How to Start in an Online Business
If you have already narrowed down and chosen your Niche, great. If not, here are some helpful tips for Best Niches – Affiliate Marketing:
- Review the skills that you listed for your chosen Field.
Remember, these are potential future posts areas.
- Check out your Competition.
Search your Field on the internet and see who your Competition is. Do not fear Competitors. You just need to address the areas that they are not addressing well. If you do your job better, people will learn to trust you over time and you can still do well, no matter who your Competition is.
View the questions on your Competitor’s posts. See what people are looking to have answered. See how your Competitors are solving their problems and addressing their needs. Do it better.
Check each of these Competitors to identify their Niches. This will give you ideas.
- Once you have some ideas for a Niche, visit online forums and social media groups that are related to your potential Niche to see what questions people are asking and what problems they are trying to solve.
If you can identify the questions and problems that are not being answered or resolved, it will give you insight into the specific areas that your future posts should address.
- Make sure that you can monetize the Niche.
The whole purpose of your Online Affiliate Marketing Business is to be able to promote products that you will get a commission on. You must be able to monetize your Niche in order to be able to earn income, otherwise, all you have is a blog.
Example: Let’s say your Field is: ‘Living With Diabetes’ and your chosen Niche is: ‘Best Eating Habits for People With Diabetes’. You could monetize your website, by offering various Diabetes Recipe Books, which may be offered on Amazon and elsewhere.
- Choose a Niche That Will Allow You to Diversify Your Posts
Try to choose a Niche that will allow you to write both informative posts, as well as instructional posts. This will allow you to be able to offer good information plus product reviews, as well as instructions on exactly how to accomplish something or how to solve a problem.
- Based on your information: Choose Your Niche.
Try to make sure that your Niche is not too broad, nor is it too narrow. Remember, you are going to need to be an expert in your Niche, yet you will want to have the ability to expand on it over time, or shift it slightly, if necessary.
Choosing a Niche that is too broad, probably won’t allow you to become an expert in that Niche.
Choosing a Niche that is too narrow, probably will not allow you to have enough to write about over a long period of time. Choose wisely.
Example: Clothing would be too broad of a Niche and baby socks might be too narrow.
Inexpensive, practical, yet cute toddler’s clothing might be just right.
Identify & Explore Your Chosen Niche
- Once you have chosen your Niche, you need to add it to your document: My Online Business.
You will do this as follows:
- Open your document: My Online Business.
- Leave a couple of blank lines under the information that you added to your previous Heading: My Field.
- Now, align with the previous heading, and create the following Heading: My Niche: (list your Niche).
- Leave a blank line.
- Indent, and create a Sub-Heading named: Potential Future Posts.
- Indent & Bullet list any ideas that come to mind for your future posts. Include any specific products that you may want to review.
- Leave a couple of blank lines.
- Decrease indent so that the next Sub-Heading will align with the previous one.
- Create a new Sub-Heading named: My Target Audience.
- Leave a blank line.
- Indent, and identify your target customers and the geographical range of your audience. Identify your Target Audience by: geographic locations, rough ages, gender, income, interests, etc.
Knowing who your potential customers are and where they reside will be key to your marketing strategy. You would be foolish to pursue a Niche for ‘expensive, high-performance American cars’ while attempting to target ‘teenagers in Bulgaria’, who have neither the funds, the driving experience, nor the availability to easily purchase those types of vehicles. For that type of Niche, you would need to target individuals who preferably live in the USA and have substantial income and a desire for such vehicles.
12. Leave a couple of blank lines.
13. Decrease indent.
14. Create a new Sub-Heading named: My Promotions.
15. Indent, and list the categories or types of products that you intend to promote. Here you will list the types of products that you intend to promote. They can simply be listed as general categories, or you can also include an indented, bulleted list of specific products, if you so desire.
16. Leave a couple of blank lines.
17. Decrease indent.
18. Create a new Sub-Heading named: Potential Affiliate Networks & Programs.
Before we proceed with this area, I would like you to completely understand exactly what Affiliate Programs are and the Affiliate Networks that service them.
Affiliate Programs
An Affiliate Program is a program used by most successful online businesses, that pays people (Affiliates – you) Commissions (based on a particular agreement) for promoting their products or business on their own website, and sending traffic to that business, who makes purchases there. You, as an Affiliate for a business, post Links to the business site, and are paid these Commissions for purchases made from the visitors who click that Link, visit the business site, and make a purchase within a given time frame (Cookie Duration).
There is no shortage of available Affiliate Programs for nearly any Niche. One of the best things about these Programs, is that the traffic that you send to the businesses via your Links, don’t need to buy the products that you may be promoting. If that visitor buys ANYTHING from that site, visiting it via your Link, you will get a Commission on that sale. The transaction must be completed within a given Cookie Duration time frame set in that Affiliate Program’s Agreement. Some are 24 hours, some are much longer.
All Affiliate Programs are FREE to join, but acceptance is not guaranteed. Most have certain criteria that your site will need to meet in order for them to accept you. This will have to do with: site content, how long you have been around, your visitor traffic, etc. If you apply for a Program that declines you, always find out why, so that when you meet their criteria, you can reapply and get accepted.
Many of these Affiliate Programs will be will be carried by an Affiliate Network that represents thousands for different Affiliate Programs.
Affiliate Networks
Affiliate Networks are organizations that handle all of the work involved for the Affiliate Programs that they sponsor. These Networks are responsible for keeping track of your Commissions and seeing that they are paid out.
Affiliate Networks are FREE for you (the Affiliate) to join, and acceptance is usually 100%. You will need to join the Networks that handle the Affiliate Programs that you intend to promote. Then, you apply to each Program individually. Most Networks will not provide a list of their Affiliate Programs before you join them, so you do your research about the Programs first, to see who is sponsoring them, so that you know which Networks to join.
Locate Potential Affiliate Programs
Now it is time to locate Potential Affiliate Programs that carry the products that you intend to promote.
You will just be locating some of these Networks and Programs for now and adding them to your list, not applying to them yet. Although there is a 100% acceptance for applying to the Networks, there are certain criteria that you will need to meet first, after creating your site, so that these Programs will accept you. So for now, merely create a list in your document for future use, so that your research will be started, and you can easily apply to each of them when your site reaches that stage. You do not need to spend a ton of time on this area for now.
Example: If you will be promoting ‘maternity clothes for executive women’, for instance, you will need to find the appropriate Affiliate Programs that carry good quality maternity clothes. You will probably not be promoting some low-end quality Affiliate Programs that do not offer the items that executive women might be interested in.
You can locate any Potential Affiliate Programs by typing in to your search engine window, the following: (your Niche) + affiliate programs (Do not use parenthesis when searching.). This will often provide you with what Network manages them, as well as some of the specifics about their Program. Each one will be different, having their own set of rules and offerings, so it will be very important to read the information that each provides in order to see if they are a good fit for you.
You can also search for additional Networks by simply typing in: Affiliate Networks in your search engine window.
Add Potential Affiliate Networks & Programs to Your List
OK. Now back to your document: My Online Business and your Heading: Potential Affiliate Networks & Programs
Once you find a Network that sponsors a particular Affiliate Program that you wish to apply to, add that Network and Affiliate Program to your list (under Potential Affiliate Networks & Programs) as follows:
- Leave a blank line under your Heading: Potential Affiliate Networks & Programs.
- Indent, and create a Sub-Heading named: Network: (Key in the Network name).
- Then, Indent & Bullet list the Potential Affiliate Programs that you intend to apply for that are sponsored by that Network.
- Then, create a further Indented & Bulleted list under each Potential Affiliate Program with the following Sub-Categories:
- Commission % – (list your %)
- Cookie Duration – (list the Duration Time)
- Payment Type – (PayPal or Direct Deposit into your checking account)
You can obtain the information needed by visiting each Potential Affiliate Program and searching for that information. This will provide you with valuable information when it becomes time to start making your choices on the various Programs that you will apply to.
Do not be dissuaded by Programs that pay a low Commission. Companies like Amazon pay a low Commission Rate, but offer millions of potential products that you can receive Commissions on. Remember, you will get a Commission on any product purchased during your Cookie Duration, not just the ones that you might be recommending.
Also, be aware that some companies, like Amazon, require a specific Affiliate Disclosure that must appear on your site if you become an Affiliate with them. You will learn where to put this on your site, later in the training. For now, you can either merely make a mental note, or add another Bullet (under: Payment Type) and call it: Specific Affiliate Disclosure – (Copy & Paste the Disclosure needed here). Then, when you reach that point in the training, you can Copy & Paste it into this area as well, so that it will be handy, should you ever need to refer to it.
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