An Affiliate Marketing Plan for Beginners

First, this is not intended to be an end to end course in web marketing, nor is it meant for anyone who has been at this a while. What it is is some free advice on how to do it right WITHOUT some lame e-book pitch at the end.

Simple success online always comes down to a very basic formula, something to the effect of:

Offer * (Traffic * Conversion) = Revenue

You put your offer in front of people and close the sale. The more people you present your offer to, and the better you are at closing the deal, the more money you make. It’s simple, but important to keep in mind.

Actually, screw it. I’m going to show you how to do it by doing it right along with you. I’m going to take this idea and turn it into a series of posts following a new project designed to make me some cash. We’ll go from concept, to implementation to promotion and hopefully cashing checks. The whole thing may blow up in my face, but these blog entries may keep me on track and we all may learn a thing or two in the process. Heck I may even make a few bucks…

Step 1, have a concept that doesn’t suck.

You can’t just build willy nilly and you can’t just copy what you’ve heard works. Create something.

My concept is simple. I’m going to build a site that caters to beer drinking fat men, who paint their bellies blue and slave over hot barbecue grills in parking lots outside stadiums all over the country. I’m building a site centered around tailgate parties. I just registered ParkingLotWarrior.com

Why does my concept not suck?

I’m not passionate about tailgate parties. In fact, the only party, in a parking lot, outside a stadium that I’ve ever been to was after a Dead concert. Something about attractive women, dancing and alcohol…

Contrary to popular opinion, it doesn’t take passion about a topic to build a profitable website. It takes passion for building your business, but a site concept just needs money making potential, which mine has.

Consider for a second the people who throw tailgate parties. Often they are, among their circle of friends, the ones with the biggest gut, the biggest truck, the biggest RV, the biggest BBQ grill, the biggest big screen television, the wife with the biggest hair, etc. They have money they aren’t afraid to spend, and friends they likely encourage to spend money too.

They buy crap to support their teams - lots of crap and I think I can build a site for them and sell stuff to them and to their friends. Imagine a place where Parking Lot Warriors can find grilling info, RV tips, drink recipes, water balloon launcher plans, etc - imagine the ultimate tailgater website, or at least something passable…

I’m sure there are bigger money concepts, but this one is simple. You can build a whole new Myspacey thing for folks in need of credit repair, with built in anime file sharing and picture rating if you really want to, but personally, that sounds a lot like watching paint dry through a Crazy Straw. It’s complex and boring.

Keep it simple. Keep it fun.

You’d also face stiff competition. Credit repair is not for the feint of heart, and not for the beginning affiliate marketer. Take on a concept with at least a few pieces of low hanging fruit in the search space, a few good long tail keywords that haven’t been bid to death, etc. Take on a concept you can succeed at.

Anyway, I like my concept. Now it’s your turn.

Next time we’ll tackle some initial planning. Hope you have a good concept by then.