Money Pit Or Genuine Opportunity?

[infinitehorizons]

I started my first campaign in affiliate marketing, I am signed up with CJ got a basic skeleton of a site built using wordpress, got a cheap logo, even some articles on the site.

I could spend a lot of time on this project, I am looking for help from anyone out there who is a master affiliate marketer to help me either continue on with the project or scrap it.

Right now I work as a NOC technician at a telecom. I am very familiar with cloud based telephony.

Typically it is not a good idea to share our niche but at this point I would rather put it out there and take the risk to possibly get help.

My Site is W W W .smarterbusinessphones d0t c0m

I am willing to turn this into a case study and do daily reports on progress/updates of traffic/ sales numbers etc.

Otherwise I am afraid I will scrap the project. I hired someone to do keyword research for me that wasn't familiar with this industry, and so my articles were written based on half a$$ed keyword research.

I am truly at the very beginning of this process. I think there is potential in this niche, I just don't know how to take advantage of it.

Anyone out there willing to help?

 

[iseegreen]

if it were me - I wouldnt bother with that site.

your target audience is businesses and you need a much more professional selling platform than the one you have.

 

[infinitehorizons]

THank you!

You're right....but a good designer could fix that up for me right?

If I started writing good content and found a few keywords? I know there is a lot of opportunity in cloud telephony since it is fairly "new" in the realm of most business people.

Thanks for your input iseegreen

 

[Virus1]

There is nothing terribly wrong with your site...that could not be fixed..
but it does sound like you are somewhat confused...

You need to have a strategy on how you are going to do
this affiliate marketing....

and no disrespect... but I think you are just clueless....

 

[infinitehorizons]

LOL

Affirmative Virus

Nah I am not retarded. I got a lot of knowledge floating around up there, it is just so completely disorganized that I haven't been able to direct it towards making me money yet.

So what's a viable strategy here with what I am working with? Don't need a step by step, I am a great researcher, I just need some general direction, I can go hunting around the forums for answers from there.

Once again thanks--no hard feelings can't learn if we don't know we don't know anything

 

[fxzombie]

Try email scraping to get directly in touch with the businesses. I don't know a lot about it, but vie seen it around. This is a full time project to take, and needs some work. I think it was a good idea looking for help on here though Youre definitely in the right place!

 

[efwebs]

If you are outsourcing everything, you might be throwing a lot of money at something, and not learning much for it. If your site is a flop, you won't have anything to show for it.

If you spend more of your own time on things like keyword research, you might get more out of the process. Especially for something like that, there are a million and one guides (like the first chapter in every ecourse ever) that can help you do it yourself.

I personally don't trust outsourcing until I know how to do it myself (unless it's really technical and not worth the time to learn for how often I'll need it)

But time is of course a bigger issue for some people, and taking action with outsourcing is better than taking no action at all.

 

[infinitehorizons]

Thanks ef you are so right about that.

Maybe I'll just use this site to practice the skills I learn here. I love learning this stuff.

I have a CL project going that is becoming profitable, I like the process of outsourcing and managing people to work towards a goal, but it's like Virus said--if I haven't got a clue what my goal is then I am not going to be able to hit it.

I need to learn the basics on my own anyway, and I favorited someone's keyword research post freaking amazing post--by one of the heavy hitters, I will just practice in the meantime.

At first when I started the site it was about monetizing it, maybe that is the wrong goal since I don't have a strong foundation to be able to monetize on.

If that is the case, rebuilding the foundation from the ground up is where I should focus.

So I redesign the site and do keyword research (myself) and work to t oget 2-3 keywords to rank using free methods like writing my own content and submitting my own articles?

Very vague plan I got there....what do you guys think?

 

[Virus1]

I did not say you were a retard..

I just meant you have no direction on how to monetize your site.

Just putting a banner there is not going to cut it when it comes to sales.

To sell stuff like that you can do it a ton of ways ...

1) make your site a review site... and rate several
service providers... and of course the top 3
you will have an affiliate relationship with..

2) make your site look and feel like you ARE
part of RINGCENTRAL... and you can take their order
right there.... starting with a subdomain like this
RingCentral.smarterbusinessphones.com

and write sharp titled articles like:

5 Ways to Save Money when purchasing VOip
7 Dangers of VOip
VOip: The reason Bin Laden got killed?? Decide for yourself.

well you get the idea .....


Good Luck...

 

[infinitehorizons]

I did not say you were a retard..

I just meant you have no direction on how to monetize your site.

Just putting a banner there is not going to cut it when it comes to sales.

To sell stuff like that you can do it a ton of ways ...

1) make your site a review site... and rate several
service providers... and of course the top 3
you will have an affiliate relationship with..

2) make your site look and feel like you ARE
part of RINGCENTRAL... and you can take their order
right there.... starting with a subdomain like this
RingCentral.smarterbusinessphones.com

and write sharp titled articles like:

5 Ways to Save Money when purchasing VOip
7 Dangers of VOip
VOip: The reason Bin Laden got killed?? Decide for yourself.

well you get the idea .....


Good Luck...

OK hypothetical let's say I pursue one of those options.. If I write unique articles and picked one of those monetization methods and got my site redesigned to be condusive to the sales process rather than a raggedy half dreamt of plan...will it convert...

That is the million dollar question that leads me back to the first one--at the end of the day is this going to be a money pit or is it a great opportunity that I just need to approach more intelligently....

If I do my keyword research can I answer this question for myself? Or do you think there is more research to find out if this is even worth pursuing in the end if I actually want to make money at some point?

 

[Sacrilege]

Here's 2 pieces of advice that a lot of people learn the hard way:

1. In the future, make keyword research the very first thing you do when considering a niche. There could be no one searching for your niche or there could be too much competition for your niche. You won't know until you research your keywords and their competitiveness. This will also help you in other areas such as selecting a domain name.

2. If you're uncertain about profitability, don't drop money on redesigns and stuff like that. You said that you have knowledge of this particular niche, so do the stuff yourself, see if you can find an angle to make some profit, then reinvest the money you make back into the project if you think it will pay off.