Affiliate Niche Selection II - In It For The Long Haul...


In my previous affiliate niche selection post I covered what I consider to be the 'basics'.

In this post I wanted to try and better illustrate what I'm trying to achieve with this website and this part of the make money online niche...​

Previously I explained that I believe you need to pick a niche that will grow with you, and for me I want this niche to last me forever (fingers crossed for major life extension medical break throughs).

I also want the niche selection at the start to be narrow enough to give me a chance to become a 'specialist' in the sub-niche.

With this specialism hopefully comes 'authority' and recognition in search engines that this site is helpful... and with it all the lovely free SEO traffic that may bring.

In terms of what do I mean by 'sub'-niche.

Make money online is the over arching market I operate in, but in order to succeed from an SEO perspective I need to be much more specific... or narrow if you prefer.

More specific than within the affiliate marketing niche underneath make money online.

​Yes, I want to narrow down 'my area' of affiliate marketing and be able to  communicate what it's about...

A BRIEF Backstory...


I promise I'll keep this brief.

50 plus guy, married with one daughter looking to fund a comfortable retirement through affiliate marketing.

No marketing experience​ (some sales), very limited time (FT job), world champion procrastinator (seriously incapable of getting shit done... consistently)

If I was to rate my affiliate marketing skills out of 10. I'd have me as a 4 max... PLENTY of room for improvement.​

What's the point of this self assassination?​

To illustrate that even with some serious deficiencies it's very possible to make a modest additional income from affiliate marketing...

AND, to hopefully impress on you that I honestly believe you can do this better than me... especially if I can help you avoid some of the mistakes that I've made.

Put another way I think it's taken me 3 years part-time to get to this point now. I hope that if you take some of my advice you can do much better, but also much faster...​

My Affiliate Marketing 'Sub' Niche


There are many forms of affiliate marketing and I'm not interested in most of them...

Here's what I need:-​

  1. Passive income based - Doesn't need a lot of time to manage.
  2. Based on 'proven' marketing strategy - Gives me access to help / mentor
  3. Ethical - Really does help others.
  4. I don't want to create my own product.
  5. I don't want to employ anyone or outsource.

​Passive income is getting paid repeatedly possibly for years for work that I've done ONCE.

I don't consider search engine optimization (SEO) to be passive income generating. Yes, once your site is considered 'trusted' by search engines they'll send you free targeted traffic, but there is a lot of work and many variables in nailing down this source of visitors.

Similarly I don't consider free social media traffic as passive, great traffic but usually requires a whole lot of time spent 'networking'... not for me. ​

What I do want is to leverage technology to do as much of the work for me as possible.

I don't mean any of the auto generated content or push-button type of crap that's peddled all over the net.​

I'll come back to how I plan to leverage technology later...​

​I also mentioned proven and ethical, two terms that don't often sit together.

For example Multi Level Marketing (MLM or Network Marketing) is a proven marketing strategy​... for me personally MLM is not ethical.

Yes, I did go there and it just felt wrong.

So if affiliate marketing boils down to traffic and conversion how do I see it working...

Traffic or targeted visitors coming from a hybrid of paid and free traffic sources.

The conversion comes from really helping people achieve their desired outcomes through the research and content that I create and through leveraging technology to enable that process over time (possibly a long time). ​

This refers to email marketing which is still considered to be the highest ROI form of online marketing.​

Here's Googles idea of the best of the web in terms of digital marketing strategies... it's interesting reading...​

Niche Selection As An 'A' to 'B' Journey


I really struggled to gain clarity over what specific parts of affiliate marketing I personally wanted to be associated with.

I've made money with CPA marketing, Amazon, Google Adsense, and selling SEO services to local businesses.​

But this is to broad​... for me.

I decided to plot my journey at a point A to B straight line plan...​

Using an A to B plan to help me define my sub niche

This exercise really helped me define how I wanted to help people looking to start an affiliate business.

I want to refine my processes to enable people to get to the $100 per month mark within 3 months... hopefully much faster. ​

​For clarity start equals $0, 1st Big Goal $5k per month, 2nd Big Goal $10k per month.

The blue 'hope' and 'faith' represent what drives people to take action. When you start ​a new venture with no prior experience you hope it's going to work for you, you may have some faith in the system your following but as a beginner these resources are very fragile...

As you can see I've still got a long way to go... but have also come along way from the start (much more motivating to celebrate how far you've come than risk demonetization by looking at the bigger distance to go).

So in a nutshell my niche is the "development of accumulating passive affiliate profit streams"​ and the sharing of processes, systems, tools and training that I use...

Care to join me for the rest of this journey?

If so click here...​

Richard

Testing what works online. Sharing the stuff that works and flagging the stuff the doesn't. Model the good stuff avoid the rest... If you have any questions I'm always happy to help :)

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