David Fiske A subtle blend of affiliate marketing and web development

There are several goals you will have put in place when developing a new website. More than likely they are:

1. To fulfil a purpose
2. To fill a gap in the market
3. To make money consistently

That's about it. In affiliate marketing, it's not enough just creating a hobby site. It won't make you enough money to warrant the time you invest in it.

When it comes to adding content, you need to keep a broad but narrow mind. It sounds daft and impossible but here's what I mean.
 
Let's use a practical example. Today I'm going to use swimming pools as a market.

Keep A Broad Mind

We need to make sure swimming pools is a broad market. There's no point in setting up a swimming pool blog only to discover that after 3 posts, there's nothing more to be said.

Also, by just sticking to swimming pools, we are narrowing our focus and are potentially missing other markets we could be tackling. For instance, who uses a swimming pool? Our initial idea was to target people with enough cash to splash (!) out on a pool for relaxation purposes. Perhaps people who would enjoy a swim before breakfast. But what about athletes? Our blog doesn't cater for them as we have been focussed on relaxation pools.

Keep A Narrow Mind

It's at this point we're now looking at expanding the blog to cater for fitness swimmers as well as casual swimmers. But is this for the greater good?

It can be argued that this is a good move as it would increase readers but could it also alienate existing readers?

If I were running this blog, I would probably add sections for as many swimmers as possible, whilst ensuring there's enough content for each group to warrant their return. There's no benefit to diluting content down to attract many target groups when in actuality you alienate them.

What I mean by keeping a narrow mind is that sometimes you have to pass on opportunities for the greater good of your site. For instance, when we start writing about fitness pools, it would be very easy to stray into home gyms. Whilst this would be relevant for a section of this market, the overall effect would be detrimental to the site. You are diluting the content to include a vaguely related product which is of no benefit to the majority of your readers, dilutes your swimming pool authority on the search engines and quite frankly wastes your time.

A Way Around?

If you were desperate to include a section on home gyms, is it a big enough market to set up a new site about it? You may have approached it from the perspective of swimmers but look at it from a fitness perspective.

Remember that if you do set up a home gym site you'll face the same problems. Do you include treadmills, aerobics equipment, food suppliments, etc? Are any of these a site on their own?

The end.