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www.ecommerce-guide.com/solutions/affiliate/article.php/3403451
By Nathan Segal September 2, 2004 In Part One of this series, we looked at how to brainstorm what to sell online using Site Build It (SBI) -- a soup-to-nuts application for creating an affiliate site. Now we delve into the nitty-gritty: site design, domains, search marketing, and signing up for those affiliate programs. Grow, Prune and Pluck the Best Affiliate Programs Now that you've got the basic premise for your Web site, you now need to research affiliate programs that fit with your concept. The top specialized affiliate directories as listed by SiteSell are: Associate Programs, Revenews, and our own sister site Refer-It.com. In actual practice, I got some of my best results from Associate Programs and Refer-It. I also got some good results by searching through affiliate backend providers (the companies that make the technology underlying merchants' affiliate programs) such as Commission Junction and LinkShare. Depending on the affiliate directory, there may be some ranking information on the quality of the program and the relative worth of the commission (Associate Programs and Refer-It provide this data.) The payouts can vary. If you sign up with the Google AdSense program, you're paid each time someone clicks on their ad -- but with other affiliate programs, payment might only come when sales are made. As for commissions, those can range from 3 percent to 15 percent or more. Also, it's a good idea to sign up for affiliate programs before you build your site, as some merchants take a while to approve your application. However, some merchants want to see your site up and running before you'll be approved -- and then you have to wait a long while for them to allow you into their program, a real catch-22. To find an affiliate program that's a perfect fit, drill down into their agreements and study them. In the fine print to which you must agree before joining, you'll see how their payouts are structured, and how long they require for approval. Some will give you an automatic approval, while others approve submissions manually. Once you've found some programs that pay well and your submission has been approved, you can use their affiliate codes and ads on your site. B>Register That Domain If you haven't already gotten a domain name yet, now's the time. For ideas, look at the concept phrases that best describe what your site is about (you'll remember these phrases from Part One.) You might be able to fit those phrases into your domain name -- this is the best strategy. Here are some examples of that by SBI users:
In my case, the best keyword combination was "photo shop tutorials." Looking at that combination felt counterintuitive to the way I wanted the name to appear, but I followed the logic of the manual and registered the name as www.photo-shop-tutorials.net. If you're wondering about the hyphens between the words, the reason they're there is because it improves readability. One other thing to mention here is when you're brainstorming your domain name, it's important to make sure that it doesn't infringe on someone's trademark. Here's a resource you can check to make sure your domain of choice is OK. Build a Site that Gets the Click To begin the process of building pages, you need to log onto the 5 Pillars Club of Site Build It, which takes you to an area of the SBI Web site called Site Central, where you all the design takes place. In addition to using SBI's templates, you can also choose to upload your own HTML code if you're an experienced Web coder. As I've mentioned earlier, I stuck with the template for the most part, because I wanted to see how much was possible without knowing HTML.
Site Central is the where you can upload graphics, track links, build forms, conduct e-mailing and much more. At this stage, though, my task was to create a layout for the site. You access this by clicking on the "Look and Feel" button, which brings up 10 different page layouts to choose from. Among other things, you can choose from several different types of navigation buttons, shapes, rollovers, type and color. Initially, I chose the layout below:
Here's the design I chose. Note the buttons that allow you to edit the layout or to build your own. I decided to take things one step further by building on this template using my own HTML coding. SBI gives you the ability to do that, and you can download their pre-made HTML files, which you can use for reference. The only issue is to make sure that you use the same file names when you reload them back to Site Central. I downloaded the templates and built my own layout. However, the navigation buttons from the original template were convenient, so I kept that part of the design.
Continued on Page Two: Adding content, and search engine submissions. |
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