Affiliate Marketing for beginners (Me)...

I have no experience of affiliate marketing whatsover, but I'm constructing a new website purely for affiliate purposes. I'm going to throw myself into it and see what happens. I'll post the details of this site on here once it's done.

Thin Affiliates
I've researched various areas on affiliate marketing and it would seem that site quality is very important. I've heard people talk of cutting commission paid to low quality affiliate sites that add no value to the users journey. As well as this, the 2005 Google report on "Thin Affiliates" made it clear that Google doesn't want poor affiliate sites clogging up their SERPs (A common strategy with affiliate websites).

This increasing pressure to design well laid out and good quality affiliate sites will put a lot of less skilled affiliates out of business. I'm not too hot on the whole affiliate business myself, but I won't have any trouble coming up with a high quality website with good usable SEO'd content.

I don't think this is bad news for affiliates at all, it just improves the overall quality of sites and actually adds value, rather than adding spam! The same goes for dodgy Adsense sites, this is a great way to earn commission and Google does all the hard work. All you need is a website with great content (an area you are interested about always helps). There is always room for a great website with a unique content offering, whether you are a life coach, a managing director or an addictive games designer, people will always be interested in specialist areas.

Content is King!
I think this is an important point when you set out to design an affiliate website because there are so many affiliate programs, you will always be able to find one suitable for your content. I would focus on developing great content on a subject you are experienced and knowledgeable on. Then find an affiliate program to suit it. If you can't find suitable programs on Commission Junction and Affiliate Future etc, you can always use Adsense, I think it's content sensitive targeted adverts are fantastic and you can filter out competing sites.

Affiliate marketing: The Basics
From what I've read so far, Affiliate marketing requires good web design, good SEO and great content with some functionality to help engage users. I have a suitable background to develop websites in this way, I just need to find my niche!

Post links to any great affiliate sites and I'll take a look at them!

Case Studies
My next post will be the start of a series of case studies. I will be investigating the online marketing of current company websites and analysing their effectiveness and how they could improve, so add my RSS feed so you don't miss out on this free content!