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

By Nick Loper / October 31, 2019

Note: Click here to download Sa’s top tips for starting and growing an affiliate site in a competitive niche from this episode.

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.

Download the Free PDF Highlight Reel:

Click here to download Sa’s top tips for starting and growing an affiliate site in an insanely competitive niche from this episode.

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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:

About Author

Nick Loper

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