Website Design

Your website is exactly the same as a store-front on Main Street in any town in America. It you make it appealing to customers then they are far more likely to visit your site and see what you have going on, so you always start with a professional looking template and plenty of creativity. Things like pictures, smart text, outside feeds, and other valuable resources for consumers will be what sets you apart from the competition, so give your website plenty of thought as to how you’ll make it different from the next guy.

Visibility

Now that your website is up and running, it’s time to talk about visibility. In a brick and mortar business you’d send out flyers and talk to other store owners for advice; the Internet is absolutely no different. Try to partner with larger websites to cross-promote with backlinks, build auto-responders at social networking sites so your customers can see what your website is doing, and continuously build your website with fresh, original content. Getting your name in as many places as possible will not only make you more visible, but it also allows for you to use other people’s credibility as a testament to your reputation.

Keywords

Another important aspect of any business is targeting consumers that will likely buy your products. In cyberspace this is done through keywords, which is what lets Google and the other search engines decide how to rate each website page. Finding the keywords and keyphrases that your ideal customer types into a search engine will allow you to prepare content specialized from them; making it much easier to create a direct link to your target audience. Also remember that those lower-ranking phrases can be valuable as well because they end up with a lot less competition.

Content

Once you are armed with several keywords to help your website rank in the appropriate categories, you will essentially have one shot to close the deal with consumers. In a regular business this would be your actual products and your sales team, but on the Internet it all comes down to the words you choose to put on your website. Poorly written articles would be the equivalent of hiring an eight year old to sell luxury sports cars for you; they simply will not instill confidence in the consumer. Your website content should always be designed with your customers in mind first; everything else is secondary.

“how should I design my first affiliate website?”

Which is really open and broad, because there are tons of different types of affiliate websites you can build. The first thing you need to do is develop your overall marketing plan. Your strategy. You already know you want to become an affiliate marketer and that you want to make money with affiliate programs, now you need to determine how you’re going to do that.

This is where many new clients say to me, “But that’s your job. You’re supposed to be the affiliate consultant.” Which is true to some degree, but I can only advise you if I know what path you want to take. Telling me you want to make money online is not enough. Everybody wants to make money online, it’s one of the biggest search terms on the internet. But not everybody is going to.

What you need, my friends, is a plan.

The first thing you need is a niche. What is a niche? It’s a specific market or area that you want to focus on in order to make money. What are some examples of niches? There are tons, but here are a few:

Communications (e.g. Save Money on your Phone Bill)
Animals
Pharmaceuticals (e.g. Viagra)
Womens Shoes (e.g. Knock Offs)
A Specific Illness (e.g. Gastritis)
A Specific Type of Software (e.g. Virus Removal Programs)
A Specific Target Group (e.g. Punk Rocker Clothing)
A Specific Hobby or Interest (e.g. Coin Collectors)

Just to name a few. These are common, and you should find a niche of your own to work in. In the long run you are going to probably focus on several niches, but at first, let’s pick one you are interested in and one you can focus on. I tell people to draw on personal experience and what you love. I had a client not too long ago tell me that his passion was a specific type of candle and how it was made. We built him a site that promoted a product in this niche and he’s now making a nice living. The point is that you need to find something to work with that you are going to like. Because it needs to hold your interest if you are going to promote it well.

You may want to get really specific, or work in what we call a sub niche. A really distinct part of a popular niche that few or none are promoting. This is where marketers make the real money, by finding a need for something that no one else is doing. Believe me, these sub niches are out there and they do exist. If you do some homework and keep digging within a niche, you might just strike gold and find the perfect one to promote.

Now once you have picked your niche you’ll need to define how you want to work within the niche. You are going to want to see if there are programs or products you can promote to make money within that niche. If you are going to use Adsense as a primary method of income generation, you are going to want to find out if there are Adsense advertisers paying for those keywords and phrases. The way to do that is to do a quick Google search for some terms in that niche. If the Google results have paid listings at the top of the page and in the sidebar, there’s a market for you and money to be made from Adsense. You also want to click a few links of other sites on the page and see if they are using Adsense to make money. Look for Adsense ads on their pages. Also look at the Adsense ads themselves and see how they tie into the topic. The more targeted the ads, the better your chance of making money in that niche is.

Now look at the search results page again. How many competitors do you have for that niche? Are there 245 million results? Probably not an easy niche to break into if there are. Nope, you want to look for niches that are not overly saturated. Niches that you have a shot of breaking into fairly easily. If there are less than 200,000 results you might have a chance, if done correctly. The lower that number, the better.

Now we need to design your actual site plan. How are you going to present products to your readers? Are you going to give them a social network like Facebook to use? How about a web tool you know that this type of user would like to use? Is it going to be an affiliate blog? Or is it just going to be a simple affiliate site with banners and links on it? Is it going to be something totally different?

You are going to need to decide the actual marketing method you intend to use. Putting banners on pages is not enough, you need to create a user friendly environment that is going to get them to click your banners and links and buy the products and services you promote. Think about this before you jump in and put together a plan.

You have no idea how many people ring my phone and tell me they want to build an affiliate website, but have not thought it through any further than that. They don’t have a niche, they don’t have a plan. They want to design an affiliate website, but they don’t know what type of affiliate website they want to design. They only know they have seen it on TV or read about it online and that they want in. They have heard there is money to be made online and they want a piece of it.

Don’t be lazy boys and girls, be smart. Build a plan and have an idea of what you want to do and where you want to go. I’ll help you from there, as will my staff. We can guide you in your affiliate website development and we can help you learn to make money online.

I explain it to my clients this way sometimes. We’re going to hike up this mountain together, and we each have a backpack on. I’m an experienced climber, so I can carry a little more. We’ll put the majority of the gear in my pack. But you are still going to have to carry a few things too. Together, we’ll get up that mountain.

You are building a network of sites… Aren’t you?

The reason I wanted to talk about this today is because many would be affiliate marketers don’t think past their first website. They build one site, in one niche, and hope that is the pony that is going to take them to financial freedom. Now I’m not going to say this is impossible, because it’s not. But I have been doing this for a lot of years and I’ll tell you that the success numbers for single site owners are not pretty. The guys and girls that make the real money own more than one site. Sometimes a lot more.

Like in the neighborhood of hundreds, sometimes thousands. I personally own close to 200 affiliate websites in a wide variety of niches. Some are blogs, some are web tools, some are social networks. The point is that I have my affiliate income coming in from many different sites and many different sources, which is exactly what I suggest to anybody considering the affiliate website route in their online efforts.

There are a couple of reasons this method is preferred. First of all, you have lots of opportunity to make money from many different niches, which is always good. If one takes off, awesome. But in my opinion you shouldn’t be pocketing one hundred percent of the income that website is making for you. Instead, the smart marketer continues to build his website portfolio. Researching new niches and new topics. Creating new websites and expanding his income.

Another reason why I feel this is a good path to take for affiliate website owners is because it gives your income diversity. Being diversified is always a good thing when it comes to income because that means your money is coming from many different sources. If one source falls away, you still have the others to carry you forward. If you are putting all your eggs in one basket, or in this case, one affiliate program promoting one product one one targeted website, you may be in for a shocker if anything ever happens to that program. A harsh lesson many Google Adsense promoters have learned when finding out they have somehow offended the Google TOS and their accounts have been disabled.

Some of these marketers were even following the multisite plan, but they often don’t follow the plan completely by promoting multiple offers. Which is where they are taking a huge risk.

So the best bet for new marketers is to build a network of affiliate websites. You are going to want to start with one site, and you are going to want to get that site making some money in order to finance future ventures, future sites. I can tell you that I have several consulting clients that have adopted this marketing strategy and they are now making money. Real money, every month, from affiliate websites.

You can too. If you need help building a website strategy, or you want to get a quote for developing your affiliate website, use our contact form here. I look forward to hearing from you.

Some are willing to put in more resources and money than others, which makes it even more difficult for new internet marketers to get a piece of the action. Especially when it comes to the low hanging fruit, easy money programs.

Which is why you have to do a lot of thinking outside the box, and a lot of long term strategy planning. If you don’t have a lot of money to invest in PPC or other traffic venues, you are going to want to focus your attention on the organic search results. You are going to try and find niches with little or no organic competition and seat yourself in the top of those search results if possible.

But to do that, you have to be forward thinking and get into niches that are not really populated yet. So today I want to share one secret with you that has been working for me that I like to call “versioning”.

What is versioning?

Simply put, I try to find software and programs with good paying affiliate programs that sell their products in versions. If they are currently on version 6 of any given piece of software, I start looking at the possibility that they might put out lucky number 7. Now I’m going to forwarn you, this can be a crap shoot, and you may or may not win here, but if done correctly, you can get some long term listings that will pay off.

Let me give you an example right here on this blog. I like to use a program called ‘Dragon Naturally Speaking”, which is a voice to text typing program from a company by the name of Nuance. For the last couple of years I’ve been using version 10 of their software, and have been very happy with it.

About a year and a half ago, I started promoting their products. What I found was that they converted reasonably well, even with just a banner ad. So I decided to do some forward planning and a little speculation. A little versioning.

Here’s what I did.

I wrote a really long blog post about a product that didn’t exist yet, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11, which was still a long way off, since version 10 had just come to market a few months before. I then did a little search engine optimization (SEO), to get that page noticed and backlinked using that term. Then what I had hoped would happen did, a discussion started among the blog users. What most affiliate bloggers don’t know is that these discussions in the comments area are the key to a page and it’s success. Google likes active pages that are updated often, and rewards these pages with good listings.

The result was that the page began to rise in the rankings for terms relating to both version 10 and version 11. Resulting in sales via the banners and links within that post for version 10. Now, the cool thing has yet to happen, but I’m fairly confident it will. That being that version 11 will actually be released and the search volume for that term will go up substantially. The good news is that I have the top listings for those terms and expect a lot of traffic when that release actually does happen. The even better news is that I happen to know the new version is going to be released very soon. In a couple of weeks, as a matter of fact. I spoke with their customer service yesterday and they confirmed it for me.

What I think will happen is that there will be an onslaught of new searches in a few weeks for this term. What I think will happen is that I’ll make a lot of sales on this product. All because I planned it out, well in advance.

So how can you benefit from this? You can find some products to promote by doing a little versioning of your own. Now I showed you what I’ve done with only one product, but I’m going to let you in on a little secret…. This is not the only product I’ve done this with. I do it often, and I make pretty decent money with this strategy.

You can too. But you’re going to need to set up a real plan with ground rules, which you need to decide. Simply developing sites and pages around any product with a number is not going to work. You need to pick good candidates that have been successful in the past that you think will have enough demand for a new version. What is the best way to do this? By looking at your software shelf, by looking at the products you actually use.

Do a little homework and find out if other people use it too. In fact, do a lot of research and find out if it’s got a large following. Then go to work. You need to actually know a little about the product to write about it well enough to spark discussion, if you’re going to promote it on an affiliate blog. If you are blowing smoke about a product you don’t, or have never used, you will get your cover blown in about thirty seconds. If you want versioning to work for you, you’ll have to really work at it.

But in the end, the result can be awesome. It can make you even more money and can help you get to affiliate financial freedom. Which is what we are all looking for. Right?

Just like investing in real estate, buying an affiliate website takes some research. If you plan to redesign the website to improve its income, then you need to make sure that goal is possible. Many affiliate websites that are for sale have a proven track record of performance, and it is difficult to improve them beyond that point. This is where being a true affiliate marketer kicks in. You need to know the ins and outs of the industry well enough to judge whether or not you can increase a websites earnings.

If you would like to just purchase an affiliate website as it is, then you have less of a worry. You can get a rough estimate of the anticipated earnings per month, and then decide whether or not the website would be a good match for your portfolio. If you would like to inquire about affiliate websites that we have for sale, please visit our contact us page.

Force Visitors To Wait

If you decide to feature a great logo, a video, graphics, and other multimedia on your website, you might actually be causing more harm than good. The internet audience expects to have fast loading websites. If your website takes those few extra seconds to load, they can easily hit the back button and visit another similar website. Streamline your affiliate website and retain those visitors.

Assuming Everyone Is Up To Date

How many times have you left a website after being informed that you needed to install a plugin or update your browser. Change is good, but do not have your entire website redesigned every few months to the latest standards. If you do, be sure to have options built in for website visitors, who, on average, do not update their systems often.

Stop With The Questions

It is understandable that you want to collect enough information about your visitors to make a sale in the near future. However, studies have shown that for every extra question you require on a form, you lose about seven to ten people from finishing the completion of the form. Get the basics and move forward.

If you take the time to research online, you will notice that there are a wide variety of plugins and customization techniques designed to improve the performance of WordPress powered affiliate websites. These techniques are constantly evolving, so be sure to take a few minutes once or twice a week to see if your installation is currently up to the standards.

From IM (Internet Marketing) to CPC (Cost Per Click), there are acronyms for literally every aspect of internet marketing and affiliate website design and development. As a beginner, you definitely need to learn these terms as thouroughly as possible.

Aside from acronyms, there are also plenty of terms that are used in the world of internet marketing. Things such as “niche research”, “social bookmarking”, “second tier affiliates”, etc. While most of them describe themselves, we all have our moments where we just cannot figure out what something means. This guide aims to clear these things up as early as possible so that beginners can start their personal journeys to internet marketing success.

There are tons of resources available on the web that teach internet marketing extremely well. Unfortunately, for every good resource, there are at least ten bad ones. Knowing internet marketing terminology allows you differentiate between both, and it helps make sure that you gain the most knowledge from the good resources that you come across.

Below you will find a giant list of commonly used terms within internet marketing. I will do my best to update this list as often as possible. On that note, remember that the internet is a constantly evolving thing. New terms develop every few months and sometimes old terms are discarded even faster than that. Just stay on top of the latest in internet marketing, shameless plug for my rss feed found by clicking here, and you will notice the new trends within the industry.

Commonly Used Terms and Their Meaning

CPC – Acronym for Cost Per Click. Used with affiliate programs that pay you for each individual affiliate link clicked on your website. Biggest examples are Google Adsense and Chikita.

CPI – Acronym for Cost Per Impression. It is closely related to the Cost Per Click described above. Often used for banner advertisements, it usually works around the number 1,000. For example, a $25.00 CPI banner advertisment will bring in $25.00 for every 1,000 impressions (views).

SEO – Acronym for Search Engine Optimization. It is the catch all term for anything related to the art of making a web site rank well within the search engines.

Backlink(s) – Backlinks are a commonly discussed aspect of SEO. A backlink is simply a link to your general website, ie. www.sabaschapa.com, or a specific page, ie. www.sabaschapa.com/specific-page. They are important because the more backlinks your website has, the higher it will rank. Search engines regularly scan the Internet and tally up how many times other websites backlink to your website. This gives your website an “authority status”.

Authority Status – A commonly discussed aspect of SEO. Authority status is the state of having a website that is seen as prominent and important by search engines. It is generally accomplished by having a large number of backlinks, especially from other authority or high “Page Rank” websites.

Page Rank – A commonly discussed aspect of SEO. Page Rank, or PR for short, is Google’s unique way of giving your website a ranking based on how important it is according to the Google search engine. A variety of SEO factors determine your Page Rank, especially backlinks. Do note that a website with a higher Page Rank may not necessarily rank higher than one with a lower Page Rank in search results.

Affiliate Program – An Affiliate Program is a way of generating income online by promoting the products or services of a third-party. Generally, you will be provided with HTML code for a banner based advertisement or a direct link to place on your website. If the program is click based, then you will be paid a predetermined amount (CPC) each time someone clicks on your affiliate link. If the program is commission based, then you will earn a percentage based on the total sale price. This can range from 1% to as high at 60%, depending on the program.

Affiliate Network – An Affiliate Network is website that allows you to signup and participate in a large number of affiliate programs all at once. Instead of calling and asking a company to allow you to promote their products, most companies have already signed up with various affiliate networks. By creating one account with an affiliate network, you instantly have access to hundreds of affiliate programs to promote. Two popular affiliate networks are Commission Junction and Linkshare.

CTR – Acronym for Click Through Rate. It is usually expressed as a percentage and shows you how many times your affiliate link is clicked as a ration against how many times it is viewed. For example, if your website had 100 visitors and 25 of them clicked on a specific affiliate link, your CTR is 25%. For most affiliate programs, you will be given a report showing the average CTR on a monthly basis. This is useful in determining whether or not it is worth your effort to send more traffic to the website.

There they are. I wanted to call this post “The Top Ten Internet Marketing Terms For Beginners”, but I only felt that these nine terms are really necessary for a beginner to know. There will be plenty more that you will come across, but you will deal with that bridge later on down the road. These set of nine however allow you to read through an SEO article and understand it. Likewise, you can also get started exploring affiliate programs, which are the bread and butter of internet marketing.

Please leave any other terms that I have missed and their explanations in the comment box below. Try to make it as easy as possible for beginners to understand, and thanks for your contribution .

These marketers are making money by building up local based affiliate marketing websites and then placing contextual advertisements in the appropriate spots. It is highly unlikely that a plumber, caterer, or wedding photographer is going to spend thousands of dollars on search engine optimization services. However, they do incorporate Cost Per Click advertising into their marketing program. In fact, you would be surprised how many Adsense ads exist for even the most basic services in small cities.

Take a few seconds and perform a search for a service related industry in a specific city. Notice the contextual advertising? Some may be local businesses, while others may be from international companies or businesses located in nearby cities. In either case, a market exists. Take a look at the results from your search. You might find that the top ranking websites are poorly designed and have little to no optimization.

It is easy to have an affiliate website built that will take over that particular local niche, the contextual advertising is in place, and a ready market exists and will continue to do so for a long time. Try your hand at local niche based affiliate marketing today.

Blogs Are Big For Content

The main techniques of old affiliate marketing involved building a nice landing page and then getting that page to rank well within the search engines. In the modern affiliate marketing world, you now have to compete with blog based websites. Hundreds of blogs in your niche, each with pages upon pages of content. In some cases, this content is auto-generated and mass produced.

Web Hosting Is Crucial

The day is long gone when you could buy a simple hosting account and place dozens of add-on domains on it. While you can comfortably host about three or four websites without suffering too much, search engines have caught on. They examine your website along with others stored in your hosting account. If the content looks spammy, expect to not rank as highly as you should.

The New Definition Of Spam

A one page website that is nothing more than a sales page. The content is basic, poorly written, and is obviously attempting to be overstuffed with keywords. Would you consider this a spammy website? How about a fifty page website, with original high quality content, optimized page structures, and plenty of backlinks from relevant and high ranking websites?

Would you guess that both of these could be considered spammy? If the website is designed only to sell, and is using a nice design and content to mask that fact, it will still raise a red flag with search engines. Providing honest value is the only way to go.