[duckingtest]

Affiliate marketing.

I'm making about $10k/month from several sites I don't really update. The trick is to install yourself in some customer acquisition path no one else figured out. When I started my first attempt I didn't even expect to make the domain registration fee back over a year, I did it mostly out of boredom.

Don't look out for affiliate solutions specifically, but keep an eye out for them. Especially when you found some product/service that's hard to find, but very valuable - do they have an affiliate program? Great, that's your chance - especially because, being a customer, you probably know better than them what's their main selling point!

No more details than that, sorry. I'm not trying to sell you anything. In affiliate marketing be super wary of those that try, most likely that's their real income source.

It's mostly a parasitic income but sadly that's how current economy is, honest productive work pays the least relative to what it brings. Mostly thanks to central banks that artificially prevented a giant systemic reset.

[nickthemagicman]

This sounds very cool. What level of detail are your sites? Are they static sites with your affiliate links on the front page? Where do you find your affiliates that are buying leads?

I'm very interested in this and am trying to figure out how to do just a basic affiliate site setup.

[ingenuous2]

These are all the secret sauce that very few affiliates will tell you. As OP said, you have to find your own unique niche.

If you write convertible copy, you can find an existing affiliate chain and try to use that to leverage your advantage. Otherwise, I recommend trying something that's out there, realize you won't be able to compete in your first niche (too much competition), then use that to learn.

Your first ROI might be 25%. Try again, find another niche, until you find the right one. This is classic explore/exploit game theory (every well publicized channel, e.g. the "Bingo Card Creator" of affiliate world) will be Red Queen'd to death.

note - not "great" copy, but copy that converts! (Or maybe you make landers that convert like crazy, or you have enough money to buy a ton of traffic and conversion optimize like crazy)

[nickthemagicman]

Cool. Thanks for the response. Are there any good resources to go to learn this stuff? Or any guidance on the basics?

[ingenuous2]

Neil Patel is a good first place to start to learn. Then you realize all his (vanity) metrics are just measures of your competition. So I went to Warriorforum.com to read what my competition was saying.

After that, I realized it was all about the basics + a niche. you need to know the fundamentals of "buy traffic, convert traffic to business goal, collect money for successful business outcome", but that was table stakes.

Once you know the mechanics of the game, it's up to you to niche/exploit. You're not going to make money doing what everyone else does, so if you're asking for advice instead of trying your own thing, you're already losing.

[parametrek]

Find a product that you like owning but have difficulty buying. Identify and fix those pain points.

[startupdiscuss]

I don't think it is "parasitic" if you are actually getting something people need/would want/wish they knew about into their hands.

[parametrek]

No, parasitic is accurate for most affiliate sites. The majority are content mills who are better at SEO than the retailers. People google "best foobarbaz" when doing christmas shopping and end up at an affiliate content mill. If the affiliate content mill didn't exist, google would have taken them straight to amazon. This is highly evident by the numbers shared in affiliate forums - 90% of annual revenue often comes from November and December. (If you have useful content and are appreciated by the community, this does not happen.)

Then there are blogs who happen to use affiliate links. These guys are content creators who don't want to show ads. If you go this route you have to be careful to avoid becoming (or looking like) a content mill. But generally these are people doing good, tasteful work and only writing about products they've actually bought and put through the wringer.

Finally, in distant third, are the companies affiliating because they want to fix the online shopping experience but don't have the capital to compete directly. Camelcamelcamel is the best example of this. My own site is also a fair example.

There are many shades of gray in the affiliate spectrum. It mostly comes down to how many "best practices" (aka dark patterns, like making all images go to affiliate links instead of larger versions) you choose to use. If someone says their operation is parasitic, they are probably right.

[vintageseltzer]

How long did it take you get to that point?

[duckingtest]

About three years.

[patrickk]

Any advice on how to find the niche?

> Don't look out for affiliate solutions specifically, but keep an eye out for them. Especially when you found some product/service that's hard to find, but very valuable - do they have an affiliate program?

Are you suggesting to look at at a high-priced product that doesn't have an affiliate program, and cut a deal with the business owner to promote their products?

[duckingtest]

In my case I was searching for something niche very hard and nearly couldn't find it. It turned out it exists, but was marketed to a drastically different market and I was using 'alien' terms, so to speak. I think I noticed a small 'affiliates' link in the footer and got the idea to market to people starting from my starting point. Wasn't sure if there was even one, turned out there are thousands.

I don't think you can specifically look for a niche. That's how you end up doing the exact same thing thousands different marketers are doing. Just be able to recognize the opportunity when it randomly presents itself.

[patrickk]

Very clever. Sounds like this strategy is for an ultra specialised product, that you have need of yourself, so that you can write good copy about and which is not sold through the usual channels like Amazon etc.

Thanks for sharing. I'll rack my brains and see if I can apply this myself. I'd love to read a blog post about this strategy, if that's something you'd ever feel like sharing (without giving away your secret sauce of course.)

[vgprice]

Would you be able to share one of your pages? I'm curious how much content you have on a page vs just keyword stuffing and bloat.

[noobieberry]

Nice try.

[gigatexal]

sounds like clickbait-y or spam