Affiliate Marketing: Opt-In Website or Blog-style Website?

[Allegro]

I have an interesting experiment coming up, more on that in the next couple days. I would like to know your thoughts which kind of website would be better. Consider the following:

- Affiliate Marketing
- Traffic through articles (EZA), outsourced to writers from the Warrior For Hire section to ensure compatibility with the EZA guidelines
- Freebie would be PLR or even PD works
- Non-US resident, benefitting from the very soft laws of Germany (mainly dealing with taxes and not with content/business models)
- only one website
- intended to run for a longer time, must be able to work with low maintenance

My thoughts so far are that I would probably run best with a pure list business. Collect opt-ins (single opt-in) and let the auto-responder do all the work. Benefits are that the engine of the business is hands-free once its set up. Draw back would be the low value of the website itself and the dependence on services like EZA.

A blog-like website would rank itself pretty good on the search engines, the value increases with each post and will make people return. Also helps building a relationship with the visitors in more ways than with a simple AR sequence and more ways of monetization should I decide one far day to kick it up a gear. Requires lots of maintenance on the other hand, but is not as dependend on other services.

[Slin]

Go for the opt in, a good list makes everything amazingly easy!

[Allegro]

Any other opinions?

[Rory Wilkinson]

Create a blog and have one page an optin page. Eg. you main website is www.whateveryourdomain.com which is your blog. You can continually update this blog (at your own leisure) with content etc that will help get your website to rank for related terms.

Then create an optin page at www.whateveryourdomain.com/optin. This is where you can send your traffic from ezine articles.

This way you build a list but also a good blog. Furthermore you can place an optin box on your blog's sidebar so that people can join your list from any page on your blog.

Hope this helps

[tommen]

I recommend setting up a squeeze page with an optin form.When you are building a list you can contact people over time.Write and submit articles to directories that are closely related to what you are giving away on your squeeze page.

This strategy is very simple to maintain, you write the auto responder emails one time, make the squeeze page and then submit a few articles per month.

[Kevin AKA Hubcap]

Why not both?

As you said a blog can create a relationship with your prospects (as can am auto-responder sequence) and snag more organic search traffic while the squeeze page builds your list.

Have the blog funnel readers to the squeeze page and you get the best of both worlds.

Kevin

[Anonymous Affiliate]

Optin all the way. The VERY first priority in your business is to build a prospect list. Once they opt in, then redirect them to the blog. But you WANT to have them sign up first.

[JR Rich]

I tend to favor the opt-in solution.

With a properly maintained list, you have a constantly-growing asset that will return an ever increasing income as time goes by.

The trouble with running a blog is that it is a very hungry creature - you have to constantly feed it with good content or it will wither and die on the vine!

Sounds too much like a 'real' job to me!

Of course, some might say that I'm biased since I write autoresponder sequences but, hey! ... that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Regards,
--JR Rich

[erwindegrave]

If you are just after getting email lists, try an opt-in website. But if you are after influencing other people and expressing your thoughts, go to blog style. :-) In fact, you can still put opt-in in the blog and thus making you get as many list as you wanted.