The best time of the year is gone and now you are stuck with these websites that are meant to make the most money in the fourth quarter. What oh what are you to do? What do I mean by this? What I mean is that the best time of the year for an affiliate marketer or any webmaster really is the fourth quarter. Advertising is up because companies are trying to make money. People are buying items and so there is a lot more money being made on affiliate sites. Amazon.com, Ebay.com, Target, Wal-Mart, the mall, all of these online and offline stores are making so much money and they always will. But, the big question to ask yourself now is what do YOU do? Your site made the most money at the fourth quarter, but what are you to do now?
Don’t stop. Yeah, the fourth quarter is the best part, but consider it being over a time to refresh. Want to know my opinion on the best time to START an affiliate site. Now. Why? Now that the holidays are over for you and that little bit of stress is out of the way, you have an entire three quarters to start working on building the site up. You can start reviewing items now, although not as religiously as you would when the third and fourth quarter roll around. But, what you can really do is start making it known that you are providing a service to those that are looking to buy people gifts. Things like iPods and Wiis and X-Box 360s, those will always be hot items throughout the year. The iPhone and the Verizon Voyager, those are hot phones. Just because the season is over does not mean you can’t make money. It just means that you have to work harder for less.
What do I mean by that? If I had wanted to start an affiliate site hoping to make money from those buying gifts for Christmas when I wrote the post about this being a great time of the year, I would have made very little money. Why? The site would have been too small, not indexed well enough, and no one would have known that it existed. Now, if I was looking to target the people that are going to be buying gifts NEXT year, I would have an entire year to get ready for it. I would have an entire year to start building the site up and getting traffic to the site and ensuring that the site was really structured well because when that fourth quarter rolled around and people started to shop for Christmas, well, just imagine whose site they would see.
Now, depending on what your affiliate site is about will determine what you can do with it. I have seen a lot of people selling their affiliate sites off now that the holidays are over and I have to wonder if that is a good move. If it’s something that is not so specific like “Eskimo Igloo Ornaments With Gold Tapestry Around The End,” I think you can keep any affiliate site and make it bigger. But, try and weigh it. If it was something that got a lot of traffic, but not a lot of sales, maybe selling it wouold be a good idea. I saw one guy on this webmaster forum who was selling off something like 20 of his affiliate sites. Maybe he was just changing businesses, but I think that he was realizing there was more to gain from something else and didn’t want to worry about it.
What you want to do NOW is start your research for next year’s holiday. Say a new system is coming out (Which I don’t think it is). I’d gobble up some domain names all with the keyword in it and then start to build information about it. Get news posted on and start getting as much information as you can. Because by the time the holidays are upon us, your site will be big and people will be finding you much easier on the web. If you start so late, sure, it’s a safer situation, but there is not as much money to be made. There is a saying: the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward. That is true. If you take a risk and try to make more money, you’ll make more if you succeed. That’s just the way it works.
So, now that the holidays are over, take a moment, breathe in, gather yourself, and then start preparing for next year. Sign up for those affiliate companies you never did and put together a site that has a lot of useful information and some good affiliate links. Because, although it won’t make a ton of money right now, come November of next year, the money will really start to roll in and by that time, the site will be large enough to make money year round. So, start working on those sites now because in time, you will find yourself getting rather large. Hell, that’s one of my resolutions…Affiliate marketing. We’ll have to wait and see, though, what sort of luck we can have when it comes to that. Merry Christmas, even if I am a little late.
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