Have you ever made an unconventional affiliate site?

What I mean by that is, have you ever made an affiliate site that wasn't a blog, review site or coupon site? I'm not asking what kind of site it is/was, just if you've ever done it and was it successful? I ask because I haven't had much luck with my blog and I stink at reviewing things. But I figured that the end result is to have people click on your links and buy stuff, right? In that case I may have some unconventional ideas on how to do that.

Here are some ideas from affiliates, who have thought outside the box and added a touch of originality to their content.
1) Video guides - not just random articles that can be re-written from numerous similar websites, but video guides - a lot of them
2) Industry interviews
While conversions and retention are the bread and butter of affiliate marketing, webmasters should not overlook indirect goals. If you're looking to vary your backlink profile and rank for non-money queries, interviews with industry authorities can prove extremely valuable.
3) Sell your own free games or donate old clothes
Why should affiliate shops get to have all the fun? Obviously, you won't be hosting real-money games on an affiliate website. However, free games can be excellent on-site assets for drumming up social buzz, acquiring links and improving retention. Donating second-hand clothes can do the same trick.

Not so unconventional, but here are some ideas: price comparison websites, best deals aggregators, store-fronts, video reviews on youtube

Look, any site can be an affiliate site. All that means is that you sell someone else's product on your site. For example, I have an adsense site in the tech field that also sells a registry cleaner and other tech products thru a company called mycommerce. Technically it is an adsense/affiliate site.

In fact the best site you can build is this type of site that blends in reader valuable content with complementary product affiliate sales. The difference is that the site does not exist to promote the product, the site promotes the content, and the product complements the site content.

I had a site a while back that just indexed thousands of pages on Google for every city in the US. Each page had spun content about moving truck rentals for that city. It earned a few hundred dollars a month in Budget truck rental commission. Eventually it fell off of Google.

Techxan said:

Look, any site can be an affiliate site. All that means is that you sell someone else's product on your site. For example, I have an adsense site in the tech field that also sells a registry cleaner and other tech products thru a company called mycommerce. Technically it is an adsense/affiliate site.

In fact the best site you can build is this type of site that blends in reader valuable content with complementary product affiliate sales. The difference is that the site does not exist to promote the product, the site promotes the content, and the product complements the site content.

Click to expand...

And therein lies the "secret"...finding a topic (keyword research) that has a nice (profitable) set of complementary products/advertising to sell. The content, which can come in many forms, but has to be useful to the audience to attract enough readers (the volume of which can be estimated based on keyword research).

As for types of content, some interesting suggestions made here. I wouldn't say they all are unconventional, but it seems like one could use some of them in different combinations to work their way into a niche. Nice.

Avid Learner said:

And therein lies the "secret"...finding a topic (keyword research) that has a nice (profitable) set of complementary products/advertising to sell. The content, which can come in many forms, but has to be useful to the audience to attract enough readers (the volume of which can be estimated based on keyword research).

As for types of content, some interesting suggestions made here. I wouldn't say they all are unconventional, but it seems like one could use some of them in different combinations to work their way into a niche. Nice.

Click to expand...

To me this is the simplest thing in the world. Everyone knows how to do something, and someone else wants to know how to do that something.

Write about how to do whatever you know how to do, and put it on a web site and throw adsense on it, and you have your first site. Good, Bad or otherwise you are officially taking action, and you might even surprise yourself and make some money.

More importantly, your education has begun.

How long have ya'll been reading about IM and not yet done anything?

Seriously, I know a guy who has held up taking his site live for 2 months because he can't find a theme he likes.

Get a move on already.

Techxan said:

Seriously, I know a guy who has held up taking his site live for 2 months because he can't find a theme he likes.

Get a move on already.

Click to expand...

Not sure you are addressing me directly, or just noobs generally. Anyway, thanks for responding.

Two months for a theme sounds like lack of commitment. That should be a trivial issue in the whole scheme of things.

Avid Learner said:

Not sure you are addressing me directly, or just noobs generally. Anyway, thanks for responding.

Two months for a theme sounds like lack of commitment. That should be a trivial issue in the whole scheme of things.

Click to expand...

Not directing anything to you. I am just saying a lot of people spend way to much time thinking and not doing.

You can learn to review things, no one was born knowing how to walk, but we all learned along the way.

But nevertheless, you can make money with "unconventional" sites, just make sure you build a massive helpful resource for the people coming to your site.