You now have your plan and are reviewing it often to make sure you are staying on track. You have done the research and have found the host that is right for your free sites campaign, so… what is next? It is time to choose some affiliate programs that match the market and the niche that you decided on in your plan and then you will be on your way to building your first site..[Part 1] [Part 2]
You now have your plan and are reviewing it often to make sure you are staying on track. You have done the research and have found the host that is right for your free sites campaign, so… what is next? It is time to choose some affiliate programs that match the market and the niche that you decided on in your plan and then you will be on your way to building your first site.
Choosing a sponsor is in some sense trial and error, but research will save you the headaches and heartaches from choosing the wrong ones. It is hard to tell who is going to be the right sponsor. What works for me for example may not work for you but what will not change is whether they have support for Webmasters, whether they have free content and hosted galleries and most importantly, whether they are reputable and pay their Webmasters on time.
Do a little investigating. Go to the Webmaster chat boards and see if there are negative articles or postings about the affiliate program you are looking at. Post a message and ask if others have used them and what feedback they may have.
Don’t ask the Webmasters how much money they make or for a list of their best sponsors. Most Webmasters take offense at that and are protective of their income streams. Common sense will reign here – you want to hear about the nightmares and stay away from them.
After that, it is trial and error time, working to make your affiliate programs work and in general, tweaking your banners and text links to do just that.
It is important that your sponsors match your site. If the market you chose was straight and the niche was Asian girls, don’t sign up for an affiliate program that has predominately heavy girl content. You will not convert traffic and your sales will be lousy.
Likewise, if your market is gay and your site has hairy guys on it don’t expect a twink affiliate program to work. Also, try to have a balance between per sale programs and partner programs. Per sale programs will pay you a higher amount for the sale, but that is it. No matter how much a surfer spends with the site he bought from through your site, you will only be paid once.
Partner programs on the other hand pay for every month that the person stays with the site you advertised. Remember your plan and think to the future for a stable and consistent income.
In choosing affiliate programs, look for ones with the content which you’d like to market. Use their free content to build a good site and start making sales with them. Once you have started making sales consistently with them you can ask for extra content and some sponsors will even allow you access to their members’ area to choose your own content. If they do, follow their rules and do not abuse them.
Sponsors are very precious to your business and you never want to burn a bridge. Once you have decided on and signed up for an affiliate program, choose some free content from what they offer.
Now it is time to get to the good stuff… building your first free site!
To make building your site easy, pre-plan what you want to do. How many pictures are you going to be offering, how many pictures to each gallery and how many galleries are you going to need to do this?
Maybe you don’t want to use galleries and you want all of your content on one page. That can be fine too but one thing to keep in mind is page load time. Guaranteed if it takes someone a minute or two to load the page to see your pictures, they are long gone. The rule of thumb is 30 seconds maximum for most of the page to load on a 56k modem, or you lose the surfer.
In addition to load time, the benefit of multi-page gallery sites is a lot more room for banners and advertising for your sponsors.
Next, choose the pictures from the content that you are going to be using.
Remember, your goal in building a free site is to entice the surfer and make him want to (NEED to) buy from your sponsor site. You will need to choose the images that reflect the goal. In other words, you have to give them enough to get them going but not enough to finish the job. Be erotic and tantalizing while saving the best for a place that if they go to will make you some cash.
In the next installment, I will cover issues such as controlling bandwidth by properly reducing size of images and using central folders for banners and graphics that are needed for each site you build. I will also cover the use of non-adult affiliate programs to increase the chances of making sales with each site.
(Stay tuned for part four next week!)
Tony is the owner of Exxxtreme Adult Designs, a design company offering custom free site, AVS site and TGP gallery designs. He also designs banners and logos.
He is currently offering a package which includes 1 hub, 5 free sites and 4 TGP galleries for only $200.00. A great way to get your plans rolling!
Tony can be contacted at tntdesign@charterinternet.com, via ICQ# 166558226 or you can call him at 802-479-0053.
