Newbie needs advice on whole affiliate thing

[Fall-down]

I am very new to this whole affiliate thing! I have found 5 products to sell and need advice about how to set things up. I want to build these sites with 5 to 10 pages of content around each product.

My question!
Which is better 5 different sites with 5 different domain names or 1 site using a good domain name, for one of the products. Then setting up 4 sub-domains for the other products. Because my funds are limited.

How about using free web hosting for some of these sites, and just buying a domain name for that free site.

Looking for idea and tips for the best way to start?

[Aunesty]

Free web hosting is a terrible idea. I personally turn down affiliates who try to sign up for the programs I manage if they are using a free site. If you do a search for cheap web hosting, I am sure you will come up with several sources, I do know that Ebay has auctions for cheap hosting. I just would advice against free web hosting sites.

[Lisa76]

The best way to succeed with affiliate programs is to choose your topic BEFORE you choose the product.

If you think about it, the super affiliates out here that are making good money, have websites with their own domain, (not free sites) with a lot of information centered around one theme. Then they find affiliate programs to weave into their site that compliment their topic.

Search engines love sites with a lot of content. You should be aiming for 50 or even 100 pages for the long term. That's why it's better to build a site on a topic or passion you have FIRST rather than finding a product and then building the site afterwards. That's actually backwards. (Trust me, I did it way back when and it didn't work.)

Let's say you love golf. You eat, sleep and breathe the sport and could write about it all day. Build a site about golf FIRST (don't even think of affiliate programs yet). Then after you've got good, quality content find golf related programs and recommend products your visitors will love.

Then you start listing your golf site in all the various online directories, pretty soon your site will start to show up in the free search engines for "golf related" keywords.

That's how you succeed with affiliate programs. Build content on something you have an interest in....then build traffic (search engines will reward you)....know your visitors.... and then make relevant product recommendations to them.

Now I don't know what these products are you're promoting but I hope you know enough about them to write tons of content. You don't want to just create a "sales" page for these products and list the same benefits the merchant does on his site.

Ask yourself, "How are people going to find your site?" "What kind of keywords do you expect people to find your site with in the search engines?" Then do a seach in Google for those keywords. Look at the top 10 pages. They are either going to be company sites or affiliates with good content surrounding the topic.

In my case I know a lot about website creation, HTML, etc. so I built a site about that. The site is about 130 pages deep and gets lots of free search engine traffic. THEN I joined GoDaddy's affiliate program and refer my visitors to buying domain names. Notice how the content came first and the affiliate products came second.

Making money with affiliate programs is like any other business. There should be an investment of time and money. Websites are so cheap these days. You can go to godaddy.com and get a domain name and host for almost nothing. If you want people to take you seriously you have to your own domain. I don't know any successful affiliates with websites on myspace or geocities.

Good luck!

[djaco99]

I started my first website last September, and got the cheapest hosting I could find (not knowing any better). I got it through plughost.com for like $36/year, and it came with a free domain name for 1 year. To make a long (and frustrating) story short, the hosting was terrible (lots of down time, awful customer service, etc...), and then they went out of business a few months ago. I couldn't even transfer my domain to my new hosting provider (hostgator - highly recommended), because the "free domain name" was never registered to me. Fortunately I always keep current backup copies of everything, so I still have my website on disk. Now I have to wait till September when the domain name expires and I'll try to get it back.

The important thing I learned from all this is "you get what you pay for". If you get cheap or free, you will have problems. It's better to pay a little extra for quality hosting up front - it will save you money in the long run.

[Lisa76]

I had a similar experience. I used freeyellow when I first started affiliate marketing in 1998 (I didn't know any better) and a few years later they started charging and rather than grandfathering everyone that had signed up, we either paid their high prices for hosting or you lost your site. I had 6 sites with them that I had to say goodbye to.

[Aunesty]

I use OhSoSimple, who I found through Ebay a while ago, I pay $8 a year for web hosting and have never had a single issue. I understand this is the exception, but I have been very pleased and will continue to do business with them for as long as I need to host websites. I don't think I would trust my luck with another company, and i know through their website it does cost quite a bit more than what I paid through an Ebay auction. But I host 20 sites through them and like I said I have never had an issue. Again this is the exception to the rule. And perhaps the only time true luck came into affect.

[Linda Buquet]

"I have found 5 products to sell"

Are they at all related??? Best option is to focus on products that are related and have one site with sub domains. So lets say they all are financial type products. Get a generic domain that would apply to all - like www.BeyondLowRates.com ( I happen to own this domain and have not done anything with it. Not good at taking my own advice.)

Then set up subdomains like mortage.BeyondLowRates.com - insurance.BeyondLowRates.com etc.

That way you can pay for one hosting account but have separate sites for each but link to them all on your home page so search engines and consumers can all navigate to the individual sections. Search engines like sites that have a theme where everything connects and makes sense.

If they are unrelated products that you could do a mall type site but that could water down your efforts and it may be better in that case to launch separate sites so each is names and themed to each product. You can get a reseller account for 11.95 from Thrill Host. http://www.thrillhost.com/ I have an account with them. Then you still only pay for one hosting account, but you can have all 5 separate sites up or as many as you want. I think have about 8 up on my hosting account right now.

Hope this helps!

What do you guys think? Any other suggestions for Fall-down?