My first affiliate site
Submitted by chopper on Mon, 09/01/2008 - 16:02.
Here's my site: http://www.highfxphoto.net.
I wrote all of the reviews for the site. The articles were written by an Elance contractor. The articles are OK, but I think I'll be more demanding on my next site. If you haven't used Elance, the process is fairly easy especially if you choose a contractor from your home country.
The site design is a WordPress theme. There's a lot of help on the WP site for installing WP and plugins. I've made a number of modifications to the theme with the help of the designer. Make sure you use Akismet or another spam plugin. Within days of my site being live, 4 spam attempts were captured by Akismet. If you're interested in the theme, here's a link (not aff): http://www.wp-magazine.com. I like the design. It has 5 different page layouts. It's easy to change to a different layout. The designer has been responsive to questions I've posted on his site.
I was approved by several new CJ companies and denied by two. One of the two who rejected me was persuaded to allow me to market their products. All I did was send an email through CJ and they responded. The other hasn't responded. Lastly, one company still hasn't responded to my application. It's been over two weeks. I think I need to contact them via CJ.
I started with image links and then decided to change to text links. I've read that text links convert better. I made my first commision a few days ago.
So far I have one landing page (Top 3 Free Photo Print Services). I haven't been able to figure out how to remove the sidebar in WP. That's a definite disadvantage to WP themes. Here's a link to a different WP theme that may work better on my next site (not aff): http://wpremix.com/demo/ .
I haven't started a PPC campaign yet.
After working on my site for the last few months I realize that it's too broad. However, I thought that additional categories and topics would help it rank better. Maybe not.
I still have more reviews to complete in the sharing and trial categories. But every site should be a work in progress as new content is essential.
This site was really a practice site because I needed to learn a lot about site design, installation, content, PPC, etc. I hope to make money with it but I won't be disappointed if I can't live off of it. I've learned a lot on my own. However, Jeremy's training has been invaluable as you all know.
Let me know the good and not so good. Thanks in advance for taking the time to review my site!
So you got a review site that is a blog. Is there a clear call to action you'd like on the page? In my opinion if you're going to have a photo site, you're going to need more photos. Especially on the home page.
Now how do you intend on driving traffic to it?
If it's just a practice site then you've done well your first time. Nice job Chopper
got twitter?
www.twitter.com/kensavage
Hey chopper, site looks good, seems to be some good information there but I agree with ken, not alot of photos. With that said, I like your site and I think wordpress is totally the way to go in most cases imo.
[quote]
I haven't been able to figure out how to remove the sidebar in WP. That's a definite disadvantage to WP themes.
[/quote]
you can get rid of the code that calls the sidebar if you go to theme editor and click on the main index template and look for something like this:
<?php get_sidebar(); ?> or maybe <?php include(TEMPLATEPATH."/r_sidebar.php");?>
Now by deleting these, the code will no longer call them to the page, however it might mess with some other things code wise. I always keep a backup of my code for piece of mind. Hope that helps...
Cheers,
-Scott
Twitter Me This....
www.twitter.com/skeever
Kensay: The site isn't a photo site. It's a blog about free photo prints, photo software, etc. with reviews. Does that make sense? Maybe, maybe not. I could make a static home page but chose not to because I wanted it to look more like a blog rather than a site about a single product/product category. I felt that free photo prints was too narrow and I wanted to practive writing reviews. As far as driving traffic, the money is in the free photo prints. That's why I created the Top 3 Free Photo Prints category/comparison page. I haven't started a PPC campaign yet. The site doesn't follow Jeremy's recommendations in every respect. The reason is that it was a practice site. I needed to understand how to install the software, modify it as needed, install plugins, create links, test a PPC compaign, etc. The next site should be easier to install, take much less time and adopt more of Jeremy's recommendations.
Skeever: I could do as you suggested, however that would remove the sidebar on every page not just a landing page. That's why I didn't do it.
Thanks for taking the time!
chopper
Chopper:
Nice theme, I have the same one over at http://youredgeonline.com/.
Check the authors homepage and learn how to insert images into your posts, might help you with the image element that the others have commented about. :)
Sorry chopper, I must have missed the landing page mention. With that, you could create a template for wordpress and create your landing page using that template.
Just put this code at the top of a php page to save as a template
<?php
/*
Template Name: lander
*/
?>
Then choose that template when you create a page. The only catch is with the xml sitemap plugin, your landing pages will show in your sitemap, if your cool with that then this will work great. That might help you...
Cheers,
-Scott
Twitter Me This....
www.twitter.com/skeever
I added some images to match the post type to the categories.
Thanks for the feedback!
chopper
skeever: The sidebar is called from the main page template which calls the other page formats (left & center) layouts.
skeever: The sidebar is called from the main page template which calls the other page formats (left & center) layouts.
you are correct! I was just sharing that you can create a template and choose that template when you create a page. so in that template, for just the landing page you could have it not call the sidebar yet the sidebar will be called on ALL other pages.
http://codex.wordpress.org/Templates
Cheers,
-Scott
Twitter Me This....
www.twitter.com/skeever