New to Affiliate Marketing - My first website... be honest :)

**Solkazo** · 09-11-11

Hi everyone.

I started affiliate marketing around 2 weeks ago, and by started, i mean buiilding the website. So far i hope im doing everything right my plan of action is:

Build a website
Offer products in sections
Write buying guides
Write product reviews
At some point get a blog section for news and updates on products and technology

Im currently working on it alone and i would rather people tell me honestly what i should change before it gets to big. Its not finished but the outlines there

PowerShopper.co.uk - Offering you quality products at the best prices

Thank you for your time

**gocrazy** · 09-11-11

I think You have used too much graphical ads. I would try working with text links in the text as too much ads does not make the impression of serious and high reputation review site.

**aaclapham** · 09-11-11

To be successful you must pick a niche and eat and sleep it, be the best site with lots of unique and helpful content. The days of throwing up a site that covers everything are long gone i'm afraid.

If I was starting again I would pick 3 totally different niches build the sites and update regularly, and then after 6 months/ 1 year see which were getting traffic, which you still enjoyed doing and dump the rest.

In 6 years I have lost count of the number of sites I lost interest in, or Google hammered. You just take the knowledge you have learn't and go and make a better site and so on.

**Solkazo** · 09-11-11

Fair comments

Ill see how the website goes, if it fails - ill try sell the domain, fingers crossed powershopper.co.uk is worth more than it cost to register.

**babrees** · 10-11-11

I agree with Andrew, but would go further...

You state...

Here at PowerShopper.co.uk, we do a (sic) online shop search for the best products, at the best prices to ensure our customers get the best deals around

but you don't, all you are doing is linking to Amazon, that's not searching the internet for the best prices!

The navigation and layout is extremely difficult - you have to click so many times just to get to some products, and then all you have are a few Amazon adverts

You ask us to be honest, but then stick your tongue out in disagreement

**Solkazo** · 10-11-11

Originally Posted by babrees

I agree with Andrew, but would go further...

You state...

but you don't, all you are doing is linking to Amazon, that's not searching the internet for the best prices!

The navigation and layout is extremely difficult - you have to click so many times just to get to some products, and then all you have are a few Amazon adverts

You ask us to be honest, but then stick your tongue out in disagreement

No no, i didn't put the sticking tongue out in disagreement, its simply a staple emoticon used.
I have started on a more focused niche website as of last night, not ready to release it on the forums as i just started it and don’t want people jumping in it just in case, All comments have been taken on board. :P

**Paul Guest** · 10-11-11

It all looks a bit squeezed into the middle. Maybe you could list the categories horizontally across the top

**alandvc** · 10-11-11

Yes, the site does seem to be almost squashed into the middle with loads of space around it. How about a search feauture?

**MartinEvans** · 10-11-11

Also why have you got two Amazon graphical ads? do they go to different places or are they just taking up space ?

**energizing** · 11-11-11

Welcome to the affiliate world

As people said above you might want to plan your niche/sector better a first site that aims to target:

Clothing, clothes, brand, designer, UK, cheap, power shopper, tv, samsung, sony, dvd, ps3, xbox360, games conesoles, sale, online shop search, truffle shuffle, shopp

*From your meta

It is quite ambitious to say the least! Your much better going for long tail terms than these generic terms. A guy called Smingle did an epic post sometime ago about niche pages and what you should do. Buy something like KeyWord.co.uk for a 1.5k niche and dominate it.

I'm guessing design is not your strong point, everyone cant be good at everything so its best to accept it and either outsource it or use free templates. A better design will help with SEO and conversion rate as your visitors will easily be able to follow your site. This site has some great free css templates: CSS Templates (page 1 of 47) - Free CSS Templates However as you are new to this I would suggest using WordPress and building upon that, again there are many free themes and plugins to do what you want.

Amazon is a really poor merchant, ok conversion rate is good but there is no cookie and % is very low. You can do a lot better by finding a merchant via a Network like WebGains.

Adwords & affiliate links is not a good combination, well not if done like you have as it adds to low trust in the site and low conversion. I understand why you added them, to try to raise funds but you will probably find the adverts will work better without them. If you must use Adwords only use them on a page you cant monitise another way.

Anyway thats enough for now, good luck!

**Sue_Neal** · 20-11-11

Hi there - I would agree with a lot of the other comments. It's not really clear exactly what your site is offering that's so special - you need to be 'giving' something to attract people to your site and it just looks as if you're trying to make lots of sales through your affiliate links - it just looks like a lot of adverts. Not a site I'd be attracted stay on and search. On the design side, the site does look rather squashed and the print is very small, not easy to read. I think you'd be better getting immersed in a particular niche and creating some really useful content - I think you need to be prepared to give stuff away initially (e.g. information, advice etc.) before you start trying to sell, to build up your customer base. The advice I've been given is that a lot of affiliates fail because they're wanting to sell straight away, which is very difficult to do, even if you've got a fantastic site.

**whiteknight** · 22-11-11

Hey, first of all, congrats on your first affiliate site!

If I could give one suggestion? I'd try and present more images of the products on your site. For example, on your clothes link, it'd be nice to then be taken to a page with 9 pictures or so of different categories of clothes. Copy the model used by ecommerce shops. Graphical depictions of products, on your type of site, tend to work better at getting your user to click through to the merchant.