With so many affiliate networks out there, how are you supposed to choose and what makes you work with one more than others. Here are just a few factors that come into play when I’m deciding what affiliate networks to work with.
A Personable Relationship
Probably my number one factor when working with a network is to have an established relationship with the company. Being able to contact my affiliate manager on AIM through out the day is a big plus. With most of the networks I am working with, I find that my affiliate manager has become a good friend, rather than just another business associate. I feel comfortable holding a regular conversation with many of account manager and am open with them on ideas on how to better increase campaigns and landing pages. I want to work with an affiliate manager that is fun and not always pushing offers down my throat.
Premium Rates & Exclusive Offers
Getting paid the top tier rates and receiving “premium” or “exclusive” offers is awesome. Going back to my “Personable Relationship” point, I would gladly stay with a company I have been working with for a while than jump to a new offer if they have an offer for a few percentage points more. A network that goes out of their way to bring you high rates, premium offers and tries to keep me happy will always get my business.
It’s Not Hard to Point Out Networks that Take the Extra Step!
These were just a couple of my BIG points that I look for when running with an affiliate network. If you are making money online, you are probably make some of your revenue (if not all) through an affiliate network… so what are you looking for when you join an affiliate network, or what do you love about your current revenue generating network?
Everyone is always talking about niche marketing and how you can make good money if you dedicate yourself and target the right niche. So how are you supposed to know what niche market to target, without wasting your time and ad dollars. Here are a few quick questions and ideas to ask yourself when trying to find and target a new niche market.
1.) Make a Short List of Your Passions
It may sound cheesy or cliché, but it’s going to matter. For example, if you really enjoy watching or playing basketball, then creating a site based on basketball or selling basketball sports supplies, you will probably be that much more dedicated toward working on your site and getting it to work. Not only will you have an interest in your new niche area, but if it’s one of your passions, then you should know a lot about the topic and what you are talking about. Write a short list down of 5-10 passions of yours and see what you can come up with.
2.) Is this a Profitable Niche?
Once you have a few ideas and passions written down, take a look at them and see if there is a high demand or big money being spent in these markets. A very simple way to see if there is a lot of money to be made, is to do a simple Google search, then look at the advertisers on the right hand column. If you are seeing a lot of advertisers, there is usually a high demand for the product or service. Another obvious method for calculating is retail pricing. Will it be better for you to target a less competitive niche market (basketball skills training guides) and sell 100 items and make $10 or each, or try and target an over saturated market (sports tickets) and making $50-$100 per sale?
3.) Is there a Demand for this Niche? Nearly just as important as how much people are willing to spend on your niche product or service, is how many people actually want it. Using the Google Traffic Estimator, you can get an idea on how often people are searching for a specific niche area or product. Not only will you be given estimates on daily search term traffic, but you can also use this tool as another resource to find how much others are paying to market in this niche, by looking at the average cpc cost.
Just using some simple “basketball” related terms, you can see there are multiple niche markets. You have less cost and traffic for targeting toward people that want to “increase vertical leap“, so it would be easier for you to take advantage of a larger portion of this niche market. On the opposite side, you could sell basketball tickets and memorabilia, where the average advertising is paying more money, with more traffic. Map out your passions and niche markets and see which opportunities make the most sense.
4.) Target Towards Yourself
Once again, going back to basing your new niche market on your passion… as a customer, learn to target towards yourself. If you are going to create a web site based on “increasing your vertical leap“, you should have prior / existing relation to the topic. If you were doing a search on Google for the same topic, what type of information would you want to find on the sites you are visiting. Since you are now the marketer and the potential buyer, you should be able to relate to your customers better than most. Create your new site and niche market to cater as much to your users as possible.
5.) Stay in It to Win It If you are going to target to a niche market and find you are doing well with it, I would recommend focusing on this niche area for the long haul. Depending on what you are targeting it may be extremely difficult, or quite possible for you to become one of the main and prominent sites in this area. If you are going to target towards people looking to increase their basketball jumping ability vs. selling sports tickets, you will probably have a lot more success with the prior. Not only will you have less competition from heavily funded companies in search marketing, but if you provide a quality site and/or product in a small niche area, you can get a ton of exposure and sales from word of mouth. Before selecting your new niche market, ask yourself… “Can I become one of the top 5% marketers/sites in this area?”
These are just a few questions and tips to consider when starting in a new niche area. Niche marketing can be very fun and profitable, or very frustrating and a waste of time and money. Before jumping into a new niche market, make sure that you take the time and effort to map out your business plan.
Initial numbers are out, and it’s no surprise… the IronMan movie is owning up the box office. As reported by Deadline Hollywood, here are what the first numbers look like and forecast:
‘IRON MAN’ FIRST SUMMER STRONGMAN: Friday’s $30 Million Dollar Marvel; $80+M Weekend, $30M Intl, 2008’s Biggest Yet
So what does this mean for you? Besides being one of the millions of people that are going to see this movie, why turn it around for once and make money off the movie, while enjoying it! If you have an interest in comics and or just like IronMan, the potential here is amazing. Just look at the Spiderman movie series, they have been marketing and commercializing the heck out of that movie since day one. If you got in early with promoting or marketing Spiderman products, you probably made out very well. Don’t let another Marvel Movie pass you buy without making some extra pocket change, not to mention you will be ready when the sequels come out too!
The IronMan movie has now been released and it’s already going to get massive overflow of people searching online for videos, screencaps, the IronMan story, comics and more… you name it! So how can you start promoting IronMan products or get in on the action. Be creative! Target to your audience and give them what they want. If you are good with ppc marketing, you can setup ad campaigns around IronMan, or you can simply setup an IronMan store and sell products, dvds and comics. Amazon.com and several other Affiliate Programs have thousands of IronMan products.
Another idea is to create a Build a Niche Store site. I created an IronMan comics sites just for the movie’s release. With the new movie coming out, you know there is going to be a huge interest in the comic book series. The creation of this IronMan comics site, using BANS, will also play into my case study for you to follow and watch. For now I have thrown together a basic design using the BANS program to give you an idea of what an out of the box site would look like. As of now, I have just registered a domain and created a header image for the site and will now document and write a tutorial of how I made the basic site into a monetized IronMan dedicated comic and memorabilia site. Through the week updates will follow with screen captures and what changes were made the to site. This should not only give you ideas on how to target to niche markets, but also how to monetize a page to the maximum.
What are your ideas for creating a revenue generating campaign around a new movie? If you are targeting towards a movie that is already bound for success, the branding and audience is already there. You just need to focus on providing a quality products and getting users to your site.
Looking for a new niche market, or tired of your current ad campaigns? Spice your marketing up by aiming what people are searching for. Below are just a few resources you can use to target and search out new niche markets and hot products.
What are people buying on eBay? One of the best and most in-depth resources for accurate and up to date “hot search” for products is through eBay’s Express Top Search. Not only does eBay break down their top 10 categories, then provide the 10+ more top searches for each, but they also provide network wide search queries. To top off eBay’s Express Top Searches, at the bottom they also list the Top Bestselling Movie Artists, Music Artists, Authors and Top Products.
Lycos Top 50 One of my longtime favorites is the Lycos Top 50. In addition to breaking down the Top 50 search terms, they also list categories and write ups on what’s hot and why. Ever wonder what was hot last year at this time or even further back? Use the Lycos 50 “Archives” and you can see what was HOT all the way back to 1999! Other great features of the Lycos 50 are their blog and Movers & Shakers lists.
These are just two of many resources you can use to find what people are searching for around the web. Get creative and see if you can incorporate some hot topics into your marketing campaign… you may just find a way to double or triple your existing revenue!
Once again, Market Leverage has gone above and beyond what is expected from an affiliate marketing company. Yesterday I received an unexpected Fedex package, only to find it was a real care package from the Market Leverage affiliate network. I’ve worked with Market Leverage for a few years now, but first met up with Debby Banning at Affiliate Summit West. Since then we have talked frequently over email and I look forward to working with their network a lot more. As for the gift package… it was awesome! Most affiliate networks or companies will send you a gift package which is loaded up with mouse pads, clothes and hats with their company logo on it… which I imagine most people just stuff in the closet. Market Leverage went way beyond the traditional gift care package by sending the following:
The Ultimate Care Package sent by Market Leverage
- A plaque in Memory of Rocky
- USB Pen, Flight Travel Pillow & Kit, Sailing Clock
- Flip Ultra Camera with Accessories (Tripod & Travel Case)
- MarketLevege Hat, Polo Shirt (Nike), Fleece Jacket and Blanket
The dedication that was put together to make this care package was awesome. I’ve received a lot of gifts from companies, but the Rocky plaque and the Flip camera are just amazing.
If you haven’t already, signup to the Market Leverage affiliate network. They just recently designed their site and it is looking great. In addition to a great site design and an amazing staff, they really do have ad campaigns that can make you some big money. I highly recommend using Market Leverage and I’ve been an affiliate with them for years now!
There are a lot of ways you can start making money online. One of the quickest and most profitable methods is through Pay Per Click marketing. Please read my "Super Affiliate's Guide to Pay Per Click Marketing" to see if it's right for you. I recommend using the following ad networks to run offers from.
"With great power comes great responsibility".... my Uncle Ben told me that. Haha, just kidding! I'm Zac Johnson and I've been making money online for over 10 years now. In short, I started making money online while I was in high school... but my passion for marketing and making money goes back way earlier than that. I created ZacJohnson.com to help motivate you to start making money online, and live the life the you always dreamed of. [Read my full bio...]
Everyone is always talking about niche marketing and how you can make good money if you dedicate yourself and target the right niche. So how are you supposed to know what niche market to target, without wasting your time and ad dollars. Here are a few quick questions and ideas to ask yourself when trying to find and target a new niche market.
Nearly just as important as how much people are willing to spend on your niche product or service, is how many people actually want it. Using the 
If you are going to target to a niche market and find you are doing well with it, I would recommend focusing on this niche area for the long haul. Depending on what you are targeting it may be extremely difficult, or quite possible for you to become one of the main and prominent sites in this area. If you are going to target towards people looking to increase their basketball jumping ability vs. selling sports tickets, you will probably have a lot more success with the prior. Not only will you have less competition from heavily funded companies in search marketing, but if you provide a quality site and/or product in a small niche area, you can get a ton of exposure and sales from word of mouth. Before selecting your new niche market, ask yourself… “Can I become one of the top 5% marketers/sites in this area?”
So what does this mean for you? Besides being one of the millions of people that are going to see this movie, why turn it around for once and make money off the movie, while enjoying it! If you have an interest in comics and or just like IronMan, the potential here is amazing. Just look at the 
Another idea is to create a 
One of the best and most in-depth resources for accurate and up to date “hot search” for products is through 
One of my longtime favorites is the 
"With great power comes great responsibility".... my Uncle Ben told me that. Haha, just kidding! I'm Zac Johnson and I've been making money online for over 10 years now. In short, I started making money online while I was in high school... but my passion for marketing and making money goes back way earlier than that. I created ZacJohnson.com to help motivate you to start making money online, and live the life the you always dreamed of.