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.