I personally think that the most difficult sites to promote are affiliate sites (especially eBay ones), because: 1) You're constantly afraid of promoting it in high profile places (forum signatures, etc), in case another marketer sees it and discovers the niche you've found 2) They generally fail in "social networking" situations -- that is, nobody is going to link to your affiliate site from their well-established site 3) It's difficult (and nearly pointless) to advertise them in blog comments, since they're usually seen as spammy. 4) Social bookmarking has become nearly as worthless as submitting to free directories Just wondering how you might handle building links for your affiliate site?
I agree with your comment about affiliate sites being the most difficult to promote. Personally, I predominately use article marketing for affiliate sites. If you pick the right terms to go after, you can get some excellent traffic. Just my .02 worth.
step 1: create a new page with content, SEO for a specific longtail. 500+ words of unique content. step 2: social bookmark that page from at least 10 sources. step 3: comment on 5 dofollow blogs with a link, make sure it is a good reply and not a shitty spam link step 4: write up a summery of the page, and post it in a couple forums where people would actually want the information. goto step 1:
oh, and only concentrate on hops/ctr after you already have your traffic and are an authority. My newest approach is to have 0 ads on a single site for a full year, while building links.
Typically, when I get affiliate sales, it's from a user that trusts me and wants to help the site succeed. Therefore, I'd suggest creating a site where your users are loyal to you. Once they are, they're more willing to buy from you or your affiliate links. I agree with amerigohosting. You should be promoting your site first and affiliate sales 2nd if you are going for organic affiliate sales. If you are going for PPC affiliate sales (i.e. providing just a landing page for PPC that has a big button or coupon to hop to the affiliate site), then that's a different story - but you're asking about link building so I don't think this is the case. I second Amerigohosting's 4 steps.
I think affiliation sites can be promoted through affiliate forums and work-at-home forums. Also blog commenting will also help.