Dealer Dan, pictured here with WWE Superstar Mick Foley, has been in internet marketing since 1996. He likes hugs, long walks on the beach, and making money while wearing his jammy jams. For more information, you can read all 
As someone who has coached many new affiliates over the years – I’ve seen a common trend. An affiliate becomes successful with their first website. They start getting traffic. They start making money. They’re doing it right.
And then they want to start a website in an entire new niche.
They’ll send me an e-mail with ideas for their next website. It’s something completely different and a whole new market and they’ll ask me my thoughts.
I always ask the same question:
What about competing with yourself?
What the Heck Do I Mean?
For some reason when it comes to online business ventures or affiliate marketing – people feel like they always have to do something different. They have to be going after new demographics, new niche, new target markets etc.
That’s a mistake.
I mean don’t get me wrong – I think it’s great that you want to expand your horizons. However if you aren’t competing with yourself and your most successful ventures – you’re making a big mistake. And not just for financial reasons.
Think about outside the internet for a second. Someone might open up a bakery specializing in gluten free items. It becomes a hit to the point that they want to expand their business. Are they going to open up a pizza shop next? No – they’re going to open up another gluten free bakery in another part of town.
The same rules apply online. If you have a successful website I’d always recommend building a website to compete with that website. Here are just a few of the reasons:
You can Split Test
This is a big one – you can view your second site almost as a playground – and play around with it, testing out various things.
Split testing is important but I know so many webmasters who don’t split test. And honestly – I don’t blame them. If I have a website which is making a lot of money and doing a lot better than I expected – I’m scared as hell to change it. Hell – take a look at the design on BetNHL.ca. It was a temporary design I put up 4 years ago. Then the site picked up thousands of vistors overnight and I’m too scared to change the design.
Having a second site means that you can split test to your hearts content. Try different designs, different buttons or CTAs etc – as much as you want, knowing that if it fails you’ve learned a lot that you can apply to your primary website.
You Know It All
Any good affiliate or webmaster will spend a long period on research before launching a website. Coming up with the content, then categorizing it into primary content, secondary content etc. Researching to get an idea of their target market – what they’ll be browsing with, what their age is and what connects with them.
The worst thing about it is a lot of it is guess work.
That’s completely unnecessary when you launch your competing website. You have the data right there at your fingertips. And it means that you can launch and start making money practically right away.
You Can Go After A New Demographic
You don’t have to directly compete with your primary website. You can go after an entirely new market.
For example – maybe your current website does well in most countries; but not in the UK. So then your competing website you can focus 100% on UK traffic. Get a .co.uk and get hosting in the UK and tell Google you’re going after the UK traffic. Look at what currently works with the UK traffic that you DO have and then apply that in a more aggressive nature.
It’s Motivating!
In all my years doing this – I don’t think anything motivates me more than competing with myself.
When a website becomes successful my mindset isn’t “okay guess I’ll build a similar site” but “I’m going to build a BIGGER, BETTER site and make THAT my main site for this niche”.
I remember years ago – going after keywords like “Full Tilt Poker Rakeback” or “Fortune Poker Rakeback”. I had at least 5 sites dedicated to these specific keywords and I’d try all these different things. I’d have unique tracking IDs for each site and I’d track it all in spreadsheets and seeing who is winning. Every day I’d wake up excited to see who “won” the previous day based on traffic, conversions etc. Plus I learned so much with running all these sites that it made it easy to know what worked for future sites I’d launch in the same niche.
When I launch a competing website – I make it a freaking competition. I don’t rest until site #2 has overtaken site #1. And if it never does? Oh well I still made a boatload of money in the process! I produce more content. I produce better content. I test and test and test and put in as much work as humanly possible – all the while making both sites better in the process.
So next time you’re looking at launching your next website – take a look in your mirror, and think about competing with that person.
The best competition is always yourself.
This article was written on October 14, 2015 however all articles are looked at on a monthly basis and updated to keep them relevant.
If you need to contact Graeme, please see his Contact Page. If you are an affiliate manager wanting promoted please see this page.
