What's your take on authority websites?

This might be better in the SEO forum. How well done is your on page SEO? Using a good wordpress theme will usually handle this. Are you not building a list outside of your site to get additional traffic? Will you only be using free traffic methods? It can work but will take much longer, I would suggest adding paid traffic method such as solo ads which is usually pretty cost effective but I'm not sure if you have a product either.

If you sell ClickBank-type products, it isn't normally the website that produces the income.

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post7110523

I think this is an awful idea: maximizing the opt-ins is emphatically not what you should try to do, to promote ClickBank-type products as an affiliate. All my split-testing (in various different niches) has shown me this.

You're looking at it quantitatively.

"The biggest list" and "the list that produces the most income" are almost never the same thing, and there are reasons for that.

I'm completely confident that if I tried to opt in visitors to my sites with a pop-up box, I would have a very significant long-term drop in my ClickBank income.

The principles underyling that are explained, passim, in the following posts ...

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post4985800

I don’t believe this! Higher opt-in rate, fewer sales

The Use of Lead Capture Page Getting Outdated?

Website or squeeze page

Squeeze Page on Landing Page a Turn Off?

What are the essential things to know about list building?

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post7939758

Wow, that's a huge amount of content! I'm a "content marketer" and it would take me 2 years to amass that much content in a niche. I write 2-3 articles per month (per niche). That's more than enough for all the content needs of my business.

Again, you're thinking quantitatively, it seems.

It's not about the number of articles you have.

It's about who reads them.

Be aware that publishing content just on your own site isn't really a traffic-generation method at all: the only traffic that's ever likely to generate is a little, gradual, eventual search-engine traffic, which may be of very, very little value to you anyway.

What are the best Traffic Sources To Make Money From Affiliate Marketing?

"Authority website" is a term with almost as many meanings as the number of people who use it.

To my way of thinking, however you look at it, an "authority website" takes many years to develop.

(To a skepchick like me, it seems that many people use the term "authority website" in some kind of understanding that refers, perhaps, primarily, to "rankings in search engines". To someone planning to monetize as a ClickBank affiliate, that's a profoundly unhelpful concept.)

If you're monetizing via ClickBank, it doesn't matter, because there's no real money to be made just by ranking in search engines. That's crap traffic. In this context, at least. That isn't what makes something an "authority site" (at least, I hope that isn't your frame of reference for the word "authority"! ).

Like almost any plan, that's going to depend on the detail, I think? My main reservations about it are (i) your apparently quantitative approaches, with which I think you're profoundly misdirecting yourself at the moment, if you'll excuse my wording it that way, (ii) all the parts you've missed out (most importantly, I don't quite see a coherent traffic-generation plan in there?) and (iii) my own uncertainty about exactly what you mean by "authority site".


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Hi,

Here's my take on authority sites. If you plan on just going with free and organic traffic, it will be beneficial for you in the long run since you will provide infomercial content to the readers. As long as you do not use marketing which will be flagged by the big G then I guess you will do just fine.

Try to read the SEO articles on SEOMoz, they provide excellent information on SEO.

If you are looking to monetize your authority site, you could place banners on your site directing it to your ClickBank offer. Since the authority site belongs to you, you have the freedom to place the banners wherever you want on your site. However a landing page will help increase the conversion rate. So you will have something like this.

Banner >>> Landing Page >>> ClickBank Offer

Or,

You could get your readers to opt-in their e-mail create an email list. Then use email marketing for your ClickBank offers.

"Now the questions:
- do any of you experienced warriors have any experience with authority websites? what are the problems that may arise?
Problems are you need to be constant when uploading your content
- how easy is it to rank in search engines and get constant traffic?
It is not easy but if you target long tail keywords, I'm sure you can get organic traffic easily
- is my plan sustainable in the long run?"
Yes if you don't use methods that are flagged by big G

I would not focus on how many words are in each article. I would just focus on writing complete articles. If you can answer a question or completely cover a topic in 400 words, what's the point of rambling on for another 600?

Well if writing is your passion and / or you hate it but is prepared to outsource it then I say Go For It!.

Authority sites, however defined, can work. But candidly, it takes time to rank in the search engines. And I have always had an issue of putting in significant time on my sites only to find out that some entity, to which I have no control (Google, Bing etc.), decides one day to change the playing field and ... Voila, my site ranking drops.

So if you decide to develop an 'Authority' site, there are many many ones out there that are doing VERY well in terms of income. I suggest research them, join their list, and see what they do and how they do it. I think you could learn a lot that way.

Takes time and lots of pages. Today if you can get a lot of social response that can help speed things up.