Starting an affiliate business. Tips and tricks are welcomed!

[siege]

Hello everyone! I've been contemplating the idea of starting an affiliate business more or less for approx. 2 1/2 years (Soon I'm 21 yrs). Affiliate business caught my interest in the late 2021. I've been unemployed for a year now and am considering starting university or college in the autumn so I have all the time in the world right now. I can't help but wonder how much progress I could have made in the last few years. Nevertheless, they say it's never too late to begin, and at least I can say then that I have given it a try.

I have a few potential "niches" that I believe might be promising. it's the execution of the plan where I am bit lost.

Website building: I have basically zero experience on website developing. I'm leaning towards WordPress as my choice unless a better idea comes my way. I might choose ready-made theme initially. On the other hand, I like the the idea of building or modifying a unique theme. This approach would enable me to acquire valuable skills that could be beneficial in possible future projects. And the site would look more unique. Not like hundreds and thousands of others. While I am financially stable, I don't have the extra money to invest in expensive website developers. What are your thoughts on this? Should I go with a ready-made theme or attempt to modify my own?

I'm planning to take along social media platforms as they are more of my stronger side and I think I could benefit of my younger vision and keep up with current trends. My target audience would probably be people around my age and people who have already some experience and passion for gambling.

Sorry for possible bad grammar. It is what it is. Also this is my first forum post ever so there might have room for some improvement too.

I may have forgotten something but these are some of ideas that came in my mind when I wrote this. Feel free to give tips and throw out your thoughts!.

-Kasper

[universal4]

Welcome to the GPWA.

Making the decision and getting started is the first major step. And if you decide to go with wordpress, the design stuff can be partially determined later, or at least changed or redesigned to a degree.

Currently there are few active discussions concerning web design that may help offer advice and direction on that front.

https://www.gpwa.org/forum/what-appr...gn-266239.html
In fact a number of other discussions in the design forum might help provide a lot of suggestions on themes etc. so have a thorough read of some of them.
https://www.gpwa.org/forum/word-pres...eb-design.html

Beyond that, there is more than 20 years of tips and tricks and what others have experienced over the years here at the GPWA, so have a read, and fire away with more questions as needed.

Rick
Universal4

[CasinosBroker]

Welcome to the GPWA!

GPWA is a great place to learn about an affiliate business. SEO, social media and more tips can be found.

What I would do if I'd start an affiliate business is:

• Decide on a niche & GEO
• Look at top 10 sites in my niche
• Taking my time to review them, adding them into a Google Sheet/Excel file with Pro's & Con's
• Perform keyword research ( = Very important step)
  
• Create a solid marketing strategy (including SEO & social media)
• Head out to buy 5 domains and hosting. (I'd go with branded or EMD domain)
  
• Build the websites using WordPress (or if you have the neccessary skills, build custom)
  
• Start marketing the affiliate business

Why 5 domains? or shall I say setting up 5 sites? to test "the waters" and not to put all my eggs in one basket.

It's always best to keep learning, from your mistakes, from your friend's mistakes and so on. The process never ends.

@SIEGE - hope this helps!

[drifter8]

Welcome to the GPWA forum.

Here are a lot of threads and you can earn a lot from any of the member here with long experience in this field.

My advises; patience, knowledge, learn Wordpress and buy even more domains. It is necessary to be .com one or for the country you gonna be using it for.

Results will not be coming in an instant, but do not give up.

[nwalker]

A lot of good advice here.

My one piece of advice is just start, don't wait to get all your ducks lined up. Pick your topic and Geo and get going.

Wordpress is a great start, as is a pre built theme.

If your instincts are for social then you don't even need a website, research what others do that you like and do something similar, but give it your own style.

Good luck.

[NoDepositCasinos]

The two best pieces of advice I can offer are patience, as this is a long game, and humility, because sometimes what works isn't necessarily what we like.

Now, on the practical side, I would advise you to take those potential niches you mentioned and thoroughly study them before committing to one. Each niche and GEO comes with its pros, cons, and regulations, and it's crucial to have a good understanding beforehand.

Regarding building the website, I had zero experience when I started, and it used to frustrate me a lot, which cost me a considerable amount of time. Try not to get caught up fantasizing about creating the unique and perfect site; start with what you have, and you'll acquire the skills along the way (hopefully while making some money).

[chaumi]

Niches/Target subjects - Just be sure to take time and think these through. Is there real money-making potential? At what level? Enough to live off as a main source of income, or 'just' enough to have made any effort you've put in worthwhile? Is there longevity, what could happen to disrupt it?

Extra considerations (before you start) - be aware that to have any real chances of making progress, it takes a lot of time and effort. You'll probably find (and partly depending on the scope of the target subject) that you could work on it 22 hours a day, 7 days a week, and still not get everything done.

Website - you mention social skills, so worth noting that if this is your main intended route to traffic, that lessens the hard reliance on having a website. There are several routes you could take that could give you a web presence to send social visitors to. But probably having your own site would be most desirable, and would supplement any other options, too.

Wordpress is the obvious choice. It's 'easy', though there are complexities (as there will be with any option). It's doable from a limited financing perspective, too. Just be aware of startup costs like hosting, theme, optimization. And possibly investment in tools - AI, keyword if you need it (you can definitely get round this), content writing, content optimization. For those, the advice would be study and learn all you can about the options. To varying degrees, they will be your friend.

Given your financial situation, your thoughts and approach around a theme are entirely valid and viable. There will be learning curves, but if you can drag and drop and type stuff you'll start with good enough potential of creating something presentable. There are plenty of 'do it yourself' theme options you can choose from. Most will have been mentioned on threads here over the last couple of years.

If you decide to go for it, just don't wait another couple of years . It won't be easy. But as you say, if you don't try you won't ever know.

[content]

I have basically zero experience on website developing. I'm leaning towards WordPress as my choice unless a better idea comes my way.

I'm gonna stop you right here. I agree, wordpress is a good choice. Though, it takes awhile to get used to.

My first casino affiliate site I made 6+ months ago was not my first site, I've set up websites before in the past, but never really any very good SEO attempts, just more like business homepages and stuff, and some abandoned web projects. I had also previously managed ecommerce, including a fairly large site which I was hired to manage but did not build myself, and also now nearly 2 decades of photoshop.

Anyway, point is, I had some experience with web building, though still in retrospect, I had more to learn. And it was a good learning project. It's ok that you don't have experience, and themes can look nice, you definitely don't need to be a programmer. But still, even with a theme, figuring out how things work, plugins, blocks, shortcodes, simple stuff, does take a little while. And now, even though I had some experience when I built my first casino affiliate site 6 months ago, now I look back on it(I'm not on my 3rd casino affiliate site, soon to be making a 4th), I realized it looks pretty messy(even though when I first made it, it felt like my baby and was personally offended google wasn't ranking it #1 for everything lol. And in retrospect, now with my focus on making multiple sites and being more efficient, now it feels important to me to not feel attached to any project, and just get it done without overthinking, you will probably feel attached your first project, and really want it to be a huge success, though that can also be a barrier to success, as the right move may to be to try something different, and maybe even start all over), and could have been better in many ways. Which is fine, progressing and learning.

My point is, is honestly, my best advice would be not to overly invest yourself into your first site. It's not going to be perfect, and that's fine. Just get your first site up and going, and tinker for a few months to get to learn it better. You may find you may want to restart(can still keep and maintain the first one) on a new domain, maybe new theme, once you have some experience and feel more comfortable with it. The more you do it the better you get.

So before overwhelming yourself with the marketing aspects(there's hundreds of affiliate programs you could join, all types of content focuses, different SEO strategies, off site promotion, blah blah blah), and without setting any earnings goals, I suggest just giving it a go. Start a site, install wordpress, pick a theme, play with it a few months.

Don't worry about making a perfect end product your first go, in fact I'd recommend treating the site like a rough draft for now. You can always get another domain later(a lot of people don't recommend trying to manage multiple sites, that's fair, but if your first one sucks, may be better to start a new one with what you learn instead of spending a lot of time to fix your first one). Just focus on learning wordpress.

If your going to be successful, first thing is getting comfortable with work, second is setting small achievable goals(not performance goals, goals towards a completed product, then maybe additions and improvements) and completing tasks one by one to follow through.

edit: summary: make the the goal of your first site be you learning wordpress by building it, rather than making a lot of money. Focus on that goal first

[siege]

Thank you all for the helpful answers! The plan now is to start by purchasing a theme and other necessary stuff, learning how to use everything at least somewhat properly, and then getting into social media aspects. If anything comes to my mind, I'll ask here or in other threads. I might update my journey here if there's anything worth to tell .

[dannyx]

I, for one, don't understand why so many people recommend choosing GEO to begin with. Of course, if someone assumes they will be doing a site in some local language like Vietnamese, German, Italian, etc. or a regulated site for one US state or something like that then I understand.

But what is very likely, especially at the beginning of the road, could be an English language site in some chosen niche. What is the purpose of establishing a GEO for such a site? One can lose out on such an action. Google itself will determine where your site will display and where it will not. That's why general hreflags en,es etc. instead of en_US etc. are best (except for the cases mentioned at the beginning)
Making a site in English myself I thought it would be popular in other locations than it actually happened, making Spanish I was counting on Venezuela and Peru, and Spanish-speaking traffic is from completely different countries. Doing traditional Chinese, I thought about Taiwan and what? Google doesn't give a damn and prefers to display the site on mainland China. It's a bit of a gamble, but in my opinion it's better to let the search engine work than to forcefully direct general pages somewhere myself.

A good option might be to personalize for a particular country later on when you see trends, where it makes sense to attack harder and where not.

[chaumi]

Siege When you get to 10 posts you'll be able to send PMs. There are several aspects of putting it all together where it'll be easier to get your head round them if someone shows you. Drop me a pm and I'll show you some basic stuff on a screenshare if you think you'll benefit. No catch, no cost.

[bonusfree]

I opened my marketing company 2 years ago and tbh, I didn't expect it to be so difficult. At the beginning I couldn't even find clients, and in general I didn't really succeed.

I was lucky that I found a company that helped me in all the processes, and they were with me all the way and I managed to grow the company organically. They explained to me what a bottleneck in in operations management is and things started to go much better.

[Adam Axelsson]

Hello everyone! I've been contemplating the idea of starting an affiliate business more or less for approx. 2 1/2 years (Soon I'm 21 yrs). Affiliate business caught my interest in the late 2021. I've been unemployed for a year now and am considering starting university or college in the autumn so I have all the time in the world right now. I can't help but wonder how much progress I could have made in the last few years. Nevertheless, they say it's never too late to begin, and at least I can say then that I have given it a try.

I have a few potential "niches" that I believe might be promising. it's the execution of the plan where I am bit lost.

Website building: I have basically zero experience on website developing. I'm leaning towards WordPress as my choice unless a better idea comes my way. I might choose ready-made theme initially. On the other hand, I like the the idea of building or modifying a unique theme. This approach would enable me to acquire valuable skills that could be beneficial in possible future projects. And the site would look more unique. Not like hundreds and thousands of others. While I am financially stable, I don't have the extra money to invest in expensive website developers. What are your thoughts on this? Should I go with a ready-made theme or attempt to modify my own?

I'm planning to take along social media platforms as they are more of my stronger side and I think I could benefit of my younger vision and keep up with current trends. My target audience would probably be people around my age and people who have already some experience and passion for gambling.

Sorry for possible bad grammar. It is what it is. Also this is my first forum post ever so there might have room for some improvement too.

I may have forgotten something but these are some of ideas that came in my mind when I wrote this. Feel free to give tips and throw out your thoughts!.

-Kasper

Did i miss something here, or are you not taking the SEO route at all?

I feel like you might be missing out, and for me this is how the casino affiliate marketing niche can become truly passive. Also, building websites as assets to at a later stage sell is also a huge benefit from creating powerful SEO websites.

Shoot me a message or reply here if you have any questions I've been around for a while - tried most of it.

[topnotch44]

If you’re thinking about using WordPress, just grab a pre-made theme. It'll make things way easier while you learn the ropes. Once you get the hang of it, you can tweak it or make your own to show off your style.

I've been checking out some resources for my projects, and I found a site that’s super helpful for billing stuff. It helped me organize things and get a better grip on the money side. If you're into niche markets like healthcare, their url removed could give you some cool ideas.

[Sherlock]

you are young and you do not want to work
affiliate business will not make you money
forget about it, it is as useless as university
get a life and work... HVAC, plumbing, construction in general, there you can make some money
not with an idea that was good before you were born, but now is obsolete

[Woodman]

I have over 10 years of experience in SEO, working in niches where we created doorway pages, earned through AdSense, and so on. But when I entered the gambling niche a year ago, I made several mistakes and learned a very important lesson:
Don’t go after all the keywords at once. Find and focus on the best one.Don’t target all geos right away. Study and know everything about one specific geo.
Hitting just one keyword and one geo can bring you hundreds of times more than ranking a little bit everywhere. This is the key difference between gambling and other niches.

[WebTraffIQ]

I have over 10 years of experience in SEO, working in niches where we created doorway pages, earned through AdSense, and so on. But when I entered the gambling niche a year ago, I made several mistakes and learned a very important lesson:
Don’t go after all the keywords at once. Find and focus on the best one.Don’t target all geos right away. Study and know everything about one specific geo.
Hitting just one keyword and one geo can bring you hundreds of times more than ranking a little bit everywhere. This is the key difference between gambling and other niches.

I will second this, and add that this could be a first and mayber faster step to start generating some income, which will allow you to expand further.
The niche is very saturated and competitive, but there is still lots of potential, and google updates, scramble the market a lot, which in some cases might give you and advantage against bigger affiliates.

[topnotch44]

Hey there! Starting an affiliate business can be a great way to dive into e-commerce. One tip that helped me when I started is to focus on a specific niche you're passionate about. It makes creating content and connecting with your audience so much easier.
I also recommend checking out resources that share insights into affiliate strategies and e-commerce growth.Check url removed. It's packed with actionable advice, especially for beginners. Good luck with your journey, and feel free to ask if you have more questions!

[eenzoo]

Hey there! Starting an affiliate business can be a great way to dive into e-commerce. One tip that helped me when I started is to focus on a specific niche you're passionate about. It makes creating content and connecting with your audience so much easier.
I also recommend checking out resources that share insights into affiliate strategies and e-commerce growth. Check url removed. It's packed with actionable advice, especially for beginners. Good luck with your journey, and feel free to ask if you have more questions!

Pls can you stop to spam your AI generated nonsense here and in your previous posts?

[Sherlock]

No wonder people leave forums. Whenever starts something that is almost an interesting debate, that has some info inside, then come robots or human robots with low count of posts and start spilling a total generic nonsense. What is worse, the posts usually negate the genuine posts from the few real people that remain. But they do it is a totally assertive way. This is why it is so annoying, more than the good old flame wars. This absence of direct confrontation is also why it is so obvious.

Not only affiliate marketing is dying. It is also forums. I gave up mine. Too annoying to ban the generic posters. Only human can reveal cheap computer generated content. Only human can reveal stupidity. But the world is so overfilled with both, that there is no power left doing it for general good as moderating the virtual public spaces.