Every now and then I type a forum post that even *I* think might be kinda good and might help more out if more people got to read it.

Today, a new member asked what the Big Picture of all this affiliate marketing stuff is - what process should be in our mind when starting out?

In other words...

What's The Plan?

Here is the original question -

"hi fellow WAers,

I am a relative newbie at IM, but I have read all of the training manuals, and my very first campain is making $5/day profit. =) But I struggling to understand:

For those of you who are doing really well (say, $3000/mo.), what is a broad overview of your total initiatives. For example, perhaps someone is running a few PPC campaings in 3-4 different niches, and after that focused on article/marketing _ SEO, and forum markets by posting reguarly. <-- it's the scope, big picture that I don't understand yet.

thanks so much,
daniel"

 

Here is my response to that question:

That's a great question!

For me, it goes like this:

1. "Test" a market/product using free techniques (ie, article marketing, Squidoo, etc) - This means making some sort of landing page to send article marketing traffic to and then writing articles to get traffic there.

If that goes well....

2. Make my own niche site targeting that market - This means buying a domain name and setting up a small website (usually with WordPress) to complement the free campaign I already have going.

If that goes well...

3. Get an auto-responder account and start building a list - Having a list in your market can be really, really good. There is usually very little time between making my site and beginning the list building process.

If that goes well....

4. Start a PPC campaign for that market/product - If all goes well, and I am making money organically (ie, for free) with this, then I start a PPC campaign to totally amp up my traffic and get top Google exposure for the "tough words".

Rinse... Repeat =)

I am a "free"/organic marketer meaning I HATE paying for traffic. I also started out broke as can be so I had very little in invest into all this - I had to learn to do it for free.

Most of my profitable niches will make it to step 3 - but not all have made it to step 4 (yet).

In the beginning of my time doing all this internet marketing stuff, I made a lot of Step 1 test campaigns. As time went by, I got to gather good stats and feedback and then started picking the ones I wanted to grow to Step 2, Step 3 and beyond.

The big picture really is to get started and then KEEP doing it so your efforts compound.

For those of you that have read my One Week Marketing, this won't be a newsflash for you - BUT, for someone brand new and wondering how it all fits together, it just might help.

That thread is here:

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/wa_forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=66029

 And thank you to Daniel ( WA Member: dakishimesan ) for the question!