Hi all (Lisa, long time no chat... I'm back!)
What a great response Lisa. This should be a blog post or sticky. Craig, you cannot go after the products until you fully grasp the concept of Internet marketing. With all due respect, not sure you're quite there yet. As Lisa said, if you had enough of the right kind of traffic you'd be selling.
So instead of asking "what should I be selling" you should be asking "How can I generate more interested buyers to my site?" That's the key. We could sit here and list the top 500 affiliate programs on the Web but if you can't sell them from your site, it won't matter much to you.
This is a collosol mistake made by Webmasters. They chase the money before they grasp marketing. I'm not trying to be hard on you because you represent the vast majority of affiliates but it's good you posted this 'cause I bet a lot of people on this forum feel the same way as you.
Making money online is straightforward. Produce a product and sell it (that product could be as simple as your content). As Lisa said the problem is people try to find the products and sell them before doing the in-between stuff like making a useful site that connects. Sure your content may be written very well and great but what are your visitors saying about it? Do you get emails with questions? Can you get a sense for what they may be interested in by the questions they ask?
40 pages of content doesn't guarantee sales so don't stress over the numbers or how many pages you need. In fact, it means nothing if you aren't selling the right products or connecting with your visitors.
I would love to tell you that there was a defined process to making money like....
1) Create a 12 page site on how to repair cars
2) Promote these three car affiliate programs from CJ.com on your site
3) Advertise your site on these 2 forums and 6 blogs
4) Wait 4 weeks and you should have 200 visitors per day
5) Spend $100/month on pay per click marketing and bid on these keywords
6) By week 8 you'd be making $500 per month
I think that's what people are looking for but it doesn't exist. In a perfect world that would be AWESOME if there was some guide out there like this, but it doesn't work like that. There are too many variables involved (your writing style, how well you market, the type of traffic you attract, how much traffic you attract, the niche you choose, etc.)
Marketing is complex, but once you figure it out making money is the easy part. Let me ask you about your niche. Are you truly passionate about it? Do you offer anything unique from your competition?
Stay away from the classified ads and all those freebie tire-kicking sites. Waste of time. Do you comment on other blogs related to your niche? Do you network with other webmasters? Write articles for other travel related ezines and blogs? Do you have a mailing list? How often do you communicate with your audience? Are you getting feedback from your newsletters? All these things help you get to know who you're marketing to. Networking and research is everything.
I do wish you luck, though.
