Entering a Competetive Niche in Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is not easy, and you won't get rich overnight, that's pretty much a fact. Some say steer clear of competitive niches, especially if you are new. This is a warning I did not listen too. It seems to be turning out well for me, but perhaps my approach was different. I focused on long term satisfaction and still do. I don't go for instant gratification. It's fleeting.

I choose the dating industry, by pure accident to be honest. I was searching online for a means to make money as I have stated in previous posts here; I hated my job. It just so happens I got dumped the day before I lost my job. So I was online looking for help with dealing with this and looking for a way to survive at the same time.

I found an ebook, get your ex back. I purchased it and read it, to later discover I could actually be an affiliate of this book. Great book by the way. I didn't get him back, but I did get my peace of mind back. Once I discovered this book, I searched for others with value. I purchased and read them all. I never promote something I don't believe in.

Then I landed on a forum for women. I went to the break up section. There were women posting everywhere about their heart break. They were all devastated, hurting and so sad. I created a thread there called No Contact Support and got them all together in one place. I led them through it. I healed in the process.

I discovered I was pretty smart when it came to men and I discovered I had forgotten more than a lot of those women knew. I started posting all over that forum. The owner offered me a non paying job as Moderator. I took it.

In the meantime I was still building my blogs, Squidoo Lens and writing article after article. Money was coming in, slowly but surely.

Funny thing happened on that forum. The ladies started emailing me privately. Some days I struggled to keep up. Fast forward 2 years and it's announced the forum is shutting down. Uh oh! Emails started pouring in again, asking me what were they going to do. It truly was a tight knit community, and it seems I had become the glue.

My door opened, I started my own forum, with help from a member of the Warrior Forum, God bless her. Week one I had over 100 members and it was still in beta testing, still is actually.

I also interacted on facebook a lot. My contacts started connecting together. On my facebook page I have women from the forum, followers from my blog, followers from my articles. I have a growing group there also. It's for Goddesses like myself. ;-)It just keeps growing.

I know I am rambling here, but the bottom line is if you are passionate about it, you can make it if you don't give up. Today you could be struggling, but keep pushing. Two years down the road you don't know what doors will open.

I like to think it's sort of like Karma. The hundreds, maybe thousands of women I have helped is all coming back to me now. If I had done it witout a heart, I think others would see through this and what I offer would hold little value.

Perhaps I should send a thank you to that man that dumped me.

It's all a journey and you won't reach your destination if you give up.

Do Article Spinners and Submitters Work

I promised to be back with a new post regarding the article spinner and article submitter that I had been using. My first step was to try it out via someone else. In other words I outsourced it to an individual who already had this software in place. I paid him 10 bucks to generate a new article and submit via his software.

My test site was a Squidoo lens I had just built. I did nothing to send backlinks to it I just left it up to the spinner and submitter. This was a month ago, perhaps a little more. My lens now has 58 unique backlinks. Not so bad for just one article and 10 bucks. I made that back with one sale.

So with evidence that it does do something apparently, I made the purchase. I bought magic article spinner and magic article submitter and went to work. I won't lie, it took me two days to figure out how to use it. Then again, consider the fact that I am technically challenged to a huge degree. I cringe thinking of learning a new software or stepping out of my comfort zone of ezine articles.

After the two days though and a lot of hair pulling, I figured it out. It now takes me about 30 minutes to rewrite one of my many already existing articles and submit it to hundreds of article directories. I am now getting traffic from places I have never even heard of and a lot of it is very targeted.

Moral of the story, now I incorporate the article spinner and submitter into my weekly things to do. My goal is to spin at least 5 articles a week and submit. Imagine continuing to do this and the impact it will have over time. It is just one of my many duties as an affiliate marketer going at this mostly solo.

Affiliate Marketing to the Next Level

This May marks two years I have been affiliate marketing . For those of you who have followed me, you know I am one of the slow boat to riches girl. I use all free methods for the most part and have spent less than $100 until recently. I have been making money and I do support myself with this. Some days are better than others.

I have primarily used article marketing to drive traffic and generate income. It works for me. The fact that I hate trying something new or having to learn to use a new software has greatly hindered my progress. I shiver at the thought.

I posted on a work at home forum asking for advice as to what would help me take this to the next level. I now make enough that I have a little extra to invest back into my business. I got a few suggestions, but nothing really stood out. One gentleman blatantly suggested I just try a few things out and see for myself. I thought well he might be onto something.

I purchase Article Dominance first. Very inexpensive, but to a Newbie at affiliate marketing, well it is priceless. I wish I would have bought this a long time ago. After I purchased it I have since received updates that are packed with new techniques on writing and getting your articles ranked. Well worth the small amount I paid for this.

If I were to review Article Dominance, I would say for the Newbie it is a must. Don't wait almost two years like I did. I have since changed my resource box and my click through rate has increased dramatically. This product paid for itself after editing an article that had been live for ages.


I have also recently purchased an article spinner and submitter. Shiver again. I have been struggling with this piece of software, but slowly am getting the hang of it. I am currently in test mode with it, but have already seen some results. This will be another topic. So far it looks like this will be another product that will aid me in getting to the next level. Stay tuned.

Making Money With Direct Article Marketing

I recently ran a little test on my direct article marketing efforts. Direct article marketing is when I write an article, and direct it straight through to an affiliate link via a domain forwarding. I don't send it to a website, blog or lens.

I can track these sales via the hoplink clickbank code. I forwarded this clickbank link to a domain and use this domain exclusively in my direct article marketing efforts. I did this a month ago and have written 5 articles with this link in them. I am amazed really. In 30 days, I have made over $400 dollars just from those 5 articles. Not really bad, considering I can now write an article in less than 10 minutes.

If you are a newbie visiting my blog this may not make a lot of sense to you, but it is the easiest, least time consuming way to make money online. You will have to purchase a domain name, but you can purchase a dot us for under $4.00 per year. As you can see, I got that back 100 times over.

Now not all articles perform equally. It has taken me a while to get the hang of how to get a higher click through rate on my articles. It's been trail and error all the way. The great thing is those articles are out there forever making money for me. I never have to touch them again. I don't have to add content to a blog or website, I don't have to do anything else. Write the article and I am done.

Of course there is a little more to article writing than this, but it's the fastest, easiest way to start making money. Once you get the hang of it, you can zip out an article in less than 15 minutes and have it working for you.

As I have posted many times on this blog, I am a true bum marketer and rarely spend much money. Now though that I am making a steady income I am able to start investing, baby steps, into learning more. I promise never to suggest a product that I have not used and tested myself.

I recently invested under 20 bucks for a product that helped me. Article Dominance before I started this test and low and behold, learned a lot of new tricks with article marketing. If you are relatively new to affiliate marketing and use article marketing, this guide is a must. For more on article dominance, click here.

How I Make Money Without a Website

I am not going to lie to you, I did spend $3.99 for a domain name. I am not really even sure exactly what a domain name is, all I know is to put a link in an article, I have to have one. Direct affiliate links are not allowed on most article directories. I like Ezine Articles, in my opinion it is one of the best if not the best. Ezine does not allow direct affiliate links, so a domain name is the way around that. There are thousands of others out there though not as strict.

Step one in Bum Marketing is to sign up with ClickBank, which is a marketplace where thousands of digital products are available for you to sell for a profit. Sign up is easy and ClickBank is one of the most trusted and reliable affiliate sites out there with thousands and thousands of products to choose from.

Step two in Bum Marketing I searched ClickBank's marketplace for a product that I know something about such as dating or getting over a broken heart. You can find about anything under the sun there though. Even how to build a chicken coup. I push one little key and get a link that is unique to me. I can post this link anywhere on the web for the most part and anyone who clicks on it and buys, the profit goes straight to me.

Step three in Bum Marketing, I purchase a domain name similar to the product and what I am selling. I use GoDaddy, but there are thousands of places out there like this. I could use a.com domain, but that cost more, about 12 bucks so I opt for the.us and pay $3.99. I then forward the link to the domain name.

Step four in Bum Marketing, I write the article giving useful information that will benefit my reader like hopefully this article is doing for some newbie to affiliate marketing. I post my link, aka domain name at the end of the article and in the bio box. It takes about 48 hours but the article goes live on the web. Some articles do better than others, again I am not going to lie about that. The good news though is the article is there forever. It's residual income.

I rinse and repeat, thus creating multiple income streams for numerous products, again, some do better than others. It's trial and error, and you won't get rich overnight. It takes patience and it's easy to get side tracked once you start because you will realize there are so many ways to make money with affiliate marketing once you start understanding it.

I am writing this article in hopes on inspiring a newbie out there not to give up, I almost did. It does work, it is possible and don't let anyone tell you it isn't. I am living proof. My first sale was about $21 bucks, but I kept going. No I am not rich, YET. After a few sales I did invest more money later to help with my learning curve, less than $50 bucks for a guide written by the pot pie girl. Sounds crazy doesn't it, the pot pie girl. Best $50 bucks I ever spent but you don't have to spend a dime really to make money with affiliate marketing, a Bum could go to the library and do it.

Here is my domain name with my link and the $50 bucks I spent. www.oneweekmarketing.us

My Core Belief About Affiliate Marketing

I use Core belief here because tonight I logged onto a work at home forum, it is my favorite one, I am on a few. I don't log onto them as much as I should. Every time I do I tell myself you should do this a couple times a week. I learn something new each time. Today I was reminded by a very respected member there in his post about Frank Kern's Core Influence series, or program or whatever it is. I watched a few of these videos and I had forgotten about them. I also realized what Frank Kern teaches I pretty much do. For the most part anyway.

The general message is you have to be able to understand their problems, feel them really so you can communicate through to their core personality. You have to get to know them I believe or communicate to them as if you know them and feel their pain or problem. So in essence if you feel their pain, you do understand and you sort of become an authority to you audience.

I don't underestimate the power of really getting to know my audience. I do this through Facebook and some forums related to my niche. I guess you could say I am building an online presence and credibility slowly but surely. If you remember, I am not in a huge hurry hear nor am I the most organized.

Bottom line, I choose a niche that I am absolutely passionate about. I know that I help other people and this and the passion means I enjoy what I do. Since I enjoy what I do, that core thing resonates through my writing. This is my core belief about affiliate marketing, you have to love what you do, be passionate, and the rest will follow.

I also have a few followers in the affiliate marketing niche. There are a few that follow this blog. The main purpose of this blog is Pot Pie Girls program. It's just a side thing from my niche and the reason is it worked for me. It opened the door and painted a picture for me. After my first week long project that I followed step by step, I started learning, a lot.

I really am pretty clueless about a lot of this stuff, but I believe in what I do, I like it and it works. It can be done. I may do things backwards, that is debateable for sure. If you read this blog I think you might see I have learned a lot from day one. At least I hope so. I am still very much a newbie.

Oh and I think in my last post I said I would update about my articles that I had screwed up links in, the domain was auctioned off because I wasn't paying attention. I fixed them. I was curios if those few articles out of the loop would make a difference. Turns out it did, not huge by any means, maybe an average of $80.00 per week, but hey, it's something.

Thanks to my friends on the work at home forums! I would not be here if not for you, really I wouldn't.

If you have made it this far I must add that core belief or feeling the pain or problem that you want to solve should transfer into your key word research. I have come up with many a good key words by putting myself into the shoes of another or remembering a time when I was in the exact same shoes. Use this core belief thing for key words, article titles, domain names etc....

Even Clueless Affiliate Marketers Can Make Money

I should know, I am clueless. I just realized today that I did not own that domain on Godaddy. Silly me. I would never have learned this had I not let my domain expire. Went to renew a little late and seems it was auctioned off and for sale for about $5000.00. I don't understand all this, but I am sure I should. I start thinking selling domains? Can I do that? Probably, but that is an entire other project that I am not ready for.

Well now I remember that I had used that domain in maybe 15 articles on Ezine. Oh boy! Manual labor to fix that. I fixed it, seems those articles had been going to the site to buy my domain for about 10 days. I spent 15 minutes, resubmitted the articles, and tad da, after they were all corrected, I made $250 over the weekend while I was hanging out with my new boyfriend. I think that is kind of cool.

In the process I also discovered that I had made another error in about 7 more articles. I had put in the wrong domain. I was meaning to tell women how to get their boyfriends to marry them but the link I put in directed them to how to get the ex back. Ughhh. I did that today. I will update later when they are released again.

So what I am really talking about above is one of the 3 forms of article marketing. Direct Article Marketing that is. That is where you don't have your own landing page or squidoo lens or blog. You write the article, link it directly to the sales page which is your affiliate link. You say you can't put an affiliate link in some articles such as ezine, true yes.

That is where the domain thing comes in. I purchase domain names or registration or whatever it is. I put keyword research into this too, another subject. So many subjects. I can get a .us for $5.00 for a year. I forward the affiliate links straight to these domains, simple even for me. You can put domain names in your articles in most directories if not almost all.

I do other article marketing other than direct, but these do make money for me. This is so much fun learning too by the way. It's like going back to college but much more rewarding because what you build is really completely yours. It could be a reputation you build, a financial empire or a few bucks, but it's yours.