Anyone running USA sites from UK

[geordieGeek]

Hi all

I am thiinking of trying to create an American verison of a web site that I have running in the UK and wondering if anyone has done similar?

Any bad networks to look out for over the pond?

Cheers in advance for any stories / advice

[John Jupp]

Yes I have.

Avoid ClickXChange. Period.

Ensure your metatags declare that your country is the US and not the UK on the website.

Small merchants ShareaSale in the US. ShareResults I think it is for Canada.

If you are prepared to pay them CJ in the US is far better than CJ in the UK for overall support and datafeeds (the feeds cost).

Not every merchant will approve you to use their datafeeds on ShareaSale.

No self promotion and no affiliate links and be prepared for the direct (some say just plain rude) approach of affiliates but check out the ABestWeb Forum run by Haiko for the latest merchant deals in the States.

[DioBach]

Originally Posted by geordieGeek Hi all I am thiinking of trying to create an American verison of a web site that I have running in the UK and wondering if anyone has done similar? Any bad networks to look out for over the pond? Cheers in advance for any stories / advice

keep an eye out for duplicate content issues as well.

[geordieGeek]

Thanks for the quick reply John.

The site will be easily identifiable via meta tags etc that it is a US targetted web site.

CJ in the UK are pretty useless for datafeeds in my target market but if the US version is better I make take a fresh look at them although paying to promote companies prodcuts seems a slightly alien concept to me??

I will have a look at that forum ASAP.

Andy

[John Jupp]

One thing seriously and I do mean seriously worth researching...it's on my to do list and that is find merchants in the US who sell to Mexico and have affiliate schemes.

Do a page in Spanish and make sure delivery info is on the main page for it as Mexicans are clamouring for products from the US but find it hard to see if merchants deliver there.

A bit of a hijack but if any merchants deliver to Mexico and can provide creative accordingly then do contact me.

[moredial]

Before you get too excited about 'exporting' to Mexico, have some fun reading how much the import taxes are - they are per delivery not per delivery size. It reads like a small little mine field that most people would probably prefer to avoid.

[John Jupp]

Ouch! Ai Caramba. I'll certainly look into it.

[justhomdotcom]

And for some reason the Mexican postal service is a real pain in that they frequently mislay parcels and/or it takes weeks for things to be delivered. So much that we used to deliver to mexico but had to drop them because too many parcels were going missing.

[geordieGeek]

I am definitely interested in the US market but Mexico and other countries will have to wait as the site is only just getting up to speed in the UK but I have already had enquiries from the US.

With regards to duplicate content a slightly geeky question: would people advise to use a completely new subdomain as in usa.mysite.com or just a folder like mysite.com/usa/for a usa based site?

I see Apple use Apple.com/uk as do crucial memory I think but in Apple's case I think this is only because Apple.co.uk was taken!

Cheers

[John Jupp]

Just a folder would do and you can always use a slightly different layout on the template

[moredial]

Originally Posted by geordieGeek With regards to duplicate content a slightly geeky question: would people advise to use a completely new subdomain as in usa.mysite.com or just a folder like mysite.com/usa/for a usa based site?

For USA, the site will do better if hosted in the USA rather than UK - so here a subdmain will be a good idea.

Disadvantages of a subdomain is that it is just one more thing for someone to have to think about when they type the url - will it still work if they type www.subdomain.domain.tld ??

There is a lot to be said for using a directory. Firstly your site is already established with some ranking whereas a subdomain will have to start from the beginning with building up ranking.

Then you have to consider the duplicate content issues.

There is nothing stopping you from doing both and getting the best of both worlds. USA landing pages, optimised for the USA market - database and ssl on the www subdomain to make maintenance easier.

You will do even better if you use dot com for USA and dot co dot uk for the UK market, hosted on different IP addresses with PR circulation.