“Hi Doctors!

My question is about analytics tracking in ecommerce.

We’re looking to set up ecommerce tracking in Google Analytics on a custom-built ecommerce website.

What are the pitfalls or issues that we should look out for when implementing the tracking?  I’m looking for any issues that people have run into that we should best avoid.

One issue that we’ve already come across is duplicate entries if the order success page (the one that contains the ecommerce tracking code) is refreshed by the customer.

Anything else we should watch out for?

Cheers!

Tim”

Dan

Hi, Tim, how are you?

To be honest, it’s not too difficult & you can’t go far wrong. Here are a few tips that may be useful:

1. Decide whether or not to include tax. You’re supposed to put it in there, but you don’t have to. If you wanted to you could even just put your margin numbers in there to help you figure out ROI more easily.

2. Think about what categories you want to track before you install the code. Often sites have categories like “Kitchen > Knives”. Decide what level of granularity you’re interested in.

3. There are some extra fields in there like ‘affiliation’. If you want you can put anything you want from your internal system into there, which you can then use later on using ‘advanced segments’. For example you could put voucher code names in there.

4. Spend a little bit of time over the first few weeks comparing the numbers & order IDs against your internal system. The numbers in google analytics will never be 100% accurate, but as long as the inaccuracy doesn’t go up/down too much you’re fine.

Hope that helps!

“This is a general question really and might apply to any affiliate site.

Suppose you want to feature a product that has several models and is available from several retailers. If you’re not using JS to bring in the comparisons and there’s say 12 mentions of the model, perhaps with just a model number varying…

Presumably that could suffer a keyword stuffing penalty?

So, suppose it’s also got a ~500 words of content that someone has written.

2 options – wondering which is ‘safest’ from an seo point of view:

1. Keep the content on one page with a big click-here box and put the comparison on another robots blocked page (then risk not having direct call to action on indexed pages).

2. Put it all on the same page and hope the algo doesn’t take offence.

It’s very noticeable that the big comparison sites have pages right up high in Google where there is very little original content on the page, and plenty aren’t running JS to show the comparison. So presumably those are ranked because of the site authority.

However, if you’ve got a newish site, what’s the safest option?

Also an afterthought: if you use JS to bring in comparisons that are hidden from the engines and you’re an affiliate site, aren’t you still at risk of a bad manual review if you don’t have a decent level of content as well (or is that paranoid).

Thanks Bob”

Kier

Hi Bob

I wouldn’t worry too much about a penalty or mess about keeping robots out of a certain page etc. Just build a good site and you should be fine.

It takes a lot more to annoy Google than most people think. Whilst you may not have loads of original content (although it’s always a good idea) if the comparison you’re providing is decent they’re unlikely to give you a mad manual review at least.

Of course over time Google does tweak the algo to ensure that users get the best experience so you might get penalised. Having said that you can still send paid traffic to the site and if it’s well built then it should be a good converter for you.

Lammo

Hi Bob

Personally, I’d keep it all on the one page, displaying the prices only (therefore not showing the product title, in this case slightly differing model numbers) embedded within the main content. I’d serve the prices using Java, as I see no benefit in making this content spiderable.

You’re spot on I think that the big players are ranking well without much in the way of content due to their authority overall – If you want to beat them, you’re going to need something better, whether that be a good level of unique content, user reviews, or lots of links to the product pages.

In short, I wouldn’t worry about getting a bad manual review for having a low level of content. I’d make sure I had a good level of content! The days of knocking up a quick 100,000 page “price comparison” site are long gone I’m afraid – There is no easy route to riches anymore!

Frances – Product Selection

“I am new to affiliate marketing and want to design a parent/kids site around affiliate sales. How do I figure out which kinds of products have the higher commission rates – e.g. musical instruments pay more than electronics?

Is there anything else I should consider when designing my site.”

Dan

Hi, Frances, how are you?

Here’s one way to figure out how much you could make from a particular product:

1. Pick a product you may want to sell
2. Figure out a rough average price for the product
3. Find a few merchants selling it (who have affiliate programs)
4. Check their commission rates

[Multiply the average price by the commission rate, and you have the amount that you’ll make per sale of the product.]

5. If they give you the information, have a look at their average ‘conversion rate’ (the percentage of people who see the product on their site who then go on to purchase it).

[Multiply that percentage by your ‘amount per sale’ number, and you have a very rough idea of how much you’ll make for every visitor you send to their site.]

6. Figure out how much traffic you think you can get to your site each month, and a percentage of that traffic that you think you’ll be able to send on to the merchant.

[Multiply those 2 together to give you a rough figure for how many visitors you’ll send to merchants each month. THEN multiply that the ‘amount you’ll make per visitor’, and you have a rough figure for how much money you could make per month if you advertised that product.]

A lot of this will be finger in the air stuff, but the more you do it the more you’ll get a feeling for it.

Hope that helps & sorry for the extreme use of the word ‘multiply’!

Dan

Carl – Datafeedr

“Have any of you guys had experience in using datafeedr?

If you have stayed away, why was that?

What do you recommend out of Datafeedr, popshops or ECU?

Thanks

Carl”

Lammo

Hey Carl.

First of all, let me say that I have a vested interest in this as ECU is our baby – That being said I believe all three are truly outstanding products that actually serve quite different purposes, and I’d have no hesitation in recommending any of them.

You haven’t said in your question what it is you want to achieve – Are you looking to quickly knock up sites from datafeeds? Monetise existing content with relevant products? All three products will to one extent or another enable you to populate an affiliate site with products courtesy of merchant’s product feeds. The main differing factor between them is exactly what you’re expecting them to do for YOU, and the level of technical knowledge you may have.

Obviously if you’d like to know more about Easy Content Units and what it can do for you, I’d be more than happy to walk you through the system and demo just how simple it is to use. Just give me a shout on john@easycontentunits.com.

“Hi Doctors.

I am looking for your experienced feedback on the domain name ‘VacuumSupermarket.com’.

6 million vacuum cleaners are sold each year or 16,500 each day.  I am confident that a strong website can affiliate sell 250 vacuum cleaners each day, generating £410,000 annually.

I have launched one site, www.vacuumsales.co.uk, but I am interested in your views on using the domain VacuumSupermarket.com.

Many thanks.

Gareth.”

Dan

Hi, Gareth.

I’m not sure whether you’re asking “which of these 2 domain names should I use?” or “should I launch a second site on this other domain?” or “I’m trying to use one of these for the UK, one for the USA, will this work?” – so here are my quick thoughts on all 3:

1. VacuumSales or VacuumSupermarket?

Stick with the one you’re using. The only difference between the 2 in terms of potential is the .co.uk vs .com . You already have some content there & the domain name isn’t holding you back, so stick with it.

2. Should you launch a second site on it?

If you’re just targeting the UK & you’re thinking of launching the second site to try and get more sales, I think you should forget aout it for the time being. When your first site hits the top few spots on google for your primary terms, then take a look at launching the second.

3. Should you launch the .com as a USA site and the .co.uk as a UK site?

Yes: If you have the time & the energy to do both, why not sell in both markets? (I assume they call them vacuums over there? and supermarkets?)

4. Bonus thoughts

Bonus thought A: If you’re already making money through vacuumsales, and you’re serious about wanting to make this really big, why not try and get one of the generics? There are at least 8 decent generics  (vacuums/vacuum/vacuumcleaner/vacuumcleaners.co.uk or .com) – even more if you hyphenate!

Bonus thought B: I’d love it if you did make £0.41m through this site per year, but it would be tough. If my maths is right & your numbers are right, that’s just under 2% of the entire market. I suspect offline sales are fairly high with vacuums, and that many people go to a brand they trust online direct when buying a vacuum (i.e. just go straight to John Lewis/Argos without ever hitting search).

Bonus thought C: You may want to put together a ‘Vacuum Buyers Guide’ and give it away in exchange for the visitors email address. Send them an automated ‘top 10 vacuum cleaners’ email (with aff links) in return. It immediately gives you extra chances to sell to them with no real ongoing effort.

Hope that’s useful & good luck with the site.

Dan.

“Hi Docs.
 
When creating a PPC campaign for a retail website, what is the best way to organise the various permutations and combinations of keywords?
 
Take the following ‘widget’ example – all of the following ‘widget’ related keywords should be bid on, as tightly within the account structure as possible:
 
‘widget’
‘buy widget’
‘cheap widget’
‘blue widget’
 
That would be logical I’m guessing – an ad group for each.
 
But how do you account for the combinations e.g. ‘buy cheap blue widget(s)’?
 
Then, as is often the case, how do you factor in synonyms of ‘widget’ which people will also be searching for?
 
I know the importance of negative keywords to tighten each ad group in this situation, but without having an optimal account structure in the first place it kind of feels like wasted effort.
 
I know this is a problem because the keywords that get the most impressions and clicks in my campaigns tend to be broad and phrase matches rather than exact.  That said, I do get a good CTR on the broad and phrase, and nearly always have a QS of 10 (a few 7’s but really not many, and none below 7).
 
This feels like the missing piece in my PPC puzzle so any help much appreciated!
 
Thanks.
 
Julie.”

Here’s what Shane had to say …

Shane

Hi Julie.

This is a good question and one which crops up even in well set up and well managed accounts, basically just how granular do you go, at what stage and what’s the best way to do it?

Split into Themed Adgroups

We would definitely split the account down into themed adgroups, so in your example, yes, we would make those separate adgroups for sure: 

‘widget’
‘buy widget’
‘cheap widget’
‘blue widget’
etc …

For combinations of multiple theme phrases like “Buy cheap blue widget” then there are three options:

1) Create a ‘fishing’ test adgroup and load all the terms (but link them to the most relevant landing page for each term via the individual keyword url option). See which of these terms gets enough volume to create other smaller adgroups from them, and then either move those keywords to the most relevant existing adgroups on a keyword by keyword basis, or to newer adgroups if enough of a common theme with volume came up.

Or

2) Add the terms straight to the most relevant adgroup (isn’t always clear cut, as some could go in two or more different adgroups i.e “cheap” or “blue”)

Or

3) Create lots of small and very targeted adgroups knowing most of the work will be a waste of time.

The problem in large scale PPC is to know how granular to go from the outset; you want to cover the main terms, but avoid wasted time and maximise the number of sales in a short timescale whilst you are working on the campaigns. If you think about it, you’ll see the data is there for you to figure out in most cases.

Taking “blue widget” as an example, let’s say this has 1000 searches per month, what’s the odds that “buy blue widget” is more than this!? … very little! In fact, with every variable added, you’ll find the search volume usually drops significantly, so you know this will be a lower volume term. Taking it one step further, “buy cheap blue widget” will be even less often searched, so you can quickly figure out the order of priority when breaking the keywords down by looking to the search volume of the next most popular phrase up.

“Buy cheap blue widget” – A Case in Point

So Julie in your “buy cheap blue widget” example: depending on how big the volume is in the first place for “widget” and “buy widget” etc., you could end up with the following combined variables:

action, price, colour, item etc.

… then you could figure out all the “action” words such as:

buy, find, compare etc.

… then the “price” ones such as:

cheap, cheapest, discount etc.

… then the “colours”:

blue, red, yellow etc.

… and finally the item and variations, synonyms like:

“thingybobs”, “thingymajigs” etc.

Now imagine the scenario in doing this by creating an “optimal account structure” from the outset. When combined into two, three and four keyword combinations, that’s around 350 adgroups just to cover these four variable themes.  In most cases, many won’t result in any impressions let alone clicks or sales (we used to do it this way years ago when 2000 keywords per adgroup was a target, not a redundant feature as is the case now).

The solution is in which way to tackle the workload, we hate messy structures too, but optimal account structure is what you strive FOR at a point in time; usually always ahead as the landscape is constantly changing, but at the outset you can have “an” optimal account structure for now that will do to get going, and then quickly refine and expand as you go.

The main point I’m trying to get across is that you can’t always start out with it as optimum unless you are willing to waste many hours (in some cases hundreds of hours).  Once you step away from the main terms and add variables to keywords to other variables, most of what you do from guess work won’t actually get many impressions in most cases. So you can either sit down and create huge campaigns with every possible variation of multiple keywords, tens of campaigns, hundreds of adgroups and tens of thousands of keywords, OR you can do the volume terms first, then get those live and break it down based on volume into smaller adgroups. Once you’ve done that, you can keep re-refining those adgroups to smaller ones as new keywords bed in etc..

In your “buy cheap blue widget” example, I’d be tempted to do just a couple of shorter keyword adgroups first to see what traffic is out there:

“cheap coloured widget”
“buy coloured widget”

Basically, we would see which of the new terms gets a viable volume of searches, and then create groups out of those starting with the most searched and clicked terms. So if “price blah blah widget” gets more traffic over “coloured blah blah widget”, create your adgroup to be predominantly price based and put the lower volume coloured yet priced keywords in there too (but link to the coloured landing page by each keyword url). Do this until such time as there are enough keywords and/or traffic in them to earn the right for an adgroup of their own.

Broad, Phrase and Exact Match

When you say you get most clicks on broad and phrase, move your mindset to think like this:

Every broad match click you get from now on is a phrase match you missed that you could be getting a better CTR for in a tighter adgroup with relevant adcopy going to a targeted landing page (*some will be clicks you’d wish you had on negative matches too!) and paying less for overall.

Every phrase match click you get from now on is a click you missed adding as an exact match that could be getting a better CTR in a tighter adgroup with targeted adcopy going to a targeted landing page (*some will be clicks you’d wish you had on negative matches too!) and paying less for overall.

The higher the CTR, the lower the cost per click as google earns more, so even though you may have a QS of 10, you can still lower that click cost with more highly targeted matching. This will benefit the overall health of the campaign, as CTR of the url itself is taken into account with QS in conjunction with the health of adgroups, campaigns and the account as a whole.

Synonyms

As for synonyms, use the search query reports to see exactly which terms are driving traffic. Search google for synonyms etc. and then do adgroups for these based in order of the search and/or click volume on the main “widget” variations you already have. You’ll find you have to stop after a few adgroups as the volume is too low. There’s no real point doing every adgroup exactly copied from “widgets” campaigns if the main synonym for it is “thingamabob”. If it only gets 10% of the volume as a keyword as widgets does to begin with, you’ll just bloat your account up with useless adgroups which is pointless work.

On the plus side Google is beta testing a new matching option called modified broad match. I blogged about this recently at http://www.revenueaddict.com/broad-match-gets-cleverererer-good-news-finally.html. This should help in the targeting as you could go ‘+cheap widget’ or ‘+cheap blue widget’ and catch all variations on a broad but more targeted match, as the term after the “+” must be in the search term, but the rest is still broad match. However, it’s no excuse for not running frequent search query reports to identify the keywords you need to phrase and exact or negative match.

Hope that helps!

“Dear Affiliate Doctors.

Up until a week ago I worked for a large video game company as one of their senior programmers until they decided that they were going to make half of their staff “at risk” of redundancy.  This means that after a 30-day consultation period I will find out if I am actually redundant but it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that I will lose my job at the start of March [editor’s note: Marc has since lost his job].  For the past 15 years I’ve worked in the video games industry and this will be the third time I’ve lost my job in the past 10 years, whilst also avoiding losing it twice in that time.  It’s not an industry to be in if you want job security!  I have a wife and two young children, and I’m a bit fed up of the constant threat of job loss and the industry’s expectation that its staff will work ridiculous hours.

As I will be getting four months of pay in addition to a redundancy package, I’m thinking that it might be time to leave this badly managed industry behind and take the plunge into starting my own affiliate-based business.  I’ve been dabbling with affiliate marketing for the past year or two and had some mixed results with the minimal time I’ve put into it.  This experience has been the creation of a few niche mini-sites, PPC to some of those sites and direct-to-Amazon PPC (when it was allowed).

So on to my question …  With the money I will be paid, I should have at least enough to keep my mortgage and bills paid for 6 to 12 months.  However, I’m mindful that I might have to get a job at some point within that time period to make sure we keep the roof over our heads if any circumstances should change.  I’d like to focus 100% of my energy on creating a sustainable business, but my problem is that I’m not sure where to focus that energy so that I make the most of my free time.

If the Affiliate Doctors were in my position, what would they suggest I do in order to start creating a long-term affiliate business?  I appreciate that six months might be a bit quick to start to become a so-called “Super Affiliate”, but any pointers in the right direction for not needing a normal job will be much appreciated.

As I’m a programmer by day, I have all of the necessary skills for web development, and this is something I enjoy and think I’m good at.  I have created a web application engine for price comparison from data feeds and this will probably take around another month to be totally finished.  Is it worth focusing on this or is the price comparison market far too competitive for a newbie?

I know that “if you had to start from scratch, how would you do it?” isn’t an easy question to answer, but I’m going to kick myself in a year from now if I don’t at least attempt to get a business started now that I have the chance.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Marc.”

Here’s what Mark Boyd and Elaine had to say …

Mark B

Hi Marc, sorry to hear about the redundancy, but one good thing to come of it is that you can push yourself to make a success of your affiliate business. Many don’t have that drive, and therefore fail, so it’s not necessarily a bad thing you losing your job.

OK, in a nutshell you’ve asked what I would do if I were in your shoes. Well, let’s just identify what sort of shoes you’re standing in before we move on…

– You’ve got some money to outlay to jumpstart an affiliate business
– You’ve got experience in affiliate marketing in general, website building and PPC
– You’ve got programming experience (having worked as a senior programmer)

So, basically, you’re wearing £500 black Italian leather shoes! You’ve got all the things that I didn’t have when I started out. The things that I do have now (not quite to the same extent as you, my programming sucks) five years down the line. So instead of telling you what I’d do if I were in your shoes, I’ll tell you what I’m doing, in um… my own shoes!

When I started in affiliate marketing, I started with just one site, dedicated to matched betting (recently sold this site to allow me to focus on my damn thesis, and I am still a little touchy about the whole thing, so let’s not mention this again!) and that was all that I focussed on. As time progressed I moved into the mini sites market and created hundreds of mini sites, with greatly differing results. I’m now at the stage where I’m going to move back to the larger sites (I’ll still make mini sites, I can’t help myself), and I’m doing so with my PPC shoes on. I’m lucky enough to have access to enough money to invest in making excellent sites and also to pump into a PPC budget for each site. So my focus recently has been on finding relatively generic sites that I can create, and then focus on PPC’ing specific sections of the sites that I know will convert well based on my mini sites experience.

For example (completely hypothetical), if I’d had a bunch of mini sites selling golf equipment that did particularly well, I’d be looking to create a generic site about all things golf, and then PPC the sections that are likely to convert effectively.

So, if I were you, I’d do the following:

– Create a list of generic sites you’d be interested in working on
– In the meantime, swot up on all things PPC, even if it’s just reading a couple of articles a day
– Identify the merchants related to each potential site, then analyse their conversion rates, commission rates, websites, etc etc to get a feel for how “worthy” they’d be of your promotion time
– Whittle the list down to just one site
– Hire a decent WordPress designer to make you a super sexy site that is geared up to convert from head to toe
– Invest your time/money in decent content, not only will this help your conversions, it will help your organic rankings
– Get cracking with your PPC campaigns, find out what works, and stick with it

Many people are scared by the horror stories of PPC. If you stick to a daily budget you can afford and utilise the matching options correctly, you’re not going to be in for any surprises. Start with just using exact match keywords (to do this, just put square brackets around the keyword when adding it to the campaign, so add [super duper high converting keyword]) and then when you’re more confident move onto broad matching, but only if you have a ridiculously long negative keyword list.
I wish you the best of luck, if you need any PPC help, feel free to give me a nudge!

Elaine

Hello Marc, just go for it.

I think you’ll find that once you have the time to concentrate fully on Affiliate Marketing you will become more focussed, and it’s much easier to complete projects when you have days instead of a few stolen hours.

Allkids really took off when I decided to leave my part-time job at the Halifax!!
If I had to start again, and I could replace my brain with a more technical one, I’d combine a niche I’m interested in with a price comparison model – don’t give your visitors the chance to leave and go looking elsewhere.  And don’t forget to include some pure information pages, if it’s relevant – they’re great for pulling in visitors and getting your site known.

I’d also look at using data feeds, but, if it’s a small site, you’ll need to be able to create your own descriptions, to differentiate your site from the crowd – Google likes ‘different’ and SEO is important – combined with good original content.

My latest project is looking at the conversion rates on our sites and how we can improve them, so that’s something I wish I’d spent a bit more time on before embarking on any changes!

I’d also take the time to attend industry gatherings and get to know other folk – it’s not just about making deals and coming away with profitable ideas and networking with the topcats – I find it does concentrate the mind and does give your morale a boost when you’ve spent some time with like minded people.

You won’t need a fancy pants, all singing and dancing site – just something that’s easy to use and easy to look at, and something you can update easily to take advantage of any special offers etc.

P.S. don’t spend too much time reading and learning either – it’s all very fascinating, but sometimes you just gotta get on with it

Editor’s Note

Hi Marc.

Thanks for writing in and being so open about things – it’s certainly an opportunity/dilemma that faces most people several times in their working life. Hope this helps you to make a decision in moving forward, and as an added bonus, Kirsty did a great article on a similar question she received few weeks ago in the Ask Kirsty section (3 docs for the price of 2!).

Best of luck mate and let us know how you get on.

Have you found yourself in a similar position to Marc and been able to turn it to your advantage?

“In your recent surgery review for Envirogadget, you mentioned selling advertising space, and developing a media pack.

Would you recommend site owners do this themselves or host the ads through one of the ad networks? And is there a ‘standard’ way to present a media pack?

Thanks guys, brilliant site, and really useful. May even pluck up the courage up ask for advice on my site one day…!”

Lammo

Hi Andy

Without a doubt you should be able to put a media pack together yourself – don’t be frightened by the term … basically potential advertisers want to know the answer to two questions:

What type of person typically visits your site?
And how many of them do you reach?

Of course you will have loads of different stats that will enable you to show off your sites benefits, but be sure to answer those two questions, and you’ll keep advertisers happy.

Take a look at what the London Evening Standard do: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/home/article-21640121-abc-figures-and-demographics.do. Very basic, and to the point, but it answers those two key questions, and if you were looking to target up to 1.7m web-savvy, stylish Londoners who earn more than £40,000 a year, you’d be happy to advertise with them! If you’re looking to get a few more people into your pound shop in Peckham, then you probably wouldn’t see the LES as a good match.

You don’t have to include prices, although advertisers are likely to ask – it’s worth striking up the conversation to see if your site is a match for the advertiser – if so, then you should be able to work out a deal between you!

Clarke

I would recommend you do both, or at least have the option to do it.

Get a media pack, look at what other sites in your sector are doing, and base yours off of established sites, but please don’t just copy them. In general, folk want to know your reach and the type of people looking at your site, who has placed adverts before (if any) and what your rate prices are. Typically, most people won’t want to pay your asking price if you are not booked out all the time. What you should do is advertise that you have advert space for sale, and if you find that you have not sold any adverts, simply backfill with adverts from Ad Networks. Try a few out to find out what works best for you.

“Hello, I have a newbie question about subdomains.

I would like to register a generic domain such as http://fromwales.com and run some niche sites on subdomains from it such as http://lavabread.fromwales.com or http://leeks.fromwales.com.

Does that make any sense from an affiliate marketing and SEO point of view?  Will Google always favour http://www.lavabreadfromwales.com over http://lavabread.fromwales.com, or do you think a bit of hard work and good content can make that strategy work?

Many thanks.

Neil”

Clarke

Personally, I would go for a main domain name for each niche site.  It’s better in the long run as it will allow you more flexibility should you wish to sell the site on, change your hosting and any issues you may encounter with link strategy.  For example, if a particular linking strategy were to backfire and kill a site, only the one site would be affected.  If you use sub-domains from one main domain, you run the risk of killing everything in one go.

However, if you have a domain and a lot of “on-topic” mini-sites, then I see no reason why sub-domains would not work.  I have done this on sites in the past, but it was to host different content and prices, based on the country the person was from, and in that case I hosted the sub-domain in an IP range of the country the sub-domain was targeted towards.  Google favours good content; your IP plays a part, but if Google can’t work out what country a site is targeted towards, you will only get ranked based on getting links in and having decent on-page optimisation.

Elaine

I don’t use subdomains on Allkids, but I do have different sections with several pages attached, and I have found that the main page is usually indexed in Google quite high for relevant terms, many at the coveted No 1 position.

For example:

Kids Beds – Single Storage Beds
                   Bunk Beds
                   Cabin, Mid Beds
                   High Sleeper Bed
                   Etc.

The main page, i.e. Kids Beds, is usually the indexed page for most of the ‘kids beds’ related terms, but quite often I get both pages listed, which is a bonus.  Google does take an overview of the whole site, so a large site with a dedicated theme, should win over several smaller sites all interlinked, especially if you take care with the internal linking structure and urls.

“Hi Docs.

I’m pretty new to affiliate marketing and am building a site for, say, red widgets.  I have both redwidgets.co.uk and redwidgets.info and am wondering which to use?

The site will have a one page review for each type of red widget with a price comparison block in the right hand column.  I am thinking of using the .info domain and swapping the price comparison affilate links for adsense ads (or even USA affilate links – is this possible?) for non-British traffic.

Or would I be better off just sticking to the .co.uk domain and, if so, why?

Really great site, by the way.  Filled with very useful advice – thanks.

Mike”

Here’s what the docs had to say:

Kier

Hi Mike.

The downside to using the .info rather than the .co.uk is twofold.  Firstly .info isn’t a TLD that’s generally associated with good quality sites.  Secondly, by passing up on the .co.uk you’ll be missing out on the high ranking Google will give to it for UK based searches.  As such, at a very minimum you should use the .co.uk for a UK focused site.  You could develop the .info into one aimed at the US, but be sure to not use duplicate content; you might want to consider using a .com for this.  Also bear in mind that affiliate marketing is even bigger in the USA than it is in the UK, so there’s no reason to be using adsense instead as it’s likely you’ll be able to find US affiliate programs to promote that stock your product.  Good networks to check out in the states for retail include CJ, Google Affiliate Network, Linkshare, Shareasale and of course Webgains.

Lammo

Hi Mike.

Purely my own opinion, but I don’t like .info domains, and would never use one.  Stick with the .co.uk, and just geotarget (Google “geotargeting” to see how to do this) to change the content based on the non-British traffic, or dig deep and buy the .com for the US traffic.

Price comparison for USA affiliate links is totally possible – just grab the feeds from the US networks as you would with the UK.  If you’re not tech-savvy to build your own price comparison, then Easy Content Units will have a US version very shortly (or it may even be live by the time you read this!) which will do that for you.

Clarke

If you are doing the “same” site targeted to different countries, then I would use both and host the UK on a UK server and the US site on a US server.  I would also make sure that the content is significantly different for each country version, and that you use American English e.g. Center and not Centre etc..  You will need to build different links in to each site, so you are in effect taking on double the work if you’re doing it right.  However, most people are a bit lazy and do the same thing when the sites cover the same subject, but this can ultimately lead to Google thinking you have just duplicated your site content when clearly you have a purpose for having two totally separate sites covering the same subject area.

If you’re new, I would get one site up and running 1st to make sure it works and you can rank before you do the 2nd, but that will depend on how much time you have and whether you will be upset if they don’t work out or not.

Kirsty

I would recommend that you make use of the .co.uk domain.  For the UK market it’ll be more brandable and SEO friendly.  I’ve found people are far more likely to click on domains with the .co.uk extension.  .info domains are often seen as having an association with spammy websites.  In the past MSN have blocked access to that extension on their service and Google have made ominous maneuvers regarding sites on such domains (a couple of years ago now).

If you want to try and target the US market in the same niche you’d be better to try and source a .com – it seems like a much safer bet!

With that said, they planned to promote the service via the affiliate channel and wanted to pick the docs brains as to where the best place would be to advertise the scheme.  Commission was set at £30 for each sale, paid directly into a PayPal account, with monthly affiliate prizes of £3,000 to the affiliate generating the most sales.

Unfortunately, when when the docs came to review the site, it was down, and only one doc got review the live site; it hasn’t appeared since.  Although the site is no longer, I thought it would still be of benefit to publish the docs reviews on how they would go about promoting a new affiliate scheme.

Here’s what the docs had to say:

Kier

Hi David.

The least time intensive method to get affiliates is to join a network.  Going the in-house route can work well too, but you’ll need plenty of time to devote to recruiting the affiliates and keeping them paid and happy.  The quickest way to find relevant affiliates is just to head to Google and try some searches for terms you’d like to appear on and see where you can find affiliate sites and then contact them.  For instance I’d try stuff like ‘hosting reviews’, ‘cheap wordpress hosting’ etc..  As things stand though, I think you may struggle to find productive affiliates, the market for hosting is very tough and there are a lot of good affiliate programs for hosting out there, I’m not sure your offering is particularly competitive.

Mark

Hi David.

Thanks for submitting your enquiry to the Doctors, and I hope the following will help you understand what you need to do to promote your affiliate campaign.

If you want to promote your affiliate campaign on your own platform, then I would suggest that you spend time targeting relevant people to promote your campaign, and contact people directly to inform them of your campaign.

You could also use some of the affiliate marketing forums to communicate information about your campaign, but please be careful when submitting things onto forums about your campaign and ensure that you submit them in the relevant place – don’t spam.

You could also consider using an affiliate network to track the sales and have the benefit of the reach that an affiliate network will have to relevant affiliates already.  You would need to pay for this, but as a rule of thumb you would pay a set-up fee, a monthly fee and an override on the commission you pay to affiliates, so you are best to contact more than one affiliate network about your campaign offering.

I would also edge on the side of caution when trying to use affiliate marketing for Business to Business propositions as there are a limited number of affiliates that are strong in this space.  I would also make sure that you ask the network about that before working with them, and maybe consider asking a few affiliates on forums about their experience with these networks for your products.

I hope this is useful, if you have any questions please feel free to contact us.

Clarke

Hi David.

As I can’t see the website to read up on the services you’re offering I won’t be able to give you any feedback, so I will address the how to promote it via affiliates part of your question.  The best places to advertise affiliate opportunities is the A4U Forum, affiliate blogs, your own Twitter account and by contacting affiliates directly.

A4U Forum

You’re free to make a post but can speak to Matt’s team with regards to placement of an onsite advert and the Affiliate Solus email opportunities.

Affiliate Blogs

These are a fantastic place to advertise affiliate opportunities as they tend to have the more engaged affiliates reading, the ones that want to learn more and stay up to date with what affiliates in the know have to say.  Plus I dare say if you’re an onsite advertiser, you could probably approach them with your press release or even a free demo account and get a free write up, but be warned, you can’t pay affiliates to write good things about you, so you will need to accept that if they review your service, they will say what they like as well as what they don’t like about it.

Twitter, is a great marketing tool that’s still being overlooked.  Granted, there are a lot more people on Twitter these days, but you will be surprised how it’s brushed off by people who are not feeling the Twitter love.  Get an account, get following the Twitter lists of the affiliates in the UK, start interacting and most of all, post information about what you do and why affiliates should check it out etc..

Contacting Affiliates Directly

This is hard work with a small percentage success rate of affiliates actually replying to emails out of the blue.  First, I would take a look at the types of affiliates you’re after, then make a list and contact them and use whatever means you can, be it email, phone, letter, Twitter etc., but please don’t spam them all.  By this I mean really look in to each one and don’t just grab the first email you can find and send a generic ‘send to all’ message; that’s got very little chance of working.