I would like to hear peoples opinions and views on which would be better to spend money on. I could go with CJ.com and spend 3k up front and dump 3k into my account or I could put 6k into SEO. For a site like mine www.supplements.net which do you feel would be best?
I think with your products SEO is going to cost you a lot more than 6k in the long run, but still may be worth it. I am curious to how long that contract is for. There is a lot of competition for these types of products and you will have to constantly stay on top of your SEO. If you want the short term answer, CJ. Although it is 3k to start up, the rest is performance based. To attract the best affiliates, find out how much a good customer is worth to you including repeat buys. Pay accordingly. Give at least at 30 - 50% commission to your affiliates, more if you want to attract the best of the best. You have a great domain and I'm really surprised the site has no pagerank, for being from 2001. Now that I think about it, you should do both. Depending on the company 6k in SEO, although it won't be a complete solution (it takes a lot of on going tweaking and constant monitoring), 6k could go a ways.
good well planned seo shouldn't cost much at all, the biggest investment is time waiting for it to take effect while backlinks accumulate and the domain age grows. for example i've never spent more than a couple of hundred for a site to get results and that was just for a few permanent trusted links to get the ball rolling
Well I will say stick to your skill set that will work. CJ could be better option if you want to start quickly where else SEO is time taking and costly too. Growing good affiliate network is always worthy than SEO. If you put some free content on your site any thing like e-book or articles back links will automatically grow slowly and steadily.
Well I still the same, why it cost to much? By my point of view, SEO don't have to spend to much in campaign. If you could find niche keyword and offer more interesting content, it will be more better.
you need to pay them to let you stay in top position. you need money to buy quality abd quantity back links and promotion. 6k budget might sound lots but to get and maintain high PR, it's not enough. so if you focus on the traffic and customer spend on CJ might be fine and make sure you give them enough benefits so they will with your products.
i keep hearing people say that seo costs money but really it dosnt have to!!!!! buying links is a waste of time seeing all my best ones i have, i just emailed the person asking for a link and got it and chosen my anchor text. If your smart about gaining links using optimised anchor text and on highly relevant sites with a good rep than you don't even need as many backlinks to do well. i've outranked people with 50 000+ links just with a couple of thousand! just have to be smart about it. oh yeah and you on site seo has to be spot on which isnt too hard when you know how. if i had to spend more than 1k just to get to #1 id be pissed off... just don't be impatient and go wasting money on links before your results settle.
Well we were a PR3 but I believe the previous owner had pulled all links and last google update we fell to a 0. we still show up in google engines though. its strange.