New Affiliate, New Site, $10k budget, Help!

[RedundoJourno]

Hi everyone,

First an introduction. I live in the UK, was recently made redundant and am struggling to find a new job. I got a decent pay-off and I'm ok for a while, so my brother-in-law (who makes a living from his websites) suggested I give affiliating a try.

I'm a journalist by trade, so writing for the site should come fairly naturally to me I hope! I also have an interest in poker and casinos - I've played both online for a good while. So I think I would enjoy writing about these things and building a website around them. I've registered a domain for my website. It doesn't have casino or poker in the actual domain name though - is that a major problem? I want to focus on writing news, reviews and related articles and the domain name ties in with that aspect - just without the relevant "keywords" in it. Does this make it doomed from the start?

I don't have much in the way of design skills and less than that in web development skills/knowledge. My brother in law has given me a load of advice - one of which was to sign up here, so here I am. He's also invested $10k in the website to help me get started. But we're also both keen for me not to be entirely reliant on him from the start, for both our sakes!

So my question here is "Where do I go from here, how do I best use that investment, and how do I best use my time?"

Thanks in advance for any and all help. It's been a long time since I was an active member of forum, but I look forward to doing so here!

Cheers!

Chris

[TheGooner]

Seriously? Where do I go from here ?

You start by getting a REAL job outside of affiliating in order to survive.

Being an online affiliate is not easy bucks - especially early on as you will be battling with a lot of other websites in order to get a steady stream of visitors to your particular niche.

Even with 10K to spend, it will be several months before you have the contneent and the links required to get this stream of traffic, and probably several months more before you work out the best way to monetise your particular niche.

If you're starting from scratch then it will take time, perhaps 12,24,36 months down the track, before you might have generated enough of a player base to replace a salary.

This forum is full of good advice to help you - but it's also full of part-time affiliates who are nowhere near replacing a fulltime income despite years of prior effort and hard work in this area.

Online affiliating can pay well - but not overnight - at least not unless you are going to invest many times your 10K budget.

[RedundoJourno]

Hi Gooner,

Perhaps I wasn't clear. I'm still planning on working, and am actively looking for a new job. I have a family to support so I've no intention of relying on something I'm a complete novice to for an income!

My point was, I'm doing this while I search for a new job. I will then look to continue with it when I'm working again - but obviously will spend less time on it at that point. If it makes me a bit of extra money on the side at some point, great! If it makes enough to replace my usual income, even better. But I'm really not looking that far ahead at the moment, I just want to get started on something while I continue my search for gainful employment!!

My "where do I go from here" was more directed at how should I get started with my website!

Appreciate the advice you've given, and it's solid. But, rest assured, I'm under no illusion about the work required to make any kind of impact in the industry - my brother-in-law has made all of this very clear to me!

Chris

[thepokerkeep]

Hi and welcome to GPWA.

Your brother-in-law gave good advice. This is the best place to begin, you can avoid making many mistakes by asking for advice here before spending your 10K.

The domain name is definitely a negative but it can be overcome with a solid branding strategy. Make sure you optimize your site for poker, casino related keywords, title tags, etc.

The first thing I would suggest is hiring a graphic designer to create a professional logo/header for your site. Then, buy a custom Wordpress template. ( Links at the end of this post)

What I would not do is hire an SEO expert. Save your money.

If your strength is writing, then focus your time on that! Either hire someone to set up and code your site or spend some time (which at this time is better spent writing) learning to do it yourself.

Once you have your site published and populated with 25 - 30 pages of content, begin working on link building. Don't buy links unless they are being placed on aged, high ranking sites. Work with reputable webmasters to trade links between relevant sites.... you'll find many opportunities here once you get some quality content on your site. Avoid exchanging links with spammers and link farms, it is an epic waste of time!

Once your site is "live" - post here for a site review. We'll give you an honest appraisal of your progress and make suggestions that will help you grow your business. Be patient. It takes time to build and populate a quality website and it takes more time for the search engines to give your site any real link juice. Traffic will not pour in over night but if you continue adding quality pages you will see a day by day improvement.

NOTE - Total cost for above suggestions should not be more than $1500 - $2000.

TIPS
Optimize each page for only one or two keywords.
Use header tags correctly - h1 h2 etc.
Use calls to action
Write for humans - not search engines
Choose your affiliate programs carefully - you work too hard to not get paid for your traffic!
When in doubt, ask for advice - we've all been there and done that!

Good luck with your site,

Links:
Graphic design
Eyenod.com


Custom Wordpress Themes
PokerWebSiteSolutions.com


Please note - I am not affiliated in any way with these sites and have not used them myself. They each have 100% satisfaction ratings on PAL so chances are they will give you good service and fair pricing.

[RedundoJourno]

Hi Terry,

Thanks a lot for all that!

I know next to nothing about SEO, but have been told that good content is the key. That will certainly be my focus anyway!

Hiring a designer sounds like a plan. It was suggested to me that using a platform like Wordpress is a good option, but another one maybe having a custom CMS built for the site. My plan is to keep things as simple as possible with regards design and coding, so I'm not sure which of these options might be best.

Link-building is another thing I've been told is very important, but I guess I can focus on that once I've got something to link to!! I'll certainly be asking for some further advice on that process.

Likewise which affiliate programs to use. I know what my favourite casinos and poker rooms are as a player - but I guess that doesn't automatically equate to a good program to work with as an advertiser.

Thanks again for the pointers, definitely very useful.

Chris

[thepokerkeep]

My pleasure Chris.

One more word of advice....
Pay for 3 or more years up front on your domain registration. The SE's actually reward sites that plan on being around for years. A small investment but well worth it!

I use static html templates for all my sites but Wordpress seems to be the platform of choice these days. It all comes down to what you're comfortable with.

Link building is important but most people spend way too much time on it. And most people do it wrong. Writing good content will earn you back-links that are worth a lot more than trading links with ****** sites.

Besides trading or buying links there are other ways to get one-way links from quality sites. Since you're a writer by trade, a good option is to provide content for links.

If you want more help or advice, send me a pm. I'm happy to help in any way I can.

[RedundoJourno]

Thanks again Terry. I just typed out a fairly lengthy PM to you, and then couldn't send it as I don't have enough posts!!

I'll send one once I've hit enough posts.

[thepokerkeep]

5 posts should do it for you...
You can also email me at admin (@) thepokerkeep.com

[alexpratt]

Learn and listen - There is a hell of a lot of information out there in this forum in free mags like GPWA mag and ours, on pod casts, videos, at events etc. If you are able to distil the usful stuff from the diversions you will have more knowledge than a vast majority of people that have been around a while, but make sure you use that knowledge.

There is still opportunites but they aren't as obvious as they used to be - the key is don't give up and seek out the opportunities whether this is geographical, a game, long tail key words or offline

[Steve9]

Hi Chris,

Welcome to the world of Internet Business!

There is definitely a lot to learn but if you enjoy it then it can be a lot of fun to work for yourself and build you own online business.

Your writing skills are a big asset, but you will need to understand SEO to take full advantage of them. If you're writing about "fizz-do-thing-a-bobs" and no one cares about that then you won't get any visitors to your site. You need to understand how to choose article titles and use keywords in your text to get ranked in Google and get traffic. Basic SEO skills will help a lot. Even reading a book like SEO for Dummies give you the basics.

Outsource what you don't like to do or aren't good at. You have capital so you can use that get a graphic template for your Wordpress Blog. You can't outsource the SEO part without a basic understanding so don't try that.

Give your content out for free. Post it in article directories, talk to website owners and give them free content in exchange for links. Get out there and promote your brand, which is you.

Content is great but you have to have a voice and a reason for people to follow you instead of all the other bloggers out there. What makes you unique? A good book to read is "Crush It!"

In summary - learn SEO, write good content, and connect with other bloggers/website owners.

Good Luck!
Steve

[clearlyportals]

Hi Chris,

Welcome! You brother in law was right. This a great place to hang out, and lots of info about.

Even without keywords in the domain, I don't think you are doomed as long as it has good branding a mentioned previously.

Secondly, I think you are going about it the right way, still looking for another job because as mentioned its a long battle, but it's also great to have something to put your energies into should you remain out of work or come back out of work in a couple of years.

I would probably iterate what others have said, but the main things I would say are:

1) Study the scene, see what other web masters are doing, and really get an idea of what you want from your site. Whatever you decide to do, make sure your site had lots of call to actions 'Play Now' type thing.

2) A lot of people have said they work closely with only a handful of affiliate programs, perhaps something worth considering, but have a look under the affiliate programs section of this site to see who represents who.

3) Content is king, identify which market you want to hit (US, Europe, Worldwide), but really do some reading on SEO, although it has been suggested not to spend any money on SEO, a good understanding of it will go a long way. This will help you when you come to setting up your sites structure, and also how you write content, the terms you use etc.

4) I too would spend my money on a good design for the website. There are various content management systems out there, but I think Wordpress is the most popular and this could help when it comes to choosing designers/programmers to work on your site. I would say go for a CMS (content management system) such as Wordpress as it will make updating the site alot easier and comes with takes a lot of the work away. Perhaps look for a good designer with Wordpress experience. Failing that, there a lots of service which can take a psd (photoshop file) and turn it into a wordpress theme for you.

5) Establish a good relationship with affiliate managers, some will offer great feedback and advice - alot of them know whats work well for their brands and can give help of tuning your site for conversion.

6) Promote your site! This will be the hardest, but just link build as much as you can, if you update your site with new bonus offers, that should work well. Try and give Google a reason to come back to your site. The more content the better generally, although you can't beat quality.

Good luck!

[seosly]

Use your seed money to hire a great designer. If you're going to build a nice site, you might as well start with a nice design. Then, write until your fingers are numb. Do keyword research and try to write 2-3 articles/day for your site.