A
Atlantean
Guest
I am new to this game, so if I come across as an idiot, please be gentle.
I have a friend who was recently hired as webmaster of a narrowly-niched website that gets an average of 3000 visitors/day and earns an average of about $3000/day. This is the first time he, and me by proxy, have been able to take a look behind the scenes of a profitable ecommerce site. He has also been made head of their affiliate program. The site purveyors also manufacture the products they sell.
Taking into account what he was learning behind the scenes and subtracting the manufacturing element from any consideration, we began to contemplate how we could use this new-found knowledge.
The answer was simple: Product Affiliate Programs. We would set up similar websites selling products for other companies.
Thus, we began searching for companies to represent with the intention of essentially "mirroring" their product lines on our own custom designed, SEO oriented, template system.
At this point, we now have some knowledge of the inner workings of a profitable ecommerce site, we have a few products to sell, and we have an SEO optimized template system to implement. Now the template system needs to be "populated" with products, each within a structure that looks like this: index.html/category/sub-category/productpage.html. This is the structure recommended, nay, insisted upon by my friend, as the best for SEO purposes. I, on the other hand, disagree on the grounds that not only is his method very time-consuming, it is also not neccesarily better for SEO.
What my friend is advocating is a static site structure that requires flat-file product include template that has to be edited to create each product file. Then, of course, that include template is plugged into the overall site template to create the finished page.
My stand is that the same result can be accomplished using a web-based CMS and MySQL. I have already set up a customized database for this purpose that requires that I click on one icon on my desktop which opens a browser to the ACP for login. Then I just fill out the form fields with the pertinent data and submit. The data is called to the template and the page is finished. Takes no more time than it does to fill in the data. No text editor or FTP software and much more simplified page creation and editing system. This is, as anyone already knows, is a standard practice.
My friend insists that if you have the structure set up where the resulting product URI looks like this: widget_name.com/widget/blue_widget/small_blue_widget.html, you will fare better on PR/SERPS than you would if you were to have the structure that I am advocating and looks like this: widget_name.com/widget_info.php?page=small_blue_widget.php. My argument is that both have the ability to achieve the same PR/SERPS, so why not simplify the entire process, therefore saving valuable time, by using a database system?
So...my questions are, what are your opinions on what is the best way to populate a product affiliate site? Would it be better to use ecommerce software like OSCommerce for this pupose? What are methods that you use for creating a product affiliate site. Example product: model trains.
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Great Gift Ideas for Valentine's Day
I have a friend who was recently hired as webmaster of a narrowly-niched website that gets an average of 3000 visitors/day and earns an average of about $3000/day. This is the first time he, and me by proxy, have been able to take a look behind the scenes of a profitable ecommerce site. He has also been made head of their affiliate program. The site purveyors also manufacture the products they sell.
Taking into account what he was learning behind the scenes and subtracting the manufacturing element from any consideration, we began to contemplate how we could use this new-found knowledge.
The answer was simple: Product Affiliate Programs. We would set up similar websites selling products for other companies.
Thus, we began searching for companies to represent with the intention of essentially "mirroring" their product lines on our own custom designed, SEO oriented, template system.
At this point, we now have some knowledge of the inner workings of a profitable ecommerce site, we have a few products to sell, and we have an SEO optimized template system to implement. Now the template system needs to be "populated" with products, each within a structure that looks like this: index.html/category/sub-category/productpage.html. This is the structure recommended, nay, insisted upon by my friend, as the best for SEO purposes. I, on the other hand, disagree on the grounds that not only is his method very time-consuming, it is also not neccesarily better for SEO.
What my friend is advocating is a static site structure that requires flat-file product include template that has to be edited to create each product file. Then, of course, that include template is plugged into the overall site template to create the finished page.
My stand is that the same result can be accomplished using a web-based CMS and MySQL. I have already set up a customized database for this purpose that requires that I click on one icon on my desktop which opens a browser to the ACP for login. Then I just fill out the form fields with the pertinent data and submit. The data is called to the template and the page is finished. Takes no more time than it does to fill in the data. No text editor or FTP software and much more simplified page creation and editing system. This is, as anyone already knows, is a standard practice.
My friend insists that if you have the structure set up where the resulting product URI looks like this: widget_name.com/widget/blue_widget/small_blue_widget.html, you will fare better on PR/SERPS than you would if you were to have the structure that I am advocating and looks like this: widget_name.com/widget_info.php?page=small_blue_widget.php. My argument is that both have the ability to achieve the same PR/SERPS, so why not simplify the entire process, therefore saving valuable time, by using a database system?
So...my questions are, what are your opinions on what is the best way to populate a product affiliate site? Would it be better to use ecommerce software like OSCommerce for this pupose? What are methods that you use for creating a product affiliate site. Example product: model trains.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Great Gift Ideas for Valentine's Day
