Two Fixes For That 8020 Volatility

bynathaniell

100.5K followers

Updated 4 years ago

I'm in Vegas right now for the Wealthy Affiliate conference, and conversations about affiliate marketing are firing on all cylinders. It doesn't matter what we're talking about - beer, boxing matches, or Bitcoin...somehow we always end up talking about affiliate marketing at the end of the night.

One conversation really stuck in my head though - the idea that very often, 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts.

For example, it's super common for a site to have just one or two killer articles that have massive traffic, while the rest of the content is pretty mediocre in terms of results.

The trouble with that is, if anything goes wrong with those killer articles, your traffic or monthly income can get crushed in a short period of time. A Google update. A rogue affiliate program. A super strong competitor. Lots of things can go wrong!

So how do you fix that? How can you fortify your business against catastrophy? There's two main strategies I try to work on.

1. Fatten Up Your Low-Traffic Keyword Foundation

This is actually the easier of the two strategies because you don't have to be real smart to implement it. The aim here is simply to rank for a lot of stuff, across a broad range of keywords.

In other words, write more articles, rank for more terms, and get traffic coming in from more sources as a results.

If you have 1000 articles on your site brining in just 10 visitors per day, that's 10,000 visits per day to your website. JUST TEN VISITORS PER DAY! You might think that 1,000 blog posts seems impossible but 5 article per week over a span of four years is 1000 articles on your website.

Keep your mindset long term!

This is all just speculation and projection about numbers, but the main point to take home is that building up your base of content over time can make your online business more robust. It may not seem like the single post you publish today is worth much, but it adds up over time.

2. Find More "Unicorns"

A unicorn usually describes something that is unexpected, or seemingly unreal. In this context, I'm just talking about those wildly successful blog posts that you just don't expect. You might land a keyword on page one or have a Pinterest post go viral, but these incredibly successful blog posts can double or triple your traffic over night (for a short period of time).

Eventually, most peter out, but how can you recreate that success? Find another unicorn!

It's important to try to think outside the box. For example, instead of using Jaaxy's main keyword search function, I like to use Alphabet Soup.

Using the example above, for my beer website, I may find some obvious terms like "how to brew an ale" or "how to brew lager". But I can also discover some unique ideas like:

• how to brew beer with video courses
• how to brew gluten free beer
  

These keywords might flop, but they also might hit the jackpot. You have to take the risk and put in the work even though you aren't sure there will be a reward.

In my experience, a ton of affiliate website creators out there are just going through the motions. They do some basic keyword research, outsource articles to content mills, and try to flip their sites a year later. They don't care that much about their business.

If you put in the hours and create a unique, trusted brand, with AUTHORITY among your audience, you're going to shoot past those weak competitors one by one until you're all over page 1.

Decreasing The Volatility Of Your Business

I've always had swings in traffic and sales for all my websites, but over time, as I add more content and incrementally improve my business, those swings come less often, and are less volatile.

When one post dips, another one rises. As interest in one topic fades, you have a fresh one to take its place.

Keep laying bricks everyone, and have a great weekend!