David Pitlyuk

Last week I made a post about a carbon fiber wallet that I really liked. I posted about it on a couple car forums I was a part of because it’s something I knew guys from there would be interested in as well. The posts received a good amount of comments, and was even re-posted on some other forums. The cool thing for me was that I had actually used an affiliate link to eBay, which ended up getting a couple hundred clicks and converted into 3 sales that made me a few dollars.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with eBay’s affiliate program, you make a percentage of eBay’s revenue from any sales, as well as $25-$50 if the user has to actually sign up for eBay.

I know that carbon fiber car parts are quite popular, and I’m sure there is a ton of competition in that market. The wallet got me thinking about any sites out there that specialize in non-car part carbon fiber products…such as gifts, accessories, novelty items, etc. I started my search, and I could not find anything out there.

*BING*, that’s when the light bulb turned on in my head. This was a great niche to get into, carbon fiber is popular, it’s not that cheap, and nobody is really in the market. So I started thinking about how I can try and monetize on this, and I thought of a few ways:

Build An eCommerce Store

I could try and go out there and find a variety of carbon fiber products, build an inventory and/or a list of drop shippers/suppliers and open a store. This is potentially a great idea, but it will take a good bit of money and time to get everything setup. At the same time, it’s probably also the most potentially profitable option.

Create A Store, But With Virtual Products And No Inventory

As an alternative to the above option, I was thinking about creating a store with products in it, but when you click “Buy Now” it actually takes you to a product page on something like Amazon via affiliate link.

This isn’t bad, I would basically find as many products a I can find, and really work on promoting the site to generate conversions.

Blog It

The last option I was thinking about was doing a blog about featuring cool carbon fiber products. Obviously each post can have affiliate links in it to generate conversions. The benefit to this option is that I can really optimize for SEO to generate as much organic traffic as possible. Carbon fiber has enough of a cool factor to potentially have some Digg worthy articles I can write to boost some major traffic through the site.

I decided to do the blogging route, with a potential in eCommerce. The blogging route allows me to build the site over time, and become the trusted source for carbon fiber products. As I analyze which posts are generating the most interest in a product, I can consider actually having an inventory of that product and selling it directly to increase the amount of money I can pull in. First things first though, build the site up, generate traffic, and make some money through affiliate links.

On that note, I’m pleased to announce Carbon Fiber Gear dot com!  I’ve already posted a few cool carbon fiber products on there, so feel free to check it out, post some comments, and help get things going :)  I’ll make a post later this week about the process behind actually getting the site setup and launched so quickly, so look for that.  This is really my first opportunity to do any sort of affiliate marketing, so I expect this to be quite a learning experience.   If you have any suggestions or feedback, please share!