Establishing a Strategy for Your Affiliate Marketing Business

Do you have a long term strategy for your affiliate marketing business?

Over a month ago I began diving into affiliate marketing full blast and launching some campaigns.  I am still very much at the stage where I am just learning the ropes and strategies of professional affiliate marketers.  However, it is abundantly clear to me that one of the first things affiliate marketers need to do is to establish a clear strategy for their business.

It is so easy to get distracted with so many different things to learn and get bombarded by information overload.

To prevent information overload, you need a strategy.

One of the first things I’m working on in organizing my strategy is to get clear on the type of affiliate marketer I want to become.  From my research there are so many different ways to play this game.

There are thousands of different strategies that affiliate marketers of all types have come up with to make money online.  However, not all strategies work for all types of affiliates.

Top Down or Bottom Up Strategy

I have found that most of the advice out there can be grouped into two categories of strategy.  There is the Top Down Strategy of Affiliate Marketing and then there is the Bottom Up Strategy of Affiliate Marketing. Let me explain what I mean by these.

The Top Down Affiliate Marketing Strategy

In the Top Down strategy, what an affiliate would do is sit down and figure out the niche area they are interested and passionate about, and start their search there.  In this example, the affiliate chose “Dating” as their niche.  They can then specialize in sub niches such as “Relationship” dating where the single people are looking for long-term relationships which they hope will eventually lead to marriage etc., or they can specialize in a niche like “Intimate” dating where the singles are basically looking to just have some fun with some casual dating that may involve an intimate encounter without any long-term strings attached.

Of course there are many sub niches, I just showed two in the example to keep it simple.  In reality a sub niche may have dozens if not hundreds or even thousands of sub-niches.

Then, below that there may even be sub-sub niches such as for example religion based singles such as “Christian Singles Looking for a Relationship” or “Wealthy Singles Looking for a Relationship”.  Then, below that you can have even more specific sub categories of niches and then finally the individual offers which are available on the networks.

Most guru super affiliates are advising that people follow this Top Down Strategy .  They advise that you should figure out what your personal interests are, what your passions are and then pick a niche, sub-niche or even a sub-sub-niche and build a long term business plan with a website or websites specializing in that area.

So, for example you may decide to build a whole affiliate business around Christian Relationship Based Dating sites.  You could create a website with a lot of articles, resources, and content such as reviews and build an audience of people who are interested in dating in the “Christian Singles who are looking for a long term relationship” category.

Then, you would search around and look for affiliate offers available to promote to that market.

The Bottom Up Affiliate Marketing Strategy

The bottom up strategy is totally different.  Utilizing the bottom up strategy, you don’t start at the top and pick your niche first.  You start at the bottom and look at the individual offers first and foremost.

For example, you log in to your Market Leverage account and check out the Top 20 offers this week.  You see that there is a Dating Offer, a Payday Loan Offer, a Research Grant Offer, and several others.  Your primary goal then is to look at these offers and systematically research and test which ones produce the biggest amount of profit.

Meaning, if you find that a new offer just came out which sells some kind of “Cat Hairball Remover Shampoo”, and there is very little competition in that market and you think you can make a pretty decent profit on that offer, then you go for it and test it.

In the Bottom Up Strategy it really doesn’t matter whether you’re promoting “Cat Hairball Remover Shampoo” or “Omaha Steaks”.  You don’t have to have an interest in cats or steak, and honestly you don’t even have to like cats or steak to follow the Bottom Up Strategy .  In fact, you can absolutely hate cats and still make a profit selling shampoo to people who do like cats.

Which Works Best?

From what I’m hearing in the marketplace, it sounds like a lot of affiliates started with the Bottom Up strategy originally.  A few years ago, before numerous adjustments to the way Google handles AdWords, you could do things like Direct Linking to offers and it really didn’t matter what the hell you were promoting.

You could be running a whole crap-load of different offers ranging from “Pet Urine Stain Remover” to “Real Estate Seminars”.  None of which you even had to have an interest in.  Your job was simply to find customers who were interested in these types of things and connect them to the offer by using PPC tools like Google Adwords.

Today I’m hearing that a lot of Super Affiliates are now following a Top Down strategy.  For example, Rosalind Gardner (the author of The Super Affiliate Handbook) specialized in the dating niche.  Her eBook talks about how she makes +$400k/year in affiliate marketing, and she recommends following a Top Down strategy where you actually build a long-term website devoted to your niche.

She’s done dozens and dozens of reviews of the top dating sites on the Internet and makes a pile of money from promoting their affiliate offers.

I’ve heard other Super Affililiates talking about this too.  They say that we should just pick a niche we’re actually interested in and then build out a site or a bunch of sites that will provide us with a long term income, instead of chasing what offer is hot today.

So is a Top Down Approach Best for New Affiliates?

This is a question I had myself for a while now.  Do I sit down, pick a niche I’m interested in and then break it down into sub-niches and pick one sub-niche I can get excited and passionate about and then go out there and build a super valuable website and promote only the offers which I feel are the best for that particular audience?

Or do I login to one of my numerous affiliate network accunts and go hunting for the next offer for a product I know very little about or even care little about, but that I think will be a profitable offer to promote?

This is not a very simple question to answer.  Here are some arguments I have with the Top Down approach.

Firstly, how the heck do you pick your niche in the first place.  Did Rosalind have a passion and interest in Dating sites prior to doing Affiliate Marketing?  I find that hard to believe.  Who the hell gets passionate about dating sites?  Maybe if you’re a human psychology major who likes to study the dating habits of humans and human behavior fascinates you, but I doubt Rosalind had this passion prior to coming into affiliate marketing.

I mean, look at some of the other niche market categories in affiliate marketing… Ringtones?  Who the hell gets passionate about Ringtones?  Electronics, diet and weight loss, business opportunities, payday loans etc.  I don’t know, I find it hard to believe someone can get passionate about Payday Loans or Ringtones, but I can believe that someone could get excited about making money promoting Payday Loans and Ringtones.

An Example Learned from Tony Robbins

Tony Robbins is a personal development guru.  When it comes to tennis though, he is not an expert in tennis at all.  So then why did Andre Agassi hire him to coach him to win in Wimbledon?  It’s because Tony Robbins is a master in understanding the mental game inside your head.  Agassi didn’t need tennis lessons, he needed to figure out what the heck was going on in his head that was preventing him from winning games.  Robbins did that for him.

Robbins has also personally coached people in the financial services sector, even though they know way more about money than he does.  Once again, it wasn’t their knowledge of financial services that was the problem, it was their mental game.

So, relating that back to the Affiliate Marketing Business, is our “passion and interest” not “Affiliate Marketing” itself then?  Why would we need to have an interest and passion for the products we promote?  Let’s put aside the argument that some affiliate offers are crap and not in the best interest of the consumer.  Lets assume they’re all created equal.

Lets say, for example, there is an offer for an eBook on “Learning Golf” and another one on “Learning Soccer” and another one on “Learning Basketball”.  Lets say you know how to pay basketball, but you’ve never played soccer or golf much.  Does that mean you should promote the basketball offer?  Or should you promote the offer that you feel has the best chance of suceeding financially?

As a good affiliate marketer, does it really matter whether the eBook is promoting learning basketball, soccer or golf?  Shouldn’t you be able to promote anything?

A Case for the Top Down Approach

One thing that I do like about the Top Down approach is that it helps to focus you.  If you pick a niche, such as Dating for example, and then just completely ignored all other types of offers out there, and just focused your mind on promoting dating offers, you will probably get much better results than jumping all over the place and chasing the next hot offer.

However, my suggestion may be to pick a few niches to start with and see which one works best.  There are hundreds of different categories out there and if you can narrow it down to lets say 4 or 5 categories which you might find the most fun to start playing with, I think you can get the benefits of the Top Down approach without the down-side risk of picking a niche that’s not profitable or that has way too much competition.

These are not the niches I’m picking, but maybe an approach like this would be best:

Month 1 – Start With 3 Niches
Dating – 2 Offers
Diet / Weight Loss – 2 Offers
Pay Day Loans – 2 Offers

Month 2 – Add 3 More
Dating – 2 Offers
Diet / Weight Loss – 2 Offers
Pay Day Loans – 2 Offers
Real Estate – 2 Offers
Travel – 2 Offers
Business Opps – 2 Offers

Month 3 – Remove the Unprofitable Ones
Dating – 2 Offers
Diet / Weight Loss – 2 Offers – Removed
Pay Day Loans – 2 Offers
Real Estate – 2 Offers
Travel – 2 Offers – Removed
Business Opps – 2 Offers

Month 4 – Focus on Profitable Ones, Keep Removing Unprofitable Ones
Dating – 3 Offers
Pay Day Loans – 2 Offers – Removed
Real Estate – 4 Offers
Business Opps – 3 Offers

Month 5 – Focus Your Efforts
Dating – 5 Offers
Real Estate – 5 Offers
Business Opps – Removed

You can see how over time you start to focus and zero in on the niche markets you like and find more profitable.  Once in a while you can throw in a new market to see if you can make it more profitable.  Remember that your skills as an affiliate marketer do get better over time so maybe you’ll have more luck with a niche once your skill set increases.

What strategy are you guys following for your Affiliate Marketing Business?  Top Down?  Bottom Up?  A little bit of both?  Undecided?

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