Make your Site Sell - a day by day diary - Day 8

Swap - a Link

Banner Exchange programs now have very poor click through rates. Exchanging links with other webmasters is a lot of hard work. And if you just want to link to someone's page because you like the content you loose your visitor. Some web sites get over this problem by opening up another browser window or opening the linked to page in a frame.

I recently found a page that I liked, and felt that it would fit in nicely with the content on my Introduction to Setting up a Website page, the page in question was also promoting the MYSS ebook. So, should I link to the other page, possibly loosing a potential MYSS customer? I could have asked for reciprocal links or just put the link up and informed the other webmaster, hoping for a reciprocal link, or just refuse to link out from my own site.

I mulled over the problem for a few days (and lost the URL in the process). I then hit upon the Swap - a - Link idea: I link to his page but substitute my own MYSS affiliate id. He gets the traffic, I still retain the customer if he clicks on the MYSS link on the linked to page.

Benefits to 'Content Providers':

If you have a webpage with good or interesting content that includes links to one or two affiliate programs you can submit the page to the Swap a Link programme. In return for the extra traffic generated you will allow a linking webmaster to substitute his affiliate code for yours. If the visitor clicks on one of these links the linking webmaster will be credited rather than you, but if the visitor moves onto other pages on your website then the linking webmaster looses the visitor.

Benefits to 'Content Users':

If you have a web page that could benefit from creating a link to someone else's page you can now create the link in such a way that your affiliate code will appear on the linking page. So you can add links to your web pages and still retain the customer.

Possible Problems:

What if the linked to webmaster does not want to allow the 'link substitution' - The script should respect such privacy requests and I intend to make it strictly an opt in programme. The only way to ensure that such permission is genuinely given would be to insist that each page in the programme includes an indicator that it has 'opted in' - so only pages that are using the script will be considered as part of the program.

To join the programme:

1. Put a link anywhere on your page to any other page in the programme. You may use the code below or change it as required:

<a href="http://amcho.com/scrunch.pl?page=amcho.com/swapalink.htm&afcode1=sitesell.com/amcho.htm">swapalink</a>
Remember to change amcho above to your own affiliate id.

2. Submit the page to our index from the main swapalink page or below:


your page address....:

and email............:


Day by Day Diary index:

Day 1 - initial impressions, goal definition.
Day 2 - how the goal will be achieved
Day 3 - 5 pillars affiliate program documentation review.
Day 4 - MYSS Book extract - Submit to Yahoo.
Day 5 - Target your Customers
Day 6 - HTML and META tags and Search Engines.
Day 7 - Affiliate Programme Agreements
Day 8 - Swap - a - Link. An Affiliate Link Exchange System
Day 9 - Creating a MYSS advert.
Day 10 - Applying the MYSS ideas to Swap - a - Link.


Join up as an affiliate for the 5 Pillar Make Your Site Sell Program



Mike Choroszewski
Mike@amcho.com
www.amcho.com


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