The Truth Is – The first year of your new affiliate websites’ life is going to be a series of ups and downs. Traffic will spike, traffic will be non-existent, and you my friend, are going to do what everyone else does… question your sanity, and wonder WHY you ever decided to build an affiliate website in the first place!

We All have two choices – Adapt to It, or Move into Another Line of Work!

The Early Months of Your New Site

It’s Blissful right? You just launched a new site, and within like a week, you notice that it’s indexed in search engines and already ranking in the top 30 for several well planned phrases! It’s like a friggin honeymoon… nothing could go wrong!

The first – second months continue to bring in good traffic numbers and you even have several sales on your new website! You simply couldn’t have planned this any better and suddenly you start to feel that you truly learned something from all your reading and efforts! Accomplishment! Check!

Around the end of the second month, you notice that traffic has started to dip just a little… but really pay it no attention – it must be a fluke right? Wrong. This is the point that REALITY starts to creep into the picture and you start thinking that something must be TERRIBLY wrong with your new site!

Chill out… step back… take a breath… its normal! Especially for an affiliate website! Why do you think the N1Way Guide suggests NOT revisiting the site for several months? Its by design!

The Cooling Off Period – aka – Unconfirmed Sandbox

From around day 45-90 of your new website being live, you are going to find that traffic dips significantly! In most cases, you will panic and start using search tools to see where you rank and find that the stellar rankings you had during the first 30-60 days, well… they’re gone! Now, you can’t even find your website in the top 100 search results!

Here is how it usually works:

• Days 1-45, Great Rankings, Great Traffic for a New Site! You are on Cloud 9!
• Days 30-60, Steady Rankings, Steady Traffic for a Fairly New Site! Already Thinking of Your Next Site – Gonna get Rich! Woot!
• Days 45-90, Drop in Search Rankings, Slowly Dwindling Traffic numbers. Uh-Oh, I Must have Done Something Wrong – Nahh… its just a Glitch!
• Months 3-6, Steady drop in rankings, traffic and earnings. WTF! This is like a Bad Dream! F*&k the N1Way Guide and Everyone who Read it!
  

It’s this point… that you need to realize it’s all by design!! If search engines took everyone at Face Value and treated every site the same, they would simply cycle through new sites every month, and NONE would ever grow into an authority!

This is the same point in time that 90% of us QUIT working on a site or walk away from Affiliate Marketing completely! The 10% who stick to the plan and move past it, well, they are the successful ones who will have build the foundation of a steady passive income in a few months!

From here forward, its going to be a slow process of your site gaining authority. The ONLY GUARANTEE beyond now, is that if you quit, you lose… everything else is up in the air!

What Can You Do During the Slow Months?

Follow the Guide, Continue with Forward and Backward Marketing, Build More Sites into your Downline, and move on… Remember, if it were easy… everyone would be doing it!

About 2 years ago, I wrote a post on the Niche Store Builder site about how building affiliate websites is like being a farmer, it’s just a different crop! In that post we were Growing DollaGreens. Now, you need to consider that when that post was written, you could push out a BANS site with a minimum of unique content and rank well… within 1 week! So at that point, the idea was to plant as MANY seeds as possible, weed out the bad crops and apply as much love as possible to the good ones!

Aside from the “As many sites as possible” part, everything else still holds true! As a matter of fact, you may even notice alot of similarity to the N1Way Guide!

• Build your Site and Water It
• While you WAIT for it to Grow, Build MORE! If you watch it like a hawk, you go nowhere!
• Revisit your Crops every now and again to Water Them
• Over Time, Weed Out the Bad Crops
• Rinse… repeat… never ending!

Again – the ONLY GUARANTEE you have from building these sites is that if you STOP WORKING ON THEM, you will FAIL! If you follow the N1Way Guide, build a downline of sites and revisit them in measured intervals, you will ultimately Succeed!

Planning for the Niche Site Giveaway

As outlined in the first section of the guide, before I jump around and just start installing and building, I want to take the time to plan my site! Following along in Step 1, I am somewhat deadlocked into the domain I already purchased to giveaway, so before we waste endless hours of time building a site that can get nowhere, I want to qualify that it is a worthy niche first. Under normal circumstances, I would do the qualifying FIRST… this stuff happens when you open your mouth before you think!

• Is there a Tangible Product? Yes! Putters…
• Is there Demand in the Market? Yes…
• Is it “Niche” Enough, or Too Wide? Yes… Niche enough!
• Is the Market Already Over-Served? No!

At this point, I am convinced that the market itself is open to entry and the Golf Putter Guide site CAN fit into it! I still need to take more of a forensic view into the market however, to be sure I am not wasting my time!

Interest In Your Niche Market

One of the BEST methods for finding your niche, which is covered in the first section of the guide, talks about looking within your own interests and goes through several other ways you can find a niche from within your existing lifestyle. For the purpose of this site, I am going to stray just a bit and develop a niche site I truly have little interest in!

I realize its a bit harder… but we may not always be interested in a profitable niche market, and as mentioned above, I kinda backed myself into this market, so I have to go for it! The success of the site when its done, will simply be a testament for how it can be applied to ANY niche market, as long as the demand, products, and proper building is done from the start!

Pulling the Plan Together to Qualify the Market!

As outlined in the Choosing your Niche Market section, I am ready to fully qualify the niche market, and determine the basic outline for the site! I like to refer to this as forensic research, as it involves getting into the nuts and bolts of the Niche market data!

• There are Several “Product Types”
• There are Several “Product Brands”
• There are Also Several Variations and Accessories, that will help drivew additional traffic demand!

Using the guide as a reference, I was able to not only find several specific BUYER words, but also qualify them by searching through the tools referenced in the guide, and making sure there is a high enough DEMAND to make them worthwhile phrases to build a site around!

Next Step – Put the Plan on Paper!

The Getting Started Section Covers

• The Rise of the Search Engines
• Consumer Habits
• Opportunity in Affiliate Programs
• Connecting the Demand to the Supply
• Your First 10 Websites
• The Results – Sustainable Income and Sellable Assets!

Did you enjoy the Getting started section of the Niche Site Guide? Comments are welcomed below..