1) What extension or analytics sources was the screenshot for 'Traffic Sources by Type' from?
2) In effort to find a niche within an industry to target do you think it is best to reverse engineer based on affiliate offers on the networks? Or Identify the largest niches (based on revenue) with the smallest number of competitors? I am assuming there is not magical path and just have to go through trial and error here.
Do you have any suggestions for those who want to drive paid traffic to a landing page with an affiliate offer? In terms of traffic sources would you still recommend FB even with all the account issues that many are experiencing? Or would you recommend moving to YouTube, TikTok, native, or other traffic sources?
Also interested in your take on promoting more seedy offers such as crypto, trading (crypto and stocks), weight loss, dating, and gambling. What would be the one or two things that we have to do to make them work white hat. I think it’s a challenge to stay compliant with the tos of the traffic source.
Also, do you have any credible affiliate networks you can share for those offers?
The paid/affiliate angle is still alive in well. The key is to have an affiliate offer with high enough commission that will cover your paid traffic. You're not going to be able to drive paid traffic to an Amazon affiliate page. If you can figure out that tight of an arbitrage, I will pay you whatever you want to teach me how.
I'm not sure what issues you're referencing unless you're talking about the grey area accounts getting banned. If that's the case, it's only a matter of time before every social platform cracks down as hard.
Never dipped my toe into the seedy offers except for weight loss. In weight loss, I've only touched the ecommerce side. From analyzing the sites though, imo, it's going to be impossible to compete in those affiliate markets without grey/black hat link building.
So advice on doing it white hat? Time. A lot of time. And at that point is it worth it? If you're going to play with the pigs, you're going to have to play in the mud.
Hey new to the jungle and wanting to get online income stream up. Question : Someone on Twitter who seems legit has a course. I’m assuming he shows us his process and how he does it. As a beginner would you trust it? Why would he sell his edge through a course if his model is successful?
I generally don't trust online courses. I'm not saying all are bad but most of them are bad. For that matter, most "gurus" are just trash with 1 year worth of experience. They learn enough to be viewed of as an expert then sell that 1 year of experience in a course. I wouldn't hire most of the gurus and agency owners I meet as a sr analyst.
Most are catered to people that don't want to spend a few hours Googling articles. Pretty much the NGMI types.
If someone is too lazy (or inexperienced) to do a few hours of Googling, the course may actually be very valuable. Generally speaking though, in my *opinion*, most of the people taking the course aren't going to put in the action necessary to really compete anyways.
Again, not all, but most. Idk who you're talking about and they may actually know their stuff.
Lastly, there are instances where there's a scale problem. (likely the issue if he actually knows his stuff) Not directly related, but I can teach anybody to start an HVAC or plumbing business and make $100k a year. I can't scale much further than that because I personally don't know how to hire and retain that talent to build a behemoth of a blue collar team. However, I can easily build the course and scale that past $100k.
In short, he's a charlatan OR he can more easily scale his course than his model.
Looking to start affiliate for the first time. I have a conventional business that is successful, looking to build out a second affiliate biz that can end up being a springboard for ecom.
Looking at either skincare, or high end yachting.
Do you have any examples of sites to analyse? For a total beginner it can be hard to even identify what is a good affiliate site.
A good way to find affiliate sites in any niche is to Google "best + niche" or some variation. So many "best" or "top" queries, most affiliate sites have articles around the search variation. Download SEO Quake to your Chrome browser to see the traffic and links in the SERPs as you search for different variations.
I know nothing about yachting but I will say that the keyword difficulty doesn't seem that high. So there might be something there for you.
Skincare affiliate is difficult because all of the high authority sites have written articles that are going to be near impossible to outrank in the SERPs. If you're going to go this route, you'll have to find a social angle to market it. Skincare is great for ecommerce if you're good with ads but difficult for an affiliate.
In terms of a good affiliate site to analyze, healthline.com is a behemoth and an example of a site that's doing almost everything right. They get about half of a billion visitors a month in the medical niche.
If you have a conventional business, if possible, I'd try to use that (domain or business) as a jumping off point for starting the next venture. It'll catapult your results by months or years.
Interesting, thanks very much for the reply. If I may, would you suggest e-commerce is a better bet than affiliate if you need to learn either from scratch? I had assumed affiliate was an ‘easy’ second income relative to creating and launching a product (something I’ve done before in the tech space).
e-commerce is better (money wise) in the long run BUT it takes a lot more money in the beginning. If you don't know what you're doing, you're going to be blowing much more money during the learning phase.
That's why I always advise affiliate first. You blow a tiny bit of money while you're learning. Then once you know what you're doing, switch to e-commerce.
Affiliate isn't "easy" but it's an easier ramp since you're not worried about blowing through nearly as much cash in advertising.
I have a company in the cannabinoid-health space (CBD/hemp stuff). We make our own products with our partners, and just coming out of R&D to sell direct to customer. We are small, and I am looking for the best way to go about driving customer acquisition online. We are making content now, but am interested in online ads (google shopping)? What are your thoughts on best first approaches?
Without knowing your team's skillset, it's hard to say what's best. What's best for you and your team is going to be what you can execute on best. You can put out a ton of content, but if nobody knows how to rank that content in the SERPs, it'll be next to useless. OR if you can't utilize that content to drive engagement across social, it'll be next to useless.
CPCs across all networks have been going up for years. It's getting harder and harder to be ROI positive on the first sale. So what does that lead you to do?
Make sure you get your funnel as smooth as possible (increase conversion), incentivize subscribe & save (increasing LTV), retargeting emails with discount for those you can't convert immediately, etc.
Assuming you have a relatively smaller budget and without anymore knowledge of your business and team, I'd advise the below.
1. Set up a merchant account at shareasale.com and start reaching out to content publishers relentlessly to partner. (on the platform and off) Make sure you have one of the juiciest commission structures in your field. (influencers too)
2. Utilize your team's network for marketing and back-links.
3. Counter intuitive, but try to get in small brick and mortar chains. It's easier than you think and will help with brand awareness. Plus some sales along the way.
4. Where ever your team's strengths lie, that's where you should focus. You'll get much better results doubling down on a marketing channel/tactic that you know than 3 that you don't.
Thanks for your significant reply, we are working with a marketing/sales team who will help us get into stores, doctors offices etc. They are not big in eCommerce, but are setting us up with standard profiles on FB/IG, narrative for website, content structure, emails and discounts for customers.
We are a bunch of scientists so are playing catch up in the marketing/sales game.
I started reading everything I can about Google ads/shopping, but it sounds like we would be better served by focusing on sharesale instead. limited funds for sure at this time.
I used to be an engineer/scientist before I transferred into ecommerce. You'll learn quick. Just make sure you fact check what they do and learn as much as possible yourself. *A lot* of charlatans in this field. I'd have at least one of the founders really know what they're doing in the digital space. That or hire someone that you can trust or has skin in the game. I have one partner that I run their store and *only* get paid a % of sales.
The benefit of performance marketing over traditional digital ads is that you only have to pay when you make the sale. As long as you structure the compensation for the affiliate in a way that you come out slightly ahead in profitability, the sky is the limit. Your next challenge will be recruiting affiliates.
Thanks for your help, this makes a lot of sense, and I am doing commission only with this on ground sales team. This is great for online, did not realize I could do that for e-commerce as well!!
Glad to be of help! The name of the game in affiliate is commission only. Not to sound like a broken record, but the hard part will be recruiting the numerous affiliates that you'll have to have. Best of luck! I should be doing a weekly Q&A so reach out for any snags.
Unfortunately, I haven't read guides in years. The best way I can think of is building a site and spying on your competitors.
Pick a site and audit everything about it. Traffic patterns, site structure, URL structure, backlink profile, technology stack, affiliate links, email capture/email marketing flow, etc.
Know the site inside and out. Then do it with another site and another. You'll soon start to see that affiliate marketing is much broader than you currently realize. Even sites like banks and health insurance companies are affiliate site.
The biggest difference that a newbie is going to experience is the ease of use and customization.
Shopify - Hosted (ease of use winner)
Magento - Self hosted (customization winner)
Think of it in terms of WordPress vs Squarespace. Wordpress forces you to pick your hosting, security plugins, and a lot more. Squarespace has all of that pre-built for you.
The upside of Shopify is that you can get it stood up in a few hours. Downside being that your speed and performance may not be in your hands. Without a doubt though, any small company or solo-entrepreneur should pick Shopify.
Shopify allows you to get set up quicker, test quicker, and for a lot less money.
Great content Opossum!
1) What extension or analytics sources was the screenshot for 'Traffic Sources by Type' from?
2) In effort to find a niche within an industry to target do you think it is best to reverse engineer based on affiliate offers on the networks? Or Identify the largest niches (based on revenue) with the smallest number of competitors? I am assuming there is not magical path and just have to go through trial and error here.
TIA
Do you have any suggestions for those who want to drive paid traffic to a landing page with an affiliate offer? In terms of traffic sources would you still recommend FB even with all the account issues that many are experiencing? Or would you recommend moving to YouTube, TikTok, native, or other traffic sources?
Also interested in your take on promoting more seedy offers such as crypto, trading (crypto and stocks), weight loss, dating, and gambling. What would be the one or two things that we have to do to make them work white hat. I think it’s a challenge to stay compliant with the tos of the traffic source.
Also, do you have any credible affiliate networks you can share for those offers?
Thanks!
The paid/affiliate angle is still alive in well. The key is to have an affiliate offer with high enough commission that will cover your paid traffic. You're not going to be able to drive paid traffic to an Amazon affiliate page. If you can figure out that tight of an arbitrage, I will pay you whatever you want to teach me how.
I'm not sure what issues you're referencing unless you're talking about the grey area accounts getting banned. If that's the case, it's only a matter of time before every social platform cracks down as hard.
Never dipped my toe into the seedy offers except for weight loss. In weight loss, I've only touched the ecommerce side. From analyzing the sites though, imo, it's going to be impossible to compete in those affiliate markets without grey/black hat link building.
So advice on doing it white hat? Time. A lot of time. And at that point is it worth it? If you're going to play with the pigs, you're going to have to play in the mud.
On twitter you mentioned
"If you own a substack
Don’t forget to verify it in Google Search Console so you can track your SEO efforts."
Is there a how to on doing this with substack?
Thanks
Same way for a website, but the difference being that Substack injects the code into the header for you by a box in the "settings".
Farmer was quick with the directions.
https://twitter.com/bowtiedfarmer/status/1424436905916121088?s=20
Hey new to the jungle and wanting to get online income stream up. Question : Someone on Twitter who seems legit has a course. I’m assuming he shows us his process and how he does it. As a beginner would you trust it? Why would he sell his edge through a course if his model is successful?
I generally don't trust online courses. I'm not saying all are bad but most of them are bad. For that matter, most "gurus" are just trash with 1 year worth of experience. They learn enough to be viewed of as an expert then sell that 1 year of experience in a course. I wouldn't hire most of the gurus and agency owners I meet as a sr analyst.
Most are catered to people that don't want to spend a few hours Googling articles. Pretty much the NGMI types.
If someone is too lazy (or inexperienced) to do a few hours of Googling, the course may actually be very valuable. Generally speaking though, in my *opinion*, most of the people taking the course aren't going to put in the action necessary to really compete anyways.
Again, not all, but most. Idk who you're talking about and they may actually know their stuff.
Lastly, there are instances where there's a scale problem. (likely the issue if he actually knows his stuff) Not directly related, but I can teach anybody to start an HVAC or plumbing business and make $100k a year. I can't scale much further than that because I personally don't know how to hire and retain that talent to build a behemoth of a blue collar team. However, I can easily build the course and scale that past $100k.
In short, he's a charlatan OR he can more easily scale his course than his model.
I gotcha you confirmed some of my suspicions. Thanks
How do you affiliate for a SaaS? How different is it from affiliating for a physical product ?
Thanks, I’ll run the numbers.
Looking to start affiliate for the first time. I have a conventional business that is successful, looking to build out a second affiliate biz that can end up being a springboard for ecom.
Looking at either skincare, or high end yachting.
Do you have any examples of sites to analyse? For a total beginner it can be hard to even identify what is a good affiliate site.
A good way to find affiliate sites in any niche is to Google "best + niche" or some variation. So many "best" or "top" queries, most affiliate sites have articles around the search variation. Download SEO Quake to your Chrome browser to see the traffic and links in the SERPs as you search for different variations.
I know nothing about yachting but I will say that the keyword difficulty doesn't seem that high. So there might be something there for you.
Skincare affiliate is difficult because all of the high authority sites have written articles that are going to be near impossible to outrank in the SERPs. If you're going to go this route, you'll have to find a social angle to market it. Skincare is great for ecommerce if you're good with ads but difficult for an affiliate.
In terms of a good affiliate site to analyze, healthline.com is a behemoth and an example of a site that's doing almost everything right. They get about half of a billion visitors a month in the medical niche.
If you have a conventional business, if possible, I'd try to use that (domain or business) as a jumping off point for starting the next venture. It'll catapult your results by months or years.
Interesting, thanks very much for the reply. If I may, would you suggest e-commerce is a better bet than affiliate if you need to learn either from scratch? I had assumed affiliate was an ‘easy’ second income relative to creating and launching a product (something I’ve done before in the tech space).
e-commerce is better (money wise) in the long run BUT it takes a lot more money in the beginning. If you don't know what you're doing, you're going to be blowing much more money during the learning phase.
That's why I always advise affiliate first. You blow a tiny bit of money while you're learning. Then once you know what you're doing, switch to e-commerce.
Affiliate isn't "easy" but it's an easier ramp since you're not worried about blowing through nearly as much cash in advertising.
I have a company in the cannabinoid-health space (CBD/hemp stuff). We make our own products with our partners, and just coming out of R&D to sell direct to customer. We are small, and I am looking for the best way to go about driving customer acquisition online. We are making content now, but am interested in online ads (google shopping)? What are your thoughts on best first approaches?
Without knowing your team's skillset, it's hard to say what's best. What's best for you and your team is going to be what you can execute on best. You can put out a ton of content, but if nobody knows how to rank that content in the SERPs, it'll be next to useless. OR if you can't utilize that content to drive engagement across social, it'll be next to useless.
CPCs across all networks have been going up for years. It's getting harder and harder to be ROI positive on the first sale. So what does that lead you to do?
Make sure you get your funnel as smooth as possible (increase conversion), incentivize subscribe & save (increasing LTV), retargeting emails with discount for those you can't convert immediately, etc.
Assuming you have a relatively smaller budget and without anymore knowledge of your business and team, I'd advise the below.
1. Set up a merchant account at shareasale.com and start reaching out to content publishers relentlessly to partner. (on the platform and off) Make sure you have one of the juiciest commission structures in your field. (influencers too)
2. Utilize your team's network for marketing and back-links.
3. Counter intuitive, but try to get in small brick and mortar chains. It's easier than you think and will help with brand awareness. Plus some sales along the way.
4. Where ever your team's strengths lie, that's where you should focus. You'll get much better results doubling down on a marketing channel/tactic that you know than 3 that you don't.
Thanks for your significant reply, we are working with a marketing/sales team who will help us get into stores, doctors offices etc. They are not big in eCommerce, but are setting us up with standard profiles on FB/IG, narrative for website, content structure, emails and discounts for customers.
We are a bunch of scientists so are playing catch up in the marketing/sales game.
I started reading everything I can about Google ads/shopping, but it sounds like we would be better served by focusing on sharesale instead. limited funds for sure at this time.
I used to be an engineer/scientist before I transferred into ecommerce. You'll learn quick. Just make sure you fact check what they do and learn as much as possible yourself. *A lot* of charlatans in this field. I'd have at least one of the founders really know what they're doing in the digital space. That or hire someone that you can trust or has skin in the game. I have one partner that I run their store and *only* get paid a % of sales.
The benefit of performance marketing over traditional digital ads is that you only have to pay when you make the sale. As long as you structure the compensation for the affiliate in a way that you come out slightly ahead in profitability, the sky is the limit. Your next challenge will be recruiting affiliates.
Thanks for your help, this makes a lot of sense, and I am doing commission only with this on ground sales team. This is great for online, did not realize I could do that for e-commerce as well!!
Glad to be of help! The name of the game in affiliate is commission only. Not to sound like a broken record, but the hard part will be recruiting the numerous affiliates that you'll have to have. Best of luck! I should be doing a weekly Q&A so reach out for any snags.
Question from some one that replied to the email instead of commenting.
"Best resources and guides for getting started in affiliate marketing besides your platform?"
Unfortunately, I haven't read guides in years. The best way I can think of is building a site and spying on your competitors.
Pick a site and audit everything about it. Traffic patterns, site structure, URL structure, backlink profile, technology stack, affiliate links, email capture/email marketing flow, etc.
Know the site inside and out. Then do it with another site and another. You'll soon start to see that affiliate marketing is much broader than you currently realize. Even sites like banks and health insurance companies are affiliate site.
My next affiliate post will be diving in and auditing a site or two.
From a merchant POV, what is the difference b/w Shopify and Magento?
The biggest difference that a newbie is going to experience is the ease of use and customization.
Shopify - Hosted (ease of use winner)
Magento - Self hosted (customization winner)
Think of it in terms of WordPress vs Squarespace. Wordpress forces you to pick your hosting, security plugins, and a lot more. Squarespace has all of that pre-built for you.
The upside of Shopify is that you can get it stood up in a few hours. Downside being that your speed and performance may not be in your hands. Without a doubt though, any small company or solo-entrepreneur should pick Shopify.
Shopify allows you to get set up quicker, test quicker, and for a lot less money.