Hello Newbie here

[Vetelmo]

Hi, just found your website last night. Have been checking it all day now.

We have a website already but no traffic and have not sold anything in several months. We stopped doing anything with our business but I have just recently lost my job and I am trying to bring in a couple extra bucks while I look for a new job.

If I want to be an affiliate, can I keep my website pretty much the same? I have it set up with our business on the main pages and then a link for online selling. Would I be able to send traffic back and forth thru a link on the web pages or do I have to make major changes to suit the affiliate company's brand?

Any suggestions on what I should do next will be greatly appreciated. The crafts stuff is the passion of my wife but I am sales driven, so we have a good mix in that regard. I would like to start something in line with our website (of which i have to make some minor changes because we changed back to our original URL, from one we were using with Go Daddy). If that begins to be successful, i want to make another website in a different subject matter I have a passion for as well. Its seems the going theme for advice is to go with something you are passionate about.

Great website by the way!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Vetelmo,

Welcome to 5 Star. Glad you've been finding our info helpful.

If you've been reading here you've no doubt heard this advice, but if you' haven't, be sure to read all the stickies in the newbie forum.

Sure you can add affiliate links to your existing site but a couple of important points.

One important thing is to mainly look at adding affiliate programs in the same niche or that would be of interest to the same types of people. Merchants in the craft niche won't mind your site, but you may not get approved for or have any luck selling golf clubs or something totally unrelated.

As far as changing the site, you don't really need to for the merchants, but as far as navigation and getting some targeted traffic, it's probably best to research and find related products that have some demand but aren't too competitive for starters, then add a separate page with articles or content that support that product or niche.

Secondly even if you add the perfect compliment of affiliate programs you won't make a dime unless you have a significant amount of traffic. So I would work 1st on building content for the site and working on some SEO so you have what it takes to start generating some traffic.

Last of all, but maybe should have been 1st - before you go too much further with the site, read the stickies I mentioned and do some keyword research on your niche. The niche is key. The craft and home made gifts market I'm guessing is pretty saturated and probably pretty low revenue potential. Not saying you should drop the existing site, but just do research and see if you can find a sub niche within that niche possibly that would be more focused and easier to see early success in.

So after you read the stickies to get the general lay of the land - here is a
good thread that will take you step by step on how to do the KW research.

 

[Vetelmo]

I assumed that the craft type market might be saturated alreay but that is the type of wesbite we already have going and will set that up first, with very low expectations.

Im working on getting more traffic to the site but need to toss around ideas in my head first.

Also, Im wondering how important the actual web address is when going after different subject matter for a different affiliation. I was thinking of setting up a sub domain for a different subject without the cost of a new domain.

Does anyone think it is important to purchase a new domain or is using a sub-domain of our website sufficient? For example, if I wanted to do an "Investing" affiliate, is it very important to have a seperate domain instead?

 

[Linda Buquet]

If it's a related topic a subdomain can work well.

However if it's not related at all it can look bad to consumers and hurt conversions and hurt your chance of getting approved by the merchant. So if you are thinking investing.katiescardsandcrafts.com well look at it and think if you were interested in investing and saw that domain in the search engines for instance - would you click it? Or would you be more likely to click investing.money-strategies.com or something?

Now you could start with a free site, like a blogspot blog, just to get started and then as you found you were serious about the niche and started making money could then get a domain and point your blog to the new domain.

However since you can get a domain for $9 a year and a good host that lets you put multiple sites on one hosting account for around 9 a month, then it's really so cost effective that you should have the goal of very quickly having your own site instead of driving traffic to a shared host like Google/blogspot.

 

[Niche48]

To make money from any website you need traffic, loads of it

I really cannot see any evidence of search engine optimization on your site. I know as Linda said that your niche is a pretty competitive one but it does not look like you are trying to break into even that market

Free traffic from the search engines in my opinion converts the most.

Also you need to decide what the primary objective of your site is and make that clear above the fold of your page.

At the moment your email address is the only clickable link above the fold. Great for spammers but not for sales

There is not a lot to lure them in. You make hand crafted cards and nice soaps and stuff like that. So why not show some pictures of your stuff. We are visual beings and a few samples dotted on your site would speak volumes to your visitors

Last all the stuff is on one page.
I think you may consider putting up different pages for different items and optimize the page for the search engines for that item

So for example have a page for jewelry and optimize that page for relevant keywords e.g hand made jewelry, handmade earrings etc
Then have another page for Journals and optimize that page for journals, personal diaries, etc
I think you get what I am driving at

You have a very significant advantage over newbie marketers. You have a website that has been online for a while so has the advantage of age. Great for SEO

Good luck

 

[Vetelmo]

Yeah, thought so. So my plan right now is to set something up with the site we own already, even if it isnt an active money maker, a little is better than nothing at all. I'm thinking of setting up a newsletter or message board to create more traffic.

 

[clawson44]

Create a squidoo lens or blog

I would suggest that you use some of the information on your domain and rewrite it and use the rewrite to create your first squidoo lens or blog. When you do this, you are testing the waters to see what works and what does because squidoo gives you stats on how many visitors you had and where they came from. Do some keyword searches using google adwords keyword tool to find out what people are searching for and write articles and submit them to article directories using your squidoo lens and not your domain URL. Why? Because squidoo already has a high Page Rank and will get your ranked quicker than your domain would.

 

[jazzguy]

Lots of great advice already. Here's something a little different. Why not sign up for Etsy (www.etsy.com), it is a handmade and crafts site that a friend of mine does EXTREMELY well on. Although, her niche is fine art photography. You may find that Etsy, or online shops like it could be a way to start making money AND drawing traffic to your site since you can add your domain URL to your profile. Something to think about. Good luck and all the best.

 

[Linda Buquet]

I think jazzguy did an interview with a friend of his at the site in his sig above.
It may have some info that may help you understand Etsy.

 

[Vetelmo]

To make money from any website you need traffic, loads of it

I really cannot see any evidence of search engine optimization on your site. I know as Linda said that your niche is a pretty competitive one but it does not look like you are trying to break into even that market.

What do you mean? Because there are not product pages?

Free traffic from the search engines in my opinion converts the most.

Also you need to decide what the primary objective of your site is and make that clear above the fold of your page.

At the moment your email address is the only clickable link above the fold. Great for spammers but not for sales

I agree and will be fixing that, though we do have spam protection on the site. Not that anything is garanteed, but something is in place.

There is not a lot to lure them in. You make hand crafted cards and nice soaps and stuff like that. So why not show some pictures of your stuff. We are visual beings and a few samples dotted on your site would speak volumes to your visitors

I totally agree and I am in progress of taken pics of our remaining products.

Last all the stuff is on one page.
I think you may consider putting up different pages for different items and optimize the page for the search engines for that item

So for example have a page for jewelry and optimize that page for relevant keywords e.g hand made jewelry, handmade earrings etc
Then have another page for Journals and optimize that page for journals, personal diaries, etc
I think you get what I am driving at

You have a very significant advantage over newbie marketers. You have a website that has been online for a while so has the advantage of age. Great for SEO

Good luck

I have fixed the pages (not live yet) so that I can add pics, also using each product page with affliates.

Sorry did not see your reply until now, but thanks for the help!

 

[Vetelmo]

I have changed up the site and made the home page more of a welcome page. I added more pages to seperate the products and will be adding product pictures this evening.

Any comments on the changes?

 

[jazzguy]

It's looking good... Some images on each of the category pages would be nice but I'm nit-picking. Also, did you check out the Etsy site I mentioned in a previous post? I think your goods would do well there. All the best in moving forward.