Wanted: Domain Appraisal Appraisal: Verdicts.co.uk

[MatBrummitt]

Hi,

I listed my site for possible sale a few days ago and have had some very good offers (one went into 5 figures). However, i've been inspired by some of the members here who seem to be experts at monetising their sites and I have decided to hold off from selling up just yet, as i'm going to give it one more shot at making lots of advertising revenue from the site.

The site gets good, healthy traffic from the organic listings in the top search engines (google for example, places Verdicts 1st page for "product reviews" and "consumer reviews" though there's plenty more page1's for product-specific keywords).

Please could you review the website and tell me if i'm doing anything drastically wrong? I'm currently making no more than $5 per day from adsense, but I feel I should be making a lot more.

The site is split accross different sections (computer games reviews, women's interest etc) and each one CAN be designed completely differently to the rest which is what i plan to do. Lets take women's interest and computer games as examples to look at, since they recieve the most traffic (women's interest gets around 450 uniques a day).

Should i be making use of affiliate schemes, as this is something I currently don't use.

Thank for all advice given!

www.verdicts.co.uk/computer_games
www.verdicts.co.uk/womens_interest

Mat.

 

[grantw]

Should i be making use of affiliate schemes, as this is something I currently don't use.

Yes, most sites of this type seem to be focused on getting people to buy the products that are reviewed, you really need a 'click here to buy it' link on each item that links through to an affiliate program - amazon would probably be an easy option as they stock most things.

Another option would be to setup a price comparison script and link through to that from each product, such as http://www.pricetapestry.com/

Grant

 

[accelerator]

Hi,
Should i be making use of affiliate schemes, as this is something I currently don't use.

Yes definitely. I use both AdSense and affiliate schemes on my sites, e.g. navito.co.uk, but if I had time I might go back and remove the AdSense because the potential for revenue is much better with the affiliate programmes.

I think the problem with your site is on page positioning of the advertising. It needs to be in the best position to get the click. Eye tracking heatmaps will give you an idea of where these areas are.

Rgds

Accelerator

 

[MatBrummitt]

Thanks for the tips.

Where can I find a list of affiliate schemes and how easy are they to set up? Will i need to create my own graphics for "Buy Now" and then manually place links to the retailer, or do i simply feed in a keyword (product name) and let the script do the rest?

Also, how effective are affiliate schemes? Surely it's harder to get someone to go ahead and purchase then to make them click an ad?

Thanks

Mat.

 

[accelerator]

Well, if you want to do me a favour you can visit:

http://www.webref.eu/

click on the blue "paid on results" banner in the right hand column and sign up with them. They are quite a good niche network and are bringing out some novel ad tools.

It's pretty straightforward adding ads and links to your sites, just sign up to the various networks and they have loads of link and banner tools.

If you haven't heard of it already, I suggest visiting:

http://www.affiliates4u.com/

There are sub forums for all the affiliate networks.

Maybe your volume of successful sales via affiliate schemes will be much lower than your Google clicks, but the commissions are going to be much higher.

Rgds

Accelerator

 

[stender]

I agree with Grant, stick a button saying buy this product on each product review that you can.

Amazon do an affiliate and will cover the games
Tradedoubler.com do a dabs one so will cover the computers
affiliate window will cover the gadgets.
buy.at do john lewis and will cover home entertainment

Just a few suggestions but between those companies you'll cover most of your products.

 

[Vialli]

Check out affiliatebounty.com, nice site telling you who does what and where.

 

[stender]

Damn. Good Job I haven't got round to developing my affiliate directory site yet!

 

[MatBrummitt]

Ok, sorry I just signed up to AffiliateVista (PixMania) and it seems all you can do is place an ad block on the site?

What i would like is to be able to add a "buy now" link which takes you to the EXACT product on the merchants site.... It seems that with AffiliateVista they advertise whatever they feel like, whether or not it's relevant to your users....

Are they all like this or is it just them?

Thanks

Mat.

 

[retired_member3]

no just them. sign up on the ones mentioned above and others. You can link to the exact product.

 

[MatBrummitt]

What is the difference between all the publisher services at Trade Doubler? There is so many to choose from but they don't do a very good job of making the distinction between them?!

Thanks

Mat.

 

[stender]

Most allow deep linking. For example on affiliate window, sign up for a merchant then on text links it allows you to take a page url and paste it into the deep link generator and it will generate a link to that page with your id in it.

Sign up and apply for the relevant merchants then pm me if you need any help.