Wrong Niche Selection or Wrong Affiliate Program?

Sometimes you have to adapt your strategies according to your visitors likes and dislikes. In one my many niche sites I made quite a few mistakes setting it up. I will address each of these in a minute.

• I chose a market instead of a niche
• I didn’t pay attention and use any keyword research in my posts
• I didn’t pay attention to what my traffic was telling me
• I stuck with the same affiliate program even though it wasn’t converting

Market vs. Niche

A lot of Internet marketers make the mistake of choosing a market to promote instead of a niche. What’s the difference you may ask? A lot!

The easiest way to explain this is too use Golf as an example. Golf is a market not a niche. Now, some of you may say Golf is a niche in the Sports market or the Outdoor Sports market, but sorry I think you are wrong. It is still too broad of a market to try to target with a niche blog. Unless you have a lot of patience and a lot of time on your hands.

Bare with me for a minute. Let’s break it down. Golf is a market, golf clubs or golf balls, golf carts or even golf courses are niches, while Spalding^® golf balls or TaylorMade^® golf clubs are micro-niches.

If some one is looking for Spalding^® golf balls chances are they are looking to buy golf balls and not looking or free information on golf balls. While someone searching for just golf could very well just be researching and not ready to buy.

In every Market there are sections that just don’t sell or only attract visitors and aren’t looking to buy, they just want information.

Keyword Research

Keyword choice can make or break you, quite literally. Choose the wrong keywords or not pay attention and just posting on any and everything in your market and your blog becomes an information center only and not a money generator.

I didn’t pay attention and just posted willy nilly about my “market” and before you know it, all my visitors were after was information and not interested in any adsense ads, banner ads or even text ads. I did manage to turn this around a little and started to show at least a little income flowing in, by paying closer attention to what keywords I chose.

Traffic Demographics and Search Terms

The keywords your visitors found you with can tell you a lot and having accurate statistics can be a marketers best friend. If you have no idea what keywords your visitors used to find, then you have no idea what they are looking for.

My search terms told me that everyone just wanted free information, yet I was stubborn and didn’t adjust for quite awhile, thinking well I can turn them on and get them excited about this or that, but nope, no dice. It was futile to even try and I was ready to give up.

I was ranked very good in Google and held a lot of number one, two and three spots for a lot of different phrases, but all “free” related. I had to adjust something, but what?

Adjust Your Affiliate Program To Match

I finally sat down and LOOKED with an open mind on what was happening. I was simple promoting the wrong things to the wrong people. Duh!!!

In almost every market there is a section of people are only looking for free stuff or free information. The good news is that there is a way to tap into that and profit from it.

I did a lot of research and discovered there were a few things my visitors were interested in, I simply adjusted my marketing and switched affiliate programs to cater to what they were actually interested in and not what I felt they should be interested in. CPA advertising is great for this and can really turn your dead income around, provided you can find the right match to your traffic.

I guess the biggest take away I can give you from this, is to listen and look at what your traffic is telling you and then find a way to adjust to their needs. By doing so, I was able to turn the blog around and make more money in one month than it did for the past two years combined.