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As social media experts, readers of Collective Thoughts understand that social media marketing starts with building content that’s going to matter to a particular social group. That’s the bread and butter of organic marketing. Anything that gets in the way of organic marketing, in my view, lowers the ceiling on the potential value of a website.
I think that the biggest mistake that new affiliate marketers make when building an online business is sacrificing usefulness for the immediacy of the almighty dollar. Now I’m not denying that you can build a successful affiliate site this way. But I am suggesting that if from the beginning all of your decisions are made for immediate revenue, you will most likely be setting a low ceiling for your website.
And when it comes down to it, it’s the ceiling that matters. All of the important people in this industry recognize that the big money is in the liquidation event. But to have an impressive liquidation event, you need a very high ceiling (I think it’s fair to say that if you are good, you should be aiming for a minimum seven-figure liquidation event for any new affiliate site you start, and that you should be able to hit this target within 3 years of launching the site).
My personal vision for any new affiliate site is to get as big as possible by building something that is truly useful to the end user. If you study your competitors in any high-margin niche, chances are that most of them have sold out are just pimping their best paying products. This gives you an opportunity.
Recently, my friend and I decided to take on a challenge by entering the ultra-competitive web hosting affiliate space with a site called Website Host Review. What we noticed when studying this niche is that most of the high trafficked sites aren’t really offering objective, revenue-independent guidance to users. Instead, they are funneling users to their most profitable conversion.
That gives us an opportunity. Our plan for entering and conquering this niche is simple: make the most useful web hosting review website available. Do things better than everyone else. Along the way, we’ll produce some entertaining content in the form of linkbaits and infographics. But ultimately, we will stand out among the crowd by ranking webhosts according to various purposes and functions. So someone looking for quality cheap web hosting will be directed to a different host than someone who is looking for great customer service and the best uptime.
I don’t put effort into a website unless I have realistic dreams of a seven figure liquidation event down the road. And because of this, I am unwilling to chase the immediate dollar if it will get in the way of any organic marketing.