CSS Validation and Standards; Does it matter?

Spectra, I just looked at Commision Junction and looked around real quick. What exactly is it that they do and what or how does affiliate marketing work? Do you just post products on your site from other companies and sell for them, so to speak?

Sounds interesting, I wonder how much it'll grow.

Zerimar, essentially if you want to do it yourself, you can host a site that drives traffic to sites that you join into their affiliate program. You have links on your site, and you try and optimize it the best you can so that you are ranked the highest so you get more traffic. Its tough work, and Google has really, really tightened their restrictions on what it accepted on sites now and whats not (in terms of their ranking process). As well, using Google Adsense program and Overture, you can put together a nice little site that generates some steady income (Hopefully lots).

Or, you have a great domain name like www.boosk.com This guy takes advantage of the mis-spelling of "books" and he makes a killing. Most people would kill for this guys wage. He is probably one of the biggest players out there in the Book affiliate world.


The second side is to manage a program for someone else. This isn't really the same, its just from the other view. Your agenda is to sign up thousands of affiliates and generate huge amounts of traffic for them. Googe Ad words, banners, etc.. are all used for this. Companies pay TOP dollars for a good affiliate manager.


Edit:

Mattboy sort of touched on something interesting. Most affiliate sites look like absolute crap. But they still have huge conversions. I know of a few sites that we would all make huge fun of, but they generate 10's of thousands of dollars monthly. All of James Martells sites are Frontpage specials, but he is filthy rich off them. Once more and more design companies realize the money that can be made off affiliate marketing, you will see an increase in quality sites. The first people that get on board on this sector are going to be rich...the rest, like always, are going to be fighting for every scrap. It will be cutthroat. This is basically the groundfloor. Look into it. Google Ad Words is really ruthless right now, but they've changed things that have weeded out the Sunday Internet junky that through together a crap site just to make 50 bucks a month.

Okay, so this guy at boosk.com, everytime someone buys a book from the links he has there they pay him a certain percentage? So basically you become a salesman in way, for others?

I remember once this guy from the UK asked me for a site template saying he was putting together some affiliate program. He showed it to me, and they have somewhat of a control panel you log into and you pick the banners you want to put on your site, and they have a code so that when it's clicked it's traced back to your site.

Then he would get a ceratain amount of money from these people he was linking to. So I'm guessing this is how it works.

Man, I'm just going to make a site that's full of banners and have people click all over them somehow. I wonder how to get traffic there?

So this guy boosk, why mispell "book" and why the redirect on his site? Is there a catch to this somehow?

This sounds interesting and I'm going to have to go have a look at Google Ad Words to see what's up with that.

Thanks for the info man, take care.

Cheers!

Yeah, basically you are a salesman. Quick tip, text links outperform banner links night and day. Banner ads are just a small thing, more for eye candy and maybe 5% - 10% of your revenue.

Getting traffic there is most of the battle. Once you get traffic, that means everything else you are doing is correct.

The reason "boosk" is so great is because people type really fast in a browser window and screw up. Then that URL redirects to his site, which is a book site (something they were hoping to find anyways) and there you see some searches for his top affiliates.

Anyways, I could talk all night about techniques and whats what. Feel free to start up a thread about this if you like and we can discuss it more. I'm off for a drink and some relaxing.

To touch on another recent thread, blogs are a great way to generate this kind of revenue as well. As we discussed, they come up high on search engines so they are a great place for all of this kind of stuff. When I posted more on forevergeek I was making $300 a month just from the google ads on my entries. If Paul kept all the entries to himself, he'd be making well over $100 a day just from google ads on that one site.

Some people start blogs on a subject just because it pays well on Google Ads, like for instance a blog on Asbestos. The guy has no interest in asbestos, but it pays well on google so he blogs about it, gets traffic, and clicks. Some people have dozens of specialized blogs like this, and make all their money from advertising and affiliates.

Almost every major site has an affiliate program. For instance you could have a blog about pets, and then have links to www.petsmart.com and get like 15% off the first order, and 5% off of every order after that, if the person clicked on your link to get there.

What is a moutebank?

Yes, I misspelled, it was supposed to be 'mountebank'.

moun·te·bank Audio pronunciation of "mountebank" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (mount-bngk)
n.

1. A hawker of quack medicines who attracts customers with stories, jokes, or tricks.
2. A flamboyant charlatan.

v.intr.

To act as a mountebank.
v.tr. Archaic.

To ensnare or prevail over with trickery.

I have no problem using CSS to format my site. What I have a problem with is spending weeks trying to tweak a site to do LAYOUT with CSS. It AIN'T there. I might switch to doing layouts with CSS when you don't have to spend weeks making it look the same from browser to browser--which with the rate that browsers evolve will be well after all the sites I have have been redesigned 2 or 3 times.

[QUOTE=malibu]I have no problem using CSS to format my site. What I have a problem with is spending weeks trying to tweak a site to do LAYOUT with CSS. It AIN'T there. I might switch to doing layouts with CSS when you don't have to spend weeks making it look the same from browser to browser--which with the rate that browsers evolve will be well after all the sites I have have been redesigned 2 or 3 times.[/QUOTE]

Weeks? Not to be rude, but if it's taking you weeks longer then when you use tables (I am presuming this to be the case from your wording), then maybe you have to brush up on your coding more so your profit margins become a little higher. I personally can't code what so ever. Anything I do is hacked up tables and whatever, but if this is your business, you need to keep up with PROFESSIONAL standards. If I was to spend that amount of time on some print work I'd probably not have a job, or at best, the amount of clients would be reduced significantly. When I used older versions of software, or god forbid, Corel Draw, I never complained that technology I was using sucked. There are tons of CSS coders out there working efficiently and pushing out validated code...why not be one of them?

The problem a lot of people have is trying to force CSS to work exactly like tables. Once you really know what it's capable of, you can avoid a lot of the problems. Also, I usually start with one of them many CSS templates online so i don't have to keep reinventing the wheel. Saves a lot of time.

Web stuff isn't what pays the bills... it'd be cool if it was. Nah, what pays the bills is http://www.pictusdesign.com/dek/Skippy.jpg <<< this kind of stuff. And you called my bluff, Spectra: not weeks of full time work. But I spent a week plus of a few hours here and there in the evenings to get this to look decent in both Firefox and IE >>> http://www.jackiegamber.com/test60/content/news


I agree Dek. I do try to force CSS to do exactly what I can with tables. If I would greatly simplify what I'm doing, it would be much easier. But why should I compromise on what my vision for a site is? Because the technology of CSS compatible browsers isn't there yet? Bah... I'll wait for 'technology' to catch up, then I'll switch.