The Perfect Affiliate Site?

It's not really a question I ever ask myself much, during the design or development of my websites.

I'm a full-time affiliate marketer, so the primary purpose of all my main websites is to collect the visitors' email addresses so that I can keep them returning to my site, promote a range of products at different prices to them over a period of time, and make repeated sales of different items to the same people - because that's where most of the long-term money is, in affiliate marketing.

So the question I'm always asking myself and concentrating on is "What will make the visitors opt in?", not "What will make them click my affiliate links?".

The actual answer to "What will make them click the affiliate links" is - inevitably - "Having arrived at those links/pages after reading and clicking something in an email from someone they trust and respect".

And they'll do that only because I've built a trust-based relationship with them after establishing credibility as a provider of valued information. Without that, I don't fool myself (and neither should you) that they're going to respect my recommendations enough to get their credit-cards out and buy on the strength of my recommendations. (Not enough of them to be worth talking about, anyway). I have a mortgage and a lot of bills to pay, so I need to design my websites to maximize my chances of producing that outcome, not for "quick sales".

You don't need a guide or WSO - just to read the right threads that explain the essentials of how the income really materializes, in affiliate marketing, and to understand really clearly what the primary purpose of your website is.

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post7860052

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...marketing.html

I always thought review sites were crappy and scammy looking,
but it turns out they have good conversion rates, because
people come to your site and get a chance to compare the
"best" solutions and make a decision on which one they wanna
buy and off they go with your affiliate link.

Email marketing, as mentioned is the best long term solution
to marketing online.. because instead of getting traffic once,
you get it many times over and a chance to promote affiliate
offers again & again.

Thanks for the feedback. I know it's going against the general consensus that the money is in the list, but for a variety of reasons I don't want to go down that route at the moment. I agree that quality content builds trusts, and I've moved away from quantity of cheap articles to well written ones I do myself.

However, I am really looking for a guide regarding how to set up a site (Wordpress or otherwise) that creates the best online environment to encourage people to click on an affiliate link, banner etc.

if you want the best chance of someone to buy from
you, then you want to build a list and build a relationship
with that person.

Imagine you come to my site and see a review for a product,
1 of 2 things will happen. You'll either buy it or not. If you
were to sign up to see a brief case study of how I used that
product to achieve the results YOU want, again(a second time)
you may or may not buy it. Over the next 10 days as you
open and read emails about how myself and others have
used that same product... again & again & again you may or
may not buy it from me. But I would have put myself in a
better position to get the most sales opportunities from you
through email marketing.

The long term is great for list building, but even the short-term
results convert better for affiliate products.

My first affiliate site did 4 times as many sales the month I
started getting optins and promoting to them via email.

The real 'best way' is email marketing, even if it's not what
you wanna hear, it converts the most.

I appreciate people taking the time to feedback, but I'm trying to make it quite clear that I'm not going down the route of list building at the moment, for my own reasons, so would really appreciate relevant feedback that points me in the right direction of where I can find the information I'm after, rather than trying to persaude me to do something I have no intention of doing.

Hope that doesn't come across as impolite.

If you're dead set against it,
a large square banner above
the fold has getsy a good CTR
for me as well as a strong call to
action at the end of your content.

The best thing you can do is create a following by publishing great content related to what you want to promote. Become an expert in the area and people will trust and follow you more.

..It seems like you're after a design trick, to make you money requiring the minimum effort possible. No such thing man.

..But in the meantime, here's the Google Adsense Heatmap, and some guides that talk about ad positioning (for Adsense, but principles are universal). This seems closer to what you're asking about.

Review sites always seems to be the best for affiliate products or a site that addresses some kind of a problem with your affiliate product as the solution.

Like Victor mentioned, building a list is essential to any IM so i highly recommend you to work on building a list otherwise why do you start IM in the first place.

Build a list and create a relationship with your subscribers. Those who opt-in to your ist are the ones who are already interested in what you have to offer them. So help them and advice them, and promote 1 or 2 products along the way which you think will be of help to them. This is one way of selling which converts pretty well too.

Truth is, even if read a product with a cookie-cutter template for optimised sales, and even if you then started to get sales ... you would still then want to test that against alternative placement/wording/colours.

I'm not saying this to discourage you. Quite the opposite - just get stuck in with the kind of layout you think would make you convert. Get some visitors, start testing.

Simply put, a great affiliate site pre-sells the product(s) on it... so I don't think there is a perfect model. It depends a lot on your niche and products

Seeing as you so dead set against following a model that works (list building) and want to stick with a basic affiliate site, presumably like a mini site of sorts, right? You should pick a simple theme (Livewire is decent), make sure not to have much clutter in the form of widgets or anything to distract them.

Have links and banners throughout the content. Make any text links stand out by having them in different font, sizes and colours from the rest of the text. Have an image that's an affiliate link in the side bar for people to click on.

Does that help?

Can you tell me why you're so against list building, I'm really interested?

Go to Amazon and search for Steve Scott's "Your First $1000" The ebook cost $2.99 and he explains step-by-step how to set-up an affiliate site that makes money. The sites he create in the book do not have any list building components to them. You can also look up Kelly & Mike's Bring-the-Fresh training. Those sites are pure affiliate sites without any list building added also. I hope this helps.

One of the best ways to sell affiliate products is to create an email squeeze page website where you give away a free guide to a niche, one that many people would want, as professionally done as possible. Then, as your email list build, market them affiliate products.