First time doing an affiliate site

[TheCake]

Hello everyone,

This is my first journey doing an affiliate site.
The niche I have chosen is "gaming hardware" because it's my hobby and because I have found some nice medium tail keywords with around 2-4k researches per month and low-medium competitivity.
I'm reading everything I can about SEO and on-page optimization.

I started with no investment (not including domain + host) but I'm ready to invest if it is necessary.

This is my first time doing an affiliate site, I'm a complete newbie so any tips are welcome.

Done so far:
- Got a domain and a hoster, the site is already online.

 

[MisterF]

It's always easier to write about a hobby / interest I find.

Shame my hobbies tend to be porn, booze and drugs

Seriously though, good luck and have fun doing it.

 

[nichexposure]

Agreed with @MisterF . Its really fun and easy to work with that topic where my interest lies. All the best for your new site. Also you can share you journey along with us.

 

[LoftPower]

Good luck. I will be following along to see how you do!

 

[TheCake]

Done today so far :
- Finished the creation of the two articles (small article with around 700 words each) that I started yesterday + some edits to improve the on-page SEO.
- Installed some plugins which fixed some speed problems (img compression, minification, etc...)
- Done some research about the competition, especially the one ranking at number 1 for the keywords I am targeting. The number one is ranking with some pretty bad on-page optimization. Also, he isn't targeting directly the keywords that are giving him the most traffic, which is weird. He has 1-2% forum follow links, the rest is nofollow links from social media.
- Created a facebook account + a simple page about my website.
- Submitted my XML sitemap to google and bing.

One page of my site got indexed by Google this morning, nothing special. Still no traffic but that's normal for a site created yesterday.

I still have to create/buy a logo, create some more articles and study SEO...

 

[bartosimpsonio]

I saw your introduction the other day and you said you'd do a journey. You held true to your words

Good luck on your journey mate. With this post, I've now subscribed. If I have anything to contribute, I'll post here. Go for it.

 

[Massacre]

Good luck!

Im going to start on this too soon. Just in the process of ordering the artices.

 

[BulletServers]

Great going, dont forget to capture leads of the people that visit your website.
Later you can sell them somethng and be in touch via emails so you get recurring readers

 

[TheCake]

I saw your introduction the other day and you said you'd do a journey. You held true to your words

Good luck on your journey mate. With this post, I've now subscribed. If I have anything to contribute, I'll post here. Go for it.

Thanks, I am trying my best, so any type of contribution is really welcomed.

Good luck!

Im going to start on this too soon. Just in the process of ordering the artices.

I was thinking about doing the same since English isn't my native language and I am not a "big writer". Fortunately, I found some interesting keywords in my hobby with a decent traffic so I going to write the articles myself.

Great going, dont forget to capture leads of the people that visit your website.
Later you can sell them somethng and be in touch via emails so you get recurring readers

Yes, I'll definitely try to capture the mails of my interested readers. I'm planning to do this later, since I have lots of things to do first.

Thanks for the tip.

 

[Massacre]

I was thinking about doing the same since English isn't my native language and I am not a "big writer". Fortunately, I found some interesting keywords in my hobby with a decent traffic so I going to write the articles myself.

I am not a native English speaker either, but, have a decent experience in copywriting. However, I'd prefer to have one main pillar article written by the experienced copywriter.
Rest of the pages, I decided, I will fill with content up myself - reviews about different products, content oriented on long tail keywords, etc.

As one good advice, what helps is reviewing other similar websites and their content. In what way they write, what is the structure of the buying guide / product review content, etc. But pick the good authority websites.

 

[stuna]

start a blog for your site

 

[TheCake]

I am not a native English speaker either, but, have a decent experience in copywriting. However, I'd prefer to have one main pillar article written by the experienced copywriter.
Rest of the pages, I decided, I will fill with content up myself - reviews about different products, content oriented on long tail keywords, etc.

As one good advice, what helps is reviewing other similar websites and their content. In what way they write, what is the structure of the buying guide / product review content, etc. But pick the good authority websites.

I like your idea.

start a blog for your site

You mean build Web 2.0s to use as "pumper sites"?

 

[Prototype40]

That's a good niche, since there are many passionate people willing to spend $$$ to get the best hardware, plus you are interested in it!
I bet this will be a good journey

 

[TheCake]

I haven't done much today, I was too busy with online stuff.

Done yesterday / today :
- Created a new article for the affiliate site and done some more on-page optimization.
- Created 1 Tumblr Blog and posted an article.

The site is being indexed normally, still no traffic.
I'm going to build every day one web 2.0, create an article and let them age to use as my tier 1 links. Initially, I wanted to scrap for high authority expired Tumblr blogs but I can't do this without investing.

 

[710fla]

Re-register expired web 2.0s and use them for your tier 1.

Just yesterday I found TF 15 webs.com account with 8 referring domains that I successfully re-registered.

 

[TheCake]

Re-register expired web 2.0s and use them for your tier 1.

Just yesterday I found TF 15 webs.com account with 8 referring domains that I successfully re-registered.

I just edited my post. I initially wanted to do this

 

[710fla]

I just edited my post. I initially wanted to do this

The cheapest option to get your site going is to find an expired domain with good metrics that's related to your niche and 301 redirect it to your main site. You can find them on this forum for less than $10 and another couple bucks to register the domain for a year. You don't even need to pay for hosting.

 

[TheCake]

The cheapest option to get your site going is to find an expired domain with good metrics that's related to your niche and 301 redirect it to your main site. You can find them on this forum for less than $10 and another couple bucks to register the domain for a year. You don't even need to pay for hosting.

Thanks, I didn't know about this. Do you know long does it take to transfer the authority of the 301 to the main site?

 

[710fla]

Thanks, I didn't know about this. Do you know long does it take to transfer the authority of the 301 to the main site?

2-3 weeks to really stabilize, you'll see your ranking dance for a bit. It could take up to a month since rankings take a bit to show since the latest update.

 

[TheCake]

Done yesterday :
- Done some keyword research to use in my next article.
- Searched for a high authority expired domain related to my niche. Looks like computer hardware expired domains are quite rare...

I'm currently creating another article. Using SEMrush I found out that my site is currently at position 46 to a low volume 3 word keyword.