[HELP] recommendations for affiliate site setup

[jalex]

Hi every one.
I thought about a year ago to start an affiliate store. Than, for some reasons, I had to postpone this new adventure.

Now got some spare time and I'm back to this project hoping to make it.

What do you guys recommend to use to easy set up an affiliate site?

Every suggestion I could get from you guys will mean a lot to me, including readings, courses etc.

Thanx in advance

Jalex

[khawk1]

I will tell you this..
Most of are making (or have been making in the past) auto setup niche shops with 0% unique content, and that will not help you, so dont do that!

Best thing i can recommend you to do, is to make review sites, with long unique detailed reviews, and make sure your site is micro niche, but still keep updating it with fresh contect all the time. maximum 1 per week, upload 1 article.
You need your site to have more than 100 pages with decent content!
Try include youtube videos in your articles/reviews. Many times you can find a cool video in Youtube.
Upload that to your own Youtube account, and add link to your article in description + insert it in the article your writing. Get you some Youtube juice ;)
Other than that, accept the fact, that good things do not come easy.
In regards of courses, if you simply do what i mentioned here, you do not need any.. Time is your friend, and that is what brings you to page 1. Time, and updated content..
Update..
Get a facebook fanpage also, and share all your articles in there.. Works for both seo and also great for sharing.

[AmazingHulk]

I would just add that it is best that you use WordPress for this

[jalex]

@khawk1 and @amazinghulk thanks a lot for your suggestions!

i will follow that strategy which seems promising on a medium/long term!

another question:

any theme / plugin you guys would recommend?

both of you repped in sign of appreciation for your time !

[AmazingHulk]

I have several affiliate sites and use various methods. Like REHub - Directory Shop Coupon Affiliate Theme (themeforest), datafeedr, Easy Azon, Fresh Store Builder, Covert Store Builder....

You can find most here on forum if you dont want to purchase.

[jalex]

Appreciate that! I'll check the forum!

[Les Chiens De Guerre]

(08-13-2015 01:31 AM)AmazingHulk Wrote:  I have several affiliate sites and use various methods. Like REHub - Directory Shop Coupon Affiliate Theme (themeforest), datafeedr, Easy Azon, Fresh Store Builder, Covert Store Builder....

You can find most here on forum if you dont want to purchase.

Which do you find works / converts best ?

Thanks.

[khawk1]

Whatever auto builder setup plugin you select, make sure you can add unique text.. Some of the auto plugins are a bitch if you want to add unique content.
To be honest, the best you can do is just find a great wp theme, and add review articles with a "buy from amazon" button.
You can find some good review themes.. You have more control over every detail.. Most the auto plugins, like azon.. aremade for shops, not review sites..
Cant come up with one superb theme off the top of my head, but i am sure someone will mention some..

[jalex]

Does have anybody sites links to suggest where to get inspiration from?

I Appreciate your attention.

Jalex

[moonbeam]

I'm in the process of setting up some Amazon affiliate stores as well, after attempting this about three years ago with no success.

One script I will not recommend is Associate-O-Matic. Not only is it expensive, it's way outdated, and not responsive at all. It was probably great for it's time, like 10+ years ago, but the front and and back end look way dated by today's standards and it is a standalone script so there is no integration with Wordpress. It does do a decent job of pulling in most if not all of the product details and extra images, which most other scripts I've tried don't. But it's a bitch to customize since the whole underlying framework is built with really dated HTML and CSS code - think lots of Table tags, goofy outdated HTML hacks, gratuitous use of BR tags and other stuff. Also, one of the two sites I used it on got banned by Google for being considered a spam site.

Another thing I would caution you to avoid is placing Amazon's own banner codes on your site. Amazon offers a bunch of snippets for you to display their products in various ways on your site, such as banner ads and galleries, etc... but unfortunately most AdBlock extensions will block all of these, so many of your users won't even see any of them.

The same goes if you are attempting to use some sort of ad rotation plugin for Wordpress - AdBlock often blocks many of these as well.

One particular plugin that I'm starting to like is AmazonSimpleAdmin. It's free and initially I didn't think it did a whole lot, until I started digging into the documentation and realized it's really pretty configurable. If you know some HTML and CSS you can pretty easily create your own customized Amazon product listings with it. Basically they have a list of available parameters you can embed in your HTML code. So you just create a custom HTML template with these parameters as you like, upload it, then call the product listings into your Wordpress pages by using a shortcode which contains the template you wish to use and the ASIN number of the product you want to list.

There are a number of free tools out there to help you scrape ASIN numbers from Amazon. Personally I use SEOTools plugin for Excel.