Strategising and building a profitable affiliate website is no easy task. If it was everybody would be doing it. There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of affiliate sites that operate in each and every industry, but only a handful of them are truly successful. For every successful site such as Playing Legal, there is a site that’s set up and then disbanded within a matter of months due to lack of traffic and subsequently conversions.
When it comes to setting up and running a successful affiliate site that will actually generate profits then there are four key things that you need to do:
Great content
Step one when it comes to being successful as an affiliate website is getting a foothold in the search rankings; and the only way to do that (without paying) is by creating great content. For affiliate sites the aim is to outrank not only the competition from other affiliate sites, but also the merchants who they’re affiliates of.
The benefit that affiliates have when it comes to content is that they can be agile, and act quickly when it comes to content marketing. Larger companies tend to have structured content strategies that take a lot of time to create and sign off; whereas affiliates tend to be smaller which means they can react to changes in the market much quicker and get their content out there without needing excessive sign offs.
Your website design
Although setting up any old website might be simple, building one that is designed in a way that generates conversions can be a tricky task. The days of ugly websites stuffed full of tacky animated graphics, frames, and inappropriately timed pop up banners is no more. People want a website that looks nice, something that’s easy on the eye and isn’t too hard to navigate.
Nowadays it no longer requires great coding knowledge to make a beautiful website. There are a number of platforms such as WordPress that allow even the least technical of people to create a nice looking website that can drive conversions.
Adding value
Right, so far we have great content that ranks well posted on a beautifully designed website, but so do a lot of other people. So what’s to stop people opting for their site rather than yours?
What every successful affiliate does is add value to their visitors. One of the reasons there are so most common way of gambling affiliates to add value is to offer advice on ways to beat the bookies.
Call to actions
This links in with we design, however doesn’t necessarily relate to colour schemes and graphics. A call to action is a part of the site that urges visitors to convert. This can be done in many different ways including, contact forms, call buttons or simply click through text.
The better placed and more effective the call to actions are, the more conversions a site will create. Without including the right call to actions the rest of the work can often be pointless.