A newbie needs some help

A lot of good tips here on increasing traffic to your site via SEO, backlinking, etc.

But don't forget the other important factor if you want to generate income = Optimize conversions.

You can have a million visitors to your site, but if they're only interested in Mexican beer and bullfights, and not on booking a hotel room in Mexico, then all your efforts will be for naught.

As someone with a few websites generating affiliate income, I would like to advise you to please put as much importance on your site's conversion as you do on traffic.

You have two offers on your site: One is for booking hotel rooms via Booking.com, the other for singles who love to travel.

The landing pages for your two offers will produce low conversions simply because when a visitor to your site clicks on either of these banners, they are taken to pages with a lot of "stuff" happening on the page, and it's likely that your site visitor won't take any action at all because there's no incentive or reason for them to take action.

Take the Booking.com home page for example. For best conversions, it would be ideal if you had an article on your website such as "5 Best ways to save on hotel rooms in Puerto Vallarta" or "How to save 20% on your next Puerto Vallarta hotel booking". Your article gives great info on saving on hotel reservations. Toward the end of your article, you would mention how booking your hotel online can save X% or X amount of dollars compared to going through a travel agency (as an example) [make sure your stats are honest and accurate, not fudging the numbers ]

Then at the end of the article, you'll have a nice Call to Action like so: "Here's an online site where you can book a hotel reservation in Puerto Vallarta and save 20% on a beachfront room and... [mention whatever other benefits that Booking.com offers compared to the competition]. OR: "Check out this site for great hotel deals in Peurto Vallarta"

You then link to the Booking.com page with the list of Puerto Vallarta hotels that match the criteria you mentioned in your article. Do NOT link to the home page of Booking.com. You want to make it as easy as possible for your site visitor, so link to the landing page where it already has all the Puerto Vallarta hotels that match the criteria you mentioned in you article, and so they can easily find the hotel of their choice and make the reservation.

The key is to have your site visitor take as few steps as possible to complete the action you want them to take, in this case: to reserve a room on Booking.com so you can get an affiliate commission. If they read a great article on your site about hotels in Puerto Vallarta with the best deals, but then you link to the home page of Booking.com, you'll have fewer people who will go through the effort of doing a search on the site for Puerto Vallarta hotels. Instead, link to the Puerto Vallarta hotel page so that they're now one step closer to where they need to be.

Even better: find 3 hotels or vacation homes in Puerto Vallarta that are featured in Booking.com. Do research on these 3 locations by visiting travel sites online as well as the info provided on the Booking.com page for each resort/condo/hotel.

Read customer reviews about these 3 locations anywhere and everywhere online that you can find the info. Begin to find the pros and cons of all 3 locations. Find common themes. Now you've got some cool and helpful info for someone that's interested in taking a trip to P.Vallarta but is interested in staying at a condo/apartment, not a hotel. BTW, This is in line with the advice by "kk075" and "Antonio Seegars" who say to focus on long-tail keyword articles.

So your article can be titled something like "3 beachfront Luxury condos in Puerto Vallarta without the luxury price".

After you mention each location in your article, you can do a link directly to that luxury condo right in your article (I'm guessing that you can create affiliate links to specific pages on Booking.com? Meaning that Booking.com allows that? similar to linking to a product page on Amazon, is what I'm trying to say.)

This type of article topic will give you much higher conversions than writing about music in Puerto Vallarta (for example), and then hoping that the person who reads that article will click on your banner in the side bar "Book Your Hotel with Booking.com", and then hoping take they'll take the time to search for hotels on their own.

Especialliy in the beginning, everything on your site should be about taking your site visitor (by the hand) to the action you want them to take.

If you want a site visitor to book a hotel room, vacation home, etc. on Booking.com, then walk them through every step along the way. But don't just take them to the Home Page of Booking.com and leave them to figure it out on their own. By the time they start to figure out the home page, the next episode of The Bachelor will take their attention away from your offer.

Think of it this way: Let's say I have a review site for vacuum cleaners where I make affiliate commissions on AMazon. If I write a review for a new Dyson vacuum, I will make sure to link straight to that particular product page. I don't link to the AMazon home page, and have my site visitor find the product on their own.

For maximum conversions on your site, I would advise you do something similar. If you write an article on "3 kid-friendly resorts in Cancun" then make sure the links in your article go straight to those 3 kid-friendly resorts (don't forget to add your affiliate link ) on Booking.com. Yea?

Also, switch your focus to "problem solver". You are solving problems for your site visitor. You are saving them time. You are doing all the research for them, so that they don't have to. You are providing value.

By solving specific problems, you effortlessly will tackle long-tail keywords and get highly targeted traffic (which leads to maximum conversions).

For maximum conversions, you want to solve problems specifically for people that are planning a trip to Mexico and are looking for a specific hotel/vacation home/resort for their specific needs.

So how to find out what problems to solve so you can turn these into articles on your site?

1. Check out travel forums: there's a "Mexico forums" section on Trip Advisor.com, and just running through a few threads can give some ideas on problems faced by tourists or some fun things that travelers are looking for.

For example:
You have the bride-to-be who wants to find the most romantic resort in Cancun for her and future hubby's honeymoon. Money is not an issue because her parents are paying for the trip (thanks mom and dad). But she doesn't have much time to do all the research b/c she's picking out wedding invitations and planning her bachelorette party and writing her wedding vows. So she does a google search for "romantic honeymoon resorts in Cancun" and your article shows up. She clicks to the article on your site, and you have the most comprehensive info available on 3-5 Cancun resorts and what makes these the most romantic. You include info about what other honeymooners have loved about these 5 resorts, is there horse riding or other fun activities nearby for newlyweds to enjoy? etc.

2. The google keyword planner tool is a good place to find "problems"
If I type in "beach resorts in Cancun", I start to get some cool ideas for future articles....
Here are some interesting keywords that the google kw tool generated under the "keyword ideas" tab:
--"hidden beach resort Cancun" = nice! Looks like some people are interesting in finding a secluded beach in Cancun that's away from the crowds. Are there any resorts on Booking.com that fit this criteria? If so...Bingo. You now have a cool article that will help solve a problem: "I wanna visit Cancun, but I'm not interesting in sharing a beach with 100's of other loud tourists." So, now you can write an article on "3 hidden beach resorts in Cancun for that perfect romantic getaway". You write a helpful, detailed review for each of those hidden beach resorts (or maybe Cancun just has one hidden beach resort?) and remember to link inside the article (with your affiliate links) to each page on Booking.com that links directly to that resort.

--"best all inclusive resorts Cancun" = okay, this may be too competitive and a bit tricky to rank in the beginning. You'll want to do some keyword research and see how difficult it would be to rank for this one.

Or, on second thought, don't worry about keyword competition (I say this at the risk of getting banned from this forum, lol). Heck, I've written articles on my product review website when it was a new site even though the keyword was highly competitive, but I loved the topic, and I just went for it. Maybe you know a good amount of info on "all-inclusive resorts in Cancun" and would love to write an article on that topic. Don't let Competition analysis discourage you. You may have a site visitor that comes to your site through another article, and sees your article on "all-inclusive resorts in Cancun" and that's the exact info they were looking for. So, you may not rank for "best all inclusive resorts in Cancun" but if you have traffic coming in from other related articles, your "all-inclusive resorts" article will start to get on-site traffic and clicks to Booking.com

--"best family resorts in Cancun" = people are looking for a kid-friendly resort. If Booking.com has resorts that match this criteria, then now you have another cool article topic....or maybe even several articles. I can see this topic being broken down into several articles.

So, the above keywords came from just punching in one keyword for one city into the google keyword planner tool. If you do this for a handful of cities in Mexico (make sure they have resorts/hotels featured in Booking.com), you'll have a nice list of article ideas. And these articles will attract highly targeted traffic to your site that are focused on booking a hotel room or vacation home in Mexico. This will give you a much higher conversion rate than an article on Mexican beers, because we don't know if that site visitor is also interested in booking a hotel room in Mexico.

Other places for article ideas related to booking a hotel room/resort: travel magazines; online reviews on Amazon for books on traveling in mexico; other travel forums in addition to TripAdvisor.com.

Remember, you're looking for problems that a tourist has (problems specifically related to finding the right hotel room/condo/resort) so that you can solve those problems with a helpful article, and each article will have a direct link to specific hotels that match what they need and solve their "problem/challenge".

Make your path to generating income as short as possible. If you want to generate affiliate commissions from Booking.com, then make sure you target an online audience that's just steps away from booking their hotel room/condo/resort in Cancun, Rosarito, Ixtapa, etc. You do this by focusing on articles that single out a couple of resorts that match exactly what they're looking for: Inexpensive hotels in Acapulco; beachside condos in Playa del Carmen; Mazatlan vacation homes with pool and full concierge service (I made that up, don't know if that would really be a search), etc.

Make each article as specific as possible in order to target as specific a group of people as possible (remember: you're solving problems). You want to position yourself for maximum conversions.

Later on, you can have fun with adding articles on Mexican beer and other cool topics not specifically related to booking hotel rooms and vacation condos. But for now, get highly targeted traffic that you can convert on Booking.com and start making money!

And finally, congratulations for getting to where you are. Most of us (including me when I first started) just can't get past that initial barrier of building a site. But You did it!...a sign of your inevitable success.

Final note: I focused only on Booking.com for suggestions, but you'll want to take the same approach for your other affiliate offer: BestSingleTravel.com. Again, you'll want to make sure that they have affiliate links available for linking straight to a particular "vacation package" page. Linking to their home page just won't give you optimal conversions.

No don't do PPC because it's like taking a big risk and you will compete with the really big companies.

Test you site out first with a small traffic package and see if it makes sales and if not make the proper adjustments.

I think you could make a heck of a lot more money going that route, but that's just my opinion.

You could make some big commissions and use all of that traffic to sell advertising and promote other related things to increase your profits.

It's more 'relevant' in my eyes to search engines that it would be more of a 'real estate' site or at least a place where they can find other resources (with the end goal being "a vacation home in mexico")