Playing Devil's Advocate... AM marketing question

[krazyjosh5]

Ok, this is a noob question, I know.

I'm trying to get a better grasp on how I should be looking at making money from affiliate marketing.

Is the purpose to sell products on sites with related content? Or to sell products through stores?

It just seems to me that getting a high volume of traffic to a content site, putting up ads in an attempt at selling products wouldnt be the most efficient way of making SALES.

For example, I dont go browsing my favorite college football news site when Im looking to buy a college football jersey. Ill search Google Products or ebay or a local store or something.

While marketing those products to that audience would certainly be alot more effective than marketing the same products on a car website, for example, it just seems like thats not the starting point for a sale.

If anything, it seems like AM would only be worthwhile on a site with a continued, returning, loyal readership thats deeply involved with a niche. For example, throwing up a site with a shitty design and somewhat spammy articles on computer scanners doesnt, in my mind, feel like it would SELL scanners. It wouldnt land in someones bookmarks. Theres probably no average user that follows news about scanners or thinks about scanners or what not. (although scanners might be a great subsection of a photography site) There wouldnt be repeated exposure. It would be another non-converting impression. Or so my thinking goes...

So where does/should affiliate marketing begin? As an addition to a content site or on a site dedicated to the dealing of those goods?

...or is my logic flawed? Playing devil's advocate here. Thanks.

 

[Aveligand]

Gave up on arbi?

I think long term content sites are good if you can keep up with them. But they're hard to maintain and can be a real drag if you don't have a real interest in the subject.

Most affiliate sites I've seen have minimal content. For the most part (if you're doing PPC advertising), its just a simplistic but visually appealing minisites with an introduction to the product you're pushing, a brief pre-sell, and then your affiliate code plastered in somewhere to drive the user to the publisher's site. I think that's a good starting point.