Choosing an Affiliate Marketing Project

If you are new to the world of affiliate marketing, one of the most important things that you can do for your first project is to pick a project that genuinely interests you. As tempting as it may be to start a site about lucrative keywords such as broadband, gambling or credit cards, the reality is that at this stage of your affiliate career there are people who know how to do this better than you. This is the mistake many rookie affiliates make – trying to jump to the super competitive keywords before you fully understand what you are doing. The result is you don’t get anywhere near page 1 on Google, you don’t get any traffic, your motivation drops completely and you give up.

Therefore, it is essential that for your first project you choose a subject matter that interests you, no matter how small or boring this topic may be. The goal of our first site is not to make a fortune out of it, although by reading our guide on how to monetise your website you may find that it becomes more profitable than you imagined. A large part of SEO and affiliate marketing is trial and error, seeing what works and what doesn’t and this is much easier to do if you understand the subject matter, your competitors sites and know where to source relevant links from.

So for your first site, what we are looking to do is look for a subject that you are passionate about and you can write good content for. It should be fairly small and not overly competitive. For example, for my “test” project I decided to create a website about the football team I support. I simply added relevant news articles to the website and within three weeks I was appearing on the front page of Google for my main keyword (the name of the team). Although I didn’t make a lot of money from this site, I did make a few hundred pounds via Google Adsense and relative affiliate programmes, but the main thing I gained was confidence in my ability to master SEO and I now began to target more adventurous projects.

Don’t worry – by the end of your training you are going to be able to tackle the major keywords like broadband and credit cards, but you have to learn to walk before you can run unfortunately. We are NOT concerned with making money from our first blog, simply understanding the process for ranking well on Google. However, if you choose a subject which you are passionate about, I have a feeling you will be pleasantly surprised about the money that it makes you. Once you understand the process, you can rank well for any keyword that you choose, so stay patient for now. My advice to you would be to think of your hobby and if it’s a major hobby, break it down into a smaller component.

Next step for Newbies: Tips on Choosing your First Niche website