Should Your Affiliate Ads Coincide With Your Blog’s Niche? Part 2
by Eric Hamm on March 24, 2009
in Advertising
Let’s continue the discussion. I’m enjoying the insight and back and forths…
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“I’m enjoying the insight and back and forths…”
Says the Roman Emperor as he sits atop his throne watching the Gladiators do battle with the lions. You masochist
Right I’ll watch the video now…
Marc’s last blog post..5 Words Guaranteed To Lead To Freelance Writing Success
Ha Ha! That’s great!
Eric
I can see where you’re coming from Eric with the readership trust and what-not but I’m not convinced it works that way. You must always keep in the back of your mind that you want to grow your traffic and subscribers. An inconsistent message could work against you.
Ok, so your readers are interested in web hosting, design and domain names. This is where your ad for Frugal Site Design comes in with a twofold benefit.
We humans are curious. We want to know more about the person that wrote these words. You have probably already found that your About page gets a substantial amount of clicks, I’d venture the same is true for your FSD ad.
The second benefit is that any leads generated by Motivate Thyself for web design/hosting/whatever is far more likely to go through FSD making those old affiliate ads superfluous. This is the so-called Law of Reciprocity at work.
Now take a look at the bigger picture: Your getting readers to your blog with the “motivation/productivity mindset”. You maximise your potential earnings from this traffic by promoting affiliate products to do with “motivation/productivity”.
You are then tapping into their natural curiosity with the FSD ad and possibly capturing those leads you expected the more impersonal affiliate ads to do.
Regarding Adsense and Amazon affiliates. You’re pretty much spot on but I question the amount of time you tested it for especially if you were getting 2-3 clicks a day. What about the old affiliate ads, how many clicks a day were you getting on those? How many of those clicks converted into cash? Adsense pays “per click”.
You are right though, affiliate products is where it’s at and you’re right again with the realisation that this is where you have to conduct your research. And yes you are going to have to buy the products you want to promote. If you think adsense is cheapening your readers experience imagine what promoting a product you’ve never tried is going to do.
Take a look at my affiliate ads on WelshScribe. I’ve paid for every one of those.
Start with blogs in your niche. What are they promoting? What are they reviewing and recommending?
And there’s another key phrase for you: reviews. Yaro Starak teaches a Become a Blogger Premium course centered around making money from blogging. Needless to say there is an entire module dedicated to writing product reviews.
Jade reads the BB and spends a lot of time writing product reviews. I bet she has a ton of advice to give in this area.
You’re on the right track mate, just need to tighten the focus a bit and don’t forget the key to Internet Marketing success is to measure and test.
Eric, thanks for being so open and inviting our input.
Marc, I don’t want to bore folk by repeating what I said yesterday and last week but it’s crucial to know what you want out of blogging, to know who you are and what your gifts are if you want to take pro-blogging to the highest levels. If you don’t – even if you get an element of financial success – it’s just not sustainable. For example, my blog is for coaches, writers and homemakers. (I also know my coaching colleagues use my articles with their clients.) That means my ‘net’ is wide and I have ruined the ‘niche focus’ aspect. But I don’t mind. I like people – the more different kinds of visitors, the merrier. Many of the older coaches I know are wary of blogbuilding and tormented by the amount of marketing they have to do. So, there are sections in my blog that have Frugal Site Design, Thesis, Blogopolis and Itty Biz, amongst others. I want to save folk time and effort and because they trust me, everyone wins. If Eric ever starts an affiliate scheme for FSD (Eric – please start and affiliate scheme for FSD!) then it would be a financial win/win for everyone if I shout about FSD from the rooftops. I also have links to writing blogs and parenting blogs. Writer Dad’s there. Theoretically, Sean and I share the same audience, but what the hell, he’s brilliant and I like him! Plus, I don’t do ghostwriting or copywriting. I want people to come to my site and be introduced to people and products I like and trust, not just find some irrelevant adsense adverts that someone else thinks my visitors might like.
I understand what you are saying Janice, I truly do.
You are spot on with what you are saying apart from ruining the niche thing. I think you are potentially onto something like Leo was talking about over on Write To Done
And that’s not something that everyone can pull off. Trust me.
My angle is this: if you want to take your blogging to the highest levels, get the maximum bang for your buck as they say then when it comes to affiliate ads, your best chance is to start with a very narrow net and build from there.
As you say though, all this is determined primarily by your focus/end goals.
Tying it all back to Eric and Motivate Thyself; he is on to a winner. One of his posts ranks 6th (last time I checked) for a term that actually gets typed into Google. Better yet it is – in terms of Internet Marketing – relatively easy for him to improve on that ranking.
As if that wasn’t enough, bear in mind that rightly or wrongly Google rewards the rich. I want to help Eric make the most of that “Google wealth”.
Again, not disagreeing with you Janice. We just have opposing views of what is essentially the same coin
Eric,
You have excellent points here especially about being reminded how little adsense makes. I have adsense for show, I guess. Some blogs I have, on the side that I do not post to often, have some good, high paying affiliate links which are better that adsense. n
Just an fyi, check out teleseminar secrets, some of Alex Mandossian’s affiliate products pay out at like a grand or so.
This is a good discussion.
Elizabeth
Elizabeth Stanfill’s last blog post..DESTRESS YOURSELF WITH AFFIRMATIONS
I am sure there are self-improvement products out there that are weak.
However, last time you used the term, “airy fairy.” I think ‘airy fairy’ does more justice to what you’re trying to describe.
Bamboo Forest – PunIntended’s last blog post..Why Do People Clap in Movie Theatres?
My thoughts…
Click to play this video.
@ Eric Yeah Adsense is like the part time job of Internet Marketing. It’s probably on the bottom rung of the “make money online” ladder.
It’s also good to hear that you have numbers to back up your decisions. From your previous videos it seemed like you were just going with “gut” feelings.
At the end of the day I’m just out to give practical advice, passing on the lessons I was taught but the only true way to know is to test and measure (you are going to get so tired of me saying that lol).
You could find out after the whole process that your visitors clicked more on the hosting and domain name ads than anything else you put up!
Marc – WelshScribe’s last blog post..5 Words Guaranteed To Lead To Freelance Writing Success
Hey Eric,
I have been watching this discussion over the last couple of days and thought I would throw in my 2 cents worth:) Recently I have just been doing more research on this word of social media and blogging and have written a few small posts on my blog http://nochiprasblogspot.blogspot.com about it too.
In my opinion, I feel if you place ads on your blogs and people enjoy reading them, then that is a way for them to show their appreciation for the content/information you provided to them (much like paying for a newspaper). If you go to someone’s blog and really enjoy what you read then I think it is kind of common courtesy to just click on an ad and know that you just paid .50 or whatever for the information which didn’t really come out of your pocket anyway.
As of right now, I have not put ads on my blog but I am considering it if I can get enough traffic to read it. When I stop by someone’s blog, I intentionally look for the ads, if I enjoy the content, and click them. If I were to find something that I would want to buy and I know a blog that has an affiliate ad where I can purchase the item, then I would make a point to buy it through that particular blog provided that its a blog I visit regularly. I only recently figured out how these ads work though, so I have not yet actually purchased an item through a blog yet.
As for the niche discussion? I think it really depends on the blog? For the most part I would agree that having those niche ads on a niche blog is a more correct way of doing it since that is the whole reason the person stopped by your blog in the first place? My current blog really does not have a niche and I tend to like blogs that discuss anything and everything that the person feels they need to discuss. I also have a genealogy blog which I have not really kept up with and really need to update and I also have an idea for another blog I want to try which would have more a niche category that I intend on doing in another month or so.
The type of affiliate ads I would most likely buy from myself though are Amazon.com or some specific department stores. Those are really the type I enjoy.
Well, that’s my 2 cents worth and thanks a lot for the discussion. It really looks like you opened up a can of worms on this one but in a good way:) Thanks, Nora
Nora’s last blog post..A Rant About Chip’s Hospital Stay!