Anatomy of a Niche Affiliate Site

September 18th, 2008 · Comments

Thanks for visiting the Affiliate Tip blog. Subscribe to my RSS feed or enter your e-mail on the top right to get updates by e-mail.

This week on the Affiliate Thing show, I was solo, since Lisa Picarille is off at CJU. Rather than a typical show focused on the issues and news in affiliate marketing, this show was an overview on how I set up a niche site: Obama2.com.

Don’t worry - no politics here - it’s just the example where I talk about the nuts and bolts in starting the site, how I develop content, my promotion tools and techniques, and the way I go about choosing affiliate programs.

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Tags: Affiliate News · Affiliate Resources · Affiliate Thing

Viewing 13 Comments

TomC 2 months ago 1 point
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Hi Shawn, that was an excellent post, very practical and useful - thanks!
I do have a question. How are you designing the logos (like Obama 2.0 title) and working with photos and images. I'm a newbie recently getting started and just purchased Adobe Elements 4.0 for that (photoshop looked like I'd need to go back to school). Any suggestions or idea?

Thanks
Tom

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http://www.BlogStudyGroup.com

Shawn Collins 2 months ago 1 point
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Hi Tom -

I don't really have any graphic experience at all - the "logo" in the header of obama2.com is a font that was in Adobe Photoshop and saved with a transparent background.

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14 /people/affiliatetip/ /people/affiliatetip/following/ http://blog.affiliatetip.com 504429203 in/shawncollins affiliatetip affiliatetip affiliate affiliate

jamesdorans 2 months ago 1 point
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I use Macromedia Fireworks, I know it is now with Adobe.

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2 /people/jamesdorans/ /people/jamesdorans/following/

davd 1 month ago 1 point
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http://www.ecn008.com

jorge 2 months ago 1 point
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what software do you use to edit and make your videos for YouTube?

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http://www.jorgezapata.com

Shawn Collins 2 months ago 1 point
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Sony Vegas Movie Studio - http://affiliatetip.com/sony-vegas - it's less than $100 on Amazon.

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14 /people/affiliatetip/ /people/affiliatetip/following/ http://blog.affiliatetip.com 504429203 in/shawncollins affiliatetip affiliatetip affiliate affiliate

sherif 2 months ago 1 point
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good topic

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SeanDavis 2 months ago 1 point
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"No politics here." You just happen to have a blog post about a niche site that just happens to be about Barack Obama less than two months before the presidential election. Well done. Not obvious at all. Oh and by the way, if you talk to any unbiased expert (notice UNBIASED) on the financial crises you'll understand that the Democrats in Congress in 2005 had nothing to do with the financial collapse. The financial collapse has to do with deregulation started during the Regan administration. True, the Democrats have done nothing to help but to blame Barack Obama and the Democrats (from 2005?--laughable) is simply complete ignorance of the facts and a basic misunderstanding of the financial system of the United States. It's ok to have your own political views but please don't make baseless, factless accusations on thinly veiled political soapboxing blog posts.

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Shawn Collins 2 months ago 1 point
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I was talking about not having politics in my discussion of setting up a niche site.

I'd be happy to debate you about politics on my political blog, but I prefer to keep things separate here and there.

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14 /people/affiliatetip/ /people/affiliatetip/following/ http://blog.affiliatetip.com 504429203 in/shawncollins affiliatetip affiliatetip affiliate affiliate

TriciaMeyer 2 months ago 1 point
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Terrific article!! So I started a niche site last week and did just about everything you list above. We've started off strong and are getting about 100 hits a day from the search engines. I think I should try AWeber for RSS by email for the first time. But a question--do you get their email addresses? So if you wanted to get people to sign up for the AWeber for RSS by giving a prize or something, would you be able to have their email addresses to draw one?

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1 /people/TriciaMeyer/ /people/TriciaMeyer/following/ http://www.sunshinerewards.com

Shawn Collins 2 months ago 1 point
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Hi Tricia -

Thanks - yes, you get access to the email addresses.

The RSS/email thing on AWeber is just an extension of their regular email opt-in services.

You also get lots of analytics with their service - I'd highly recommend it.

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14 /people/affiliatetip/ /people/affiliatetip/following/ http://blog.affiliatetip.com 504429203 in/shawncollins affiliatetip affiliatetip affiliate affiliate

TriciaMeyer 2 months ago 1 point
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Thanks, Shawn! I just signed up for it yesterday and got it up and running. I love the template system that they have. I'm hoping to see the list build up during this first month so I can figure out if it will be worth the money. So far, so good.

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1 /people/TriciaMeyer/ /people/TriciaMeyer/following/ http://www.sunshinerewards.com

Shawn Collins 2 months ago 1 point
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Hi Tricia -

They have some neat features with follow-ups, too, if you have a use for that sort of thing.

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14 /people/affiliatetip/ /people/affiliatetip/following/ http://blog.affiliatetip.com 504429203 in/shawncollins affiliatetip affiliatetip affiliate affiliate