Building A Website
|
This article will not be a tutorial on the technical aspects of building a website; for that you can find answers all over the web. Here we will deal with websites as they apply to your affiliate marketing business. In case I haven't made one point perfectly clear, sticking a few banners on an otherwise unrelated blog or site is not going to cut it. You have to ask yourself what would make you buy from a website? Would you click on a random banner on a site that didn't look like it was set up to sell? You might get a stray click here and there, and maybe even a sale once in a blue moon, but in general it will not work. So what is the secret? How can you be successful? It will take some work, but it can be done. The bottom line is that you will need to design your site to look like what it is, which is an online store. You need to display and highlight your products and services in a clear and organized way so a shopper can find what they want. You need to make niche sites that sell related items; a pet store for example should not be selling computers, and vice versa. Buyer's are going to want to feel like they've been shopping at a specialty shop, not a huge department store. There are lots of tools out there that can be used to get you set up the way you should be so post your questions on the message board and blog about your progress. We make extensive use of a content management system called Joomla, which has many add-ons to help you build a store. There are other ways too, and a lot of them are free. A big topic that could be discussed at length is search engine optimization. Proper optimization of your website will get you targeted visits from potential customers. By targeted I mean people who are looking for exactly what you are selling. That type of traffic will be the lifeblood of your business without a doubt. SEO is a complicated and sometimes confusing topic, so don't get discouraged if you don't get it at first because it will soon be second nature and part of your normal process when building and maintaining a website. |
|
