

Has anyone on Hacker News made any money with affiliate marketing? - joafeat123

I am interested in affiliate marketing, and was wondering if anyone on this site has made any money posting affiliate links on their websites.
If so, how did you do it, and how much money have you made?
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patio11
a) Some folks on HN have made a lot of money with affiliate marketing.

b) Rather than asking people "Hey, please identify a niche in which I could
very profitably compete with you. kthxbye" you'd probably get a better
response with something like "Hiya guys, I'm interested in getting into
affiliate marketing. I currently have this source of traffic: [fill in blank]
and/or this asset which could be marketed by affiliates: [fill in blank]. I
have investigated these approaches: [fill in blank, fill in blank, fill in
blank]. I am currently leaning towards [fill in blank] but would appreciate
your thoughts. Given that some of you are experienced with affiliate
marketing, my vertical, and the like, what would you suggest that I do?"

P.S. If your answers are "I have this source of traffic: nothing, I have this
asset: nothing, and I have investigated these approaches: read a few blogs by
affiliates attempting to sell me their info products" you may wish to hold off
a bit. It's not a magic money tree.

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joafeat123
Thanks for your response Patrick, I guess I could have worded that better! I
understand it's not a magic money tree, and I understand it will take real
work. It's just that I just wanted to read some stories of how people got
successful with affiliate marketing. But I guess that does sound like I am
trying to copy other people's ideas. The only asset I have is a real in depth
knowledge about this thing I have been doing since I was in middle school, and
a lot of experience in copywriting. I want to combine these two skills
together to make a blog that hopefully I can get a lot of traffic, and maybe
monetize.

Oh, and my traffic: none, and approaches: getting some ideas now, from hacker
news.

~~~
patio11
_real in depth knowledge about this thing I have been doing since I was in
middle school_

Well, that gets us somewhere. Here's some questions you could ask to see if
this likely has viable affiliate options. Let's call it "trout fishing" for
the sake of the example. "Yes" answers are good for your prospects, "No"
answers are bad.

1) Is trout fishing a commercial activity?

2) Do people spend a lot of money on trout fishing?

3) Are there brands available in trout fishing? Ideally, are there multiple
competing brands?

4) Think of an economic activity associated with trout fishing. Does that
economic activity have high margins associated with it? (Is there at least one
activity which does?)

5) Are people really interested in learning how to trout fish better? Are they
so interested they would pay cash money for the option? Do people do that
currently? For example, are there magazines about trout fishing? Books about
trout fishing? University courses about trout fishing? Conferences you could
go to about trout fishing?

6) Think of the people who trout fish. Do they spend time online at all? The
best answer here is "They know how to use Google but don't live online."

7) Is trout fishing a screamingly obvious affiliate market such that it is
overfished, to pardon the pun, by every person who has ever bought some
sleezebag's Totally Guaranteed System For Making Money Online? (Ideal answers
here are "No." or a "No but it shares some characteristics with those.")

8) Are the people who trout fish either a) spending other people's money,
because they have corporate budgets to fish trout b) spending other people's
money, because the government heavily subsidizes fishing trout c) spending
their future self's money, because trout fishing structurally does not require
you to commit money right now, it only costs you money in the future or d)
upper middle class or wealthier than that? All of these things suggest low
aversion to paying money for trout fishing, which is magic to the affiliates'
ears.

9) Does trout fishing generate a lot of transactional revenue online
specifically, as opposed to requiring substantial offline components?

10) Is there an active lead gen market for trout fishing? For example, could I
call up a business affiliated with trout fishing today and say "I have ten
people who expressed interest in trout fishing in the last 2 hours. Is that
worth cash money to you?" and have them scream "YES!" and immediately have a
number ready for me when I say "How much?"

11) Is trout fishing a really wide field of human endeavor, such that there
are many, many variations on a particular need someone could have in the trout
fishing space?

12) Is trout fishing a really deep field of human endeavor, such that if you
told me "Patrick, a site about trout fishing made me a bajillion dollars" I
couldn't reproduce it even if I wanted to, despite being a smart cookie with
access to Google, capital, and processes designed to make copying successful
affiliate sites easy?

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tjoozeylabs
Check out affbuzz.com and wickedfire.com if your new to affiliate marketing.

