Market Niche Overlooked? Not Good For Affiliate Marketing

It's been just over a year since my re-introduction to affiliate marketing and many lessons and mistakes have been made along the way.

Originally, I wanted to create an income out of nothing, but I abandoned that when I became too impatient and wanted to have my own website. It made it much easier to become an affiliate for particular products and to market, so over the last few months I've spent some money for my domain and hosting.

Getting back to my marketing endeavors...

Seems I need to learn things the hard way (ie. my own way) sometimes, so I'm looking at the last year as being very productive in education. Optimistically, I see the last year as opportunity for knowledge.

I haven't earned anything yet, which is why I'm going to weigh heavily on the educational aspect of this experience. Education has a value in and of its own, so I guess it's just a matter of how much I value my time.

Since beginning myaffiliate marketing aspirations, I've come to see many important aspects that need to come together to optimize the efforts put into my site. Market research, SEO, proper keyword research and applications along with working with all the social networks and email marketing all play a large role in promoting a website.

But the one big marketing technique I never implemented was finding my market niche.

When I first started my affiliate marketing campaign and began writing articles, I had all sorts of ideas of what I wanted to offer on my website.

As I was developing my website, I would come across something I would feel complimented my site.

So I added it. So on and so on, I began adding offers from different products, expanding my site by adding pages to it.

I first thought this was good, developing my offerings and hopefully reaching a potentially larger audience.

I found myself overwhelmed. I had read the advice to begin with a focus on a small, reasonable market, but I didn't heed it.

As I was developing my website, I created more work than I was ready to handle. It was a mistake to take on so much when trying to learn the basics at the same time.

Thinking if I used a broad area such as personal development, it would leave me room to go in many different directions.

Sometimes there can be too many directions to go in when it comes to affiliate marketing.

I've found out that if you don't have a specific direction, you can get lost in the vast universe that is the internet. There are to many big guns to compete with so you may never be seen. Very few search beyond the first page of results, so getting pushed back in page rankings from more established companies is very likely.

The plan now?

I have the basics of the site in place. I want to optimize my site by finding a good market niche to implement, but it will have to be one page at a time. See what I mean about creating too much work? But breaking down page by page at least makes it seem more manageable and still gives me a broad area to work in, accommodating my short attention span.

Still not sure what page I want to start with my site, but it's going to use a market niche technique to narrow in on stronger buyers.

I'd at least like to work on the one particular page long enough to measure a result. Then I'll know I'm going in a positive direction.

Affiliate Marketing-A New Year

It's just been just over a year now since I first realistically threw my hat in the affiliate marketing ring. It's been a long year of a lot of reading and research looking for the path of success with affiliate marketing.

You see, when I began this endeavor, I had all intentions of doing it for nothing, primarily as an experiment. I didn't want to spend a dime and test to see how viable it would be to build a lucrative presence on the web without an initial investment.

I started a free lens on Squidoo and began writing articles trying to drive traffic to it. After a few months, I wasn't getting much traffic at all, so I started my own website.

After a few weeks of trying to figure out in what direction I wanted to go in, I established my website in a way I could expand on it. I figured the more I could build on it, the more potential traffic, and in turn, more sales.

This has come with a double edged sword.

I still love the idea of being able to offer help in many different areas, but at the same time, it can be overwhelming.

I still consider myself very new to affiliate marketing, and that is what has given me issues in growing my site to the potential I had hoped for.

Trying to put together a multiple page website while still learning the ins and outs of affiliate marketing hasn't been a smooth process.

It seems the more I learn, the more potential I see, and with that, more to learn. It's very easy to become flooded with possibilities that can easily distract you from your original goal. You see or hear of success in some area, so I would look further into that.

This has kept me from becoming affluent in any particular area, keeping me almost distracted from completing my education from the task at hand. A lot has to do with my personality, but it can also be due to the hundreds of different avenues you can go down when pursuing an affiliate marketing endeavour.

Over the last year, I have learned a lot. I still only incur the one website maintenance expense and still plan on pursuing all the free marketing available.

But if I'm going to truly learn one thing, it's to try to remain focused on the task at hand.

My website has 7 pages right now. I think my best option is to concentrate on one of those pages and work on it. Treat it as my only page for a month or two and then move on to another. Continue writing articles, social networking and any other free networking out there for it. After going through all seven, I'll begin to look at expanding and adding new pages again.

It's hard to stay focused when everything so new and novel, especially with the potential you hear about. So this year, I'm designating focus as my "mantra" to carry me through and continue.