Dipping my toes into affiliate marketing.

[Ashton]

Ok, so... I have rolled out my first affiliate based site

After a kind someone posted this domain as available. I got bitten by the 'wow' bug and dived in and bought it just as I was going out the door.

I have since built a site, signed up for the corresponding affiliate links and I am now stuck.

Where do I go next? Do I advertise it with adwords? Do I work more on the SEO? Confused

Any help, friendly advice, constructive criticism is all appreciated.

Please Note: I will send every penny profit I make from this site to the admin of here. It will prove the market to me and ill buy some more domains (probably off members of this forum) and invest proper money into affiliate marketing.

 

[RSK3000]

Ashton,

1. For your best chance of success develop a site on a domain name containing a term people are actually searching for. Google's external keyword tool is your guide in this.

2. There is lots of good advice in the mini-sites section of this forum. Read this before you do anything else. Minisites are not your only option and there are money making opportunities such as through blogging and internet marketing, for example. I have heard that some people are making money buying and selling domain names, too.

3. Once you have decided your strategy then develop a site based on what you have learned. Your money making strategy may include blogs, minisites or internet marketing, or a combination of these.

The thing is that generally speaking this is not a route to easy money and for everyone who has made money easily online, there are lots who are putting in loads of hours over a long period of time.

This is a good start. Take what you have learned and take things to the next level.

 

[Ashton]

Thanks a lot for your reply, any ideas on the minimum monthly searches?

 

[accelerator]

Build great content, have more quality text on your site, answer questions people are looking for, make your site interactive, look at longtail searches that you could leverage.

Learn how to promote your site well: PR releases, articles, blogs, sigs in relevant forums.

Rgds

 

[whiterabbit]

Hi,

A few random points...

-the homepage doesn't hit me with any wow factor. It's a nice clear layout, but nothing that leaps out of the screen especially. That much white space on the homepage and massive button sizes, etc also suggests that's there's not much content on the site. (That might be true but try to hide it) I'd recomment some sort of clear call-to-action on the homepage would be good. E.g. a "not sure where to start? click here" type button.

-Your buttons on the other pages also need to be a bit more buttonish or look like they'll do something if you click them. Some sites put a '>' symbol at the end of the button or position the button at the bottom right of the page to suggest it'll take you somewhere else. Look at a few sites you like - what do their buttons look like? It's vital you get customers to click!

-I'd definitely work the SEO angle to start with. PPC can eat a lot of money, quickly. You should probably want to be happy that your site is good, users find it easy to follow and that it converts well before you work out how much you want to pay for a click and against which other players you want to compete.

-As a basic test try getting the least internet savvy person you know and sitting them infront of your site. Give them a task that you think most potential customers in your area would want to do, e.g. "you want to find out more about used PCs. Try researching if they're cheaper than a new one, and what benefits or downsides they might have?" See whether they can find what they need on your site, or where they end up - it's nearly always a valuable learning.

Hope this helps,

WR