What should a newbie read?

Hey,

First of all, thank you for all the information on this forum, it's really overwhelming but very informative and I learnt so much in the last couple of days just reading and browsing the topics, it's insane.

I'm a total newcomer to being a webmaster (been working in gambling affiliate business before as a content producer) on our upcoming site, and I'd like to know what you think is a must-read and also what you suggest I should follow on a regular basis in the forum (and maybe outside the forum)?

Thanks in advance.

I would also follow SEO related forums and blogs. You can start with blackhatworld, searchengineland and MOZ blog.

Take plenty of time reading about which sponsors to promote and which ones to avoid. It could save you $1000's and a lot of wasted time in the long run.

Just read the entire forum....plenty of training a more than 10 years of history.

LOL

Rick
Universal4

Follow the forum :)
Good Luck with your new project.

Like others said, this forum, SEO forums and also this forum http://www.affiliateguarddog.com

there are also some great affiliate blogs, like Affiliatebible and few others.

Read the Freshman Forum and The Chatter Box.

Good Luck and welcome again i have to reiterate speak to the affiliate programs your advertising they should be able to help you with Content .Ideas etc

Thank you all for the ideas, I feel like I have days of reading ahead, but all these forums and blogs seem really valuable.

Sorry to bump an old thread but had some comments... I was in exactly the same boat just over a year ago, I read hundreds of threads on this forum and made contact with a few other helpful affiliates who have helped me massively. This forum is a goldmine of information for beginners, but there is also a lot of cr*p posted on here so only take advice from those who are well respected and have been in the game a while.

It seems in this business the key is to make good relationships and to offer help and advice to those who are willing to listen.

Thanks for the advice, I'll keep it in mind.:)

Find some of the guys and girls on this forum whose posts you find informative and helpful and then read everything they've written here. That will help you sort out the wheat from the chaff.

I agree to read the forum and other affiliates sources and to read some SEO sources. In fact all is about thinking and using Google for me.
But that is not all. It is not enough to copy what other people do. It is important to know what the people do, but it is important to add something or go exactly against the flow sometimes. There are lot of hypes, especially in SEO, that are overrated.

I suggest reading some oldschool cyberpunk, I learnt about the web from cyberpunk before I saw internet on my own eyes and there is still a lot of clear information. The battle for traffic and conversions is not about recent rules, but partly about predicting future. Both for Google algo and human behavior.

Example: now everything seems to go even more social. But will it? Imagine that people will get pissed of Facebook during next years and everything about their real identity and they will swicth to reddit style. The one that can predict that (and bribe some opinion leaders at reddit for example) will bank. I do not say this will happen. But those are the important things.

Another example what I am trying now. I will not say exactly. But imagine you have an African country where you figure out they play some weird card game. There is no information about that game. Maybe you can just buy keyword.com domain for reg fee or cheap. So you have market hole. Make a website about that game. If the internet develops there, you can transfer the people that want to read about that game to poker for example. Yes, it is a longshot, probably nonsense. But sometimes a gem can be found.

So the important thing is to think out of box. You can not read about it, no school will teach you. Just life, work and your own fails. So except thinking out of box you need a lot of money, because you will lose a lot. And the only way how to have a lot of money is to work hard, no debts and no spending. I used to live in wet, rotten garage even when I was making low 5 figures/month 10 years ago as a bettor. Nobody will tell you this has sense, because everyone wants to make money out of you somehow. It is important to be hard on yourself, the information will come through indirect ways.

I agree with sherlock on thinking outside of the box sometimes, but I also think , especially for beginners, it really isn't necessary to reinvent the wheel. If something is proven and doing well, then maybe you can get a small slice of that pie and maybe even a small slice of said pie could be highly lucrative for relative newbies.

I spent a lot of time trying to be 'different' and desperately trying to come up with great ideas, then I found for me that just following 'tried and trusted things but doing them very well' was actually the best method for me.

If you're gona do a free bets site for example, just make it the very best free bets site out there, you don't necessarily have to be at all unique in your concept, just deliver it with 100% commitment and drive to be the best one out there and you will get your rewards. I wish somebody had given me THIS advice 5 years ago when I was constantly holding back because my ideas weren't particularly unique and I thought I had to reinvent the wheel. It's not true, you can copy other people's ideas and concepts (within reason) but just do it really well. It works, I promise you.

Affiliate marketing isn't rocket science, it is a science, but it's definitely not rocketry. KISS -Keep It Simple Stupid.

I agree. I did not want to suggest a path with a lot of ideas and no work. It is important to start and begin doing mistakes. It really has not a lot of sense to read debates if there should be h2 or twitter account on the page or if is better for Germany bet365 or tipico. It is important to try it. In a very simple way that always directly aim to fast monetization, because it is the money or at least registrations and depositors, what can show the path. There is too much theory around and too little execution. I know many people in 20's that are stuck with reading everything but they fail to do something.

But meanwhile as second plan, that hopefully will become a first plan, the thinking out of box must be present. There is a positive feedback loop: the more one workd, the more info he has and the more info one has, the more effective is the extra work. This also means that even very small progress from the beginning might be a lot. I still remember my first money made online, it was 2 usd. I was very happy, because I saw the scalability potential. It is important to understand the pace of online business (the work you do today will be rewaded hopefully across many years, so the daily revenue might be very small, but if it sums up, it can be very high). With affiliate business on revenue share this is even more valid than by other online business. Plus there is a black swan / whale factor always, that means that there is always some crazy bonus looming, but one can not count with that.