Last week I went to the Affiliate Gathering in York, which was organised by YouTuber Carl Broadbent.
I spent two days in the company of some incredibly intelligent people who doing some amazing things in the niche site space.
Here are my key takeaways from the event…
Before I get started,
These are not the main thing that were included in the speeches.
These are just some little snippets of info that I gained, mostly from chatting to people before and after the main event.
1. Amazon commission rates vary wildly by country
This is something that I kinda knew, but I’d never thought about too much.
Selling items in the ‘home’ category, for example, will get you 3% in the US,
7% in the UK
And a whopping 10% in Australia.
I currently use Geniuslink to send people to their country.
But there are some cases where the products are so different that the UK and Australia will warrant separate pages.
You may even decide that these could be separate sites.
A new site for the Australian market could be worth it in some cases, especially for products don’t ship globally.
2. Pinterest works now
The word on the street is that Pinterest can be a decent source of traffic right now.
It used to work a few years ago,
Then Pinterest changed the algorithm and it stopped working.
People stopped pinning,
So they changed it back, and now it works again.
(This sounds a lot like Facebook!)
I missed the Pinterest workshop as it overlapped with Jamie I.F.’s talk about affiliate marketing.
But, I can’t wait to watch the replay video when it’s out!
3. Keep YouTube videos broad
There was some great YouTube advice at the gathering.
As a YouTube beginner, I learned a lot from this.
One important thing I discovered what that you should make each video appeal to a wide variety of people.
So instead of ‘Benmullen Hotel Review’
Which will appeal only to people considering staying at that hotel.
I’ll be making a video about:
“This Cheap UK Hotel Has HUGE Waterslides (Benmullen Hotel)”
This will appeal to a wider audience of people who are just browsing.
(I made up the hotel name, but you get the idea)
4. Niche sites are selling for lower multiples now
Niche website marketplace, Motion Invest, shared some interesting stats about the current state of the market.
In April, sites were selling for 27X monthly profits on average.
This is down from 35X back in September.
It was good to see some stats to help decide if now is the right time to sell.
I also met quite a few people who had sold their whole portfolios recently.
I can’t imagine how amazing that must feel!
5. Evergreen content should be refreshed every year
According to data from Newzdash, traffic peaks 10-12 months after an article is published, then begins to decline.
By refreshing the content every 12 months we can keep traffic higher for longer.
Again, I kinda new this.
But it was good to see stats from an actual analysis to back up my own hunch.
And it should give me a kick up the arse to get updating things!
6. Meeting people is SO important
Look, I love nothing better than working alone at home.
Just as my idea of hell is a 6th birthday party with 30 screaming kids and 30 weird parents you have to talk to for 2 hours…
My idea of paradise is being alone in silence.
But, for people like me, going to events is SO valuable.
It gets us out from behind screens and into a place where we can chat with people just like us.
And it’s not all about the work chat either.
During a fun non-work chat, I happened to meet someone who is passionate about one of my niches and also works as a freelance writer.
Hello!
I hope that we can work together, and if not, that we’ll stay friends anyway.
Overall, I had a fab time at the Affiliate Gathering and I’m so glad that I went.
If you want to see the talks, you can buy the video recordings here.
These have much more useful info than the snippets I’ve given you here.
In particular, Jamie I.F.’s talk was like a checklist of how to optimise your affiliate posts – it had SO much value.
But really, you can’t beat going in person.
See you next year?
– NSL