David Fiske A subtle blend of affiliate marketing and web development

In past seminars, I have developed roadmaps for finding niches. They are all archived so if you have missed any of the older posts, you can find them there.

In a nutshell, I said find something you are passionate about and stick to that.

But I'd now like to extend that.
 
Affiliate marketing is all about laser targeting your website to your visitors.

Let's have an example. Let's assume we are building a site about laptops. We are fanatical about them and want to create a site that has the best information on laptops there is.

Good. The first point to note is that we have a clearly defined purpose here. We are not building the site to make stacks of cash (though that can come afterwards). We are not building a site because the retailers are offering hundreds of pounds in commission. We are building the site because we love laptops.

It's much easier to write content for something that you enjoy than something you 'have to' do for money.

So what will be on this site? When I go shopping on the web for most things, I want to read what people think about the product. I want to read what comes with the product and then I want to compare prices.

THIS IS NOT THE MARKET WE SHOULD BE LOOKING AT. Don't get me wrong, price comparison comes into it if you are an experienced Internet user.

We should be looking for the 'hungry market'. In other words, we are looking for people who need to buy what we have to offer - need as in desperately want (e.g. gadgets) rather than can't survive without (e.g. water and food).

People who want the latest laptop may be less price sensitive than those who are considering buying one.

Practical example: Take the Nintendo Wii. Supplies were limited which helped to hype the product. When stocks dried up, people paid hand over fist for a Wii on eBay. Why? Because they had to have one. They didn't care about price so much. An extra £50 is nothing if you get what you want months before anyone else.

So when it comes to filling the site, forget price comparison. By all means, give it a go but it is a lot of hassle and prices can become out of date in seconds. So long as you give your visitors a strong reason to buy from a particular merchant, they will. It could be argued that price comparison just adds more indecision into the equation.

So perhaps reviews is the way to go. But without buying every laptop we wish to promote, how do we review them? The simple answer is don't. Why not offer an overview of the product, then open it up to readers who already own one?

Amazon do this, and the reason they do is that consumers will take more notice of what fellow consumers have to say than what Amazon has to say. If the reviews are good, this encourages the visitor to go on and make a purchase. If the reviews are negative, the user will either buy anyway with lower expectations or delay purchasing, opting for an alternative or just never ordering.

So we have built our laptop website. We have reviews on there of the latest models. We've got pictures (remember, pictures are as powerful, if not more powerful than text alone) and we have hooked this site up to a panel of merchants.

Where next?

I've always said to focus on a niche and this is where the point of this post leads to. Don't stick 100% to this.

I could hear the gasps! I'll say it again. Don't stick 100% to the niche.

If I was buying a laptop and I had decided I wanted the ABC123 model, I would find reviews for it, just to make sure it was OK. Let's assume the ABC123 is a quad core dual processor laptop with oodles and oodles of memory, storage space and it has the largest screen ever. What are the chances I am going to buy just that?

If you have ever bought a computer, you will know you'll need a printer to print stuff. You'll need a scanner if you want to scan things. What about a docking station for the laptop and some nice speakers to hook my new toy up to?

My point is that in this instance, we shouldn't focus on selling just the laptop. We should focus on selling the peripherals to.

In fact, I have been taught one very key principle (incidentally on a computer sales course!) - sell the experience. If you can sell the experience of having the product, if you can sell the lifestyle and the satisfaction, you can create a sale.

Remember too that we are per-selling here. Our objective is not to sell the laptop but create the sense of urgency so that our visitors are convinced they need to buy when they land on the merchants site.

So we now have a laptop reviews site which suggests compatible peripherals, again which have been reviewed. Here I would like to suggest that if we are recommending the ABC123 from Merchant A, the peripherals also come from Merchant A. If we recommend peripherals from Merchant B, that's two orders and I would rather buy from one place than two or three.

Just to clarify, when looking for related items to promote, don't look too broad. We still want a niche site, just not one that sticks rigidly to one particular thing. So if we ran a fitness equipment website, besides the hundreds of fitness equipment models we could promote, we could also promote dieting websites or health food shops. Car insurance is not even vaguely related and this is where so many affiliates fall down. Health insurance is related and would be apt.

To emphasise this point, take another website. Let's go for a bingo website. Gambling adverts are relevant. The National Lottery would be good too. Car insurance is not that good and neither is a tyre company. Loans are debatable as some players may play to excess and use loans to fund their bingo habit. A debate of ethics here!

So ultimately, write about something that turns you on and look around the subject. Stay close to the subject else you will dilute what it is you are doing. There is money to be made...

Video: Laser Graffiti