I’ve been experimenting with blogs and static websites for a few of the affiliate sites I run and manage.
Within the last 3 moths, the blogs have finally over taken the static web pages in terms of profit. This is utterly crazy to me because I’ve been updating the content on the blogs while the niche sites have been relatively stagnant in terms of content. Plus, it’s much easier/cheaper to build a blog affiliate site rather than a static site because the content should come easy!
Does that mean that content isn’t that important for an affiliate site?
I would argue no, because I’ve seen an increase in repeat IP’s processing repeat purchases. For instance, one of the affiliate sites I manage is a NASCAR themed site (I don’t miss a race), and the repeat buyers are about 79% higher on the blog/content site rather than the static content site.
So, if you’re going to do affiliate marketing, make sure you consider the type of content you are providing to keep the visitors coming. Repeat visitors/customers are invaluable!
Agree? Disagree?
“Does that mean that content isn’t that important for an affiliate site?”
There’s an age old argument. 🙂
I haven’t seen your NASCAR blog, but in essence, when you blog, aren’t you just creating content anyways?
Furthermore, isn’t it more of a function of the SE’s liking fresh content these days? Since I launched the blog at our site, it gets more entries than the static site, almost from day 1.
And a big search term is Affiliate Summit West.. 🙂 Thanks Shawn.
I’m assuming your traffic for the blogs are higher than the static sites? Excluding repeat visitors of course.
By and large, 80% of your profits are eventually going to come from 20% of your customers. Taking that into account, a good portion of them will definitely be existing ones. It’s typically a business principle.
Existing customers are always easier to sell to. There is a level of trust established there. So yeah, you’re absolutely right about that Sam.
I have combined blogs and static pages for a long time, but recently I have learned to be smarter about it.
In the beginning I used the blog to support the static page by posting comments and reviews concerning the static page on the blog. This worked ok in it’s various forms for a long time.
A new thing I have discovered is to link to the blog from the static page to support some contention in the sales presentation. This is fundamentally different than the method mentioned above. This works for an active blog because of the tail of content that should logically support every contention on the static page (related blog published over time in same niche).
Content on the blog will in essence prove the facts mentioned on the static page.The 2 types of websites support each other in a tag team way, now in reverse – sort of.
Also, you can use another blog outside of your revenue empire to do the same thing. Visitors then will return to the static page more often to buy, but in some cases they buy from the links on the blog (this is risky).
The bottom line is that the content of the blog is always going to exceed the content on the static site, making the blog directly or indirectly the sales agent.