Caroline Elle

I don't need to say it but I will, the most important thing with having a website is getting visitors to your website. You can have the best product in the world, the nicest website in the world with the coolest URL but it doesn't matter if no one goes to your site.

So, whats the easiest way to get visitors to your site. There are a few different ways and each one depends on how much time you're willing to give in waiting for your traffic to build up. If you can't wait, then you can purchase clicks from Google or Yahoo. You pay a certain amount for a keyword. Whenever someone enters that keyword into a search engine you ad shows up and if they click on your link, you pay. This can generate a lot of traffic but obviously, depends on how much you are willing to spend.

Another method is reciprocal linking. You find someone who has a website with a similar topic as yours. You put a link to their site on your website and you ask for the same from them in return. This can take a while as you have to find the sites, then contact the owner and wait for a response.

Another method, which I don't think it massively popular but I think is the most effective is to find sites and forums which are based on the same topic as your website and make comments and posts. Majority of forums let you have a link to your site in your post and same when posting comments.

Shoemoney calls himself a super affiliate and claims to make massive amounts of money through affiliate marketing. He just wrote a post on this topic and said that comments and posting on other sites and forums was the way that he built up traffic to his sites in the beginning, when he didn't have lots of money to buy traffic. He goes into detail about how to get traffic read his post here.

One of the most important things when starting a new website is your landing page. Basically, the first page people see when they click the link to your site. If it looks like crap the viewer will close it straight down and go onto the next website. Personally, when browsing the internet, I look for professional looking websites. If it looks like it's from the 90's with bad images and bright purple times new roman font, I click off. That's just me but I have read that those ugly, hard selling websites do well. I don't want to go down that track and for those who also don't, here are some tips on how to build a successful landing page.

Uber Affiliate has a great article on how to build successful landing pages. Some of the main comments are:

You need to build a site according to your audience - their age, gender etc and the product you are trying to sell them. Different people buy different things and you need to build your site to target the appropriate audience.

You need to communicate to your audience what it is your website is about, what you are trying to sell and how it benefits your viewer. You are not directly selling the product but you are promoting it and you need to get the audience as warm and as ready as possible. You need to butter them up enough so that they are ready to push the buy button as soon as they hit the product website.

Don't make your site too "flashy". These days your site can have videos, music, flash graphics, widgets and all sorts of bits and bobs. First of all this can make your site very slow to load. People are impatient and don't want to sit around waiting for your site to load - they will just move on to the next one. Second of all most people (or their computers) aren't that far advanced in the internet and they can get confused and overwhelmed. Keep your site simple but professional.

Try to test different version of your site. Different colours, fonts and images can all make a difference. Changing the colour of your site can make your site more successful.

Click here to read the full article.

Affiliate Classroom is a free magazine which "is published to serve hard-working affiliates. Our goal is to help keep you informed of emerging marketing trends, increase your website traffic, and raise converions and revenues. The writers, columnists, editors and teachers who contribute to Affiliate Classroom Magazine are all affiliates who speak from experience."

It's a great little e-zine to read so click here to view.

 Affiliate Classroom also offer a training service where you have access to their full training facility with every resource you need to help you build your affiliate marketing business, including marketing guides, tutorials, industry expert interviews etc. You can trial this program for 14 days for only $1. Click here to see more.

I have mentioned quite a few times in previous posts about lack of motivation. I think this is because I have yet started to make any real money so it is on my mind a lot. When you don't see rewards it's hard to justify why you should keep spending all this time and a little (or a lot) of money on something that you don't know is ever going to give anything back. I like to tell myself it's a hobby that I enjoy and don't care if I make any money from it. That's true to an extent - but would mainly like this to be my "job" or my main source of income (and let's not forget the $1 million I'm going to have at age 30!).

I was browsing through a few blogs last night - I have a few ones that I read regularly to keep updated on affiliate news and information. Super Affiliate Mindset calls himself a Super Affiliate who claims to make millions and his blog is mostly posts about what he is spending him money on this week. But he wrote an interesting little post about his experience when he first started out in affiliate marketing and related it to the Bamboo plant. Some of the post is as follows:

"Have you heard about the growth cycle of a bamboo tree? It’s actually quite amazing, for the first 2-3 years it grows only a few inches in height.

Then in a period of about 60 days the bamboo tree explodes to potentially 60 feet or higher!

So what’s happening during those 2-3 years where it seems the bamboo tree is not growing at all? Well, the bamboo tree is actually growing in the inside, that is, it’s building up its root structure so that it can handle the massive amount of growth it will experience during its 60 day growth spurt.

The road from a newbie affiliate to a super affiliate is just like the growth cycle of a bamboo tree.

When I first started out in this business I know NOTHING, seriously, I couldn’t even design a simple web page. I spend my first several months attempting to create a website that would get natural search engine traffic."

Click here to read the rest of this post.

I mentioned in an earlier post that for anyone who doesn't know how to build or want to pay a lot of money to have a website designed, that Template Monster is a great source of thousands of quality templates. All you need to do is tweak them a little to include your own logo and website name. I have aways noticed a little site that comes up in the search listings with Google that has the heading 'Read This Before Buying From Template Monster'. I like to try things whether people have a good opinion or not because my experience may not necessarily be the same as someone elses but decided to have a look at this site to see what they were complaining about. Well, the site is in fact a glowing review of Template Monster and this person uses them so much they have been able to get a 15% discount code which they would like to share with everyone. So, now I'm sharing it all with you! Go to Template Monster and if you buy a template, use code be74T00418FVhjrMvQGmen4Wv at the checkout to receive a 15% discount.  Click here to go to Template Monster.

Having a lot of different websites means that I am always on the look out for new and better ways of hosting them. I mentioned in a previous post that I use Go Daddy for hosting any US based websites. While I am happy with them right now, I still keep an eye out for better deals. I have come across a site which offers webhosting for very competitive prices which I am going to give a try. Web Hosting Buzz offers budget web hosting and has been around since 2002.

Their hosting plans are very cheap and they offer free domain names along with their hosting. Prices start at $3.95 per month with free setup costs. If anyone has used them, please leave some feedback in the comments. I am going to give them a try so will let you know how I go.

Click here to visit Web Hosting Buzz.

When it comes to building yourself a website there are many different options available and it can be very overwhelming trying to figure out what's right for you. What kind of website do you want: an online store, a blog, a directory, etc. Whatever you decide it is super easy to get up and running in no time at all.

I have a mixture of blogs and websites including online stores. Blogging is a very cheap and easy way to start with websites. There are lots out there but people love reading them if the content is good. It is also a good way to experiment with affiliate advertising and learning how to place affiliate advertising on your site. I started out with blogging and it's a great way to experiment with your writing skills and topics. Starting out with a blog also helps you build a readership or membership base. If you build a loyal audience it's easier to start other websites as you have gained trust from viewers and basically already have a readership base for any new sites you start. There are many "blog" blogs out there which give tips and advice on good blog designs, good blog content, how to advertise your blog and the like. Some of my favourites are:

Here.org.uk

Blogtrepreneur

Pro Blogger

The two main blogging programs is Blogger and Wordpress. For most of my blogs I use Blogger but I do have a couple in Wordpress. I like Blogger better because I find it easier to manipulate the templates to look how I want whereas I find that harder to do in Wordpress. Both products offer a free domain and template or you can use your own domain name, host it on your own server and have a larger range of templates available to you. I really feel that you don't need to spend the money on domain names and hosting. A lot of blogs that make huge amounts of money have a blogspot or wordpress domain name and a pretty plain template. You'll read it everywhere but the most important thing is that you are writing interesting posts that people enjoy reading.

If you prefer to have a website and/or online store I would suggest getting your own domain name and hosting. If you don't know how to build your own website you can get basic website template for free or professional looking websites for very good prices. For my Australian websites i.e. aimed at my Australian audience I use a .com.au domain name and Australian based hosting. For websites which are aimed at a US audience I use an US based company.

For my Australian sites I buy my domains and hosting from Domain Central. I have been with them for about a year and has been relatively problem free. They have good a good range of products and the hosting that I use only costs $12 per month. Domain names are around $30 for 2 years.For my US sites I always use Go Daddy. It's a huge, well known service and it very cheap. You can get a .com domain for around $11 per year and hosting is about $5 per month. In AU dollars that's around $12 for .com domains and $5.50 per month for hosting.

If you want a quick and professional website built go to Template Monster. They have a huge selection to choose from and they are professional looking. The average price for a website is around $50-$60 US dollars. All you need to do is incorporate your logo and/or images into the site. If you don't feel confident doing this, they offer a "tweaking" service to add your websites little details. So for under $100 you can have your very own, professional looking website up and running.�

All you need to do now is decide what kind of website you want to put out there.

So, this is just another quick post to let you all know I have made a second affiliate commission. Yay!

It has been a while since my last post. Not because I've been unmotivated per say but have been a little lazy recently. I came to a bit of a standstill and unfortunately let myself slow down on my learning curve in affiliate marketing. But I am back on track and hoping to be able to post more often.  So, I did make my very first affiliate commission this week. I am so excited! It was for......wait for it.......$5.99!! (US dollars that is). I know it's not much but, you know what, it has taken me since the beginning of 2008 to make that first commission and it just made me feel like I'm not wasting my time and that I am doing something right. I really hope this is the start of something big. Gotta start somewhere, right?

So, hopefully you went through some of the info from my previous post pointing to Uber Affiliate and his Affiliate Marketing Guide.  The most important thing about having a website is getting taffic. You could have the best website in the whole world but if there is no traffic - that is, noone looking at your site - it will fail. here.co.uk has good information on the best ways to get traffic to your site. Getting good quality traffic to your site is free, it is just a lengthy process so you have to be patient and perservere.  Click here to read how to get traffic to your new site.