The Time Is Right To Think Holidays - In An Affiliate Sense

I've never been one to follow current "conventional wisdom". According to most we're in a two year recession, the banks will fail and we'll loose our heads.

I feel the two year thing is a bit over-pessimistic. But if its anything like that then it gives any affiliate that wants to start now a great time to start building a holiday/travel/hotel site.

It in relatively uncompetitive markets you can reach #1 and fairly large (comparatively) traffic levels from scratch in just a few weeks - as I've already described here and here.

But what about the uber competitive travel markets? Well in June I started a Cuba Holidays blog knowing full well that we're heading into difficult times. But my theory was that the market would come back and now is the perfect time to get started.

Why, you're probably asking? Well in these markets to get anywhere will take a shed load of content and a fair amount of time for Google to start trusting it.

I've done no external (to my network) link-building and its already picking up sales from niche search terms. Without harping on about stuff, its having a wide range of relevant paragraphs of natural English text.

So I've left it fallow until this morning when I did a quick post about a new hotel that's been finished. But my strategy now is to gradually build up the hotel reviews, add some local news items and step up the monetisation.

I'm not expecting to make a positive return on it for a year (time / commissions > my minimum expected return), but that won't stop me plodding on with it. I've seen from past experience that to get anywhere with my usual blogging tactic can take time, but you can also get there in a few weeks.

For my Easter and Valentines stuff I did last year puts me in a fantastic position for this year (some awesome rankings achieved) so this year's work will be much lighter whilst I work towards next year's stuff.

So my advice to other affiliates is:

• Don't believe the current hype, have the courage of your convictions - if you believe in the market or niche then go for it;
  
• Have a pipeline of sites - start some now, work on them, a few months later start another and keep the life cycle going;
  
• Don't try and monetise from the off - look to build trust from Google and consumers. Overly monetised sites are less likely to attract links naturally
  
• I know everyone else says it, but do what you're interested in. The sites that I've done the most out of are the ones that I've had a good interest in. The ones that I don't have a buzz for have dropped out of rankings. I've seen it with other affiliates, some sites they've launched with a big fanfare they've just left as they hadn't seen good rankings and then given up;
• That's the next tip - not be a "confidence affiliate", if you believe in the site don't give up because you don't see the rankings or revenues - break the confidence negative cycle.

So, if you don't have a travel site, get one started, it could be huge at the end of next year - but go niche, be clever and think true, related, relevant, linkable content - don't just get any old crap on there.