I took a big step back from affiliate marketing about a year ago to focus on my family's restaurant, as my mother (the owner) was having some serious health problems (it was actually the driving reason behind a move across the country, but that's a different story). The last year has taught me a TON, but the biggest lesson I've learned comes down to consistency.
Why Consistency is Important
It sounds pretty obvious, but most of the affiliate pages I run across don't follow it. As a result, they are lacking in the key area that Google emphasizes more than anything: the user experience. It doesn't matter if you're trying to sell a diet pill or a slap chop, a dating site or a ClickBank trashbook (erm, I mean "ebook"). Without a consistent website, your user experience is going to suffer.
Now that I'm managing the restaurant I'm forced to constantly be assessing every aspect of its operation. I make sure the food goes out in a timely fashion, and that it is prepared and presented well; I ensure that the tablecloths are clean and pressed; I enforce a dress code among the staff. I do many things that most people would completely overlook (ensuring that the ceiling sconces are dusted, for example), yet as a customer, it is always that one little detail that resounds. That is why consistency is so important.
How I Translated Offline Success to my Online Business
Now that I'm able to break away from the restaurant and get back into affiliate marketing, I've taken a different approach than I did in the past. In the past, I'd set up a quick landing page for Facebook traffic, a cheap little website for search traffic, and then I'd run it all and keep what made money. That approach doesn't work today.
Decent Facebook CTR's are a pain to achieve, and AdWords won't even both displaying my old cheesy PPC websites. Something had to change, and I decided that I would make a change in the level of consistency for my websites.
I ensure that every page maintains a consistent user experience. I don't direct sell anything, I rely on a passive sale. All information is easy to find and understand. More importantly, I am much more discriminatory about what websites link to mine and why. I'm still learning the advanced bits of SEO (as I'm sure more than one of you noticed), but while I learn I maintain a long-term growth strategy with a consistently high-quality experience in mind.
Being litigious in your development and presentation not only looks better to a search engine- it looks great to a visitor as well. If 99% of the websites in your niche say *this* about widget X, what sense does it make to go and say *that*? It's a near guarantee that your visitors have visited more than one related website, and if they are getting conflicting information from yours, the chances are good that they're going to rely on their mob mentality: whatever the most people are saying must be true.
Obviously, that's not completely correct 100% of the time, but that's also irrelevant when your goal is a sale. Or a lead. Or a signup. Or a donation. Or whatever. What matters is that you remain credible enough to warrant someone wasting their time and/or money with your website.
Some Points to Consider
I'm not saying anything that anyone who considers themselves a marketer doesn't already know. Unfortunately, when someone hits me up on AIM (hfmyoinkgasp) to chat about their landing page or ad copy, it's generally trash nine times out of ten. It looks the same as everyone elses: low quality design, even worse copy, and an inconsistent approach to the user.
If you aren't willing to put in the time required to make your project a success, why would you be surprised when someone like me comes in and dominates YOUR niche? Just because you aren't willing to write the content necessary, or pay for the design that will sell, doesn't mean that someone like me won't. The reality here is that it consistently pays off to be consistent, or if you're consistently lazy, it won't.
At the end of the day, we are all fighting for the same piece of the pie. However, you'll have some who will take time to learn what type of filling appeals to certain demographics. They'll be the marketers that wind up selling 1,000 pies a day. The marketers who assume that every pie is the same, well, they're the ones that wind up getting burned.
Step it up. Make money.
Why Consistency is Important
It sounds pretty obvious, but most of the affiliate pages I run across don't follow it. As a result, they are lacking in the key area that Google emphasizes more than anything: the user experience. It doesn't matter if you're trying to sell a diet pill or a slap chop, a dating site or a ClickBank trashbook (erm, I mean "ebook"). Without a consistent website, your user experience is going to suffer.
Now that I'm managing the restaurant I'm forced to constantly be assessing every aspect of its operation. I make sure the food goes out in a timely fashion, and that it is prepared and presented well; I ensure that the tablecloths are clean and pressed; I enforce a dress code among the staff. I do many things that most people would completely overlook (ensuring that the ceiling sconces are dusted, for example), yet as a customer, it is always that one little detail that resounds. That is why consistency is so important.
How I Translated Offline Success to my Online Business
Now that I'm able to break away from the restaurant and get back into affiliate marketing, I've taken a different approach than I did in the past. In the past, I'd set up a quick landing page for Facebook traffic, a cheap little website for search traffic, and then I'd run it all and keep what made money. That approach doesn't work today.
Decent Facebook CTR's are a pain to achieve, and AdWords won't even both displaying my old cheesy PPC websites. Something had to change, and I decided that I would make a change in the level of consistency for my websites.
I ensure that every page maintains a consistent user experience. I don't direct sell anything, I rely on a passive sale. All information is easy to find and understand. More importantly, I am much more discriminatory about what websites link to mine and why. I'm still learning the advanced bits of SEO (as I'm sure more than one of you noticed), but while I learn I maintain a long-term growth strategy with a consistently high-quality experience in mind.
Being litigious in your development and presentation not only looks better to a search engine- it looks great to a visitor as well. If 99% of the websites in your niche say *this* about widget X, what sense does it make to go and say *that*? It's a near guarantee that your visitors have visited more than one related website, and if they are getting conflicting information from yours, the chances are good that they're going to rely on their mob mentality: whatever the most people are saying must be true.
Obviously, that's not completely correct 100% of the time, but that's also irrelevant when your goal is a sale. Or a lead. Or a signup. Or a donation. Or whatever. What matters is that you remain credible enough to warrant someone wasting their time and/or money with your website.
Some Points to Consider
I'm not saying anything that anyone who considers themselves a marketer doesn't already know. Unfortunately, when someone hits me up on AIM (hfmyoinkgasp) to chat about their landing page or ad copy, it's generally trash nine times out of ten. It looks the same as everyone elses: low quality design, even worse copy, and an inconsistent approach to the user.
If you aren't willing to put in the time required to make your project a success, why would you be surprised when someone like me comes in and dominates YOUR niche? Just because you aren't willing to write the content necessary, or pay for the design that will sell, doesn't mean that someone like me won't. The reality here is that it consistently pays off to be consistent, or if you're consistently lazy, it won't.
At the end of the day, we are all fighting for the same piece of the pie. However, you'll have some who will take time to learn what type of filling appeals to certain demographics. They'll be the marketers that wind up selling 1,000 pies a day. The marketers who assume that every pie is the same, well, they're the ones that wind up getting burned.
Step it up. Make money.
