Hi All, I got my idea for a website from 101 ways...

**eyejacker** · March 17th, 2010, 07:10 PM

Hi,

I got my idea for a website from 101 ways to make money (thanks) and it is a cool and friendly forum so I thought i'd ask on her for some advice. All my mates are brickies, plumbers, chippy's and stuff so even if I was to mention it to them it wouldn't be off any help!

I'll try and be quick and not blabber on so here goes.

I've been working on the idea and site for quite a while now, inbetween work and stuff. I think i've got it looking alright. I added a shopping cart from ejunkie (another tip from here. Thanks!)

The niche gets around 50,000 searches a month in google keywords for the term 'animal alphabets' and other spin offs of nursery art and alphabet art get another 50,000 each. Is this enough to expect sales from, it seems enough to me but what do you guys think?

Now i'm useless at SEO and all that and google adwords scares me with the amount of money a sucker like me would lose trying to figure it out. So what I've done (doing) is set up an affiliate program through ejunkie. Affiliates get 10% of the sale.

Trouble is how do I approach website owners? I don't want to scare them off by being unprofessional. But I also don't want to try and come across as pretending to be a established company getting loads of sales.

Also do you think an affiliate program is the way to go? I can't think of any other ways to get traffic without heavy advertising. Which is money I haven't got.

Anyways, this is a great forum so I hope you can help.

**tke71709** · March 17th, 2010, 08:27 PM

The search terms have decent volume so the first question I would ask myself is can people get this stuff for free? If the SERPs are filled with free sites with quality offerings then I probably wouldn't go any further.

If the answer to the above is No, then I would have to ask myself would people pay for this and can I compete with those who do sell it at the moment?

If the answer to the above is Yes, then I would have to do some basic keyword competition analysis to see if I could rank organically.

The answer above would help me to decide how I would proceed, if it's something that you can set up an affiliate program for then ranking organically wouldn't be as big of a deal for me.

After a while you just have to decide to take the plunge, my only recommendation would be a larger affiliate % if the product is digital and thus has no marginal costs to you.

**eyejacker** · March 17th, 2010, 09:09 PM

Thanks for the reply.

It's a range of canvas artwork which can also be customised. I can't hike up the affiliate % too much as it costs quite a bit to make and ship. There's no others like it on the market so it does have a unique selling point. Which I hope would encourage affiliates.

It retails for £40 which is cheaper than other sites which offer custom canvas so I think I could compete with these sites.

I don't think i'd be able to rank anywhere organically with it as i'm not good at SEO. That's why I thought the affiliate way might be better. Just worried about how to approach them.

Cheers

**Clinton** · March 18th, 2010, 06:38 AM

Someone like you made a success of a term that one would expect to attract even less visitors than what may seem at first sight your rare and seldom searched for product. His site runs on autopilot and he makes $15K a year for doing almost nothing at all. Read about bussongs .com in this thread.

Go ahead and give us the URL so other posters and I can see the site and chip in with comments.

**eyejacker** · March 18th, 2010, 07:03 AM

Hi Clinton,

Yeah I would love to have it on autopilot and have money roll in while i'm sipping cocktails. One day eh?!?

I have got some ideas for flash games, stories for it that could be made into a download or an iphone app. I gotta lot of work to do on it before I can get someone to make me one of those though.

Anyways instead of explaining it here is the site www.TheAlphapets.com

**Clinton** · March 18th, 2010, 04:22 PM

I like the product, I want one for my kid's bedroom!

I know your question was about getting affiliates, but I'd suggest you tweak the copy a bit or get a professional copywriter to take a look. It doesn't seem to "sell" as the moment. It's got a very homely feel but affiliates will check your site and try to judge whether you're any good at converting (as that's ultimately what they get paid on).

**hooperman** · March 18th, 2010, 05:26 PM

eyejacker, your site looks really good. Just from a SEO perspective, you'll want to have all your home links point to your domain (not index.php), and redirect the index.php back to the domain too. You can do that with .htaccess (just ask if you don't know how).

**eyejacker** · March 18th, 2010, 08:40 PM

Cheers guys, thanks for the feedback.

Yeah Clinton, the copy is bugging me! It's hard for me to write about selling my own own stuff. It does sound a bit warm and fuzzy and all that. My sisters mate is a copywriter so i'll get her to look at it from an impartial view which should get it looking a bit more professional.

Hooperman, I may need a heads up on all that htaccess stuff. I did it in dreamweaver which I've got REAL basic knowledge of. I'll have a look tomorrow afternoon. Thanks for the tip though, if I can get it higher in the Searches organically that'd be proper good.

Clinton if you want a couple of posters I'll post you some for free if your in the UK. Just PM me you addy. If you want a canvas i'll do you them for cost and P&P which is a tenner.

**Clinton** · March 19th, 2010, 08:35 AM

Thanks for the offer.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I see the potential particularly with personalised canvasses advertised in mumsnet.com type places (targeted). That's after you've had the copy and the conversion potential tweaked. There wouldn't be any point in spending too much on ads if you haven't addressed that IMHO.

There are some members here who have useful advice on that kind of stuff. Maybe one of them will drop into this thread over the next few days.

<added> My wife looked at your site. It's sometimes good to get a non-webmaster opinion. She asked a question that wouldn't have occured to me: Why does it come only in blue and not in pink?

Did you intend to cater for only half the market? Or was it accidental that you didn't put an example of a pink canvas on your homepage?

**eyejacker** · March 19th, 2010, 01:50 PM

Yeah I gotta pink ones too, just gotta take some photo's of it properly. I did rush some up the other week but they looked pretty iffy. I've done a lemon one and light grey for the 'not born yet'! I'll get a pink one up to go along side the custom canvas pic aswell.

Had a look at mumsnet before. That's one of them I want to approach but don't know how to word it professionally. I'll get the copy sorted on the site first.

Cheers.