Patience is a Super Affiliate Virtue…Part I
November 16th, 2007 by 
Amit
I have to admit, patience is one area of my life I still really need to work on. However, it’s one of THE most important attributes you need to have to become a super affiliate.
How’s that?
Here’s how a lot of impatient newbies sabotage their business:
BEFORE LAUNCH
My team and I will sometimes spend weeks putting together a site. We also do a considerable amount of market research ahead of time to really understand what we’re getting into, and what visitors in a market were promoting are looking for.
We build a site with multiple targeted landing pages, each with unique copy and content. We also add 20-30 unique articles to the site.
I put a LOT of thought into how I structure the campaigns & ad groups. I also spend a good amount of time writing a bunch of different Google ads, and researching existing Google ads for the market to really understand what the emotional triggers are.
The whole process is a team effort that is carefully though out at each and every step. We will NOT launch until everything is just right.
Are YOU doing that before you launch a new affiliate offer?
Or are you just throwing up a ripoff of the merchant site, and putting together a campaign as fast as you can to see what happens?
Are you sending all your traffic to one landing page?
Really, are you rushing to get as many offers up as fast as you can and sacrificing quality as a result?
When I started out I know I did. Half the time I really didn’t understand what I was really promoting, I was just in a mad rush to blast out as many affiliate offers as I could until I saw some success.
It’s funny how two people can promote the same EXACT affiliate offer through ppc and one fails completely, while another is wildly successful.
My point is that it’s often not just finding the right affiliate offer, it about doing the right things to setup the right affiliate offer for success.
That means having a little more patience and really taking time to research and understand what you’re promoting.
That means building a quality site that won’t immediately get slapped with $1-$5 bids.
That means putting some serious thought into how you want to structure your Google campaign.
Back when I was a black belt in karate, we had a saying that went something like : “The battle is won before it has begun.”
And that’s so true in this business, the more planning and preparation you do before you launch a campaign the more likely you are to have a successful profitable campaign.
Next time I’ll talk about the pitfalls that newbies make AFTER LAUNCH…
Posted in Super Affiliate Mindset | 
In regards to new sites, do you take domain age into consideration, or do you think that has any role, as long as the site is well thought out and SEO’d correctly?
“And that’s so true in this business, the more planning and preparation you do before you launch a campaign the more likely you are to have a successful profitable campaign.”
To a point. You don’t want to over analyze and miss an opportunity. You should have steps you take for every campaign as part of your regular business processes. But the key to success is Action.
Amit,
What helps you decide what market to go into? Using the
concept of “sell what people are wanting” not “sell what you
want to sell”. Do you use any special tools to gauge the market(s)?
Amit,
Yes, but this raises the cost of entry. If someone is trying to dip their toes in and invest, say $500…. you could eat up a good chunk of that in creating the site and writing the content (unless you do that yourself). This is the position I’m in… I want to invest a fairly small amount of actual cash, so I’m trying to hit the sweet spot between upfront research, site creation and content creation and getting an offer out there. My plan right now is to spend next week choosing 2-3 offers, doing the prep work and having the offers live the week after.
Will my returns on these offers be optimal? Probably not… but there’s a range between failure and optimal return. My goal is to shoot for good return in the short term on some offers and then optimize.
Wouldn’t we want to know that a specific niche is going to work for us before spending the time to build out as larger site? I like Jeremy Palmer’s “start thin, grow fat” analogy, where you start a site small and grow it out into more pages only after if it shows that it will bring decent returns. What is your take on this strategy?
I built a huge affiliate site, but it turned out to be complete flop (for various reasons). Since that experience, I have chosen to start with smaller sites and see how they do first before growing them out.
Hi Amit,
Wow U R a Black Belt in Karate also…..
Vijay
I’m caught between a rock and a hard place. I have a niche site, that is considered such, yet it has relevance for the general consumer population. Even though I have content that is not found anywhere else, I can’t seem to tap this ultimate responsive chord, which should be there, on a big scale.
Good stuff that you’ve got here. You cover much of my problem. But, come up just a little bit short.
Amit,
How many “employee’s” do you have?
Also, Could you do a post of how one might go about doing effective market research?
Hi, I love the article! Can you take a look at my site and tell me what you think? I belong to linkshare and I rotate the offers by my many affilates with little success. So, I’m really trying to get an idea of what I need to do in order to be successful.
Thank You
Patience is virtue like they say. It just really sucks when your patient and still miss the boat.
Can somebody here please talk about how they do/perform market research?
Since Amit has refused to answer
I’m no expert by a long shot. But sometimes I do the following.
-I subscribed to keycompete.com to get the best keywords.
-Sometimes I goto paypal, view its directory to see what store is selling the most.
-The same is true of Ebay and Overstock. The products on their main page is generally the stuff selling the most, Maybe.
-Or if your doing clickbank. Goto CBtrends.com or CBengine.com to see what is the best clickbank product.
-Get a Subscription to Revenue Magazine.(This is a most)
-Google trends can show you the monthly and yearly trends of an item. You can also see what city and state are search the most for that item.
-Sometimes I just do a simple search and count the Sponsered links to gauge it.
This stuff can really eat up your afternoon and more. So be prepared to do a lot of research.
Like I said I’m not a expert. Hoping to get Amit’s product one day. Also I want to get Affiliate Elite Software.
Anyone esle have any ideas. I could sure use them.
Thanks in advance.
REC:
Very good ideas! Thanks for that.