Excellent vs. Good Content

A bit of an eye opener webinar last night. Admittedly I have been a "back burner" affiliate for over 3 1/2 years now since going back to a day job full time. In that time it has become nearly impossible to make money with what Google considers to be "thin" affiliate sites, and even "good" affiliate content has a lot of competition.

Jeremy emphasized the need for excellent content rather than just good content. It's a lot of work. On the other hand, it's doable. Unlike having to learn a new programming language every few years or the newest internet traffic trick, you can learn to produce excellent content once and continue to do so for the long run. Sure, you may have to learn a few new skills as time goes by (video was NOT a viable media for common use 10 years ago due to bandwidth and storage limits, for example), but the general skills learned are constant.

I actually realized how much more I could build up the content on my remaining affiliate sites. The original content is there on many of them, not all, but mostly it's good content, not excellent content. And one site that has some excellent video content really needs more excellent written content to support it.

But right now my main focus is the partnership site. With a full time job and a commitment to 10-12 hours a week for the 2010 Partnership, I don't have a lot of time to fiddle with my remaining affiliate sites right now. That's okay. It's never too late, and I've only kept the ones that I felt I could eventually commit to developing in terms of content.

Excellence is a far more demanding goal, but in many ways, it's a far more worthwhile goal.

A three webinar week

We really are a bit behind schedule. Sites are nowhere near being finished, at least not if partners are waiting for task lists to complete. We haven't had any new tasks for awhile as the Wireframe Wizard was built.

While I have been spending time anyway on the project by immersing myself in my niche, I still need to finish my wireframe. I sent a first draft sitemap (using Mindjet) and content inventory sheet (using Google Docs) and a link to my swipe file at Evernote to Jeremy for feedback. Actually, since I know he's really busy, I just asked him to let me know if there was mission critical corrections to make.

No response, so I'll go ahead with a wireframe based on that content inventory and sitemap.

Of Niche Immersion and Wire Frames

There aren't currently any new tasks, so I have been immersing myself in my niche. I'm using Evernote to put together a swipe file of site design "do's" that I'd like to incorporate into our site.

Here's a good blog post on how make and use a swipe file for inspiration during website planning: http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/06/02/swipe-file-for-inspiration/ .

So I've been visiting sites and making note of things that I like (like the design, like the navigation categories, like the search feature, this one is along the lines of what I'd like to do with a different focus...). I keep in my Evernote file a screen capture, the URL, and notes about what I liked.

Then I also keep a Google spreadsheet with extra notes about sites, and have sorted my keyword intent spreadsheet to narrow down categories. This is all giving me a clearer idea of how I want the site to develop.

The clearer a vision you have of what you want from your site, the more information you can provide designers who will code the site. I'm in general not a visual person, so spreadsheets actually help my creativity.

Jeremy is coding a WireFrame Wizard, and for very good reasons. It's not ready yet, so I am using this time to get a clear picture of my niche and what I want for our site. A long cry from some thin affiliate sites I put up in 2004 or so in about 4 hours from domain registration to full site up on the web. Hopefully with longer term success, too!

Niche Marketing -- you need content

I'm caught up on our current tasks, and am trying to wrap my mind around wire frames. I haven't done them previously, most likely to the detriment of my sites.

Mean while, I wanted to share one of the tasks we had in researching our niche. Make a list of 10 forums and blogs in your niche and then note 10 topics that are most popular on each site. Boom, 100 content ideas. This gives you a glimpse of the customers out there and what their questions are, what interests them, and what bothers them in your niche.

There you have 100 article ideas that already serves the community interested in your product. Or perhaps less than 100, as you may see some of the same topics come up over and over. That's also important, as those topics are the ones that you really want to make sure you address with your content.

Jeremy has begun providing our task worksheets in .csv format rather than an online form to fill out, which I prefer. I open the form in my Google Docs and work on it from anywhere. In fact, on my new desktop I haven't purchased MSOffice, I've gone with Open Office and Google Docs. Since I still have a day job, I like having my documents "in the cloud".   

Niche Selection Pro Milestone finished!

Niche selected!
A 1-on-1 call with Jeremy was great. First, he is so polite, positive, and friendly. He said, "Nice to meet you", but of course his voice was familiar to me. Shortly after he was nominated for the Horizon Award in 2005 with Commission Junction, I recall listening to a podcast of an interview with him. And of course, I hear his voice on the  2010 Partners webinars.

Even with the worksheets, I was still feeling not totally confident about choosing a niche. "What if" kept running through my head.

So when Jeremy asked about my enthusiasm for one of them (it is based on a wish list purchase I'd like to make), that helped put the pieces in place. Now I can focus and start pulling all the tools and skills together on this one niche topic.  Bonus for the niche is that Jeremy has researched a similar niche previously, so he has a lot of information to share.

I do seriously hope this ends up being worth his time. He's got phone calls to make, webinars to give, record, upload, the partner portal to keep up... and the deal is only 10% of the website profits for him. I'm sure he did his math before taking this project on, so here's hoping everyone's successful so it's well worth his while. On the partner side, the training and information we're getting is invaluable.