WordPress Blog vs. Website Powered by WordPress

[deniseoberry]

For me, the biggest advantage of using wordpress is that it's easy. Even though I've been around for a while and can do my share of stumbling through creating a (maybe) decent website, why do it if you don't have to? It's wordpress all the way for me.

[angienewton]

This is a question that I have been wrestling with as well. It seems that Lynn prefers to use html sites for her product oriented affiliate sites vs wordpress. However, clearly Traci is saying you can use wordpress to set up a site with static pages also. I am not sure I understand the pros and cons of which to use for affiliate marketing of products. Any thoughts?

I think it's personal preference. I also use html site for my main site and then WP for my blog. They both work!

[Lynn Terry]

I agree on it being personal preference - go with what works best for you. A blog is a great addition to a traditional site as well, but like Traci said you can do both static pages & posts with WordPress.

The one thing I did not end up liking, in regards to affiliate marketing, was the affiliate datafeed plugins for WordPress. I found them hard to work with.

[TomM]

Lynn, can you elaborate on exactly what you didn't like about the datafeeds. I don't even know what a datafeed is or how it works in html vs wordpress.

[Lynn Terry]

Hi Tom,

Here's some good background on affiliate datafeeds:
http://web-procreate.com/wm-what.htm

They're not all the same. Some are tab delimited, comma delimited, etc - basically they are a like a text database of the entire product feed. They are most commonly used for physical product lines.

The datafeed files can be HUGE and difficult to work with. And since there is no real standard, most datafeeds need to be edited in order to work with your program - the program is needed to parse the datafeed into HTML output. The last one I had done had to edited by hand to work with the WordPress plugin (to drip products into posts over time) - it took hours. Of course, I outsourced it, but I've had to do it myself in the past too.

Obviously this still sounds easier than creating pages or posts by hand. That said, if very many affiliates take the "lazy way" and the same datafeed info is out there on numerous affiliate sites... well, that's not really adding value to the search results and so you suffer in the rankings.

Also, it can be a royal pain when the merchant udpates the datafeed. Which is necessary when they add or remove products, prices change, etc. If you used WordPress, you have to track down and edit or delete all of the posts that were created that contain bad info (if you don't you could get in trouble with the merchant). I find this much easier to do with HTML pages because I can bulk delete pages, put up a custom 404 page, and then work on the updates offline & reupload in bulk.

I prefer to create my pages by hand (or posts) and leave out pricing a lot of the time. I usually say "click here for price & availability" - then if it's not available they land on a "this product is no longer available" on the merchant site, which usually directs them to related products from there. Sounds like a lot of work to create the product pages by hand, and it is - but it makes for a more unique affiliate site than all of the others out there.

[TomM]

Ok, well I have to say, this is over my head right now. I don't have any programming experience at all. This is one of the things that stumped me in the 2008 30dc, getting the ad to show up on the blog. What you are talking about here is just too complicated for me and I don't have alot of money to outsource. It looks like I should just pick a clickbank product and start a blog. I need to get some income started so I can pay for help and tools for these types of things.

[Lynn Terry]

It's a little over my head too - like I said, I prefer to create good old fashioned HTML pages. LOL. Don't limit yourself to ClickBank. Definitely start a blog, but pick your product carefully and then start your blog on a topic that attracts the target market for those products.

If you need help setting up your blog, I have a checklist here:
http://www.clicknewz.com/1872/how-to...ordpress-blog/

[TomM]

Unfortunately for me "good old fashioned html" is over my head too.

[Lynn Terry]

LOL - It was for me at one point too

Back when I first started, the only program to even help was Netscape Composer. ACK It stunk! And trying to learn the code was madness for me at the time. The first employee I hired was a die hard Dreamweaver user and I refused to learn yet another way to do things (for about a year lol). It's a learning curve for ALL of us. I promise you none of us were born knowing how to do this stuff.

Of course, it seems to come a lot easier for my kids, who are now 13 & almost 18. So I'm outsourcing a lot of stuff to them these days

[Iris]

Mastering DreamWeaver is on my "To-Do" list for goals to accomplish within the next 6 months. WordPress is so user-friendly and it meets all my current needs. I think knowing HTML and coding is definitely a plus if you have a blog or website. Even if you have the funds to outsource it, you are not at someone else's mercy when you need something done or changed immediately.

Learning HTML and coding also gives you more insight into what's possible in terms of creating a custom website.