This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Can small content creators succeed with affiliate marketing? Hey friends, hey community, what's up? Welcome to Sodasil School. Chris Guillebeau, your host here. In this episode, we're gonna explore how smaller content creators can compete in the affiliate marketing space that is currently dominated by big companies.
So what we're talking about here, you have experienced this as a consumer when you go to Google and you search as one does, you go and search for something, you're looking for laundry detergent or Bluetooth headphones or whatever it is, you go there and you search and immediately, like all of the top results are dominated by news content companies. It's gonna be like Time Magazine or Newsweek or CNN or health, various health magazines. And they're like, here are the top 10 laundry detergents. Here are the best Bluetooth headsets as tested by our experts. And they do this because they make a lot of money doing it.
Like it's an entire huge industry, again, dominated by these companies. So if you are not a huge company, if you're a smaller content creator, but you like this idea of this kind of business model, which has been really successful for people in the past, what do you do? How do you stand out? So Sam, our listener in New York asked this question. I'm gonna see if I can be helpful to Sam and maybe some other people out there as well.
It's a really interesting time in this space because a lot of change has taken place in the past few months or so. So I'll talk about it, detailed question. And my answer coming right up. [Music]
Hello, Chris, I'm Sam calling from New York. I've noticed that the content affiliate strategy seems to be dominated by big companies, making it hard for smaller creators like me to compete.
Is there still room for small content creators to succeed with affiliate marketing or should I consider different strategies? What tips do you have for standing out in a crowded affiliate marketing space? I discovered your podcast last year and it's been really helpful. All right, all right, thank you for the question. I totally get it.
Competing with big companies in the affiliate marketing space these days can feel like an uphill battle just because they kind of flood the market with content. These publishers, there was a report that came out a while back that was like, these publishers actually own like 87% of the internet, which is crazy, right? It's like a massive number, especially in terms of the search terms for any kind of products. And it could be from fashion to tech to food and health and just basically anything, right? Anything where they can make money on affiliate commissions.
They've got people and now AI tools as well that are just cranking out so many different posts. So it is a challenge. I just wanna acknowledge that in the beginning. But of course, as a smaller creator, you're not gonna be able to flood the market with content in the same way, but there's something you can do. And that is you can stand out and make a name for yourself and you can brand yourself in a way that these big companies can't do.
So we've got this reality here where they have a massive advantage in terms of resources, SEO experience, expertise, both and content production capabilities. What you have is the ability to embrace your niche because your niche, your niche, whatever pronunciation you prefer, big companies often take a broad approach to content. But you can go hyper specific. You can be the go-to expert. And so you wanna focus on a really narrow topic.
For example, instead of like a general fitness blog or website specialize in vegan bodybuilding. Just for example, if you're not into veganism or bodybuilding, will you choose something else? That's the point. You specialize in something and you go deep. Your depth of knowledge and passion will resonate much more with a targeted audience.
And then next, these big companies, they have large audiences, but they are not loyal. They're just following the clicks. They're just like, they just go on Newsweek.com, not because they wanna read Newsweek, but because Newsweek was able to rank for the laundry detergent search. So you can cultivate a loyal community and it takes time. But if you engage with your audience, you kind of create a missional sense around this website, even if it is a content affiliate website, that's okay.
You do your best to get people coming back. And then so part of that is like offering some authentic personal content, share your story, share your personal experiences, stories and insights. Authenticity cannot be replicated by big corporations. So this can be a unique selling point. Practical tip, next, competing for broad keywords is tough, but long tail keywords like more specific and less competitive phrases can help you kind of build that audience.
So there's some free tools you can use, free or low cost. One is Google's Keyword Planner. Just look that up, you can use it. It gives you lots of information. Other one's called Ahrefs, A-H-R-E-F-S.
You can find long tail keywords relevant to your focus. So if you do these things, again, you're not gonna be able to compete necessarily, but you can build a monetizable product, monetizable content product that will not only earn you commissions, but hopefully get people coming back over time. So you want to use social media as much as you can, leverage multiple platforms. It's a lot of work, but the cool thing about it is it's kind of defined work. Like you know what you need to do, you just have to go and do it.
So big thanks to Sam, our caller, and all of our listeners out there who are trying different things, experimenting. I am cheering you on, wishing you the best. I want to be as helpful as possible. Got a bunch more episodes coming up, so it's always completely free. I hope you'll continue to listen.
My name's Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
[Air whooshing] [Music]
From the Onward Project.
