Affiliate Site Basics

I started working on a new affiliate site today and thought I would share a few of the basics I start with, let you comment on them, and add your own ideas. I'll share the url shortly with you:

Info Pages

Pages like about, tos, disclaimer, contact, are all necessary pages that are required for a good affiliate site.

I like to make my about page early on to get an idea of what I'm building as I go.

Also, you might want to bookmark this page for this step: 20 Types of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider

Blog

I don't like to start affiliate sites that are a blog only, but I do like to have a blog on the site, even if it's only updated a few times per month.

A great place to put the blog is on a subdomain like blog.domain.com or in a folder like domain.com/blog.

I use my homepage to aggregate and link to all the sections of the affiliate site.

My favorite blog software is Typepad.com.

Forum

Also great as a subdomain or folder is a forum. Always these things start slow but eventually get some questions being asked, especially if you direct any contacts to post the questions in the forum.

Once upon a time I tried vbulletin but it got hammered with spam just as much as a free version. Punbb has been good to me so far, but there are many free forums that are good:

Forums aren't easy to make money directly from but they do bring eyeballs and links, plus other people write the content for you for free ;)

Related website: www.forum-software.org

Guides/Pillar Articles

I like to think of any guides, reviews, etc that I want as static pages and will try to promote to other bloggers or update frequently.

"best of" are popular with products. How to's, lists, etc. are great linkbait.

Of course you can simply put all of these pages as blog posts but I like to give them their own html page that I can feature and manipulate real easy.

Newsletters?

I don't do newsletters (for most sites). Because most affilaite sites I have use rss for the blog I use feed burner to get subscribers.

I'm not sure why people run a newsletter sign up and a feedburner sign up so you will have to share the details on this one.

Redirects

I don't link directly to merchants, rather I redirect to them. Deciding if and how you will do this from the start will help.

Merchants stop their affiliate programs and products go out of stock or get discontinued. If you use a redirect you can either send them to another product or a custom landing page explaining this.

Social Networking Accounts

I go and get login accounts for most of the video services, youtube, and a few other profile sites for my sites name like twitter, squidoo, etc.

People like to subscribe to info in many different ways now and it's best to give them the options.

Also, if you are using a keyword rich domain you might rank real well for some of these profiles.

The Basics

That's the basics off the top of my head of what goes into making an affiliate site for me. I usually leave my homepage as a pointer to all that ;)

What am I missing? What would you do different?

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