Blogger is the easiest thing in the world to setup. Not to mention, its free and Google tends to index these sites pretty quickly. I have 16 blogger pages right now. Just put some relative content in your site and it will only help. I believe the affiliate section would be well worth it. Link building can be daunting at times and this could only help. Just out of curiosity, are many of your subscribers earning commissions through their links?
Wordpress does have an API, but they don't have any third-party authentication (like Google does), so I've shied away from Wordpress because I don't want to ask for sensitive info (and they consider their API secret key as sensitive). That being said, I do have a small network of WordPress MU's set up. I could easily include those in the BLOG BLASTER feature in addition to Blogger.com. If anyone knows of another blogging platform that accepts posts via API, please suggest and I'll include it. ARMY - Thanks for the feedback on the Affiliate Manager piece. My gut says it's a good idea because, as you point out, link building is difficult... Any other reactions? I would obviously add it so that it could be turned on or off, but would you use it?
From an SEO perspective, twofold: 1) Gives the store owner a place to write a keyword-rich paragraph on the same page with products. 2) Gives the store owner a place to automatically pull in RSS feeds for further content on the same page as products... As I do link-building to my C4.us Niche Store, I often build links directly to this section (not the SEO-friendly url) with the targeted keyword as the anchor text on the inbound link... I'm thinking you could use SPOTLIGHT in conjunction with the BLOG BLASTER feature...
I'd actually like to see the affiliate feature that yes, would give 100% of commissions, but would only show that affiliates ID maybe 50% of the time. Link building is daunting however its still "my" store that I've seo'd, designed, paid for, etc. Though I am in favor of being over-ruled on this one just a suggestion
my site has already worked now. but i feel i opened this site a little slowly. maybe c4us.compare4.us is too slow. thanks!
Thanks for the feedback.. We will be moving the database to a bigger server for launch. That will help on speed. Anyone else had slowness problems? Anyone else feel that including the Affiliate Management Module is worth it?
Hey all... Happy Thursday! The AFFILIATE MANAGER MODULE went up this afternoon with v0.4... This is tricky because of the multi-level nature and all. I could really use a test of this. 1) Go into ADMIN and then CONFIGURE at your store url. 2) Change the setting for ACTIVATE AFFILIATE MODULE from "NO" to "YES" (requires Store Contact Email first) 3) Hit UPDATE INFORMATION Then click HOME. You should now have a link at the top called 'AFFILIATES' The tricky part is the testing... Now you need to come to your C4.us Niche Store and sign up as an affiliate. Please LOG OUT first... Then sign-up as an affiliate and put in a DIFFERENT Amazon ID so that you can tell if it's working. Let your store build affiliate links for you and then test a few of those all the way through to Amazon to ensure that the ID in the URL is correct.... Please open a support ticket if you hit any bugs. We've tested it and it's working... But you know how it goes....
Looks promising, I'm definitely interested. BANS is rolling out some pretty cool updates in V3 in January.
Congratulations! The sites look ok and all but how in the heck will anyone find them aside from ppc or through your network? There's not much content there. The compare4.us stores are seo'd in many different ways.
ARMY (and anyone else) - When you get a chance, please test the AFFILIATE MODULE... Make sure it's swapping Amazon IDs as expected. Thx...
there is a threshold for CJ.com the minimum is 25$ which you will have to set because I think 100$ is the default adsense you will need to make your first 100$ to get your first check