Good Website Content, to survive your web site needs lots of it

Do you ever ask yourself if Affiliate Marketing is really what it's cracked up to be? Can many of you, of us, make serious money selling other peoples' products? Or is it only a few big guns that have the right to succeed! At the beginning I was very skeptical, but as time passed and progress was made, it became less of a frustration. Now, I am an absolute believer. If ever I had doubts, they are long ago behind me. Why is that? What made the difference in my results? There are, of course, several factors that determine the success or failure of your endeavour. But there is one key element that ranks above all others. And that, in my humble view, is CONTENT on your web site. Good useful and informative content is why people come to visit you. If you don't have enough of it, and if it isn't relevant content, then we all do the same thing...click away, go elsewhere. No content, no repeat visitors, no repeaters no sales and you lose. Ask yourself this... What is your site trying to say? Do you have enough information to offer, to keep people interested, to stick around, and especially to come back for more. For example, Best Affiliate Products is all about helping you to become a successful Affiliate Marketer, and guide you towards Niche Markets. So I keep adding relevant information. Relevant means info relating only to Affiliate and Niche Marketing. Nothing else. I am not trying to sell used cars, or give away free vacations, or offer travel plans, or offer advice on care of your favorite pet. You must stay away from the temptation to get sidetracked and have articles, or banners trying to promote products that have nothing to do with your site's main purpose. Also of critical importance is the links that you have coming in from other sites, or outgoing links from articles on your site. In the Related Links category on BAP, you will find only links to truly related web sites. When a webmaster offers to link up with me, the first thing I verify is whether their links are relevant. In many cases, they allow any kind of business to connect up with them. When I see this, I run away real fast, and refuse the offer. If you find I have used the word RELEVANT very often, then believe the importance of focusing on your Niche. Your search placement will improve in time, as you add content that is wanted by your readers. Best Affiliate Products, as a niche keyword phrase is not very large. Replace Products with Programs, and the competition is fierce, with up to 230,000 web pages found. But my niche keyword has a reasonable size, under 600 in fact. As a result of this, and the fact that useful content pages keep getting added, has resulted in excellent Search results on Google,Yahoo and MSN. I am proud to say that for the search term "best affiliate products" for Best Affiliate Products home page is currently ranked as # 1 on Google, Yahoo and MSN The reason: good content! I also have other pages in the top 10 and top 30. If your search results come in higher than 30, then the chances of getting noticed are very slim. Is that enough proof to convince you that content is not just important, but crucial to your success. Which brings us to the next point regarding the ideal Niche size of a successful site. Size, in this case, means the number of web site pages you find when you do a search on Google. In my opinion and that of many experts, an ideal size niche should be from 500 to 10,000 search results. These smaller sized niches offer good potential income, and you could do well with a site competing in this size niche. However, having more than one Niche Market assures you flexibility and protection against one site losing steam, and also offers income growth potential that is unequalled in the online business world. Before I get carried away on this topic, I better leave it to a future article. Fred Farah copyright 2005