Lots of Newbie Questions Re: datafeeds, blogs, SEO, etc.

[debdenby]

Hi,

I am kind of asking questions after the fact, as I've already got a site up and running with affiliate content on it.

My niche is hard-to-find shoe sizes for men, women and kids. My site is set up with individual pages for each of the merchants I'm working with and a few speciality pages, i.e., sandals, trendy shoes, kids shoes, etc. It takes me forever to create these pages, as I find the types of shoes I want to feature and create individual links for them -- image links, so that the customer can click on the shoe they like and then go buy it from that merchant. I also have text links and different banner ads on each page. It's working, in that I am making sales, however, I'm not getting enough traffic. I had 174 views (a bunch of them were mine when I viewed my changes after adding content) and 12 sales, though.

Here are my issues and I hope you can offer suggestions as to do what I'd ideally like to do:

1) My site was designed by Homestead and they don't support (is that the word?) datafeeds or blogs with affiliate ads. Do you have a suggestion for a web host that would accomodate both?

2) Ideally what I would like my site to have is a drop down menus for shoe size, shoe style, shoe width, womens, mens, girls, boys so that if a person put in size 9, AA width, womens, sandals, sandals from all of my merchants in 9 AA would come up on her screen. Is that what a datafeed would accomplish?

3) How can I create such a feed or would I have to have someone do this for me?

4) Regarding a blog--I started one, but quickly stopped because I couldn't add the ads stopped. Any suggestions regarding that?

5) Right now I'm using Homestead's Searchlight program as well, they've created an ad for me and submitted it to about 25 search engines. If I were to leave Homestead, how could I find something like this elsewhere.

6) I've read a bit about Site Build It and I believe it was one of the threads somewhere here that someone said datafeeds could be incorporated into Site Build It. Would Site Build It be the best way for me to go? I'd really prefer not to have to rebuild my site and I know with Site Build It their basic pages look very basic. I'm sooo confused and so overwhelmed.

It doesn't appear that I can post my url, so if anyone would like to see my site and would like to PM me about it I can give you the url so you can take a look.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions or help you can provide.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Deb,

Welcome to 5 Star.

You can ask all the general Qs you did and we’ll try to help with that. Then after you have 10 posts you can request a site review and post your link. HOWEVER I would not waste your review on a Homestead site, I'd wait til you have your new site set up.

1) Here's a good long thread with how to pick a host and some of our members fav hosts.
http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5...se/6824-your-favorite-web-host.html#post20087

3) For a VERY easy to use datafeed solution see if Popshops will do what you need.
Ck out the video of the 3 year old building a datafeed site. (on homepage)

4) "I started one, but quickly stopped because I couldn't add the ads stopped" Sorry I don't understand the part in bold.

If you were on blogger or something could be something you can't control. Another good reason to have your own blog on your own host. If you set up your own domain (under 10 a year) plus your own host (under 10 a month) you can have a datafeed site and blog you own and control.

Hope this helps and best of luck!
Let us know how you do!

 

[debdenby]

Hi Linda,

Thanks for your response. You wrote that I should wait until I create a new site rather than ask for a site review on my Homestead site, not sure I understand why?

I'll definitely read the thread about "your favorite web host" and will look again at Popshops. I did use Popshops for a while before I had the site redone. I think the main issue was that I couldn't set it up to the exact specifications that I wanted to. I'll double check again to see the video to see if I could do something different now that I have more experience.

Oops on #4--what I meant was that I'd started a blog but stopped adding content, because I couldn't add affiliate links to what I was writing about because I couldn't connect an affiliate blog with Homestead. I have to check back as to what the exact reason was.

With Blogger, are you able to post affiliate links?

You wrote: Another good reason to have your own blog on your own host. If you set up your own domain (under 10 a year) plus your own host (under 10 a month) you can have a datafeed site and blog you own and control.

I'm not really sure I understand what you mean by this--sorry, still getting the terminology down.

Thanks!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Well I meant if you are going to be scrapping that Homestead site and building a new one, no point in getting a review on the old one plus most here don't think sites like Homestead are worth putting energy into.

Blogger blogs are hosted by Blogger - so just like with Homestead the problems are that you don't own anything, they are in control and sometimes you don't have the flexibility to do what you need to AND you are driving all your traffic to someone else's web property instead of your own.

That's why I said IDEALLY you want your site and blog on your own domain and your own hosting account. You were asking about a host, so I assumed that's the direction you were planning to go. That's the prices I gave you - for your own domain and hosting.

 

[debdenby]

Hi again,

I realized after I sent the email that you might have meant that I should wait if I were scrapping the Homestead site. That certainly makes sense.

Thank you for clarifying about Blogger blogs. I didn't realize I could have my own blog without Wordpress or a Blogger! I'm learning a lot today! Now I understand about having your site and your blog on the same domain and hosting account. If I have a website and a domain on the same hosting account do they provide templates for blogs or would I use a Wordpress blog template?

Sorry, I feel like I'm asking R-E-A-L-L-Y elementary questions but that's where I am right now--actually more like pre-school questions at this point.

I hope you'll bear with me!

Thanks!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Most standard hosting accounts make it easy to install Wordpress, then you can just find whatever WP template you want to use. There are so many great templates and also so many plug ins (add ons) for WP that let you do almost whatever you want.

 

[debdenby]

More Questions &Translation of Vocabulary--Plug ins, etc.

Most standard hosting accounts make it easy to install Wordpress, then you can just find whatever WP template you want to use. There are so many great templates and also so many plug ins (add ons) for WP that let you do almost whatever you want.

Linda, I'm so glad you mentioned "plug-ins"--what exactly are they?

I was reading the requirements for Popshops and they recommend Firefox. I am assuming that I can't have Firefox and Internet Explorer on my PC. I have to check to see if my hard drive can handle Firefox because navigating Popshops with IE is waaaay too slow.

Do you know of any online tutorials for Popshops? It seems like it would do the trick regarding the types of search boxes and dropdown menus I'd like to add, but I'm not well versed enough on how to do it myself.

Also, in their hosting requirements they say "if you want dynamic features like autofeed and dynamic pages using search...l can you "translate this for me into plain English? Also, what is PHP? And, while I'm asking for translations into basic English, what is a "trackback" a "ping" and what are "trackbacks?"

On their site, one of the "happy customers" -- a larger sized womens clothing shop -- whose link is posted seems to have a similar look and feel to what I want to accomplish. My guess is that a professional did it? How do you find professionals who are well versed in "Popshops" to create the site for you at a reasonable rate? Any suggestions? Do people post that kind of thing on Sologig?

I hope I'm not overloading you with questions and vocabulary! I've looked on line and still need some translating to understand what they all mean.

Thanks!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Most people have IE and Firefox, no problem at all and FF works with almost every PC. It's free and easy, just download and you should be fine. If you are like many of us, once you start using FF you won't ever go back to IE.

Popshops should have tutorials but it's super easy and you don't need a pro. Just need to follow the directions and try it. So easy a 3 year old can do it! Did you watch that video? It's really about that easy.

"if you want dynamic features like autofeed and dynamic pages using search" don't know but don't worry about it. If you get a full featured host, which most are unless you go super low budget, they should have what you need. If concerned I'd ask over at the Popshops forum you posted on yesterday or email their tech support.

A trackback is something you add to your own blog post each time you quote and link to someone else's blog post. You probably won't be doing that right away and don't have a blog yet so I would not worry about it.

 

[debdenby]

Thanks again Linda. I'll check over at the PopShops forum to ask more.

I just spent the morning getting discouraged because I know what I want to accomplish and if I can't accomplish it with PopShops or something like it, it's got to be done professionally, by a programmer and I don't have that kind of budget. I actually found a site that is set up similarly to what I'd like to have and at the bottom of the page it said "powered by Yahoo Shopping." Unfortunately, based on what I've read, to create something like it, again would require a programmer to set it up for me. I'm hoping that PopShops might work as a much cheaper alternative.

Thanks again for all of the info., it's helped a lot.