Promoting a Review Site.

Rich · 22-08-03

One of the sites I'm currently creating is a review and discussion site and I'm trying to work out the best way to attract visitors to it. Any suggestions would be gratefully received, but these are the ideas I've come up with so far.

1) Create an affiliate program paying out when a user registers for the site and/or posts a forum post and/or posts a product review. - My main concern with this is it will be hard to work out the value of these actions on a new site.

2) Create a program where the affiliate gets a %age of all sales to that visitor (along the lines of GreasyPalm). - I don't think the programs the site will be linking to will offer enough tracking to make this viable.

3) Allow affiliates to submit there own ID's for each program promoted on the site and always use these for that visitor (along the lines of the-jigsaw). - This seems the easiest to implement, the only drawback being that affiliates have to sign up for multiple programs and would have to hit the payment threshold on each one. It also means I would get no income from these visitors, but they would hopefully refer other people.

Thats all I've come up with for getting sites to send traffic, I'm also looking at ways to get visitors to interact with the site once they are on it, such as discounts off next purchase if they write a review, rewards for 'tell a friend' type referals, competitions and special offers.

Which of the above program formats would you promote? How else can I get a review and discussion site rolling?

Thanks for your suggestions.

Rich

Rich · 26-08-03

Anyone?

scifind · 04-09-03

I had an idea a while ago, but like most of my ideas I don't have the time or money to realise them, if it works you can send half your millions to my paypal email address payment@scifind.co.uk

Get users to register, select a product to review, write a review under the promis thay will recieve half all commission for purchases made of that item through a link on their review.

(you will have to use a data feed to get the correct link)

Using the same tracking technology as Greasy Plam ( the epi network etc tags)

offer a payment once their account reaches £25
99% will never reach this value - so write a clause where you can claim all the money if their reviews don't generate a sale in 12 months, meanwhile enjoy interest on any/all monies generated

Supercod · 04-09-03

Or be a little bit nicer and allow them a buying out clause of say pay £5 and be paid early.

They say great minds think alike; I wonder just how many other people have had a variation on this theme and not had time to do it. GreasyPalm for example is something I could do no problem at all, in fact have had the same type of technology installed on Free UK Offers for over a year now, but for me GreasyPalm was very simple, get paid a percentage, send Neil thousands of users and make him work ate getting money out of the user base, have to say I am very happy with this and would 100% do more web sites on that kind of deal set-up.

Supercod · 04-09-03

One more thing to add, if they do a review of say an insurance company, 2 sales a month will take them over the £25 if your paying out 50% of the commission, every one is happy, lovely stuff

It's actually something I already do loads of on 3 of my sites, only I just pick 1 or 2 people per site and pay them a percentage of all income from the site, for a house mum it's a great work at home job that they can do any time and make the kind of wage you would expect from working 9 to 5 in an office 5 days a week but without the stress.

Rich · 05-09-03

That's the way we wanted to do it, but we're dealing with a few independents that don't have extended tracking options

For our 'staff reviewers' we have looking along the lines of a revenue share (like with your house wifes) though most people we have approached are happy to do it for free in return for the products. We are still looking at it as, once they have 20 free products, they may lose interest in doing future reviews.

So for getting general traffic to the site, do you think any of the three options above are likely to be attractive? #3 is the one we're most likly to go with at the moment, but I'm not sure whether affiliates would link to us rather than directly to the merchant.

Things have moved on a bit since I first posted and I will now say it is a female friendly sexy toy review and discussion site, as I'm sure that will make quite a difference. We're promoting the 'nice' UK sites and looking for a good US store (anyone?)

Any ideas would be great. Thx