For a serious Affiliate Marketer every part of their business must look and function in the most professional way to maintain their credibility.
This includes the quality of their websites, and the quality of their hosting.
In this article I talk briefly about websites, hosting, and the meaning of a 'niche' and the meaning of 'traffic'.
Serious Affiliate Marketers invest in building websites of quality for marketing their affiliate programs and products.
After all, your image and credibility depend on your interface with the customer, and in Internet Marketing your interface is your website.
A shabby looking poor functioning website will do your image good deal of harm, so, you need to get this right.
That means, until you can produce websites of the necessary quality for yourself, you will need to hire people to do it for you.
There are a large number of people and companies advertising on the internet that do a good job of designing and building websites for people just like you.
Use Google search to find them.
Just remember what I said in my last article; before wasting a lot of money, ensure the one you are hiring is the one for you.
There are those companies that are good for corporate clients and those that are good for individuals.
Those that deal with individuals can be cheaper, but check the quality of their work before you take them on.
They should have a number of examples of their work available for you to see.
You should be able to access these sites and see what facilities they offer and how complex they are.
Another thing to check for is whether the site they are offering is a unique, multipage, stand alone site, or whether it is a blog site (WordPress or other blog site).
To explain this further is not appropriate to the depth of the discussion we are now having.
What I am trying to convey here is that producing a website is not straight forward, and neither is choosing someone to build one for you.
You should also check for the degree of ongoing support you are going to get after the website is produced.
You are no expert, it is not reasonable for you to know exactly what you want first time.
There should be some flexibility in the contract to modify the site after it is initially produced.
Be careful here.
We are only talking about minor changes.
If you have completely messed up your original specification, and you now realize what you need is quite different to what you asked the designer for.
My advice to you is cut your losses, produce a new spec and ask the designer to put it on your existing URL in place of the original, assuming the URL is good enough.
Your URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the internet address of your site.
Don't ask me to explain what it means, just accept it! Now I am touching oh so lightly on a topic that is dear to so many people's hearts.
Then again, there are a lot of people who will tell you it is all 'smoke and mirrors' (magic), and don't go there at any cost.
The topic is SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
There are many books written on this subject, so you can see there is a great deal of 'expertise' available.
So, what is it all about?Well, it is not a linear subject to discuss, (you don't start with block A then build on this with block B and so on) it's more like a mindmap (you start with a thought in the middle of the page and branch off in any number of directions all based on the original thought).
This is because there are so many parallel considerations all going on at once.
The base of all SEO is what Internet Marketing calls 'traffic'.
There are two words I have to quickly explain here: traffic and niche.
There has been a lot written about both these subjects, and I will cover a little more in future articles.
I will start with 'niche' (niche is a French word pronounced 'neesh', but in the US it is pronounced 'nitch' as in 'itch').
How it is pronounced is not really important, what is important is what it means in Internet Marketing.
To operate in a 'whole market' your company has to be very big.
You have to have big bucks to advertise; otherwise your ads will be drowned out by all the other people running similar ads.
So, when you start up in Affiliate Marketing you have to find yourself a tiny part of a market where you have more chance to dominate, this is your 'niche'.
Let me make this clear.
You won't be alone in your niche, but there will be far fewer competitors than you would meet in the whole market.
Deciding on your niche (that little part of a market you have decided to operate in), and developing the kind of website that best exploits your niche are big subjects in themselves which you will need to read a lot about (even though someone else will be building the website for you).
For now it is sufficient for you to just know about the elements that go to make up Internet Marketing and Affiliate Marketing.
The next thing to talk about is traffic.
When we talk about traffic in Internet Marketing and Affiliate Marketing we are referring to the number of visits a website gets.
This is measured in 'hits'.
A hit being someone (a visitor) clicking on a website to look at it, and the pages within a website.
The more clicks (hits) you get, the more traffic you have visiting your site.
Generating interest in your website to get the maximum number of hits is one of the big issues in Internet Marketing and Affiliate Marketing.
This is a subject you are going to have to read about and practice a lot.
Having decided on your niche, you need to think about what you want to 'show' your new visitors on your website, and what you would like your new visitors 'to do' when they visit your website.
I will cover these topics in future articles.
I have myself dabbled in SEO to no great effect.
My advice to those new to Internet Marketing and Affiliate Marketing, based on my limited experience, is that you should read and understand the basics of SEO so that you can at least choose appropriate URLs and develop your site in generally the correct way to take advantage of the way search engines work, but don't become obsessed with SEO.
Here is a very brief introduction to some aspects of traffic and SEO to help you start:When you do a Google search on any subject, you usually end up with ten websites displayed on the first page, and there might be thousands of sites advertising in your niche, so your chances of getting your website onto one of those ten slots on the first page are quite low.
Now, here is a gem I worked out.
Of all the hits for a given subject, by far the greater percent go to the number 1 site on the first page of the search engine.
Fewer hits got to number 2 site, fewer hits still got to number 3 site, and so on.
Until we reach the number 6 site on the first page, which I have worked out gets only gets 10% of the hits that go to the number 1 website on the first page.
In short nearly all the hits available in a given niche go to Google search page 1, the rest of the pages pick up the crumbs.
Ah.
But what crumbs! Now we come to hosting.
By the same token, you must choose a reliable company for your hosting.
If your hosting keeps failing, then your business will be failing also.
Remember, although it is usually a separate company that is providing your hosting your customers do not see that.
If they cannot get through to you it is you they blame, and so they soon stop trying to visit you.
A reliable hosting company is absolutely essential to ensuring your website is running smoothly at all times.
This includes the quality of their websites, and the quality of their hosting.
In this article I talk briefly about websites, hosting, and the meaning of a 'niche' and the meaning of 'traffic'.
Serious Affiliate Marketers invest in building websites of quality for marketing their affiliate programs and products.
After all, your image and credibility depend on your interface with the customer, and in Internet Marketing your interface is your website.
A shabby looking poor functioning website will do your image good deal of harm, so, you need to get this right.
That means, until you can produce websites of the necessary quality for yourself, you will need to hire people to do it for you.
There are a large number of people and companies advertising on the internet that do a good job of designing and building websites for people just like you.
Use Google search to find them.
Just remember what I said in my last article; before wasting a lot of money, ensure the one you are hiring is the one for you.
There are those companies that are good for corporate clients and those that are good for individuals.
Those that deal with individuals can be cheaper, but check the quality of their work before you take them on.
They should have a number of examples of their work available for you to see.
You should be able to access these sites and see what facilities they offer and how complex they are.
Another thing to check for is whether the site they are offering is a unique, multipage, stand alone site, or whether it is a blog site (WordPress or other blog site).
To explain this further is not appropriate to the depth of the discussion we are now having.
What I am trying to convey here is that producing a website is not straight forward, and neither is choosing someone to build one for you.
You should also check for the degree of ongoing support you are going to get after the website is produced.
You are no expert, it is not reasonable for you to know exactly what you want first time.
There should be some flexibility in the contract to modify the site after it is initially produced.
Be careful here.
We are only talking about minor changes.
If you have completely messed up your original specification, and you now realize what you need is quite different to what you asked the designer for.
My advice to you is cut your losses, produce a new spec and ask the designer to put it on your existing URL in place of the original, assuming the URL is good enough.
Your URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the internet address of your site.
Don't ask me to explain what it means, just accept it! Now I am touching oh so lightly on a topic that is dear to so many people's hearts.
Then again, there are a lot of people who will tell you it is all 'smoke and mirrors' (magic), and don't go there at any cost.
The topic is SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
There are many books written on this subject, so you can see there is a great deal of 'expertise' available.
So, what is it all about?Well, it is not a linear subject to discuss, (you don't start with block A then build on this with block B and so on) it's more like a mindmap (you start with a thought in the middle of the page and branch off in any number of directions all based on the original thought).
This is because there are so many parallel considerations all going on at once.
The base of all SEO is what Internet Marketing calls 'traffic'.
There are two words I have to quickly explain here: traffic and niche.
There has been a lot written about both these subjects, and I will cover a little more in future articles.
I will start with 'niche' (niche is a French word pronounced 'neesh', but in the US it is pronounced 'nitch' as in 'itch').
How it is pronounced is not really important, what is important is what it means in Internet Marketing.
To operate in a 'whole market' your company has to be very big.
You have to have big bucks to advertise; otherwise your ads will be drowned out by all the other people running similar ads.
So, when you start up in Affiliate Marketing you have to find yourself a tiny part of a market where you have more chance to dominate, this is your 'niche'.
Let me make this clear.
You won't be alone in your niche, but there will be far fewer competitors than you would meet in the whole market.
Deciding on your niche (that little part of a market you have decided to operate in), and developing the kind of website that best exploits your niche are big subjects in themselves which you will need to read a lot about (even though someone else will be building the website for you).
For now it is sufficient for you to just know about the elements that go to make up Internet Marketing and Affiliate Marketing.
The next thing to talk about is traffic.
When we talk about traffic in Internet Marketing and Affiliate Marketing we are referring to the number of visits a website gets.
This is measured in 'hits'.
A hit being someone (a visitor) clicking on a website to look at it, and the pages within a website.
The more clicks (hits) you get, the more traffic you have visiting your site.
Generating interest in your website to get the maximum number of hits is one of the big issues in Internet Marketing and Affiliate Marketing.
This is a subject you are going to have to read about and practice a lot.
Having decided on your niche, you need to think about what you want to 'show' your new visitors on your website, and what you would like your new visitors 'to do' when they visit your website.
I will cover these topics in future articles.
I have myself dabbled in SEO to no great effect.
My advice to those new to Internet Marketing and Affiliate Marketing, based on my limited experience, is that you should read and understand the basics of SEO so that you can at least choose appropriate URLs and develop your site in generally the correct way to take advantage of the way search engines work, but don't become obsessed with SEO.
Here is a very brief introduction to some aspects of traffic and SEO to help you start:When you do a Google search on any subject, you usually end up with ten websites displayed on the first page, and there might be thousands of sites advertising in your niche, so your chances of getting your website onto one of those ten slots on the first page are quite low.
Now, here is a gem I worked out.
Of all the hits for a given subject, by far the greater percent go to the number 1 site on the first page of the search engine.
Fewer hits got to number 2 site, fewer hits still got to number 3 site, and so on.
Until we reach the number 6 site on the first page, which I have worked out gets only gets 10% of the hits that go to the number 1 website on the first page.
In short nearly all the hits available in a given niche go to Google search page 1, the rest of the pages pick up the crumbs.
Ah.
But what crumbs! Now we come to hosting.
By the same token, you must choose a reliable company for your hosting.
If your hosting keeps failing, then your business will be failing also.
Remember, although it is usually a separate company that is providing your hosting your customers do not see that.
If they cannot get through to you it is you they blame, and so they soon stop trying to visit you.
A reliable hosting company is absolutely essential to ensuring your website is running smoothly at all times.
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