help and advice for newbies and people who need a kick up the backside in 2009

[smingle]

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Hi everybody,

I've been reading this thread since it started and I'm hooked!

New to affilate marketing and following all the advice on this thread I now have my first 2 sites set up. The first one was maybe not the best niche choice but the second one seems to be performing very well.

I found a niche with ave 33,000 exact searches per month and manage to secure a good keyword domain.

I'm on average 25 unique visits per day and ranking highly on lots of very niche terms (top 3 on google). Still a bit to go on the main search term - currently ranking 41.

Great news is that I've made 11 sales so far so something must be working! Interestingly all the sales have been with amazon so far and none have been through my other merchants on AW - anyone else had this experience?

Anyway just wanted to say a massive thanks to everyone that contributed to this thread and especially Smingle for all his excellent advice! :tup

Cheers,
Si

P.S. Smingle let me know if you would like a link...

No problem, glad you have done so well - this is further proof it can be done

What was your site, as I would love a link please - pm me if you prefer

[smingle]

Hey smingle, do you want a link on my sites? I didnt use a domain you suggested (as I missed them all) but I followed your advice.

Just checked my first stie and its on page one in Google!

I would love one please ! what was your site ? feel free to pm me of ypu prefer

[simon1984]

How is everyone doing sales wise? Should I be concerned I'm not making any sales yet?

[sabian1982]

How is everyone doing sales wise? Should I be concerned I'm not making any sales yet?

Depends... how long as your site been up and whats the niche? If its TVs is a little hard to know how that niche has reacted to the credit crunch... i'd think on a whole sales are down however thats not to say the potential for generating a sale isn't there!

Whats your traffic like at the moment? Have you got Google Analytics installed so you an assess whats going on?

[howaboutawii]

Hi guys,

I've finally got my first site up and running. Mens Shavers

It is a work in progress as I'm currently writing the reviews of each brand/model of shaver. These will be linked from the right hand sidebar eventually....

The site has been up for almost a week now and is currently 14th in the big G for mens shavers and 15th for mens shavers reviews :tup

Any comments/suggestions would be much appreciated.

Dan

P.S. Smingle - the link back to your site is there too!!

[dylanjones]

looks good, no follow the outgoing links if you can mate to keep all the link juice on page, also vary the internal link text to "mens shavers" rather then the url

[fizzbird]

no follow the outgoing links if you can mate to keep all the link juice on pagel

I'm not so sure smingle or the theme designer would be too impressed with that statement - what other outgoing links are there btw?

[fizzbird]

Hi guys,

I've finally got my first site up and running. Mens Shavers

It is a work in progress as I'm currently writing the reviews of each brand/model of shaver. These will be linked from the right hand sidebar eventually....

Looks good - how are you planning to do the reviews, are you going to have any user feedback for instance?

[dylanjones]

the outgoing links are all the affili links.

I couldnt care less about the designer, as long as the links are there then your not breaking any t&c and if you wanna be a nice guy then do follow smingles link

[fizzbird]

the outgoing links are all the affili links.

I couldnt care less about the designer, as long as the links are there then your not breaking any t&c and if you wanna be a nice guy then do follow smingles link

Yes, I gathered the affiliate links were outgoing and are very clearly affiliate links so why bother?
Also, adding a nofollow to the designer's link isn't exactly the decent thing to do is it; and shows the world what kind of person you are?

[howaboutawii]

Looks good - how are you planning to do the reviews, are you going to have any user feedback for instance?

Cheers,

I've been doing the reviews myself at the moment - taking the official jargon, then re-wording it myself.

I've emailed Amazon associates about putting the Amazon Rating system on the site via some sort of widget, they've said they're looking into the idea. I think it'd be great for me and other sites. Anyone else thought of this, or managed to pull it off?

Other than that, the user feedback would come from the comments part of each post/review. I'm sure I've seen a wordpress plugin that allows a user to rank the post/review/product, so I could integrate that too.

Thanks again,

Dan

[fizzbird]

Other than that, the user feedback would come from the comments part of each post/review. I'm sure I've seen a wordpress plugin that allows a user to rank the post/review/product, so I could integrate that too.

Good idea, if you can encourage people to post comments and general questions then it can be a good way to get some very effective original content. Of course you'll attract a lot of spam, which can be a pain, but every silver lining has a cloud?

[darrenb]

I'm sure I've seen a wordpress plugin that allows a user to rank the post/review/product, so I could integrate that too.

I use wp-postratings which seems to work well and allows the option of adding the highest rated items as a sidebar widget.

Darren

[dylanjones]

Yes, I gathered the affiliate links were outgoing and are very clearly affiliate links so why bother?
Also, adding a nofollow to the designer's link isn't exactly the decent thing to do is it; and shows the world what kind of person you are?

because it keeps the link juice on the page, nothing to do with usability just seo.

The decent thing? lol business isnt always decent

[howaboutawii]

I use wp-postratings which seems to work well and allows the option of adding the highest rated items as a sidebar widget.

Darren

Cheers Darren,

I'll check it out

Dan