When deciding to get started in affiliate marketing there are four major things to consider.
Interest- is there enough interest in your niche to sustain itself? Doing good keyword research at this point will help you determine the levels of interest in the market. You should consider using tools like Keyword Competitor, WordTracker or our favorite Market Samurai
Traffic potential – When looking at the Google Keyword Tool You can easily see the search traffic for both Global and local searches. This should help you determine if there is enough search traffic available and uncover new phrases and terms that are related to help you build out additional content ideas and structure for your website. Another tool we highly recommend is WordTracker. Start with a root keyword and let WordTracker find all of the phrases for you that have a high KEI value ( less competition but good potential). Focusing on a long tail search three or more word search term or niche marketing is key to a successful affiliate venture.
Domain availability– When possible you want a domain with your keywords in it. Domains are very cheap as little as 7.95 from GoDaddy
Product with affiliate program Start a search for “your keyword Affiliate program’ If you do not find anything consider Amazon of Ebay as viable alternatives.
The next thing to consider is content creation. Can you give the visitor added value with your content ? Content can be video,images, text, a PDF, or audio. Unique content will Give you an advantage not only with your visitors but also with the search engines. If you are having difficulty writing articles we recommend TextBroker.com as a reliable source for creating articles. Provide a good description of the type of article you want for best results.
When building out your website be sure to mask your affiliate links. This has been shown to improve click rates as well as quality score in Google. For wordpress sites we recommend Ninja Links word press plugin to cloak or hide your affiliate links. It will also track clicks and insert links based on keywords in previous blog posts as well as future ones.
Plan a strategy for adding fresh content to your site on a regular basis. Things like fun facts, tips, trivia and general information about your product.