This is one of those videos that can be taken the wrong way if you don’t watch from start to finish. I realize it’s a long video, but I felt it was necessary to get my points across.
Below, I offer my opinions for why I believe some blogs do not perform as well with affiliate marketing compared to static websites (especially content affiliates with tutorial-based websites.) In addition, I address the “static websites are dead” idea that is often thrown around by bloggers today.
I suspect many will disagree with my stance, but that just opens the door for some juicy discussions, right? I look forward to hearing your opinions on this issue!
Update March 2012: My WordPress tutorial goes into detail on how to make your WordPress site more “static” so it behaves more like a traditional website. The great thing about WordPress is you can get the best of both worlds with static and dynamic content.
Wow that was odd. I just wrote an very long comment but after I clicked
submit my comment didn’t show up. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again.
Anyhow, just wanted to say excellent blog!
great informative video! and it really makes me realize I made the right choice by adding a small blog to my static website as a way to add new content to look better to google. rather than just having a huuuuge blog with tons of posts getting buried constantly…
So now I know why I didn’t had any success on affiliate marketing with my blogs. So I will incorporate some static pages on there soon!
Thanks for the tips!
I eventually paused just after reading the title of this post. I am just thinking of converting my blogs to an affiliate sites lately but I don’t know where to start. Thanks for giving me an idea about it.
You know whats interesting, to me anyway? I started playing disc golf about a year ago. There is a niche here, by the way, for anyone that has the time or desire. =)
A course I started playing at is the home course for one of the top 20 professional disc golfers in the world. Yes, there really is a professional disc golf association, and as you may guess the pros don’t make much money playing disc golf.
The point is they started a new disc company. Their site is legacydiscs.com. Their backlinks are a joke. They’re almost all banner ads. There are some backlinks from forums but they dont use keywords or keyword phrases, they are just pointing to the TLD.
The site is less than one year old. The site has not much content on it. The site really doesn’t seem to follow many, if any, IM rules.
Yet the page is Google Page Rank 1. Not 0.
That kind of mystifies me. Although I do not know what platform that site is built on, I am pretty sure it is not WordPress.
There is another site that a friend of mines brother put up. Winetrippingtv.com. His site used to be around 547K in alexa traffic rankings. His backlinks are all a joke too. His site is PR4. I think this site is juno, or jumla or something like that. He has barely worked on it for months now. He still has an alexa traffic ranking score of around 4 million.
There are factors other than backlinks that increase traffic. Neither of these sites I mention get any organic search engine traffic from what should be longtail keywords they target.
I tried to explain to the owner of winetrippingtv.com that they need to start building backlinks for things like, “napa valley wineries”, and “best california red”, or the like. These aren’t necessarily exact matches for truly good longtail keyword phrases relavent to his niche, but without banners, media buys, paid traffic, or ANY organic search engine traffic… he still managed to get up to ~547,000 alexa traffic rank.
Of course.. the site also makes no money. He has not been approached by any networks to do a TV show. And he has since had to get a “real job”. So.. successful site? Not in my opinion, no. But it gets traffic.. somehow.
I think my advice on this topic would be boiled down to this: don’t get too hung up on whether you’re going to use wordpress or some other method. Just get it done. Promote it. Keep learning. Keep doing.
I would also pose a question, to Lisa, this sites owner and operator: your blogs don’t even compare to your static sites. OK. But have you ever actually put in the time to properly monetize any blog? I’m new to this site but I’ve read several posts and even commented on a few. I have yet to see anywhere on here any failed attempt to make decent money using a blog.
Having said that, I would certainly stand by the sentiment that you DO NOT have to use a blog. But its also not a great idea to omit blogging altogether.
Yes, I agree with you and at the same time appreciate your efforts. While people are simply creating websites and blogs to promote products, it is not very easy to get conversions and this is where most bloggers fail. You need to optimize the site onpage and offpage so that your visitors would stay long. I like this video and it is really great stuff.
I like what you said about making my blog look like a static site.. and that is exactly what i’m intending to make , you also mentioned in another video to make a small banner or something like that on the side bar to direct viewers to a “pillar article” or I don’t know the exact word but I got it.. as always lisa I admire your thinking and honesty.
I am also new to affiliate marketing. What I can tell here is that to start getting involve with affiliate marketing make sure you have a good source of money and research your niche well. Don’t follow what I had done. I created a website before even research about the niche market that I want to get in. Then I just use any niche that fancies me and it turns out that the niche is not profitable and no product to promote.
It is increasingly difficult to operate affiliate sites, especially when Google Panda rolled out as it penalized sites with affiliate links. I base this from my personal experience. I’d like to know how affiliate site owners are coping. Anyone who’d like to share?
One of the best posts I have ever read. I keep coming back to it as a reminder…
thanx for sharing
With internet marketing offering lucrative amounts and work from facility, more and more people are entering into this. However, 90% of internet newbies find themselves unsuccessful. The reason I feel is that they think this is an additional income. However, you need to be serious and learn the basics of internet marketing and implement effective strategies to become an affiliate marketer or successful blogger for that matter.
This video is a great tool for internet newbies and if we follow these steps effectively, I am sure we can at least start reaping things out of this.
I have tried but in vain .. pls help Lisa
Lisa,
I just recently came across your website and this posting has resonated so clearly with me. I am new to blogging and I am currently about to launch a website for my IT Business. The clear points you make about the differences between the longevity of a site, and whether content is static or dynamic, have helped me realize some design decisions I need to make for my business site. Please point me into more of your tutorials on site development and especially on how to monetize the site through affiliate marketing. Thank you and I look forward to following your posts.
Thanks for your comment, Marty. I have a video that walks you through how to make money with affiliate marketing and I show you some examples of monetization.
http://www.2createawebsite.com/money/affiliate.html
Aloha Lisa:
You basically need 3 things to make money:
1. You need a “hungry” crowd/market.
2. You need a product that will satisfy that hunger (aka, solve their problem). You’ll also warm them up and have them feel that that this product is what they’re looking for.
3. You need to have them find your affiliate product (through Search engines, or various forms of traffic generation)
Now, I’m willing to bet your weight loss site is a big money maker for you. They are definitely “hungry” to lose weight. I didn’t read your copy but I’m sure you warmed them up with your genuineness.
What sort of puzzles me is how your site continues to get the traffic? How does it continually rank high in the search engines (if indeed it is) when it’s not being updated?
Are back links being continually built?
Or, are videos, articles, or other sources ranking high, and therefore, funneling the traffic to that static site?
So, how do you thing that targeted traffic is finding your static site?
(you were right, 44 comments is a pretty good indication of a hot topic/debate)
Thanks again,
Charlie
It sounds like you have experience at this. Can I pick your brain?
Hi Karen:
I do have some experience and will answer whatever I can. But, I’d like to see what Lisa thinks as to what is causing her static site to continually rank high and/or bring in continual traffic.
Charlie
Hi Charlie,
The two main reasons I believe are:
1) Age of site (9 years)
2) Lots of unique/relevant backlink (thousands)
Hey Lisa!
Thanks for chiming in:) So, are you still creating those back links? Self-creating? or are you outsourcing?
Thanks for your comments again.
-Charlie
They are all naturally/organically earned. I don’t spend any time going after backlinks. Back in the day I would submit to directories, but that strategy is worthless today (in my opinion.) I just continue to build my brand through YouTube, social media, etc. The links come voluntarily. 🙂
Wow! Thousands of natural back links? Did you construct your site a certain way to encourage natural back linking. In other words, is this an art?
Thanks for your comments again:)
No, when I say natural I mean people linking to me voluntarily out of generosity. When people like your site, that naturally link to you in blog posts, articles, etc. Remember my site is 9 years old and I have been promoting it heavily for years in social media, youtube, and my site has hundreds of articles.
Got it. Thanks Lisa!
Thanks Lisa. Your video gave me something to think about. With my current “blogger test blog” since each blog post is a separate webpage, i get almost all of my traffic from Google searches and here’s what i’ve noticed:
They find my site on Google, then read the article they came for, then, if i have a link at the bottom for “related posts” they may click on that – or the “popular posts” on the left.
almost no one was using the “blog archive” feature (so i removed it) and after reading the post some clicked on the “Home” button but almost never paged back to older posts.
So were it not for the “popular posts” links, viewers would have no idea of my older content… outside of Google…
So i think you’re right. Navigation is key, and im working out all the kinks here, so that when i write content for my main website things will run much smoother, thanks for the tips!
Great video, my blog uses both static pages and dynamic pages. I first built the static pages and these are what i call my money pages where I try to sell my affiliate products. On top of that I regularly add blog posts to keep a fresh supply of content. Although my blog is quite new, early signs are that it is going to do quite well in the search engine results pages. 😉
There’s a lot of factors as to why some blogs are not conerting well with affiliate marketing. The best thing to do is to experiment and try new things.
The one thing that changed everything for me was making my pre-sale pages one column templates. Most blog platform will allow you to do this. That way there aren’t too many distractions with side navs and other ads. My conversion more than doubled when I started doing that.
Can you show me a sample link?
I love the speed and SEO advantages of a blog installation, but you are right that ‘traditional’ static HTML websites generally ‘make more sense’ to the reader. I continue to use wordpress but I cherry pick themes and tweak my designs to look more like static websites.
So far I have only made a few bucks from adsense and amazon. I Get about 100 unique visitors daily, but I wonder why the low conversion/click through rate? Or maybe its just a matter of time before I start getting more conversions as I’m starting to get more organic traffic?
I don’t agree your opinion: “static websites are dead”.
How many sites do you have? And is the reason you have more than one site because if one site fails at making money you’ll always have a backup?
Also how many daily viewers do you think you’d need before you think its safe enough to post an ad?
And if you more than one site pertaining to different themes couldn’t you post more products on those sites, creating a bigger variety of things you could promote?
Thank goodness Lisa, it’s been a while since I preview your video and this must have been the answer I was looking for during the past weeks because I was contemplating of moving my Static Site to a Blog Environment.
My only dilemma is that I could not find a better way to use WordPress Blog to create Static Page like what it can be do on a Static website.
Despite not making a cents since day 1 (2 years ago), I am still exploring for the best way to generate the kind of traffic I want. With your opinion mentioned here, I think I should keep the static site and improve on it further so that I can generate the traffic I want.
Keep those video coming! Even after 2 years, I am still inspired by your action and success.
Cheers,
William
The queen of making money online has spoken!
When I arrive on most blogs, the monetization aspect is not so obvious and I believe that if your visitors have to dig deep into the archives to buy something then there’s a problem. I love to be in control of where I put stuff on my website that is why I prefer static websites. Also the kind of websites I like to build are not blog-compatible ::: lol
Not only does this video address the inability of some blogs to convert, it is an excellent comparison between blogs and static websites. It sure solidifies my faith in the latter!
great video with various angles to this subject matter. i have been successful with affiliate marketing on my niche content websites, mainly because the websites are written from a personal perspective, engaging the reader one on one. the newsletter offers an incentive to sign up and i am able to sell my ebooks and various other affiliate products through them. that said, my blog, although has over 3,000 subscribers now, does not monetize as yet. this video certainly gives one a few things (at least) to think about prior to making that initial contact.
Hi Lisa,
I don’t play in the domain of affiliate marketing at all. So, for me, I look at converting in a different light. For me, a sale is a new subscriber, a new face in my comments, and a new personal email touch.
I really don’t have much value to add to this conversation…but I would like to share that I think your video was great in explaining why you make the claim and even more so, you backing it by experience drives it home.
Good Stuff Lisa – enjoy your Sunday!
Nice work lisa …
Again you showed the you are worthy of follow-up ^^
Hi…Just wondering what you did to have Google rank your flat stomach website on the first page? Was it keywords? If so, how did you choose your keywords? Thanks!
there is one answer for all your questions. read about Lisa’s write ups on SBI – which walks you through KW research, content creation, marketing and monetization
I love your videos! you cut to the point and you have great public speaking abilities. i honestly think you would be a great CEO one day because you can analyze something to the T. i am currently trying to create a site and i will most def be buying site build it through your affiliate in the near future.
Take Care!
Eric
I really enjoyed this video. I like how you combine the blog with your static website. I feel like I get the best of both worlds. I love the how tos of you static website along with knowing what’s new in this industry through your blog. Thank you for your insight. I’ll have to show my assistant.
Hey there, thanks for the question. My view is that affiliate marketing really works, me and my brother are doing it together and were getting money rolling in.Affiliate marketing means you sell other people’s products where you gain a hefty commission, LoL that’s cool! We are always posting our links on forums and stuff so that it directs to our website and blog.
Hi Lisa, Great video again.
I have created about 10 months ago 10 static Halloween costume sites from Yogi Bear to The Lone Ranger and so on and these static sites did very well and were great fun to make.
I got a lot of traffic from articles (and still do now better than ever since the Google update which is weird) and still make a few quid from a costume niche weekly.
But as I’m using wordpress, I decided to add a blog page to each site to see how this would go, adding articles about costumes etc, videos and posts related to the theme of the site (my Irish Celtic Costumes site may have an article about Viking or Celtic history) and this has increased my traffic, moved my site up in page rank and made sales, though it is March. I really can’t wait to see what this Halloween will bring at the rate these sites have improved.
Adding a blog with related Halloween or any fancy dress party information has brought people to these sites, grabbing them from different angles using various interesting types of articles and resulted in sales, as when you arrive at the site you know it is a costume site and people are clicking through.
So blogs do work, but I agree they may only work for a certain type of static site like these as the articles added to the site are aimed at people looking to buy a specific item.
Trial and error I suppose but it has worked for me.
Very interesting post and very forthright video; heck, you got me to watch an entire video! 🙂 You make a great argument for static sites versus making money with one’s blog. Overall, I think you’re correct in the affiliate marketing game, although for many people, talking about static websites can be quite scary and expensive sounding. From my perspective, I’d hate to have to continually be buying new domain names to market a product; I’m sure Google wouldn’t like it all that much either. One of my other online friends has suggested taking one of my existing websites, creating individual product pages off that particular domain name, then writing about products and the like on my blog & direct people to those sales pages. They’d be static and thus always be there, even for the search engines, yet it sounds like a lot of work, and that kind of time I don’t have.
Still, it’s an interesting premise, and your highlighting how static works well for you is intriguing and confirming. Great job.
Mitch, I’m not sure what you mean about expensive and buying new domains. I don’t buy a domain for every product I review. I build loyalty to one website by recommending products I use. I’ve actually put more work into my blogs than my static sites because I’ve often felt the pressure to keep posting fresh content. Whereas with some of my static sites I haven’t updated them in years and yet the SE traffic continues to grow. So I think that is a huge misconception about static sites today. In my experience, blogs are far more work.
I’m sure some people do buy multiple domains and review different products. Seems like a lot of work to me too. Why not build equity with one site?
Ah see, you didn’t say that, so my supposition was that you were recommending that people buy multiple domains to promote each product. What you’ve just said is what I’m hoping to do, just not on a grand scale.
And we differ on blogs. I find blogs fairly easy and enjoyable, which is why I have 4. Well, let me restate this; I find the process of writing blogs much easier. As for making money off them or monetizing them properly, much different endeavor.
@Mitch Sorry, I shouldn’t assume everyone knows exactly how I make money online – I should have clarified that. But yes, that’s the beauty of the Internet. There’s more than one way to skin a cat when it comes to making money online. Good luck to you, my friend. 🙂
Great information. Definitely gave me a lot to think about when it comes to doing better with affiliate marketing on my blog. 🙂
I don’t think my last post went through so I’ll try again! I know you are a VERY busy lady with your site(s) and all and I sent you an email the other day, but I just want to thank you for ALL you do here with helping people build their blogs/websites. The one I have was built like through a third party if you want to call it that ( explained more in my email) and I didn’t do much to it. I am learning A LOT from your videos as I’ve been watching A LOT of them! I also went to Yaro which on one of your site you recommended and I got a lot of information there too! I HIGHLY recommend anyone just starting out with blogs to STUDY everything Lisa has to offer here! I also HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you check out Yaro too! (Lisa please add a link here). I just want to thank you for being here and for all the helpful information you have. Thank you for being here!
Dave in Mass.
Hi Lisa
Wow you have a lot of sites!
Static sites bringing in all the cash?
What an eyeopener.
Great point about static sites having easy to find static content.
I have an almost static front page and I think that it has helped me.
One thing that is fantastic about static sites is… page speed.
All this PHP is clever but it aint half slow.
Blog with static pages sounds good to me.
Lisa this post is a classic.
I’ve learned so much from it.
Appreciate you sharing your experience.
Great reading I will have to come back hear everyone had great things to input. I am just starting out with affiliate marketing and have been told it is all in the list. We will see.
Lisa
hey there,
ive been struggling with affiliate marketting and can’t seem to find out how to improve till i saw your vid. If you can give me some personal advice on my blog i would really appreciate it 🙂
Hi Lisa… My favorite part of that video, “You can call it whatever you want to call it. I call it my mortgage payment and then some.”
I had a static website that I sold off some years ago. Not a blog, but a true HTML setup. I just did a search for it within the past 2-3 days, and sure enough that baby was still sitting high in the SERPs. And it didn’t look like the owner had done much updating to it.
To be honest with you, I was actually kinda surprised that it had hung in there through all these 5,142 Google algorithm changes. Like you said though, there’s a lot of power behind static sites. Good food for thought for my upcoming projects.
Take care,
Dahlia
i always thought a blog was good for redirecting traffic to a static site.
Hey Lisa,
Question: Is it best to create static pages on your blog? Or have a static website and the a sub-domain with your blog?
I don’t think it matters as long as the navigation is optimal for whatever you’re trying to accomplish. I know some SEO experts will say choose one over the other, but in this video I’m primarily talking about creating a better user experience that’s optimal for sales conversions. In other words, make sure those important, converting pages are front and center. For example, I know exactly which pages convert the best on 2CreateAWebsite.com.
So I’m not necessarily talking about the technicalities of a subdomain over a blog with static pages, I think it’s important to make sure those high-converting pages are visible and you are not losing visitors due to poor/confusing navigation. So how you do this doesn’t really matter, as long as you do it.
Hi! Lisa,
I’m a newbie and I’ve been studying your sites: how to create a website, how to plan a website and website babble.com all day long (smile). And Thank Heavens I did! I was thinking about doing only a review blog on gardening products with sub-topics on whole foods and supplements which are my passions. But as I researched other product review blogs, I must admit its hard navigating the pages, sifting thru ads and trying to get back to an article I want to re-read . But with what I want to do, I think I better do the website along with a blog.
Yours sites are great, educational and I’m grateful to you and the community for sharing so much information.
I’ll definitely keep in touch.
I needed to hear these insights because now that I’m using Thesis I can think of many ways to make use of static pages the way you’re suggesting. The old theme I had was not the greatest in terms of navigation but now I can move forward and start working on some static pages that will be content rich and easy to find. Thanks Lisa!
Excellent video Lisa. I have blogs where the only purpose of the blog is to get people to join a FREE mini-course. Once they join, I can start the pre-sell process for the affiliate product.
I have blogs that are used for creating backlinks to my static-affiliate sites. They also have banners or text links on them to send people to my static affiliate sales sites.
Here’s what I’ve learned about affiliate marketing. If my product solves a problem and I can can get the prospects on an email responder, I can convert leads to sales.
I think you are right on track…
People don’t typically buy products the first time they see them. They read about it, think about it, and come back to buy it. Websites can be clearly organized, and people will able to navigate back to the product page easily. Blogs present the greater challenge in terms of navigation. The post that was on the top one day may be 10 posts deep on their next visit.
Hey Lisa: I have a static website about stress management which has been a tough niche to break into but I have been giving it time and letting traffic build–slowly, but building. I think one thing that you have stated, and something I also do, is sell products that I have personal experience with and can endorse. That way I can write good presell content and be clear on my call to action for the reader. I enjoyed listening to your comparison and will keep this in mind if I add a blog later. Right now, I am just sticking with the SBI website. Thanks for a great post.
I say it always come down to building a list while your marketing to survive as a affiliate marketer…so you can always market to a targeted audience even in down times.
“Black Seo Guy “Signing Off”
Good video Lisa
One more thing…how about email lists? because you started building your email list recently on this site and wrote somewhere that you built list earlier but did not get many conversions. What were reasons for that? I am asking this because most money making bloggers suggest to build lists and that lists are best way to make money through affiliate marketing. Your thoughts?
Yes, list marketing can be another great strategy IF you can convert. Many people will tell you the money is in the list, but you also have to learn how to engage people through the list and that’s what I’m learning.
I don’t send a lot of emails but now that I’ve segmented my list down to site and interest (my list is for major updates only) I got a much better conversion on my last open rate (51%). Doesn’t sound like a lot but it’s way better than I used to get (less than 10%).
I’m sending another email out tomorrow about a sponsor special so we’ll see how it converts.
On that note, subscribed to your list. Thanks
I’ve kind of just ignored/overlooked the whole list building portion of affiliate marketing so I’d be keen to see a post or video on your experiences on this.
The money is in the list.
Although overused, it is still a phrase that rings true if you want to gain more money doing affiliate marketing. The rule is to provide value and also entice them on how they can improve their lives by buying your promoted product.
Great video Lisa, and your points are all clear.
My blog hasn’t performed well with affiliate marketing even though I don’t plan on giving up on it because I know it’s a great way to make money blogging if you do it well. As I stated on your fan page the other day, my Adsense performs better than my affiliate links. I guess in due time I will be better at marketing.
Loved the video and thanks again.