Link exchanges with friends vs. affiliate promo - How's a girl to start?

[Head Boy]

The tradition way for a girl to start her owner managed site is to arrange some good link exchanges with other girls, and get her site listed in various directories (oten with recips required). All of these create massive leaks, and that turns away potential affiliates.

So what's a girl to do?

Well the answer came to whilst I was discussing hyphenated names with Elspeth. First you need to register both the hyphenated and the non-hyphenated versions of your site name. Then start to build the site traffic with link exchanges using the hyphenated version. Now you can create an alternative entry to your site using the non-hyphen. Keep the tours and support pages super clean and leak free, and then use that for selling by your affiliates.

What do you think - does this give a girl the best of both worlds?

[XXXTurn]

This is a really good idea. This should be one of the best ways to make links exchanges without making traffic leaks on your main paysite.

[rogue]

there is no excuse for leaks, just have two tours, one for affiliates and one for the recipts, its easy enough to add an affiliate tour without leaks onto the same domain as a "leak" tour

[glowlite]

What rogue said.

[Comrade]

I like rogue's tour idea a lot That being said, regging a hyphenated domain for that purpose is a good one also, and it will prevent someone else leeching SE traffic from her later on.

[LezGeri]

You don't need 2 or more domains to create alternative tours. Like rogue said.

But if you are starting a paysite it is a good idea to register the com & the net at least - org & info as well ideally.

I think the com & the net is more important than hyphenated & non-hyphenated. But if you want to be really thorough do that as well.

[finike]

I am using 2 tours - one for my traffic (with a links page) and one completly leakfree for my affiliates - I shuffled the tour episodes on the pages, so Google doesn't punish me for duplicate content

[Head Boy]

Well if the friends demand links on the index page for the domain, and the "leak-free" affiliate tour is in a sub-directory, then a leak is created straight away.

So what the disadvantage in having two domains (either hyphen or net)?

[rogue]

Originally Posted by Head Boy

Well if the friends demand links on the index page for the domain, and the "leak-free" affiliate tour is in a sub-directory, then a leak is created straight away.

So what the disadvantage in having two domains (either hyphen or net)?

if the affiliate tracking cookie is set right then the only way that it would end up a leak is if the surfer strips the url to basics then goes through the tour again and then click on a friends link, if the surfer goes to that much trouble then he's almost certainally not a buyer anyway

[Head Boy]

What about the more frequent situation where the surfer remembers the site name, and then revisits the next day via a type-in?

[VV]

Novel idea Head Boy! I like Rogues idea too but since I have registered .com and net it makes sense to make them work for me

[LezGeri]

Originally Posted by Head Boy

What about the more frequent situation where the surfer remembers the site name, and then revisits the next day via a type-in?

If they haven't bookmarked the url or made a physical note of it, (which would likely be some saved watermarked promo content) aren't they more likely to search for the site using google, yahoo etc?

So say they remember the site they liked was called Horny Hanna, or at least they remember the girl they're interested in is called Horny Hanna - they don't know if her domain is hornyhanna.com or net or horny-hanna.com or net etc. etc. So they google Horny Hanna & whatever site comes in number one for the paysite they are looking to join with that search is the most likely to get the sale.

No affiliate can expect to get paid for every sale their promotional efforts help to achieve for their sponsors. Not even if they are the only affiliate the sponsor has!

[rogue]

Originally Posted by Head Boy

What about the more frequent situation where the surfer remembers the site name, and then revisits the next day via a type-in?

if thats the case then they are just as likely to enter via a typo domain or something arn't they?

[Head Boy]

No sweat guys - I just thought it was a good idea to keep leaks away from affiliate tours. Using the primary name for affiliates gives them the greatest support, using the hyphen for supplementary sales and promotion keeps the affiliate links clean.

It seems I'm too much of a purist though, and I guess I keep thinking like an affiliate.

[anne]

Originally Posted by Head Boy

The tradition way for a girl to start her owner managed site is to arrange some good link exchanges with other girls, and get her site listed in various directories (oten with recips required). All of these create massive leaks, and that turns away potential affiliates.

So what's a girl to do?

Well the answer came to whilst I was discussing hyphenated names with Elspeth. First you need to register both the hyphenated and the non-hyphenated versions of your site name. Then start to build the site traffic with link exchanges using the hyphenated version. Now you can create an alternative entry to your site using the non-hyphen. Keep the tours and support pages super clean and leak free, and then use that for selling by your affiliates.

What do you think - does this give a girl the best of both worlds?

I think that's a great idea as well as using the .net, .org as well to push traffic. You could even make one of sites a blog. The more pages (sites) you can get to show up for you in a search engine the better you are going to be. Also affiliates hate to see any outgoing links so you need to have either a sub domain or another site for link exchanges. Personally I would stick with another site all together as I have seen search engine ranking drop with too many out going links. Best to keep your main site that you are marketing clean and with the majority of your links coming in and not going out.