#226 – 7 REAL AFFILIATE SITES Dissected (And Why They’re Successful)
What You Will Learn * What a successful affiliate site looks like* How they got there* Why we consider them a success We get this question all the time with The authority site system… “Should I go into a broad or narrow niche?” Well, instead of giving you a bunch of unfounded theory, let me tell you the story of 2 sites that experienced both sides of the coin. On my left: Alphashooters.com (The power of niching down) The photography niche is no joke. There’s a ton of massive sites reviewing every lens, bag, adapter, sd card, little fluffy thing you put on the mic to reduce wind noise, etc.… So when I saw alphashooters.com got 25k traffic with just a DR 15, I was like Bravo. Their secret? Focusing on a single brand of camera and covering everything related to them. If you didn’t know, Alpha is Sony’s camera brand. And the items they review are NOT cheap. I know it because we shoot our show with a Sony camera… and it cost us 2600 GBP ($3,380). So when those guys rank for “best lenses for sony a7iii”, they must be making bank. And this, my friends, is the power of niching down and owning a topic. You don’t need as many links to rank. You don’t need as much time either. Buuuut, you may be putting a ceiling above your head. That’s what happened to our next candidate. On my right: Baldingbeards.com (Woops, I ran out of keywords) Balding beard started as a niche site for bald people with a beard… Talk about niching down. Their problem? They’ve been victims of their success. They’ve covered most of the keywords in their small niche, and it felt like a bit of a waste to not be able to grow anymore. Soooo they started expanding the scope of their content and talk about all men grooming items. And it has been working. Today, they are sitting pretty with over 275k traffic, according to Ahrefs. And I can tell you it’s not just rough bald dudes visiting their sites anymore. The moral of the story So what can we learn from these 2 sites? One, niching down, is powerful. It allows you to enter competitive niches by focusing on a single area and covering it better than people who pick a broader scope. Two, Even if you end up constrained by your niche because of your narrower branding, Google doesn’t work that way. So like baldingbeards.com, you can expand your scope and start ranking for more keywords. So should you be afraid to niche down for a new site? Nope. It might be a good idea. Plus, you can always rebrand and use a new domain name / 301 redirect the old one later if you feel constrained. If you want more Alpha shooters and Balding Beards are only 2 out of the 7 sites we analyzed in this week’s show. So if you want more of this kind of affiliate si...