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I have been looking further through the Schoolbook, and notice that under assignments, the number of times one needs to come up with 3 idea topics comes to 24 ideas.
I can't think even of the first 3 at the moment, and I'm wondering if my niche is too narrow. I'm wondering if I should have gone broader to include more items, rather than one item.
I have 40 keywords so far that fit the niche of the one item. Are all these topic ideas to be fitted around those keywords?
Yes, your articles should be centered around the keywords you've found, but I can understand why you're concerned. How to use keywords in articles, how many keywords and articles you need to have a decent site, and whether your niche is too narrow or too wide are things that a lot of beginners worry about, so you're not alone.
It can be hard to come up with lots of topic ideas. I made that the "homework" for quite a few of the lessons so that the students are forced to stretch their minds and come up with related ideas that they can write about.
It's easier to work from a list of already-thought-up ideas than to have to come up with a new idea every time you sit down to write. That can make you dread the task of writing.
Keep in mind, though, that the articles don't need all to be totally different from each other. There will definitely be overlap.
Let's take a for-instance using the made-up primary keyword widgets. Say the list of keywords you found starts with these:
Plastic widgets
Widgets plastic
Widgets made of plastic
Those are three ways to say the same thing, so you would probably incorporate all three of them into one article. Of course, those keywords may show up naturally in other articles as well, such as one that's about blue plastic widgets.
Maybe the next keyword on your list is:
Extra-large plastic widgets
Well, it would probably fit in with the first article too, but you'll just make this next article lean more heavily toward the extra-large ones. You'll say some of the same things as you did in the first article but word them a little differently, and you'll add lots of specific information about the extra-large size.
What might be next?
Extra-small plastic widgets
Again, some basic info may be repeated, but you would talk about how handy it is to have an extra-small widget around the house.
Then maybe you have a keyword like:
Fuzzy widgets
That can be the basis for another article on its own. The main thrust would be the benefits of fuzzy widgets.
But you also have keywords like:
Widget care and maintenance
How to care for your widget
You could incorporate both of those into one article. Say your next keyword is:
Widget cleaners
That can be the basis of another separate article, but it may duplicate some of the info from the widget care and maintenance article, just naturally, because it has to do with cleaning the widgets.
You might then have more articles based on keywords like metal widgets, wooden widgets, whatever.
I could go on and on, but I'm sure you get the idea that there will be overlap. You will want to avoid using large chunks of text in several articles verbatim, but you'll find somewhat different ways of saying the same thing.
Now, if someone read your whole site, starting with the first article and going one by one to the very last one, they'd run across lots of duplication and it certainly wouldn't read like a book. In a novel, you expect the action to develop page by page, chapter by chapter, in a coherent order. You generally wouldn't expect to find a scene in chapter 15 that already happened in chapter 3. But blog posts aren't always in any particular order, and visitors don't expect them to be. They're just a bunch of related things strung together in the order they were created.
One site, many doors
With affiliate marketing, you're trying to capture traffic coming from all kinds of different angles. One person may find you because they searched fuzzy widgets, but the next person will find you because they searched extra-large plastic widgets. They will enter your site through the page that uses those particular keywords, not necessarily through the home page.
So people won't generally be reading your site from beginning to end. They're going to pop in, get information from the pages or posts that specifically interest them, and—we hope—purchase something.
When they land on the particular page using their search term, you want to provide all the information they need to make their purchase decision. You're doing the same for the other person on the other page. So there will obviously be some duplication of ideas between those two pages.
But it doesn't matter to the two visitors; neither of them knows about the other and aren't wondering why the other post has some similar ideas repeated. All they care about is whether they found what they need. And what everybody needs is articles that address the exact keywords they search, and they need to be told, "Check out these widgets that will fit your needs perfectly. Here's how to order," etc.
As you try to come up with these topic ideas, don't stress too much about having a ton of completely separate things to say about a narrow subject. Your posts will be related to each other. Besides, as you do research for your site, you will run across new ideas or new products that would fit with your theme, and you'll be able to add new articles from time to time.
Your posts needn't be super long, either, so you can stretch out those keywords a little more by keeping articles on the short side but writing more of them. I would recommend the articles be at least 300 words, which shouldn't be too hard to do. In fact, this post has approximately 1,200 words so you'd only need a quarter of that.
But when will it end?
Don't feel you're going to have to come up with new articles about widgets for the next 20 years! Once you've made a complete site that adequately covers all your keywords, you'll probably be ready to move on to a new site.
You'll still maintain the widget site by adding new articles on a regular basis, whether that's weekly or every other week, or maybe even monthly. But you can pour your energy into a new project. See the difference between a "finished" site and a "complete" site.
There are no rules about at what point you can sit back a little and just throw your widget site a bone once in a while and move on to a new idea. It varies from person to person and site to site.
If you find that you indeed did make your niche too narrow or too broad, you can learn from that and correct it on your next site. It's not the end of the world!
I LOVE my “job.” Affiliate marketing takes work, but it doesn’t feel like work.
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