359: Profitable Affiliate Marketing, Even in an Insanely Competitive Niche


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Just because a niche is insanely competitive, it doesn’t mean you can’t start an affiliate site and claim a slice of the revenue.

At least, that’s what Sa El of SimplyInsurance.com has done, and the way he lays out how he’s done it will pique the interest of affiliate marketers out there.

Sa was a door-to-door insurance salesman in Atlanta. He wanted to get into the online space and build an affiliate site, and with more than 11 years’ experience in the insurance industry, it made sense to enter the insurance niche.

He took Brain Dean’s SEO That Works course to learn the ropes. But, when he told Brian he was going to build a site in the insurance niche, he was advised against it.

Did Sa go back to the drawing board and look for a new niche?

Nope.

Sa told me there were two reasons why he decided to go ahead and build his site:

  1. He likes a challenge, and
  2. If the niche is that competitive, most of his competition is already at the top, leaving room for him to work his way up.

That was 2 years ago.

Today, Sa’s site is bringing in 6000 visitors a month and $13k-$15k in revenue.

These numbers prove how competitive the insurance niche is. That’s a huge revenue number for 6k visitors, and Sa told me that only around 4.5k of those visitors are landing on his “money pages.” (Some examples linked below.)

Tune in to hear how Sa strategically built out his content to capture longtail traffic, how he builds backlinks (lots of them) to rank his money pages, and the tools he’s using to accelerate his efforts.

Free Bonus: Download Sa’s Top Tips For Growing an Affiliate Site in a Competitive Niche

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Learn:

  • Why Sa decided to start a site in the competitive insurance niche.
  • How he approaches content creation and what’s working for him.
  • The criteria he uses when doing keyword research.
  • How he’s building backlinks to his money pages to increase revenue.
  • How he’s targeted longtail traffic to break into some competitive insurance terms.
  • His unique and effective guest post outreach tactics.
  • The things that motivated Sa to persist until he received his first commission check.
  • Some of the trust signals he says are important for SEO.
  • Sa’s #1 tip for Side Hustle Nation.

Links / Next Steps

Examples of Sa’s “Money” Pages:

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With all of my guest's top tips and resources included.

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Nick Loper

About the Author

Nick Loper is a side hustle expert who loves helping people earn more money and start businesses they care about. He hosts the award-winning Side Hustle Show, where he's interviewed over 500 successful entrepreneurs, and is the bestselling author of Buy Buttons, The Side Hustle, and $1,000 100 Ways.

His work has been featured in The New York Times, Entrepreneur, Forbes, TIME, Newsweek, Business Insider, MSN, Yahoo Finance, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Financial Times, Bankrate, Hubspot, Ahrefs, Shopify, Investopedia, VICE, Vox, Mashable, ChooseFI, Bigger Pockets, The Penny Hoarder, GoBankingRates, and more.

5 thoughts on “359: Profitable Affiliate Marketing, Even in an Insanely Competitive Niche”

  1. Hey Nick Loper and Sa
    Loved the podcast, thought I was going to write it off when I heard it was about insurance but wrote a whole page of notes instead.
    Quick Question: what were the parameters to scrape those hundred guest blog addresses?
    Jay

    Reply

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