Designing my site

The second week of TBIP was basically about creating a website. This week's workload grew a lot. Aside from keeping up with learning about affiliate marketing and keeping up with researching my niche, I have to learn about designing and creating websites! I've decided not to outsource just yet because I want to be able to really learn everything. It's taking up a lot of time, and I feel it's worth it.

Since my last update, I've registered myself at several forums for my niche. One site had me wait three days before I could start posting just to make sure I wasn't a spammer. I've done more reading about my niche at different websites.

I've also started designing my site. I chose the color scheme of my site. I chose based on color psychologhy:
www.sibagraphics.com/coulour.php

Today I created a sitemap. I was having trouble because I kept getting the urge to create a different site for each of my personas, but after several drafts I finally chose one that I think will work.

I also wanted to learn more about database driven sites. They separate content from design and provide an easy solution to being able to quickly update your sites. Are database driven sites the only solution? I must look into it. Anyway, here's the SQL/PHP tutorial I took:
http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/ddws/index.html

TBIP Day 7 & Peer Discussions

This week's session for TBIP is about designing/creating your website. Today, was about designing a visually appealing site. I started brainstorming on how I want my site to look like. I was having trouble because I can't imagine my site to be anything but a macro site. There are many products to promote and many customer personas to target. Since this will be my first affiliate site, I know that a micro site should do for a couple of reasons: I don't expect my first site to be perfect the first time, I want to test the niche, I want to test the site, etc..

So I chatted with my buddy Brad for a little bit. He helped me realize that the microniche I have been working on is actually a niche. I still need to carve out a smaller niche. So I spent some more time today trying to carve out a smaller niche. He advised me to pick a smaller niche, become and expert in that tiny area and then expand.

I've now chosen my smaller niche. The workload lightened up a little bit and a lot of the work is becoming much more clearer and a lot less overwhelming compared to yesterday. I understand my customer personas better. I have a better idea of what the direction of my site should take.

It's good to have a trusted peer and/or mentor in affiliate marketing. I can get feedback on what I'm doing right and wrong. An outside perspective can provide some great insight. They can provide good resources and they are an excellent resource as well.

Getting to Know My Audience Action Guide

I did not get to complete all I wanted to do today. I barely just finished the TBIP action guide for Session 4. So that leaves the rest of my to do list unchecked.

Session 4 Action Guide was a little demanding:
1. Review product advertisements
2. Review company websites
3. Review company financial reports and news
4. Join community sites
5. Consumer review sites
6. Subscribe to newsletters and blogs
7. Buy books
8. Be the Customer
9. Create customer personas
10. Create niche keyword list
11. Categorize te keywords for each persona

I'm having a little trouble creating customer personas which means I can't categorize my keywords. So I still have to do that.

One thing about Session 4 Action Guide, is that it's not a one time thing. It's an ongoing process. Today I found a few forums and blogs for my niche. I'm very excited about all the resouces that I am finding.

It's a little overwhelming because now not only do I have to keep up with affiliate marketing blogs and news, I also have to keep up with blogs and news about my niche.

TBIP Week2 Day 6

I am currently falling a little behind. TBIP action worksheets for week 1 were sent over the weekend. The research I have been doing on my own is not quite as thorough as the action worksheets. I'm still really confident with my niche selection.

Today's topic was 'Building a bulletproof site'. Feeling a little overwhelmed. So here's my to do list for today:

Complete the action worksheets sent over the weekend
Figure out my Unique Selling Proposition: what value does my website provide?
Decide what kind of site I want to build: a comparison site or a review site, etc..
How big do i want my site to be?
What specific need of the customer should it address? Or address all needs?
What are my site goals?
How do I organize my site content
Preliminary site map
At which stage in the buying cycle are my site visitors?
How do I deal with which phase?

I'm leaning towards a site that helps the customer decide what they want to and tell them the best place to get it.

Organizing my niche research

I don't know why I'm a little surprised, since I've heard many times that niche researching can be very tedious. I've spent the last few days researching my niche. My niche is an actual tangible product, so my methods may not apply completely towards all niches.

One of the hiccups I encountered while researching is the overwhelming amount of information. I spent quite some time getting off track. So I had to organize myself.

(I started taking notes in Notepad, but that's wasn't very useful when it came to reading my notes. I started keeping it in Microsoft Excel, but I didn't like the idea of having multiple files between my home and work computer.) So I use Google Docs Spreadsheet. I love it! I can easily access it from home and work without having to worry about whether or not I have the latest version open. My way of oranzing is constantly evolving. Right now it's in this format.

Sheet 1: Random notes: other possible niches I may want to pursuse in the future, article titles I would like to write, various ways to categorize my niche product, specific keywords to look into
(I'm sure I will have to find a way to organize this sheet, but everytime a cool thought goes into my head I write it so I don't forget it)

Sheet 2: Competitors
Each competitor takes 10-20 rows & 4 columns:

• website address
• pros of the site
• cons of the site
• notes (how i found the site, # of visits as reported by http://www.compete.com/ [thanks, Brad!])

Sheet 3: Merchants has 9 columns:

• website
• name 3rd party affiliate program/private
• commission
• payment frequency
• number of days to store cookie
• affiliate tracking software
• reports?
• price 1
• price 2
• notes

(price 1 and price 2 are the prices of 2 different items found on all the websites so that I can get a better idea of how their prices stack up)

Sheet 4: Products has at least three columns:

• Category
• Price range
• a column for each of the merchants and how much it goes for at that site

What do I research?

Now that I've picked a small niche, I've been doing a lot of research. So much that it might be a little overwhelming. I'm starting to jump ahead into what do I want my site to look like so that I know what kind of information to gather. Do I want my site to list all the types of products and link them to the merchant once they've decided on which type? Or do I want to rate all the sites and then lead them to the site? The former feels like it would have a higher conversion rate. The latter seems easier to do (which would be good to test this niche). So again I'm going to resort back to a spreadsheet to help me organize the information I need to find and what I find.

Product
What are the different types of this product?
Which products have better reviews?
Which products are most popular?
Which product are on every merchants' list?

Merchants
Who are the merchants?
Which merchants sell which type of product?
Which merchant has better prices?
Which merchant has better reviews?
What do I like about this particular merchant?
What do I not like about this particular merchant?
How does this merchant address the needs of the customer?
Who is their target customer?

I'm starting to wonder if this smaller niche is still too big..maybe I should do a microniche? I'll decided after I fill this spreadsheet.

Carving out a Niche

After choosing a big niche, I must carve out a smaller niche to focus on.

This was a little harder that I thought it would be. It's hard to stay focused on a micro-niche especially because a lot of the competition seems to be really broad and because I'm so interested in everything.

I decided to resort to the good ol' fashion way: a pros and cons list. Well in this case, instead of two columns there were 4: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. I listed as many possible smaller niches as I can. For each one, I did a brief SWOT Analysis. Brief in that I concluded they were all the same because they're still part of the same niche. So I added another column: target audience. There was one whose potential target audiences is wider than all of the other smaller niches. (I also considered if there were merchants, I am confident there are many because of the competition. ) Now I have a small niche.

I am sure there are many ways to hone in on a smaller niche.

• visiting merchants' and competitors' sites and see what their focus is
• what am I in the market for?
• are there any new products/services being introduced?
  

I will continue researching this niche to find more about the needs of the customer, what the competitors have to offer, what the competitors don't offer, etc..

I found my niche!

TBIP Wk1, Day 4 was excellent: Understanding your audience.

Learned a lot. I'm not a marketing person so it was all brand new information.

As I logged into my computer to get started on researching my target audience, I decided to keep up with my blog subscriptions. And there it was: an offer for a new affiliate program. I got really excited about it. It fits the number one criteria: I'm genuinely interested/passionate about it! It's very broad, now I just need to carve out a smaller niche from it. I'll probally tackle multiple smaller niches in the future, but for now, I need to decide my first one. My research has to start over again, but I only lost a few days!

Niche researching

I still haven't chosen my first niche, but I do have one that stands out from my list. I started doing some research about it. I was a little surprised that I did not find as many competitors selling products as I thought I would. I think I only found one affilliate and the noticed a lot of the PPC ads were the direct sellers- no affiliate in between? I did find a lot of sites that ask you to fill out forms (which I believe is another form of internet marketing, but not my focus as of right now)

This made me wonder if there were any merchants in my niche. I signed up for Clickbank. It was pretty easy. I found several merchants for my niche. Including one of which I was a customer of! This was encouraging..

Is the lack of competitors a sign of a bad niche or hidden niche?

1) what are the keywords I should target?
2) what will be my unique angle be?
3) what are customers looking for?
4) how will i drive them to my site: paid search? organic results? blogging? i hesitate with blogging because i'm not a professional/expert in the industry of this particular niche.

TBIP Wk 1, Day 3: Developing a Rock Solid Business Plan

Today was a good session for me. I'm so excited about getting started that I completely overlooked the preparation step. I've decided to keep myself organized electronically. I read some blogs about a few tools. Should check those out.

Lessons for the Day:
Think objectively about your model. Act on reason not emotion.

1) Choose your Niche

2)Analyze your Niche: SWOT Analysis. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunties, Threats?

3) Dig deeper/Market analysis

• Competitors
• Sufficient demand
• Understand the customer
• Find a unique angle
• Get feedback

So I have a list of possible niches that I would like to pursue.
A few have passed the SWOT Analysis. Still need to 'dig deeper'.

Today I will:
-google my competitors
-browse through some tools to keep me organized

Day 2

I missed Day 1 of TBIP because I couldn't watch it at work. The anticipation of waiting for the Day 1 recording drove me so crazy that I decided to watch Day 2 at work anyway. I hope I won't regret that decision =P

Anywho.

Topics:
Day 1: Choosing your Niche. Most important rule is to do something you're interested in/or have experience. Understand your customers. Don't pick something just because it made someone else a lot of money. They made a lot of money in it because they were really interested in and/or had experience with it.
Good niches: good selection of merchants and have a clear advantage of buying online

I've been keeping a list of certain areas/niches that I would like to explore in. Everytime I come across an area of interst I write it down. As that list continues to keep growing, my #1 pick hasn't changed yet.

Day 2: Building your Business. Three business entities were introduced. Sole Proprietorship, Limited Liability Corporation, S- Corporation. All have pros and cons. Tax avoidance is a right. Tax evasion is illegal.

I've decided not to focus too much on this yet. I need to get my business up and running before I lose track with this stuff. It's good to get educated in it so the tax proffesional I hire knows he/she can't take advantage of me, but like Jeremy said, I'd rather hire a professional because that's what they do and what I do is make money.

Getting Started

Welcome to my blog about affiliate marketing. I'm a beginner in affiliate marketing. I'm eager to learn and share with you my so-called journey.

Why I'm doing affiliate marketing: There's the obvious, I want to work harder for myself than I do for someone else. I see the huge potential. My close friend Brad had actually quit his day job! So the promises aren't made from some distant infomercial, I can see it happening through someone I personally know.

Who I am: I am Julia. I have no experience in affiliate marketing whatsoever. I took a few courses on web development and Photoshop and would say my knowledge in both is intermediate. Brad invited me to join The Black Ink Project (which I like to call TBIP) by Jeremy Palmer.

What I am doing now: TBIP starts tomorrow. I spent the last week reading High Performance Affiliate Marketing by Jeremy Palmer. It was really a really good book and it provided a good foundation.. Brad and Jeremy both mentioned using PHP so I also spent a few hours taking a PHP tutorial at PHP.net . I also read a few blogs written by other affiliate marketers.

Can't wait till TBIP starts!