Start w/ THIN Affiliate Site - Then Get FAT!

[Linda Buquet]

We've heard warnings in the past about "thin" affiliate sites, but as Jeremy Palmer,
the "Million Dollar Affiliate" reports, there is a time and place for everything!

Thin Affiliate or Fat Affiliate???
<a target="_new" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/popoever/214417412/"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/96/214417412_545e78ce03_m.jpg" alt="thin affiliates fat affiliates" align="left" hspace="10" /></a>
Start thin and grow fat! Jeremy shares some wisdom and suggests you test market by 1st building a quick & easy THIN affiliate site for PPC. Then build it out into a FAT & STICKY affiliate site, after you've proven to yourself the viability of the niche and are sure it's a topic you want to put additional energy into.

Head over to 'Quit Your Day Job' and read:
<strong><a target="_new" href="http://www.quityourdayjob.com/blog/2007/05/23/thin-sites-vs-fat-sites/">Thin Sites vs. Fat Sites</a></strong>



This goes hand-in-hand with a post I recently wrote about a very efficient method for testing new affiliate marketing campaigns and new niche ideas before investing too heavily with your time and/or money.

This post goes more into detail about how exactly to set up your campaign for testing profitability
<strong><a target="_new" href="http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/niche-marketing/5887-how-profitable-your-niche-marketing-test.html#post16495">How Profitable is your Niche? Marketing Test</a></strong>

Thoughts??? Ideas???

 

[Franck S]

Yup, I always build FAT affiliate sites. I have some thin affiliate sites, however they don't bring any significant income since I wasn't focused.

I prefer build one site, and focus and dig the niche until I become a trusted guy there. When you have a fat affiliate site, people will contact you to buy it...

always a good option if you don't have interest in the niche, or if you want to do something else. Plus thin affiliates will find it very hard to compete with you.

Why spending a lot of time building a site that bring a small income?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Yep FAT sites are best for the long run and building them solid and sticky so both visitors and spiders like it is KEY.

But both articles above have merit from the viewpoint of testing a niche to see if it's worth putting the energy into before you go to far. At least on new niches you just arent sure about.

 

[JAmieF]

Good post Linda,

Would building either a thin or fat site be seasonal? For example would it be best to have a thin site for summer as attention spans are smaller (due to summer activitites!) and have a fat site for winter?

 

[bfree74]

As an affiliate manager I definitely see the highest commissions going to the people that have built fat sites. Out of my top 10, maybe one is a thin site, 2 do paid search, and the rest are fatties

 

[ayushpant]

Thin or Fat. Interesting. I completely think that both have their own places. Fat affiliate websites I think should be some sort of your long term projects. For example, in 6 months I am going to have so many pages, so many users on my website.

Thin websites work well too. I read that Google is trying to weed out thin affiliate websites, but I own a thin website and currently it made some good profit with little advertising. So, I believe thin websites are will stay at least for sometime.

Of course, we should listen to someone like Linda or Jeremy Palmer as they have much more experience. I take their advice very seriously.

Unfortunately, I sold my thin website (my first one) to invest more into my second website which I think is better than a first one (its a medium sized one).

I really like this affiliate marketing thing. I have not been very active for the last 2-3 weeks as I just moved to a new city (Washington DC). But, starting to gain back momentum once again.


Btw- I love this forum.

 

[Linda Buquet]

"Btw- I love this forum."

Thanks Ayush. We aim to please!

 

[Sparky]

Thin vs. FAT

Guess I've never thought of thin vs. FAT...As a communicator/pr type who is very active in web communications, I've always seen that more credible information/content is always better than less. Understand the need to test to avoid waste and learn, however, there are other means to accomplish that I think. For my part if you're gonna be a bear, you gotta be a grizzly.

 

[ayushpant]

Your welcome Linda. I read somewhere in this forum that you believe in Karma. You are helping so many people by giving out such excellent information. I have learned a lot from this forum and looking forward to implement what I have learned.

My past few days were quite "bumpy", but I am glad that I am back. I look forward to participate more in the forum discussions, and contribute in any way I can.

I can say that affiliate marketing is not the easiest thing, but its not rocket science. It requires a little "common-sense" to succeed in it. At least, I made some money and sold my website at a very good price. So, I think it definitely works.

Btw- I was thinking that I am not sure if my website wasn't a "thin" website. It has like 5 pages and offer some value to customers, that's why the buyer must have bought it. I'd PM and would like to get reconfirmation from your end on whether it was a thin affiliate website or not. Not quite sure. LOL.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Was just searching for my article about "thin affiliate sites" with the official
definition from Google. But I can't find it here or on my blog.

 

[Linda Buquet]

I think basically the issue (according to Google) is NOT how many pages so much, but IF you removed all affiliate ads and affiliate related content would the site still be of value to visitors?

If I remember right it also focused or seemed to somewhat on datafeed sites.
So if all you have is a carbon copy of all the merchants pics and products descriptions, just the same as 100 other affiliates have with NOTHING unique added and no additional value to visitors then that could be a problem.

That's why it's always good to add your own spin and unique content such as reviews, products ratings, shopping comparison features and/or user generated content.

But again, as the article states, if you are JUST researching a site and using PPC at 1st to test the waters, not even trying to get SE traffic, just testing, I think thin is fine. If you want to build it int oa long term successful enterprise, you need to add some meat to those bare bones!

 

[noveltytease]

I have never thought about that...sounds like that would be logical though...something else that may be worth checking out would be niches specifically designed for the different seasons...for example, maybe a winter, spring, summer and fall mini-site dedicated to just those seasons...like formal wear rentals during the springtime for those high schoolers that are doing all of their formal dances...Christmas specials for the winter site....

And then after you see how that is going maybe focus on the previous seasonal site to program upcoming the seasons....what i mean by this is maybe on your summer site you promote something that would be great for the winter (ie. fur coats) this way you can get your full market value before the season and then when the season officially ends do like a closeout prices on that site to get in gear for the next years trends...

i am sorry if i am focussing more on tangible ideas but i run a business where my products are tangible ideas...and just thinking about what jaimief mentioned just made me stop to think about some ideas that could possibablly be interesting to look into...and hopefully someone else on here would agree with me...

 

[noveltytease]

ahyunte (sp) makes a good point...however with everyone trying to figure out whether to go thin or fat...here is an idea just to shoot it out there...

depending on what kind of product you are trying to market and the price range would really depend on your landing page...for instance why spend all of your time and efforts on making a fat niche site to promote a program that only costs less than $50.00 for the person to subscribe to...by this i mean there is a program out there that i have had some good success with that i haven't had to advertise that much for just a couple of blog posts and a couple of banner links on myspace...and it was for a workout pass program...

I think that a fat website would be for one of those products that costs over $100.00 that you really need to go into detail as to what the benefits are good for and what the product does...need to be able to catch your audience quickly at first and then spill out with all of the technical information and the design pros while comparing to similar items in that market to show how it out does that product...