Affiliate Business – Short or Long Term?

So I guess a pretty big question when thinking about your affiliate business is what type of business do you want to start up. Do you want to focus all your efforts on a site that will bring in consistent money over the long term (6+ months)? Do you want to go on a super-hot tip and make a lot of money with a short term business (>1 month)? Or do you want to try to find what’s hot and run it for a couple months and then accept when it dies?

The inspiration comes from a campaign that I ran in the short-middle term range. I primarily want to talk about it because most “gurus” out there will tell you that it’s all in setting up the long term, “mini website” blah blah. That’s not the only strategy out there. I just got out a niche a couple weeks ago that made me $6,000 profit/day on average, but I only had it up for 17 days before it died. Although this only lasted barely 2 weeks, I still made 100k, which is a nice salary nowadays.

Another campaign I ran back in the day was dating…everybody thought they were cool because they though they found the only niche I ran. Well not the only, but dating was awesome for around 6 months (peaked around 20k/day for me…about 8k profit margins were lower).

After the dating buzzed died when spring rolled around, I broke into another niche and did 4-5k profit/day on that…that only lasted for around 2-3 months.

My point with all these examples isn’t to sound tough saying I made a lot of money, it’s to get the point across that running a long-term business isn’t the only way to make a lot of money. For the past year or so I’ve ran on short-medium term niches. Sure I have long-term sites that have been making less money but over a longer period of time. I’m actually in the process of building out a slower, more long term niche, so we’ll see how that goes and I’m sure it’ll do fine.

So when you ask your friend about this way to promote something and they say “uhh yeah that probably won’t last too long it’s probably not worth it”, that means they’re banking on it and you can hop on and ride the money train as long as it lasts…just don’t get upset when it dies.


10 Comments

  1. Steve
    July 29, 2008

    Save your 2 cents and put it towards ads. You’re looking for the “secret sauce”. Sorry, but there is none. Just research research research and be creative. That’s really all you need to know, the rest you should be able to figure out as you go, if you can’t or don’t then this biz probably isn’t for you.

  2. Tacit
    July 29, 2008

    Why do you think Paul does this blog and runs his paid service? He is of course trying to make a name for himself in the industry (he already has) and like most young webpreneurs, he gets off on generating traffic. Have you checked his results on compete.com lately? Zero to 300k hits per month in a span of a few months aint bad. You don’t need an MBA to figure out that TRAFFIC = PROFIT.
    I’m just wondering when he is going to start thinking BIG. I’m sure he has a “takeover the world” project brewing in there somewhere, as many creative entrepreneurs do… API’s? Mashups?
    What’s it going to be??? Think big people…

  3. Frank
    July 30, 2008

    Yeah, i also believe that this biz isnt for everybody. So Paul and the indian “Super bragging affiliate” should stop making it look so easy for everyone.

  4. Steve
    July 30, 2008

    Is Paul making it look easy? Have you read https://uberaffiliate.com/affiliate-marketing-guide/uber-affiliate-marketing-guide/ ?

    That doesn’t look “easy”. Listen to Warren Buffet or Bill Gates talk… you think they make what they do sound hard? “I invest in what I understand” .. “I like technology”… So if I invest it what I understand and if I like technology will I become a billionaire? Give me a break. Haven’t you ever heard that there’s no such as thing as “easy” money. Well, It’s true and It’s also true the the rich get richer, and once you understand how to turn profits in this biz It’s easy (which is a relative term) to make lots of $.

  5. August 1, 2008

    Steve you are completely right; I even ave nothing to add

  6. August 3, 2008

    most affiliate offers will run for a short period of time… but I know that you will succeed with most of them if you’ve built up your own blog/website and mailing list…. so in a sense its a long term commitment with short term goals

  7. August 5, 2008

    Long Term For Me!

  8. August 7, 2008

    I haven’t done much affiliate marketing, i have affiliate links on my blog but haven’t gone to full-time affiliate linking. thanks for the info i had thought i would have to make it a long term thing, the idea that you can tackle a short term niche is great.

  9. August 8, 2008

    I think it is worth having as long-termed sites as those of short period. However I do prefer to host long-termed niches.

  10. August 11, 2008

    It should be a combination of both. A couple long term, and a handful of short terms.

    Shudogg Dot Com – Make Money Online Blogging

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