Affiliate Marketing Tips - Top Mistakes To Avoid In Your Website Design

These are the general guidelines one should take note of for a basic website. Whether for affiliate marketing purposes or not, these tips are worth following. If you have a website already, review it again and see whether you are making any of the mistakes!

1) Fonts

Your choice of fonts for writing should be one that most people are familiar with. Think: Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana. These standard fonts are most likely installed in most computers, so when your visitor visits your website, your text will appear as intended and not look like gibberish stuff. If you really want to use unusual fonts, do keep them to the minimum. And do not use multiple fonts in a single page. It can get quite irritating to see more than two or three fonts appearing on the same article too.

The font size should also be large enough for most visitors. Imagine grannies who might have to squint to see what you are writing? Don't forget that every visitor is a potential customer, so avoid this kind of unnecessary mistake.

2) Color Scheme

Depending on your niche product, you might wish to select a color scheme that is suitable for it. A gardening niche might suit earthy colors like green or brown, while a baby product niche might suit pastel colors. Also think the reverse way. If you have a mortgage niche website in red, would it scare your visitors away instead?

Remember to complement your background color scheme with your font color as well. If they are close shades of each color, it may be difficult to read the text. If you have a black background with a bright font, the reader may also find it tiring after some time. The safest bet is to choose a light background with black or dark color text for most niches.

3) Pictures and audio add-ons

Pages with pictures or videos usually use up more bandwidth and take longer to download. Avoid those that take really long to load up as visitors usually have short attention spans and they would click away before your page appears! In some parts of the world, people also do not have cable or broadband, so imagine the frustration at having to wait to see your website. They would most likely give up instead.

4) Links and pop-ups

In affiliate marketing, links are usually incorporated into the content of the website. It's important to distinguish your links from the usual text. Usually, links which have not been clicked appear in blue and when you hover on them, they appear red. Clicked links appear in purple. Always use the standard colors to avoid confusing your visitors. You can customize link fonts and colors at the CSS (cascading style sheets) section of your website.

Sometimes, affiliate websites use pop-ups to capture the visitor's attention once the page loads. It is a must click to clear the pop-up away before you can see the rest of the page, so sometimes visitors might find it a pain whenever they reload the page. Personally, I dislike seeing pop-ups as I find it a hassle to click it away and I think most readers feel the same too.

5) Page layout and display

Always design your website to appear in the most standard display sizes. Most screen resolutions are 1024 by 768 pixels, but some people might still be using 800 x 600 resolution. Design for this category of people at the minimum so that most visitors to your website can see your information displayed correctly.

When designing your website, take note of the white space that surrounds the text and pictures on a single page. Is there adequate open space between your design elements? It would look visually more appealing to readers when the page is not cluttered to the extent that there are too many words to read or too many ads in a block.

Are you making any of the mistakes above? If you have just started the website building process, it may be easier for you to review your mistakes now and make changes fast. Getting most of it right early is important so that when your website grows, you can avoid having to rework the changes again and again. Time can be better spent promoting your affiliate products instead!

Authored By:
Angela Tay

Affiliate Marketing Tips - How to Choose the Best Domain Name For Your Affiliate Website

Coming up with a domain name is not a difficult task, but have you considered whether it is appropriate enough for your affiliate business in the long run? Your domain name is the web address you conduct your business at and where your potential customers will find you on the internet. It is like your brand name, so it is very important to get your domain name right from the beginning. You wouldn't want to change your domain name halfway and risk losing the reputation and branding advantage you have established over time right?

A domain name is the part that comes after the "www" of a web address. For example, an address with http://www.abc.com has "abc" as its domain name and .com as its extension. A domain name can be a combination of letters and numbers you create, as long as it is not registered under someone else's name already. No spaces are allowed in a domain name, but hyphens (-) are acceptable. Some people have their websites as http://www.a-b-c-d.com. Usually domain names will end with extensions like .com, .net, .biz, .org.

Put these 5 great tips to good use when choosing a domain name for your affiliate website!

1) Think of a domain name relevant to your business

You may be marketing a skin care niche. Think of the possible keywords that are associated with the niche you are promoting and come up with phrases that are straightforward and can reflect your affiliate product. For example, domain names with words like "wrinkles-no-more" or "skin-solutions" would be quite relevant and appropriate for the niche you are promoting. Choosing a very good keyword rich domain will also help your website rank better with search engines.

2) Keep your domain name short, but memorable

I always like domain names that I can remember off-hand easily. It goes to show that it is short enough, but yet able to leave an impression on the visitor without even the need to bookmark it. If your domain name is less than 20 characters, most people will find it easier to remember and the chances of misspelling your website is much lower if they want to return to your website another day.

3) Keep the spelling of your domain name grammatically correct when possible

It is not advisable to have fancy spelling for domain names. What I mean is using something like our mobile sms message jargon. Your visitors may find it difficult to pronounce and spell and it is not easy to remember. For example, visitors may find http://www.3littlepigzzz.com more confusing than http://www.threelittlepigs.com.

4) Try to avoid letters or numbers that may be interpreted wrongly

Letters such I and number 1 sometimes look so similar that people might read them as the reverse. Letters O and number 0 gives the same problem as well. Try not to put these confusing letters in your domain name, unless it is very relevant to your website and has some meaning of its own. Otherwise your visitors may go to the wrong website to see an error page and be mistaken that the link does not exist at all.

5) Choose the more commonly used domain extensions

I would recommend .com if you are not sure what to get. Most people will associate a website with .com more than anything else! However, many .com domains are usually taken up, especially the more popular ones, but if you can work around with a domain name that is close enough, a .com will look more credible than a .biz or .info.

You can check the availability of your preferred domain names before you even take it up. Create a list of domain names that are modelled after these 5 tips and I'm sure you can find a winner that nobody else has thought of and registered yet!

Authored By:
Angela Tay

Affiliate Marketing Tips - How to Chose Your First Affiliate Marketing Niche

Very often, being newbie affiliate marketers, we chase every opportunity we get in the hope of seeing results fast. But is that the right way? Maybe as you look around, you see a huge, lucrative market in financial products and your first instinct is to join in the crowd. You would most probably be telling yourself "since everyone is there, there must be something attractive about it" right?

You are not wrong in a way though, but if there is a crowd, there is competition as well! There might be already thousands of affiliates working in this niche category. If you were to use advertising as your main method of driving traffic, you could be paying a lot than what you would pay in a less competitive niche. I would not recommend starting with something that you know nothing about just for the sake of the huge affiliate commissions you could rake in. Of course, if you are already a finance guru knowledgeable in this area, it might be worth the try as you probably have an upper edge as compared to others who know nuts about financial products. Your expertise could have a "pre-sell" advantage as your visitors would feel that what you write on your site makes sense and they would trust you more in helping them find solutions to their financial problems.

The most important factor I would recommend for new affiliate marketers is to consider your own level of passion and expertise in the niche you choose. You have to be at least interested in the niche you want to start with. Otherwise if you employ article marketing methods, you will find it really difficult to write about a topic you have no knowledge and no interest about! After your first few articles, you might just run out of ideas. There is no motivation to keep you going in marketing your niche as you probably dread the thought of brainstorming topics for it. If you can't imagine yourself writing about the topic in a few months from now, do not even start in the first place and waste your time.

There are many niches in affiliate marketing and there will be something that catches your eye. You may be a travel fanatic. Why not share information about your travel stories or reviews of booking websites, hotels, etc, with others? It is not only useful to others, but you will also find it a joy talking about your niche. It will take time and effort to create a content rich site that has popularity and credibility, but as you grow your site, you can find more related affiliate products to include, like travel books, luggage and travel clothing. The affiliate opportunities are plenty. It is just how you incorporate all these nicely into a place which can add value to your visitors.

If you still do not have any ideas at all, probably you can look around and think about the problems many people face and how you can help to solve them by recommending the right products. A very popular problem solving niche is the health niche. Imagine recommending weight loss products, hair loss products, etc. They are all there to help people solve their problems right! Work around these ideas and shortlist one that you would like to start with. When you have gotten through your first affiliate marketing niche, the experience you have gathered would make it easier for you to develop your next niche. And you are on your way to making money online!

Authored By:
Angela Tay