nichebuilder.net

So I registered a domain tonight for a new site that I want to launch that will be monetized via the Amazon Associate program. Currently affiliate marketing and earning money on the internet is just a hobby for me, but I plan to significantly ramp up my efforts. All of my current sites, about 7 of them are monetized via EPN (eBay Partner Network.) Ever since QCP debuted in October almost all publishers monetizing with EPN started looking for other monetization sources.

EPN’s Quality Click Pricing, or QCP for short, is an inherently closed system in the vein of Google’s AdSense program, so I decided to pickup a domain related to the food/cooking niche. I didn’t check the keyword or search volume before running this which admittedly wasn’t smart, to do this long term I need to start doing more research into a niche and/or how it is monetized before attacking it. Regardless, I bought the domain in the spur of the moment and now I’m working on developing the site.

Diversifying away from EPN is important to me, with PPC affiliate marketing having an advertiser drop you isn’t that big of a deal as you can usually find another network running a similar offer. But eBay is one of the bigger “gateway” affiliate programs, the programs that people start out in when they first discover affiliate marketing. It’s easy to start making money with eBay and to find yourself spending all your time launching and optimizing sites only around EPN (or formerly CJ or Pepperjam.) The problem is, if eBay decides they don’t like your sites or your traffic they can unilaterally boot you from the program, or change the terms of the payouts to hamstring your earnings. Which is why I want to limit my exposure should a problem with me EPN sites ever come up. My goal is to match my monthly EPN revenue with Amazon Associates revenue and possibly AdSense. I’ll post intermittent updates as to how I progress.