Any advice from long-time affiliates?

[Korgonthurus]

I don't want to fill a thread detailing my personal experiences and realisations, I have studied more than 120 hours the past 15 days, and I'm trying to set a direction to my website, since "discovering" the whole affiliate marketing industry.

I have also used WF a lot through this small journey for consulting and motivation, but since I'm a total noob, things I read may keep me off track. The aforementioned website is iphonecasesandaccessories dot com, the niche is obvious. My budget is zero, since Im struggling to survive in uk and havent managed to even get a day job for 5 months.

So I handle all the content, development,writing, etc. What I would appreciate the most, is a couple bits of advice from veterans in the field.

Content and format- wise if I should incorporate or stay away from certain things? I'm still "scared" of adding prices to the products, and amazon reviews for example.

I'm sorry if the thread feels irrelevant or a waste of time, but it's hard to keep track of growth without some guidance.

I'm not asking for an seo or design class, something like do that, dont do that, will let me google my way out of any advice you can give.

Thanks for taking the time

 

[CCarter]

How do you plan on getting traffic? Social Media? PPC? SEO? Craigslist Ads? Offline traffic (flyers, etc) - I guess that's the first question.

2nd question is Can that URL be little longer? I mean, come on... If this is a long term project, imagine putting that url on your corporate communications, flyers, or watermarking cool iphone cases with it. Imagine how many people will misspell or mis-type that thing.

3rd question - what guide are you using to do all this? Where did you get the idea and what's your overall strategy and end goal for the site?​

 

[tylerherman]

No idea what your strategy for getting traffic but the site is paper thin.
If you would have spent that 120 hours writing instead of wasting time on forums you'd have 60,000 words written (at the minimum), or a shit-ton of links and would probably be making a little money already.

A few website notes:

The font you used for your logo is horrible. Change it to something you can actually read.

The persistent header is pretty annoying and on a smaller screen like my macbook air it takes up far too much real estate for not really having anything important on it.

Stop making all your headings h1s. It looks like shit and only your page title should be an h1.

It takes far too long to click through to get to product pages. No one really cares about which ipad version it is, just list the products.

Good luck.

 

[Korgonthurus]

First of all thanks for taking the time and leaving your comments.

I'm sorry for not explaining further. In a few words what got me into the game, is the wealthy affiliate website, where I watched some free videos around the subject, and had a bit of a guideline to follow. So I would say that seo is my prime target to build traffic, then I slowly do what I can social media wise. Link building seems scary still , since all I have read around it is very controversial opinions.

I haven't spent 120 hours reading forums, I mentioned that I come back to read some posts and get some tips for the road ahead. I admit that I could have done a far better job writing articles, but the whole page-url setup & format in excel & wordpress needed long hours.

@Carter wealthy affiliate introduced me as I said above, grabbed some tiny bits of info from there, and then went on and read "Tested Advertising Methods" which I found to be quite informative regarding copywriting, and a whole to of articles and books about design,formatting html,css etc. My overall strategy is to get around 500k monthly visits due to the nature of the niche and the low conversion it would have. If I reach that along with some good sales history (10k pounds/ month? I don't have a clue) I plan to sell the website, and maybe start working on some niches Im actually interested in.

@tylerherman I know about the font. I fell victim for my own taste, being a tattoo artist for the past few years, and I have already planned some new logos and badges in illustrator which I plan to incorporate soon. A few relatives made the same comment, so I won't go for personal taste in anything again.

I find the header very annoying on my iphone, the site is unusable actually so I planned to remove it just in mobile version. But thanks for that comment as well, I am planning to make the sidebar static, while the content scrolls, so theres the menu always accessible instead of the header.

I agree about the headers. It's a noob mistake that has been going on because I havent yet reached that part of "knowledge", I stack somewhere that h1's get more attention from google bots than the others do. So should I use h2's for all headings except h1 for the post title?

I also agree it takes far too long, in the beginning I had the blogroll available under the devices as well, but thought that long term it would look more like a blog, while I want to make something more "professional" (the whole idea is that if someone visits the home page, he s there to browse something related, so choosing device first, and then browsing cases or accessories, where I depend however is for individual posts to rank for their keywords). There is also the big slider on top with some featured posts, but I agree with your opinion, but havent yet thought of a better way to present it (?)

Thanks again for taking the time and making your notes. It is extremely helpful.

Do you think I should also implement prices on the products? I'm really struggling to decide that. I want to definitely add amazon reviews extracts,but Im still trying to find a way that won't look "demo" and bad.

 

[CCarter]

Do you think I should also implement prices on the products? I'm really struggling to decide that. I want to definitely add amazon reviews extracts,but Im still trying to find a way that won't look "demo" and bad.

Think about it from your own online shopping experience. When you go to a website for a product that you want, and there are no prices, how would you feel?

Think about it from the consumer's standpoint, imagine if YOU visited your website and were looking for iPhone cases. Go to other iPhone case websites, go to Amazon, and see what they're displaying. Really compare your website versus the competition. You have to be honest with yourself first and put yourself in the shoes of your potential customer. Which website would you use, buy from, and trust?

One trick I use is ask a random person to "take a look at this website and tell me what you think." - BUT do not tell them it's YOUR website. When they think it's a 3rd party website, they'll give you all the honest feedback in the world, use that feedback.

2nd - Are you sure SEO is the best route? I'd try out different traffic sources, that can get you traffic a little faster than SEO as well, and can give you feed back. First for example, I'd try something like craigslist, where you post in the selling section that you have "Hello Kitty Swarovski iPhone 4 Case" for sale, Give a small description, and then post a picture with a watermark (See what I mean with the URL being too long):

Do this for a week with different products you have. See if that gets you some traffic. If it does, you've got a good potential traffic source. Also, look at what the competition is doing on that particular site and see if you can mimic them. If things go well, then you've got a good traffic source. Try different images, different text, and different classified Ads and different platforms (ebay?, you can watermark images on there, therefore driving traffic to your site). Craigslist is a lot easier in getting short term traffic versus traditional SEO where you are waiting on Google to rank you for bla bla bla. If you can place a link to your site from a potential traffic leak, our example is craigslist, that's even better.

There are several different tactics you can use to drive traffic for any niche outside of the traditional SEO. SEO is one tool in an internet marketer's toolbox. It's all about getting creative.​

 

[Korgonthurus]

I can't thank you enough for taking so much time!

I can't agree more about the prices, the same thoughts revolve around my mind, I just needed to overcome the feeling that it's to "up-front".

This trick works best, my self-esteem and the beginner level on the website havent let me try it yet though.

What you propose regarding craigslist sounds amazing, and opens up a whole new level of opportunities. Will definitely place that on top of my list.

I also agree on the site name, but starting out I have been brainwashed enough about "the name and length doesnt matter" so I just went for it, excited (!) it was available. But I'm sure I will find a nice way to implement it in pictures like that.

Your signature post also gave me a lot of great insight and a great guideline to follow, it's the only post along with the "240% increase in traffic-pagespeed" one, that influenced me so much, and I managed to follow word by word being a noob.

Thanks again for the most useful feedback, I won't forget when I hit 500k

 

[CCarter]

Your welcome. I'm not sure if you are talking about the http://www.wickedfire.com/enlighten...checklist-how-i-represent-18.html#post2129604 post or The http://www.wickedfire.com/enlightened-members/165861-case-study-additional-traffic-sources.html, but thanks again. I'd also check out Tavin's thread - http://www.wickedfire.com/enlightened-members/168063-flipping-website.html, that's up your alley since you plan on selling the site. Me and Charto911 go in on this one as well - http://www.wickedfire.com/traffic-content/167760-getting-traffic-difficult-niches.html, but most of this is just the tip of the iceberg on the potential when you consider there are 100,000 website in Alexa's top 100K, and they are all potential traffic sources for you.

Carry on...​

 

[emp]

Oh man, where to begin...?

You are lucky I am on my iPad right now, so The rape won't be as extensive.

- Empty categories
Seriously? WTF... I actually browsed to iPad2 cases, because I need one. To be met with NOTHING! Fuck this site!

- Navigation
In general.. It takes me 4 clicks to get from the front page to a case... And as many decisions.. Again... WTF?
On the iPad in landscape, I need to scroll every single page

In detail
Change the ordering... Newest / most popular devices on top... I need to scroll to get to the iPhone 5

- Design..
The head is not flush with the top of the window (again on iPad. So when I scroll, stuff appears above the header

Etc..
Etc..
Etc...

::emp::

PS: If I am in a good mood, I'll give some pointers on fixes later/tomorrow

 

[emp]

Well.. as promised (now on laptop)

We all got laid off. So we're going to take on our ex-employers. We're going to take them on. What do you want from a gift site? : AskReddit

Read it and take extensive notes.

I like your product detail pages, by the way... some have a lot of good pictures and lots of info (but you need to go through the copy, some is unreadable)

Also..

WTF keeps you from displaying prices? Often enough, the price is the buy or leave point.

Make it look like amazon and put it up top, to the side.

And please, get rid of the fucking social media button here.. you really think anyone shares a shop page? How many times have you done that?

::emp::