me to provide some actionable steps for you to get started.
Thanks,
Dmitry
Hi Dmitry,
Sorry it took kind of long to answer you back. My girlfriend and I got in an argument and she took my planner with all my notes and business plan and kept it but I got it back lol. Anyway I understand that to start a business online, to get noticed you have to take a subject and put a different spin on the topic from what your competition has. Also, you have to have interesting and unique content different from your competition. You also have to have sufficient content so the search engine bots will notice. What matters is how many sites related to your niche are linked back to you that have a lot of traffic and have sufficient content.
My site will be a cross between Science and the Occult. How do the two theoretically mix? Well, one example is that the best magic books mention everything as a tiny vibration and String Theory in Physics confirms this fact. Plus, in Neurology there is not a universal accepted theory of what consciousness is. I am not saying that I wholeheartedly believe in the Occult. I just like to study the unknown areas of Science which inevitably lead to me considering Occult books. It’s just fun.
I know there is a demand not only with Google Adwords but look at what the most popular shows are doing such as Fringe, The History Channel, Animal Planet, and the Discovery Channel. They are speculating on the two subjects being mixed. There is not a site that exists that mixes the two subjects and the sites on studying the Occult have an outdated look and haven’t been updated for a while. I plan on taking the subject and presenting it professionally and with updated content. I’ll even have a newsletter and as my traffic grows I will add a Blog, then when I have more traffic I will add a forum. It will be an online community dedicated to the subject.
I plan on adding traffic by:
- Using Site Build It (which does some marketing for you)
- Answering questions on Yahoo! Answers
- Doing forum postings on the other sites related to both Science and the Occult
- Posting useful comments on high trafficked blogs related to the subjects
- Broadcasting videos on YouTube
- Check webstats and create new pages based on the keywords that generated the most traffic then link the old page to the new page
- Publishing a newsletter
- Creating RSS Feeds
- Using a TAF (tell a friend) script
- Creating a custom screensaver
- Creating a useful e-book based on the two subjects
- PPC (pay per click with Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing)
- Holding contests
- Offering something for free
- Writing guest articles and guest blog posts
- Creating a Squidoo page
With these methods my primary goal is building traffic so more people will click on ads from Google Adsense. I will also use Chitika, Adbrite, Linkshare, Shareasale, CJ.com, and Associateprograms.com. My income will be strictly the Ads and with the above methods I will be able to get 5,000 to 9,000 visitors a day working hard at marketing my site and providing fresh, unique, and useful content daily.
Please answer me back. Take care,
Alfredo
Hi Alfredo,
I think overall you have a good business plan and chances to succeed. It seems you know the subject, passionate about it and have business goals in mind. Now let me address couple things that captured my attention:
In order to achieve 5000-9000 daily visitors you need to have pretty large website with a lot of content (100 -500 pages) and a lot of content means a lot of writing – do you have enough time to write articles or you have somebody who will write for you?
You’re planning to monetize traffic using contextual ads (Adsense, Chitika, Adbrite etc). Usually profits are 50/50 – 50% to website owner, 50% to a network. So how much you’re going to make depends of how many clicks you will get and how much advertisers are willing to pay for keywords. For example for keyword “real estate” advertisers are willing to pay up to $3.02 to appear at the top spots at search results and for keyword “occult” – $0.50. (You can look yourself here https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal choose option “show all columns”). I am not an expert in your niche so I might chosen the wrong keywords but prices for keywords are good way to check out relative measure of niche profitability. So if your article is about “real estate” you can expect to make more money than from article about “occult”. Another thing is how much traffic is in your niche, will it be enough to support 9000 daily visitors? You can play with mentioned above Google Keyword Tool to see how many monthly searches there are in your niche. Another thing to remember clicks distribution in SERP’s are disproportional. First website gets around 40% of all clicks; second website gets 15% of all clicks and so on. So you can expect get fraction of that traffic that Google Keyword tool showing you as numbers of searches.
Before writing article I would suggest to perform keyword research to find best keywords in your niche to write about. There are several signs of good keyword:
- Relevancy to your niche
- Good level of traffic
- Commercial value
- Acceptable level of SEO competition
So look for keywords that have all four when writing articles.
All of the above require some time investment – how much time are you planning to spend to get this project up?
Did you considered another ways if monetizing your website? In my experience getting serious income stream from AdSence require some time and a LOT of traffic. Let’s do the math for your niche based on average numbers:
- 5000 daily visitors
- 1% CTR
- $0.50 your earnings per click
So your approximate revenue would be 5000*1%*0.50=$25/day Does it meet your expectations? And to achieve even this level you have to do a lot of work. So I think it would be helpful to add additional ways of monetization, maybe some back end offers, affiliate promotions…
Let me know if you need any help or have any questions.
Thanks,
Dmitry
Hi,
What would you say would be a decent amount to spend on Adwords and Adbrite when starting out? Do I need spreadsheet software for an Affiliate Marketing site? Do I need a printer, scanner, fax and printer? If so, for what purpose?
Hi Alfredo,
If you want to attract visitors to your website so they click ads I don’t think you should spend any money on AdWords and AdBrite at all. With average CTR around 1%-2% it doesn’t make sense. Lets do the math. Let’s say your average cost per click is $0.50 so 100 clicks to your website from ad networks like Google, AdBrite etc will cost you $50. With CTR 2% you get only 2 clicks on ads out of those 100 visitors. 2 clicks will make you somewhere around $1 in revenue. I don’t think business where you have to spend $50 and make $1 is profitable. But let’s say for example you recommending relevant course, book, merchandise to your visitors and your affiliate commission is $35. So now if you spend $50 on clicks and get 2 sales it will be $70 in sales. Now it makes sense to spend $50 on advertising to get $70 in sales.
I don’t think spreadsheet software is necessary to start affiliate marketing site. But if you want to have one you can download it for free from http://www.openoffice.org/
Printer, scanner and fax also are not required to start affiliate marketing business. Things you need to start making money as affiliate are knowledge of internet marketing basics, SEO, desire to work and succeed and belief that you can do it… If you want to get a solid start in affiliate marketing business I would recommend check out Wealthy Affiliate. Wealthy Affiliate is what got me started in affiliate marketing and in my own personal opinion – is the best place out there to learn it.
Thanks,
Dmitry
Hi Dmitry,
I have been recommended Site Build It and have been told it is the best. Is WA better than Site Build It? If so, for what reasons? How much does WA cost?
Also, is Thesis the best blogging software? Is VBulletin the best forum software? Is Pinnacle Studio the best software to make YouTube videos? Is there any other software I may need for Affiliate Marketing and if so, what are they and where can I get the best prices. If there is better software for any of these categories then let me know. I appreciate the fact that you are answering my questions…
I tried clicking on the ‘join and claim my bonus’ link at the bottom and the link doesn’t seem to be working.
Thanks,
Alfredo
Hi Alfredo,
SBI is a good product. But it is a different product; you can’t directly compare it to WA. It is like comparing apple to oranges. SBI has several modules and different prices for each one:
- Site Build It – website builder – you build website yourself ($299)
- SBI eLearning – their learning program ($598)
- SiteSell Services – they help you to get started and do some stuff for you (from $1599 + $29.99/month up to $3999 + $29.99/month )
With WA you get everything together – education, tools, website builder, hosting, personal coaching and so on. There are no separate modules or additional payments. You get complete system to build your internet business. I think the last time I checked WA was something like $40/month or $350 for a year… something like that.
I am not going to argue what software is the best for blogging, forum or creating and editing videos. I think as long it gets the job done it is good. I have my personal preferences:
- WordPress – for blogging (Free)
- PhPBB – for creating forums (Free)
- Camtasia Studio – for creating and editing YouTube videos (I don’t know exactly how much it cost – I got mine for free)
In my experience 90% of the time it is possible to find free tools or open source software for the most tasks you may run into. The main thing is mindset and desire to succeed and what software is not that important. If you decided to make it happen everything will follow. I am not sure about WA Bonus link, sometimes it takes some time to load because WA server can be quite busy or maybe it is my website. I am playing with social media lately and sometimes get spikes of traffic from DIGG, Twitter etc. So maybe it is my server. Try to click and wait for some time, it should be working…
Let me know if you have any questions
Dmitry
Hi Dmitry,
If I start an Affiliate Marketing site then do I have to pay any fees for licenses such as getting a business name registered and money for the business license? Also, do I just make quarterly tax payments to the IRS from my earnings?
Thanks,
Alfredo
Hi Alfredo,
No, you don’t need to have business name or business license to be an affiliate. Most of the time company you’re partner with or affiliate network takes care about tax papers. They usually send W-2 with your earnings and you can do you taxes however you like. Most of the people prefer do it online. If you feel like making quarterly tax payments to the IRS you can do so to feel more secure.
Dmitry
Hi Dmitry,
I don’t have a phone. Is having a phone line necessary when being an Affiliate Marketer?
Thanks,
Alfredo
Hi Alfredo,
No it is not necessary. It is up to you. I prefer to use my cell phone or Skype for communications.
Dmitry
Hi Dmitry,
I am about to purchase Wealthy Affiliate so send me the link to where I can purchase the product and you can get some referral credit.
Thank You,
Alfredo.
Hi Alfredo,
I am glad that you decided to start with Internet marketing by joining WA, I am sure you will learn a lot. You can use one of the two links:
http://www.wealthyaffiliate.com/?a_aid=1SEVBUfx
http://www.wealthyaffiliate.com/signup.php?a_aid=1SEVBUfx&page=wlm
First one is a regular link, second one is link with a bonus (as a bonus you will get “Who Loves Money” e-book).
After you finish training course let me know how things working for you.
Dmitry