How To Make Money Selling Action Figures [With Affiliate Marketing]

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I used to play with my G.I. Joe figure for hours on end when I was a kid. Granted we didn’t have a lot of the distractions that kids have today.

It was the 80’s and there were plenty of things to do but Action Figures always had a special place for many of us that grew up back then.

What were fun and games is now a beautiful business opportunity.

So.

How To Make Money Selling Action Figures? There are a variety of ways to go about making money off your passion for action figures. Affiliate marketing and advertising on a blog is one way. A Youtube channel reviewing the latest figures or vintage figures or anything in between is another. So many possibilities for this niche.

That is not to say that they are dead and gone these days. They have just evolved into toys that are more appealing to today’s youth.

There Is Just Something About Owning Your Own Business. Being Your Own Boss. Building Something From The Ground Up With Your Own Hands. Especially When It Is This Easy To Get Started.

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The Action Figure Niche

Remember when you were a kid and you said: “When I grow up I am going to buy every action figure I can”. I know I did. My parents got me a lot of great toys but there was always one that slipped through.

That is one of the great allures of the action figure niche. You can discuss your love of this great childhood defining toys and promote them to earn a little income as well. Then you can spend that income on more great action figures to review and discuss.

It is a never-ending circle. A joyous toy infused never-ending circle. But it is so much larger than that now. Not only do we have the classics we have new figures.

Some of the best and most detailed we have ever seen. Action figures from every movie and television show and video game that you could possibly imagine.

It is a great time for people who love action figures and that makes it a great time for you to start your own action figure blog.

In fact, action figures have continually brought in over 1 billion dollars in the U.S. alone for close to 2 decades(source).

Micro-Niches To Consider

Technically actions figures is a sub-niche of the toy niche. You could try and take on the entire action figure niche all at once but it will likely swallow you up.

It is just too broad.

The best course of action is to find a micro-niche to start out in and expand as you need to. Here are some examples of where to look for a micro-niche.

1. Specific Size Figures — Focus on 6-inch figures for example.
2. Specific Genre Action Figures — Generate content around comic figures or robotic figures.
3. Stick To One Brand — Start with Star Wars or Marvel or DC or GI Joe or Fortnite. And stick to it until you grow a little bit. Plus 100’s more that you could focus on.
4. Anime Action Figures — This might even be a little too broad. But find popular Manga and Anime action figures to promote and review.
5. Vintage Action Figure — This can be a real money maker if you can really relate to your audience. And of course, you are able to find and promote the vintage figures. This would also make a great e-store if you could find these older action figures and sell them in one place.

How To Monetize An Actions Figures Blog?

There are a few ways to monetize an action figure blog. Affiliate marketing. An E-commerce store and advertisements are all possibilities. Let’s take a look at three of the best ideas for your new niche blog.

Affiliate Programs

The first way to start out with monetizing any blog, including an Action Figure blog is to use affiliate marketing.

You don’t need the big traffic numbers of advertisements or info products. You don’t need to worry about inventory or customer support if you are opening your own online store. It is the best way to get started.

Here is the rub for affiliate marketing in action figures. There are very few that are going to be what I would consider high-ticket items.

Vintage Action figures are the exception in some cases. But for the most part, you are looking at a 4-5% commission of a 10-20 dollar item if you stick with Amazon for your affiliate partner.

Obviously, with those types of commissions, you are going to need to make a lot of sales to get a nice income stream going.

The good news is that Amazon, Wal-mart, and Target with their tiny commissions are not the only options.

Here are a few examples that may help you get better commissions and better user experience from your affiliate programs.

• The Right Stuf — An Anime based toy shop with a variety of products available. Including a wide selection of anime based action figures. They offer an 8% commission.
• Entertainment Earth — This Store Has a Wide Variety Of Popular Action Figures From Comics And Pop Culture. They Offer A 7-10% Commission.
• SideShow Collectibles — A Creator Premium Action Figures. These are barely action figures really. They are handcrafted collectibles but they fit right into just about any action figure blog.

Advertisements

Next up is advertisements. These are a great way to earn a little extra cash for your website. Depending on the niche you could get about $25 per 1000 pageviews with the right ad network.

For something like Adsense, it would be closer to $4 per 1000. So it is important to find a good ad network like Ezoic or Adthrive, The issue is that most ad networks have minimum traffic requirements and won’t take anyone who has been banned from Google Adsense.

It is not hard to get banned from Adsense especially if you are new. So my advice is to wait till you are getting around 10k page views a month and then join Ezoic.

When you hit 100k a month move on the Adthrive. Just forget about Adsense it is not worth the risk of getting banned and losing out on earning real money down the line.

Info or Custom Products

This is for advanced marketers really. You could create a course on topics surrounding the action figure niche if you think you could add enough value to sell them on their own. It might be a bit tricky but I am sure it’s possible for someone with more experience in this niche that I have.

One other way to make money with action figures is to create your own action figures. This requires a bit of upfront capital and you will need to have a receptive audience waiting so you can turn your profits around fairly quickly.

But with enough planning, you could really start making a name for yourself in the action figure niche.

Domain Names

What to call you blog is becoming less and less important overall. However, if you plan on expanding into an e-commerce site then you are going to want to have a domain and blog name that you can brand.

Easy to remember and memorable domains are the best way to go. No hyphens or underscores or really long domains. Keep it simple and make it memorable.

Keyword Research For Action Figures

Keyword research is just as important to action figures as it is to any other niche. And it is still one of the most important factors for organic SERP traffic.

Let’s start with the head keyword for this niche.

“Action Figures”.

Let me be plain about this. You are not going to rank for this keyword. Not with a new blog and probably never. It is too broad and too competitive and frankly not worth the time and effort it would take to try and bully your way onto the front page.

Why?

Because there is no intent and no direction for the keyword.

What type of action figure?

Star Wars?

Marvel?

What size? 6 inches? Bigger? Smaller?

Action Figures as a keyword is just not good on its own. But that’s where your best friend as a blogger comes in.

The long-tail keyword.

Let’s look a few now just to get you started with some ideas. I’ll be using Jaaxy for the research, you can read my quick review here.

One note about Jaaxy is that the tool is very conservative about its traffic estimates. Which is actually a good thing since you will often time see 2 or 3 times the traffic for a single keyword. Much more in some cases.

“Best action figures of the ’90s”

This long-tail keyword would be ideal for a vintage or collectible action figure blog. “Best Action Figures Of The ’90s” has some good buyer intent by adding the word best to the search keyword and the era narrows down the search so you can be laser-focused on the subject at hand.

A best-of list with places to buy these vintage figures would be a great money page for your collectibles blog.

Using eBay partners might not be a bad idea if you can find someone selling them. Keep in mind that the auctions don’t last long so they would need to be updated frequently.

“Top 5 best selling star wars action figures”

Another great buyers keyword. Someone is looking for the best Star Wars figures and they are looking for opinions. Yours is a valid as anyone else’s.

You can even break it down further by adding the toy line into the keyword. Top 5 Best Black Series Star Wars Actions Figures is even better and more focused.

Anyone looking for that search will find your thorough list more than enough to make an educated decision on which ones are the best.

“High-quality anime figures”

Another micro-niche dependent long-tail keyword. This one has a little bit less “buyers intent” that a “best of” keyword but you can certainly add the best qualifier onto the front of it and give it that little extra intent.

In the end, it is going to take a good amount of keywords of all types. Buyer intent, informational and everything in between.

My basic rule of thumb is to find 50 good keywords before you write an article. Preferably find about 200 good long-tail keywords and lay them out in a hit list.

That way you will won’t need to go looking for new keywords for a while and if you choose to outsource your article writing you already have all the keywords you need for that as well.

Wrapping it up

Action Figures is a great niche. Whether you are focusing on new toy lines or reliving your youth promoting and reviewing the classics you are going to find this niche a rewarding one.

Starting in any niche is not an easy thing to do. A lot of work is required before you write a single word of content. You have to find a domain name for your action figure blog and you need to find web-hosting for it as well.

You’ll need to do a ton of keyword research and get proper training on the best way to do SEO for your action figure blog.

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Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day.