Paysite Specific Hosted Blog Question

[Lee]

I was wondering what you folks thought about this, im in the process of putting together a whole heap of hosted blogs and RSS feeds for the Condom Cash paysites but, im wondering if i should be hosting the blogs on the actual paysite domain name itself or, if you thought it would be better with a stand-alone domain name for each of the hosted blogs and rss feeds?

There does not really seem to be a 'standard' when it comes to this was curious if anyone who currently has hosted blogs for affiliates to use currently hosts them on the same domain as the paysite or whether they have a domain specifically for the blog and also, if you have tried both methods, have you found that one method works better than the other both in terms of affiliate signup increases and in-house signup increases?

Right now im in two minds about putting these blogs on the same domain as the sites are on.

Regards,

Lee

[Bec]

You could always put up the blog as a subdomain, that way if you find they're slowing down the server, they can be moved to another one that isn't hosting the actual paysites.

[Lee]

Bec,

My concern was more with 'branding' in terms of the blog/paysites.

For example, if i hosted the blog on the paysite domain name, is that going to mean that affiliates will lose out in sales, because of the surfer simply stripping the URL to the root and going directly to the paysite.

Whilst that is good for me, it is bad for affiliates.

At the same time, hosting it on another domain, means that each site needs to have yet another domain name associated with it, and whilst affiliates will be able to make more sales, the amount of 'in-house' sales will decline.

Id like to find a comfortable medium somewhere in the middle, that benefits both affiliates and myself.

I know some programs host their affiliates blogs on the same domain name as the paysites and im curious to know just how much doing so affects affiliate vs in-house sales.

Right now, we're pushing around 75% in-house sales, id love to increase that amount another 10-15% but i dont want to do it at the expense of affiliate signups.

Regards,

Lee

[HunkyLuke]

it doesn't have to be linked from your paysite to your blog/feed, for example, I just released 8 site-specific rss feeds for our HunkMoney sites (see this thread: http://forums.gaywidewebmasters.com/...ad.php?t=30926) They are on the paysite domain but they are not linked to from the tours.

[HunkyLuke]

as for your concerns, if you use a proper tracking system through your blogs and paysites, you can ensure that sales are properly credited. I don't know how useful the ccbill tracking is, but I can tell you with nats that even if someone strips off the extra info in the URL, we still track properly.

[Rich]

maybe do both and see which is better i know me and you had a talk a while back about keeping urls simple because surfers will strip down to the main url just to see what is on there maybe the thing will happen if you put these blogs on your paysite names and affiliates will lose sales if they do?

[Jeff@UKSLads]

I just created and put up a blog for UKScallyLads - UKSL Blog - and implemented this WP Plugin into it - Hosted Addon Plugin (not a spam promotion - LOL). We're with CCBill and all seems to be going well. The Addon is easy to use and the programmer is very supportive if you have any issues. I had it up and running in no time once I figured out how it all works.

There's also a function where you can enter in replacement words and create a "Thesaurus" if you will. This way if a number of affiliates use your Feed, not all of their posts use the same words. Nothing worse than repetitive blog posts.

Affiliates link to our RSS Feed, the blog itself, including Posts, Pages or what have you, and it's working out well.

It's worth noting that this Plugin also works for NATS.

Great plan with the Hosted Blog. It really is an effective tool these days.

Best of luck with it!