(And Why You Shouldn’t Be Either…)
Affiliate marketing is a business model whereby you promote products & services in return for a commission on each sale. You can promote products/services in many ways, such as blogs, social media, video, and email marketing…
One of the biggest fears of people looking to get into Affiliate Marketing is competition – there are millions of affiliate marketers in the world, and many of them are promoting the same exact product or service that you’re considering. This leads to being afraid that you can’t compete with long established affiliate marketers – but let me tell you why that’s a baseless fear:
The Ocean Is Vast.
The ocean is a good way to think about the Internet – it’s vastly bigger than you can imagine… I recall flying to Japan a few times when I was in the Marine Corps – and despite the plane flying far faster than you drive on the freeway – it was about a 14 hour flight. Fish don’t worry that there’s too many other fish… there’s room for all. One source puts the number of websites in the world at 1.88 billion, but estimates that only 200 million are active.
This is the ocean that approximately 4.66 billion active internet users swim in. Far more users than websites – so there’s room for many more!
Google doesn’t share it’s search volume, but it’s been estimated that there are 5.6 billion (yes, BILLION) searches every single day. And one out of every five searches has never before been searched.
This explains why I like the “Shotgun” approach to writing posts – I’m in a niche that’s materially different from most others. Let’s think about this – say you were looking for information about being stationed in Okinawa by the Marine Corps – it’s quite likely that at some point in time, this very website will be indexed by Google for this exact search term.
And someone looking to know about their possible stationing in Okinawa as they join the Marine Corps may end up on this exact page – reading this. (And cringing at the photo, remembering boot camp.)
Is it a loss for me??? It would be, if my website were about model trains. People would “bounce” out of this site faster than they clicked in. “Bouncing” is defined by Google as:
“A bounce is a single-page session on your site. In Analytics, a bounce is calculated specifically as a session that triggers only a single request to the Analytics server, such as when a user opens a single page on your site and then exits without triggering any other requests to the Analytics server during that session.”
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1009409?hl=en
Bouncing is generally a bad thing – it shows Google that when they sent someone to my site, it wasn’t what they were looking for. This means that Google is likely to lower my ranking for that search term.
But THIS niche is different from model trains… almost EVERYONE IN THE WORLD (Even Marines) is interested in making more money. (As they are in general health and possibly losing weight). This is why I recommend these niches… no matter HOW they arrive here – no matter what search term they used, they are likely to stay and look around.
Here’s an example of what I mean… I have another website, a hobby site, on the martial sport of Judo. In looking through the search terms that brought people to the site, this term appeared: “men top one hundred tennis ranking” – now, I suppose that whoever was searching for Tennis ranking information was quite disappointed at seeing Judo – which I’m quite sure he had no interest in.
And he most certainly “bounced”… but would he have bounced if he’d landed on a site showing him how to make more money? Not nearly as likely!
The market is vast – far bigger than you can imagine – and all you need is the smallest little bite of the pie to earn a full-time income. I’m not afraid of the competition – You shouldn’t be afraid of the competition – there’s enough pie for everyone!
You Are Unique!
You have a completely different life from mine – the areas where we’ve had the same experience in life is miniscule in comparison to the differences… I cannot possibly describe things the way you do, and as a result, you will rank in Google for keywords that aren’t even present in my blog.
You will describe things differently than I – and will affect people differently than I. There are websites online built by people making thousands, 10’s of thousands of dollars each month, they are my competition. Do they bother me at all? Nope. In fact, I study other competitor websites to see if I can do anything better than them.
Some people will land on this site – and absolutely HATE everything they see… run to your site and fall in love with your content.
And visa versa!
Some people will land on my site – and never see your site at all…
And visa versa!
One thing I do better than anyone else in the world is to describe things my way. No-one else can do this.
My uniqueness, your uniqueness – means that the competition online for the niche you select is not even worth thinking about – because it simply doesn’t matter. This is why I’m not afraid of competition – you can’t compete with me… (nor I, you.)
Increased Market Awareness
When there’s competition – there’s an increase in people’s awareness of your topic – think about it, few people today aren’t at least somewhat aware that blogging online can lead to making money. You don’t generally have to convince people of this – they’ve seen it on different websites, social media, Youtube, etc.
Have you ever noticed that fast food joints all ‘cluster’ together? They aren’t afraid of competition – indeed, they all benefit from the increased numbers of customers coming to that specific location.
Likewise – I’m happy that people generally understand that they can make extra money online, they just need to be shown how to go about it. Websites offering courses costing $495, $995, or thousands of dollars aren’t direct competitors to me – I’m offering much of the same information for free.
And despite the fact that I’m offering this information for free – I’m not much competition to them, either! (Hard to believe, isn’t it?) They have benefits that I’m not offering – such as one on one counseling, or forums where others can help you.
Increasing Innovation
Competition also leads to further innovation – long gone are the days of 500 word posts, competition has forced websites to be better – to be more informative, to be more relevant.
Search engines likewise have increasingly innovated in their efforts to provide the perfect match to their customer’s queries. Anyone who’s been building websites for the last few decades can remember a number of tricks & tactics that websites used to increase our results in Google.
Remember link farms? – Doesn’t work anymore.
Remember keyword stuffing? – Doesn’t work anymore.
Remember doorway pages? – Doesn’t work anymore.
Remember cloaking? – Doesn’t work anymore.
Indeed, if you are caught (and you would be) using any of these tactics, Google will simply make your website disappear…
Innovation – on the part of search engines, has forced websites to be more informative and helpful. This is a good thing. You can no longer put out a garbage website, and hope to mine gold. But for those of us who are truly trying to help others (and therefore help ourselves!), the Internet has been a gift from God.
Another aspect of innovation has hit me far more directly … I created my first website out of raw HTML code on Notepad back in the early 90’s. Then when WordPress came along, I was a heavy user of it, as well as a few other CMS programs. Now, getting back to building a site after a few years away from WordPress, I’m finding out that all my former expertise in FTP, coding, .HTAccess file, and so forth is no longer relevant or needed. WordPress has improved so much that even absolute beginners can quite easily build websites today.
Let’s Summarize!
The internet is a vast ocean with room for everyone. There are billions of active internet users and only millions of active websites.
You are unique and your content will be unique too. No-one else can see things the way you do, or describe things the way you do.
Competition can lead to increased market awareness. When there are more websites on a topic, it means that more people are aware of that topic… less buyer resistance.
Competition has also led to innovation. Websites have to keep getting better in order to compete. This is why I’m not afraid of competition.
If you focus on providing value to your readers, it’s almost impossible not to turn it into profitable retirement income. If you provide value – your readers will reward you and keep coming back. There’s no-one competing with you – because you are the only you in the world!
