Affiliate Marketing Plan & Strategy

I've been working on my website, but felt I needed a specific plan.

I don't know if this is a good plan, or a feasible plan, but it's a plan that I am going full force on.

I am posting it here because the WA community is the largest, most experienced group of online marketers that I have ever seen, with a plethora of success stories that I use as motivation. I would appreciate any feedback on this plan.

Website: Rentals and Realtors

Niche: Real Estate Investing

Primary Target: Beginners in the real estate industry, or some articles with tips for intermediate investors.

Secondary Target: Those with an interest in legendary investors and businessmen, both in and beyond the real estate industry.

-Do I know if this niche is specific enough? No. But I do know that as of now I have a lot of content ideas that I can post, and if I find or am told of a better path, I can edit the plan.

Why am I getting into affiliate marketing with this website?

There are multiple reasons.

I will be in a miitary college for the next three years, and they do not allow cadets to have a job. I am working an unpaid internship right now, (most people think I made the wrong decision "volunteering") but it is an amazing long-term investment. I am getting hands-on experience and education, and building connections with people doing exactly what I want to do. Not to mention I am getting my real estate license where they will hire me as an agent next summer, and I will have a team of agents, brokers, and contractors ready to work with me upon graduation.

I want something where I can get into the business arena and make money while I'm at the Citadel, and I can also learn about real estate on the side.

In order for Rentals and Realtors to be successful, I have to learn more about real estate. The more I learn about real estate, the more money I earn from Rentals and Realtors. It's a win-win!

Summer 2020: This is the largest amount of time I will have until Summer 2021. I need to utilize every morning to produce quality articles consistently.

Goal for Summer 2020: Have 50 Articles on the Website by September 1st.

I began this site in March, and currently have 14 articles. I will need to step my game up, and will as this week began my summer schedule, in which I will have more time to devote to the website.

I have 110 days until September 1st. I move back into the Citadel in the last week of August, so I am taking those last few days off. Call it 105 days.

My goal is to publish an article every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I am giving myself 2 days for each article because I want them to be quality articles.

What kinds of things will I post about?

1. Lessons from books I am reading.

I have been making a conscious effort to read every morning, and I love it. I am reading about real estate, stocks, and CEO biographies. Productivity and time management books, taxes, business, and management. I will take lessons from these books and create articles about them. When I monetize later, I will put the book into the article.

For example, my article on Avoiding Drastic Mistakes. These are lessons taken completely and entirely out of Grant Cardone's book, "How to Create Wealth Investing in Real Estate."

2. Rolemodels I look up to, and/or their company.

For example, I am currently working on "How Did Warren Buffett Get His Start? It has low searches, but a single-digit QSR as well. This is what I will target until I start getting some authority on Google.

3. General Tips on the industry, and possible tips for the stock market as a bonus.

I am unsure if broadening the niche a little for some extra content and a little diversity will hurt, but until otherwise corrected, I will post some tips and info for the stock market as well. For example, my most recent article, "Why Doesn't Berkshire Hathaway Pay a Dividend?"

The general tips I plan on posting will be simple questions that I will go into extensive detail on, such as "saving on taxes through a 1031 in real estate", or "how to prevent overleveraging in commercial real estate". An example of this is a previously posted article of mine, "What is Inflation Caused By?"

4. Guides

These are the 3000+ word articles I will take the most time and pride in. These are the articles where I will write about leveraging debt, compound interest, and building substantial cash flow from real estate.

Things I won't worry so much about:

1. SEO:

I am told that SEO is extremely important, and I believe them. I have an SEO plugin, I ensure that I put my keyword in the title, in the first paragraph, and maybe a couple of times throughout the article. I set a meta description and image description with the keyword, and then I move on.

I would like to learn more about SEO optimization, but the reason my prior sites failed is because I spent more time worrying about SEO than I did writing content! I plan on writing good, quality content, publishing often, and letting the writing do the work for itself. Unless someone teaches me otherwise.

2. Keywords:

I will still focus on keywords, but not to the extent that I did. Right now, I have 3 criteria for keywords. Please tell me if they are wrong:

1. Keyword is a topic that I can make a quality article about.

2. Keyword has more than 10 searches per month.

3. Article has the lowest QSR possible, preferably under 30.

3. Monetization:

My site isn't even monetized. I don't even plan on monetizing it until traffic starts coming in. That is just another thing to distract me from making quality content.

Content is my primary focus, and nothing else even comes close. I learned this lesson the hard way from my past sites, which all ended in utter failure from failing to focus on content.

I don't really care how much traffic these first 50 articles bring me, (that's kind of a lie, but it isn't a priority), I just want Google to recognize my site and for the software to respect Rentals and Realtors far more than it does right now.

I currently have 14 articles in 2 months. I have 1 website click, (no idea how), 34 valid pages (no idea what this means, I don't even think there are 34 pages on the site), 61 impressions, (no clue if this is good for the articles and time of my website) and 0 articles ranked.

I am not discouraged, I know it is a process that takes time. I bought four years of hosting, and that is how long I am giving myself to hit affiliate marketing head-on. If I haven't had any success by 2024, then I'll hang up the cleats.

But four years is a long timeframe, and I expect to continue longer.

I need to take advantage of this summer, because once I head back to the Citadel, life gets pretty sporatic and content will probably be uploaded inconsistently as other priorities rise.

I plan on staying with WA for years to come, not because of the training, but because of the community. I plan to stay to continue learning from those with more experience, and so once I start gaining experience, I can give back to the community that has helped me so much, without asking anything in return except the $360 I gave it. (I haven't received anything financially, but I received enough knowledge from that investment that I believe it will pay off handsomely.

Unfortunately, my WA membership expires in July, and I do not have the means to fork over the money just yet, but I believe I am on my way to bringing traffic to my website, and once I start bringing traffic in, I will begin to monetize, and once sales start coming in...

As the terminator said: I'll be back.