How to Design an Affiliate Program Site from Scratch?

I’ve read a lot about affiliate programs here and found mostly “marketing” ideas (SEO, PPC, how to choose a good affiliate program, CTR, tracking…)

But have not found almost anything about how to design the site itself (navigation, look, what kind of content, how many products by page, how many affiliate programs per site, prices displaying, data feeds…)

What I’m trying to do is to design an affiliate site from scratch (to sell musical instruments), a site focused for affiliate sales mainly (or exclusively).
Is there any recipe?, is there any thread to read about this subject?

I would appreciate some help on this because after running several sites with links to affiliates added, I’ve found that the CTR achieved is not good enough.

Thanks in advance

 

What do you mean by CTR?

Provide your visitors something useful and they will be happy to click what you want them to.(Your affiliate links of course)

 

In this case would be: how many visitors become customers?

 

Well, that depends on your preselling and the quality of your merchants' products, vary from 0.1% to even 30%.

 

CTR is click through rate.

how many visitors that come to the site click through to the affiliate.

 

The merchant is OK - CJ’s MusiciansFriend, one of the best online for musical instruments.

Since most of the links are in contex links (links in articles’ text)…is this could be a reason to fail in preselling? see: http://www.guitar4ever.net/guitars.html

This site was designed with adsense in mind, what kind of content is better for an affiliate site?

 

Do you already own any affiliate offers through your musical niche?

 

Offering and affiliate program in my site?...No
Links in my site to affiliates sites?...Yes