Newbie Question about Self-improvement Niche in Affiliate Marketing

[ikelove]

I'm a newbie to Warrior Forum and online affiliate marketing, and I had a couple of questions. I've done a little research so far so I have a basic knowledge. I'm now at the stage where I've written down five products I'd like to promote from Clickbank and trying to choose one from them.

Self improvement is my passion. I've done presentations on it (in front of small crowds) and I've written some newsletters about it that I send to some friends. However, I'm assuming that self-improvement is one of the three areas that was advised by other affiliate marketers not to go into in terms of affiliate marketing because of the competition. Is that true? I saw this product on Clickbank about a confidence building system that I was interested in promoting. Do you think it'd be possible to make money with it? I've decided to start with SEO, and I read that one of the best ways to rank high is through writing articles. I figure that since I'm into self-improvement, it'd be easy for me to write and submit articles online, as opposed to some other subject like dog-training, a subject that I know little about and have no interest in.

Also, if I chose to market it, do you advise I buy the product first so I can experience it firsthand?

I appreciate your help.

[bobcath]

Go for it! The fact that there's lots of competition also means there's a market of buyers too.

If its your passion you will have no problem writing articles. You should probably pick a niche within the niche, the 'self improvement niche' on its own is too broad.

I personally find its good to have the product, that way I feel better when promoting it. Others may think differently.

Good luck
Bobby

[Alexa Smith]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

Originally Posted by ikelove

Self improvement is my passion. I've done presentations on it (in front of small crowds) and I've written some newsletters about it that I send to some friends.

You'll be a natural for writing about it in articles and on web sites, then.

Originally Posted by ikelove

However, I'm assuming that self-improvement is one of the three areas that was advised by other affiliate marketers not to go into in terms of affiliate marketing because of the competition. Is that true?

I wouldn't have thought so, I must say. I can think of many niches I'd put higher on the list of "avoid because of heavy competition from experts" principles, and I'm not sure, in your case, it should put you off even if it's true, anyway?

Good luck!

[Orator]

Nowadays self-impoverishment is a pretty big field, but that shouldn't scare you away from it. I suggest you focus on a particular facet of self-improvement though, the more detailed you can get the better.

IE

"Improving Social Skills For Geeks.." that's just an example. The key is finding a targeted group that you can appeal to.

[Catalyst eMarketing]

I agree, self improvement isn't one of the top most saturated/competitive niches. Also agree to focus on some long tail keywords or a sub niche to start.

If you want to branch out beyond eBooks on Clickbank or if it turns out that product is not very good... may want to look at other self improvement affiliate programs.

Nightingale Conant, for example, has an affiliate program and carries all types of top rated self improvement books and tapes from top authors and motivators. (I don't know anything about their affiliate program so not recommending just suggesting there are other options too.)

[ikelove]

First of all, I would like to thank everyone who responded to this for your help. This helps to steer me in the right direction.

Originally Posted by Orator

Nowadays self-impoverishment is a pretty big field, but that shouldn't scare you away from it. I suggest you focus on a particular facet of self-improvement though, the more detailed you can get the better.

IE

"Improving Social Skills For Geeks.." that's just an example. The key is finding a targeted group that you can appeal to.

Thanks Orator. My next newbie question (to which I think I already know the answer to) is: When you focus on a sub-niche, is that when you take a "broad" product and market it to a sub-niche? For instance, I can take a product about self-confidence from one of these affiliate programs and choose a sub-niche to cater it to?

Originally Posted by 5starAffiliatePrograms

If you want to branch out beyond eBooks on Clickbank or if it turns out that product is not very good... may want to look at other self improvement affiliate programs.

Nightingale Conant for example, has an affiliate program and carries all types of top rated self improvement books and tapes from top authors and motivators. (I don't know anything about their affiliate program so not recommending just suggesting there are other options too.)

Thanks a lot. I guess I'll post and ask if anyone has dealt with them before.

[Catalyst eMarketing]

You are very welcome!

Originally Posted by ikelove

My next newbie question (to which I think I already know the answer to) is: When you focus on a sub-niche, is that when you take a "broad" product and market it to a sub-niche? For instance, I can take a product about self-confidence from one of these affiliate programs and choose a sub-niche to cater it to?

A sub-niche can either be a smaller more focused subset of the main niche or it can be marketing to a certain demographic.

So self improvement is the broad niche and self confidence is a sub-niche. But then you could go deeper and focus on self confidence for women, which would be a sub-niche of a sub-niche. (I guess)

[nobodyreal]

I've found that IMers(most of whom do not make much money) have a unique, overly optimistic attitude. The self improvement niche is already saturated. If you think you can build the regular readers necessary to bring in a good income(35k+) because you love self improvement, that's fine and I won't say you can't, but remember who you will be competing against: the bloggers over at Zen Habits, Scott Adam's from Dilbert, the self help articles featured at LewRockwell and an almost limitless source of self help articles on Ezine. Not to mention Tim Ferriss and the hundreds of bloggers who read his blog, and then respond with their full names in hope of stealing some of his traffic, haha.

It's just a big show man, all of these hundreds of thousands of people trying to build traffic driven websites because they have heard some stories of some people earning great income at this. I cannot think of a more difficult way to invest my time, except for maybe trying to be an olympic gymnast.

Just take a look at what some of this involves.

The avg. reader only wants to check 8-12 websites regularly. So when you are building a website that is going to be powered by traffic, you have to appeal to the reader more than the other 8-12 blogs or sites he/she normally reads, and as anyone will tell you, to truly make above 35k on a traffic driven, free information site, you NEED regular readers. They are extremely difficult to get.

It also will involve CONSTANT writing and brainstorming(or if you're like 90 percent of IMers who are trying this out, rewriting other peoples content). All of the successful websites(with the exception of those who can fall back on their reputation like Tim Ferriss) have a constant stream of information being put out, LewRockwell, Dilbert blog, etc.

That is hard! It's one of the most gruesome processes in the world. One famous writer was asked if writing was easy and he said "sure, I just sit and look at a piece of paper until drops of blood form on my head".

I just think the effort you put into this niche you could also put into a more fresh niche. By watching the news and staying steeped in the culture around you, I think you should be able to find some.

Remember that it's not get rich on IM or bust, it's get rich or bust. There are plenty of valid options out there. I run an SEO company and I hangout here because there are some extremely IT mechanics/IT marketing savvy people here, and I can say I went to get into IM two years ago when it was a lot easier to get in and succeed, and it helped me acquiring a mindset that has made me aware of other business opportunities, both in real life and through the internet. But seriously, do a 'market analysis' on your niche(and on what you're trying to do in general) and I think you'll be discouraged.

I mean there are good things about IM that appeal to me, ie no cost of production and so no need for venture capital, but with the nature of the Google search engine, you're always going to have a very steep payment pyramid when it comes to IM. Only a few sites can show up for the competitive searches that bring the traffic.

Also, you guys should consider yourself immoral for falsely misleading him in order to bolster your own confidence that by pluck he could turn this into a successful enterprise. What a joke.

- Nobodyreal

EDIT : A good indicator for the health of the IM community, and one that may help in your market analysis, is to look at this forum and to see at how many people have resorted to using this forum to build their own blog/information driven site. IE, they started out to go into IM, and now their form of IM is selling shovels to the gold diggers. It's a joy.

[bobcath]

Originally Posted by nobodyreal

Also, you guys should consider yourself immoral for falsely misleading him in order to bolster your own confidence that by pluck he could turn this into a successful enterprise. What a joke.

Shame to take such a defeatest attitude about who's misleading who and who is immoral.

Let me give you a more positive example. I'm in approx 12 niches, one is self improvement. I have 2 sites on page 1 of google for their respective keywords (and I'm not a big gun)

So, no one was misleading the OP, just giving their opinion borne of experience.

Bobby

[WritingMadwoman]

I won't outright agree or disagree with others who have responded to your questions because we're all different so get different results. I'll just share my own experiences with this niche - it's my best performing niche so far (though another fav of mine is steadily gaining! ).

I've been in the self improvement niche since 2000 and for the first few years had no clue what I was doing, poorly monetized the site, didn't know squat about keywords or SEO, and still managed to grow quite a decent following for that site.

With some others that I've started more recently (past 2 years or so) they have become successful much faster than that one did because I knew a lot more about what I was doing and did it in a more focused way.

Personally, I think the self improvement niche is only oversaturated if you are regurgitating what everyone else has already done or is still doing. If you find a way to put a unique spin on it however, you can become pretty successful pretty quickly.

You'll still have to work hard and create really good content, do lots of article marketing or other methods you choose, but in my experience it really doesn't take that long to capture people's attention if you know what you're talking about and have some good tips to share. Make your content as interesting and inspiring as possible and people will want to read it.

You can promote other people's products, but find a way to make those promotions unique too. Don't just slap the link on your site or write generic articles on the same topics that have been covered by thousands of other people. Buy the product, check it out from top to bottom, and then make a long list of ways that you would improve upon it. Then create some top quality bonuses from the information on that list and promote THOSE in your marketing efforts. Give away a really good free report when people sign up to your list, send them really REALLY good content. Once you have gained their trust, recommend that course and tell them about the bonuses they will get if they order through your link.

Hopefully I'm not throwing too much information at you here - it's not hard to do all this, just overwhelming if you're still fairly new. Take your time, don't try to do it all in one day, there is a learning curve.

No matter which niche you enter, remember that your target market is seeking information/solutions/encouragement/inspiration, etc. If you can give them some of that, they will keep coming back for more no matter how many others are doing something in the same niche - no one can do it exactly like you do!

Hope that helps,

Wendy

[Catalyst eMarketing]

Originally Posted by nobodyreal

Also, you guys should consider yourself immoral for falsely misleading him in order to bolster your own confidence that by pluck he could turn this into a successful enterprise. What a joke.

I'm not sure how positive and supportive replies got construed as immoral and misleading.

[billaaa777]

Go for it, the only way to find out anything is by trying. What's the worst that can happen, you fail and start over. As long as you keep starting over you will find a winner sooner or later, hopefully!

[ikelove]

Originally Posted by bobcath

Shame to take such a defeatest attitude about who's misleading who and who is immoral.

Let me give you a more positive example. I'm in approx 12 niches, one is self improvement. I have 2 sites on page 1 of google for their respective keywords (and I'm not a big gun)

So, no one was misleading the OP, just giving their opinion borne of experience.

Bobby

Bobby,
Thanks for the positive feedback and at least giving me some hope. Not to down the other guy who gave more pessimistic feedback, I put more weight on your opinion because you've actually have experience from this niche and have made money from it. Just so I know which direction to go, in these two sites you have in self-improvement, are they affiliate sites or are they sites that are promoting your own product?

Originally Posted by WritingMadwoman

Hopefully I'm not throwing too much information at you here - it's not hard to do all this, just overwhelming if you're still fairly new. Take your time, don't try to do it all in one day, there is a learning curve.

No matter which niche you enter, remember that your target market is seeking information/solutions/encouragement/inspiration, etc. If you can give them some of that, they will keep coming back for more no matter how many others are doing something in the same niche - no one can do it exactly like you do!

Hope that helps,

Wendy

Wendy,

Much thanks for your positivity and encouragement. And yes, it's too late, because you've already overwhelmed me! lol..

It's funny, someone on a totally unrelated message board introduced me to the whole affiliate marketing industry. He wrote a free e-book that has given me a very basic understanding of affiliate marketing in terms of SEO, keywords, Clickbank, etc. He had me look up Clickbank and find 5 products I'm interested in that I'd like to promote and then narrow them down. I figured that after I found the product I'd put up a landing page featuring that product and then worked on SEO for the page so that I could drive traffic to the page. Is that way effective to make money?

After doing some more research, I thought of my own inspirational concept that I created some years back that I had given a few presentations about, and written periodic e-letters about. I don't have a website or anything up about it, and talking to you is making me think about putting up my own website where I blog about this concept and write articles. Is that a more effective way (albeit much slower way) to promote products? I've kind of shied away from doing that because I didn't feel I was ready to talk about self-improvement on my own yet.

Also, are you familiar with Nightingale Conant as an affiliate marketer? If so, how good are they?

[bobcath]

One is my own product and the other is my own site that promotes 2 affiliate products. I make most money from the affiliate promotion site, probably because I forward on to a better sales page than I have!

Regards
Bobby

Originally Posted by ikelove

Bobby,
Thanks for the positive feedback and at least giving me some hope. Not to down the other guy who gave more pessimistic feedback, I put more weight on your opinion because you've actually have experience from this niche and have made money from it. Just so I know which direction to go, in these two sites you have in self-improvement, are they affiliate sites or are they sites that are promoting your own product?