Where do I go from here? Comparison website...

[Lee_K_00]

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Hello i'm new here!

Ok so I decided I wanted to get into affiliate marketing and thought a comparison website would be the best way to do it, so I bought myself a domain name and hosting and went ahead creating the layout, learning CSS and HTML along the way and come up with this:

This is still heavily underdeveloped and what is set up at the minute as you'll see, is just a basic layout, the navigation and search box don't work just yet and there's a few other things that need adjusted. These things aren't a problem, I can fix those.

What is a problem though is I started looking into what my next step should be as far as comparison website's go and how they work, and i'm totally stuck! I know about data feeds and looked into AffiliStore, Data Feed Studio, Price Tapestry etc. But they have me totally baffled!
I started to get somewhere with Affilistore but don't like how I can't customise the layout, or at least not to the extent that I want to. This is something I find very important!
So then I moved onto the free version of Data Feed Studio to see what it's like, but I find this even harder to use! And i'm not sure whether the customisation that I want to achieve is available either.
I have heard extremely good reports of Price Tapestry, but again I don't know if the customisation that I want is achievable. Or if i'll eventually be able to get my head round how it all works. So I dont want to spend the money on it to find out it isn't.

So now I havn't a clue where to go next! I'm not the 1 to give up on something but after spending endless hours trying to decide what my next step should be I am starting to think a comparison website isn't for me?
Should I just give up? Sell the domain and layout? Domain Parking? (How does that work anyways?). Consider paying someone to code it properly? If I did go that way I imagine it could be costly? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

[csn]

Just sent a DM.

[dc000000]

I have heard extremely good reports of Price Tapestry, but again I don't know if the customisation that I want is achievable. Or if i'll eventually be able to get my head round how it all works. So I dont want to spend the money on it to find out it isn't.

Yes it's achievable and you can get your head around it.It does take a lot of time and effort - not to mention making many mistakes along the way
Paying someone to set it up for you will save a lot of stress and time - and probably won't cost as much as you imagined.

[Deeps2365]

I would recommend paying someone to get it all done perfectly. Then you work on the marketing and promotion. You'll have a good looking site, get some traffic and you'll start making money.

Although, if you try and build it yourself then you might just learn how to make your next site without any other help.

Choices.... choices...

[keano]

If you are just starting out I wouldn't recommend that you get stuck into datafeeds and large scale data manipulation straight away. You need to have the technical skills to be able to not only set it up but also ensure that you have unique content blended in with the feed - if you just plan to publish the feed and use the descriptions within the feed you won't get very far.

So I'd suggest that research the most popular perfumes in your given niche by using your preferred keyword popularity tool and work your way down the most popular items by creating pages on each one manually, grabbing nice images, writing unique content about each one, pop an affiliate link in there somewhere and perhaps an area for user generated content such as reviews of the perfume by your site users.

I'd start slow if I were you, get a feel for the niche and then as your skills develop then look at more sophisticated data driven ideas.

[Lee_K_00]

Thanks for the replies! It's the exact sort of thing I wanted to hear. Sometimes you just need that extra push to keep you going! But although you say it's achievable, who am I most likely to achieve it with? Who would you recommend I go with?

This is something i'd love to achieve on my own, without paying someone to do it. I'm really keen on learning my way round this stuff. But I wasn't sure if I was just wasting my time trying to achieve somethng that can't be achieved. So thank's for the replies!

Sent an email CSN

[nts123]

Defo start slow writing your own content and see if you can get traffic to the site. If you can't get traffic you won't make any sales, so it has to be your first objective.

[liveland]

So then I moved onto the free version of Data Feed Studio to see what it's like, but I find this even harder to use! And i'm not sure whether the customisation that I want to achieve is available either.

I've been using Datafeed studio for around a year now, it does take a bit of getting used to, but once you've learn't the basics it's easy to use and very customisable.
I never bother with the DFS sites (I did start with these but found them too rigid), I now always use the DFS Wordpress plugin or the DFS API.

I also found it easier to setup datafeed studio on seperate domain, as a price comparison engine, and then all of my other sites get the prices from this site (as clients).

The DFS support page has links to to a wiki, and discussion board which I found invaluable when starting out.

[Lee_K_00]

NTS123, I think this will probably be my next step just so that I have something up and running, and something to build on.

And thanks Liveland, but what do you mean by setting it up on a different domain and using another site as a client site?

Thanks for all the replies, it's much appreciated! As are anymore!

[liveland]

Take a look at the bottom of the Datafeed Studio homepage for some examples, there is a 'Deal Drop' site, this is just a price comparison engine that sits in the background powering other sites, below this the WII bundles site uses the API to display prices (which it obtains from the deal drop site), and below this the DMR BS850 site uses wordpress plugin to display prices (again which it obtains from the deal drop site).

BTW, none of these sites look great, or are maintained (in fact they aren't even working very well), they are just example sites to try to show the capabilites, you can style your sites however you like including the price comparison parts.

I've got the same setup as this albiet on my own domains (and working and looking much better).

[Lee_K_00]

Ah ok, thanks for that i'll check them out! I'm really keen on getting my head round this, then either carrying on using it or investing in something more. But at the minute I can't afford to put money into something that I might not be able to make use of! With a baby on the way, I don't think the misses would be overly keen on me spending money on something if it wasn't going to be of any use! lol.