Affiliate Web sites - basics
Making web sites can be very frustrating for affiliates.
Site must be made to sell product, rank well on search engines,
visitor must be encouraged to click on affiliate link, list go on...
You can not make some kind of personal site, sit back and
expect loads of cash.
Shortly, to be successful affiliate, you need to learn how
to build profitable web site, and at the same time, that site
must be useful for visitors.
Tools:
Web page editors
WSIWYG, or "What You See Is What You Get" editors
are popular for beginners. Some code editing can be required,
but simple coding can be learned fast.
I suggest that you try NVU editor, it is free.
It is not perfect, but for that price...
If you are looking for good and popular editor, FrontPage
or Dreamweaver can do the job.
Online WSIWYG editors can be used too, for practice.
WSIWYG editors are messing HTML code, use it only to make
template or initial layout. This complete site is made
using one old template and textual editor, and a few HTML
tags. Open source of this page and you can see that is not
too hard. Page can be edited using notepad, anywhere, anytime.
Graphic tools
They are not only used for making buttons and banners, graphics
program can be used to making complete page.
Anyway, avoid too many images on page if it is not necessary.
Page loading time is important. You need an useful page,
not Christmas tree.
Web page templates
Web page templates are a good choice if you are not web designer,
or don't have a time to bother with design.
Add links and content, tweak a little, and page done.
Some level of HTML coding is also required, so take a look at
web page tutorials.
Photoshop template requires editing in photoshop (slicing).
If you are using page templates, choose simple and fast loading.
Content and navigation are more important than look.
CSS:
If you are using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for formatting layout,
move CSS code to separate file.
Advantage of separated CSS file is that you can change look of all
pages without editing every of them.
Don't play with CSS too much. Load page without CSS to se how it
is looking. Is it still readable?
Java, Javascripts, Flash
Your visitors are looking for problem solutions and information,
not for fancy javascript effects and big pictures.
Leave those effects for teenager sites.
Add usability to web site. Usability means easy navigation and
fast loading pages. Don't forget interesting content.
Use tables for formatting
If your content is a few screens long, use two or more tables,
not one big table. Many visitors today are on fast connections,
but what with the others still on Dial-Up? With more tables,
your page loads faster, and visitor can start reading visible
area, while other tables are loading below.
For tables, try not to use fixed width (pixels), instead try
with percent. Or, make a few fixed table pages and serve according
to visitor screen resolutions. Can be very annoying if my
screen resolution is 800x600 and site is made for higher resolution.
If menu is on the left side, it will be first served to search
engine spider. We need content on top. So, or move menu to right
side of page, or use little trick with table cells, where menu is
pushed below main content in source, and on page it is still on
the left side.
OTHER Tools
Web page generators
This kind of software can generate and link pages together, you need to
fill empty fields only. They are expensive, but time savers also.
CMS - Content Management System
This is looking simple. Enter your content, affiliate links and site done.
No, it is not that easy. Small learning curve is required, but you don't
need to know HTML. With free CMS plug-ins and themes, it is possible to
make excellent community site with blog, forum, etc...
Almost every good hosting today offers some kind of CMS or blog
application with "one click" install. So, try it.
And, please, try to change template. Too many sites were made
with default templates (themes).
BLogs
Everybody is blogging today. Popular blog can pull visitors to
your site or affiliate links. Search engine simply likes fresh
content. So think about that, like addition to your site.
One of the best tools for blogging is WordPress. Be warned.
Search engine spammers just started to use automatically
generated blogs. Everything must be abused.
Linking - navigation
Only a few most important guidelines:
- Provide easy navigation to visitors, not more than three
clicks from main page to the last level page.
- On long pages, add additional menu to bottom of page.
- Add link back from every lower level page to higher level page,
and to main page.
- Add simple "site map" page and link every page from there.
Stay tuned, this above was only overview, more detailed descriptions will be added soon
Site comments script
"Instant Site Comments" is the script you can include to existing static html pages,
what means that your visitor can comment articles on your static HTML pages (like blogs comments).
In other words, you could have a blog without converting any static page to dynamic.
- instant site comments script website -
Next part of this guide is Web Site theme
