Okay, let’s accept the fact that most of the marketers cringe at the very thought of marketing an affiliate website. We simply can’t blame them because of the bad reputation of affiliate websites. Most of the affiliate websites that we encounter on the web has the following features – low quality content, bad structure of the website and the purpose behind these affiliate website is just to earn some money.
However, there is nothing wrong in making money with website. In fact, we launch websites to connect to our prospective customers and thus this can be safely said that websites help webmasters drive some revenues.
In fact, affiliate websites can still thrive and make a hell of a time even during this age of panda and penguin penalty. All you need to know the tricks and that is all.
1# Focus on a Theme
When the idea of affiliate marketing start gaining traction on the web, affiliate marketers start launching websites with multiple niches. So, the number of niche affiliate websites was few and far between. Now, since you can’t be the jack of all trades, you will not be able to come up with high quality content for different types of products. Rather than stuffing your website low quality and thin content, you need to concentrate on a single niche and then work hard to come up with creative and compelling copy that will be appreciated by most of the readers on the web. If you can manage to make your website look good to readers, Google and other search engines will start treating your affiliate website more favorably.
2# Learn to Diversify the Source of Income
Just because you have launched a website for affiliate marketing purpose does not mean that your source of income should be limited to affiliate marketing. There are hundreds of websites that are earning a good amount of revenue from Google Adsense and similar types of ad networks. Moreover, if you are smart enough, you can sell advertising space on your website. Try BuySellAds and its likes and this will help you earn a good amount. The thing is, you need to diversify your source of income as the old saying says – don’t put all your eggs on one basket.
3# Spammy Link Building
There are some affiliate marketers who tend to treat their affiliate websites as one night stand. They are in the habit of launching multiple websites to drive as much as revenues as possible. To ensure maximum visibility of these websites, they tend to build thousands of spammy links with exact match anchor texts in an effort to push their search rankings. But if you have a long term plan, you need to stop doing that. These types of link building activities only make your website a victim of Google Penguin update.
And also, you should be not linking out to only affiliate websites only. Since we believe that you want to educate people, you need to link out relevant sources like government sources, relevant resources etc. This will make people and search engine believe that you are trying to help people to get the most authentic information.
4# Build A Solid Subscriber Base and A Strong Community Base
You need to build a solid community as it will help you build a brand image for your website. Of course, building a thriving community is easier said than done. You really need to put your blood and sweats into it to be able to create popular community. Try to post unique and awesome posts that will make people interested in your website. Increase the frequently of the post as this will further increase the interest of the people in your website. To create a solid subscriber base, you need to ask people to subscribe to your blog. You may use lightbox to encourage people to become subscriber as well.
5# Be Cool
Remember that you have to stand out from the crowd. Since there are hundreds of other bloggers who are writing on the same subjects, you need to do something to make your posts look different. Try to do extra research, post some cool and unique images, add video, some illustrations and you will be able to drive more traffic to your website.