Category: Network News

Choosing a website builder to create your affiliate marketing site is an important but difficult decision.

Whether you plan to send organic traffic to a review site through SEO or acquire traffic through paid social ads to a blog, a website is an integral part to most affiliate marketing campaigns. 

Unless you’re someone with extensive coding and web design experience, you’re likely going to have to utilize an online content management system (CMS) or website builder. 

We believe there are three important factors to consider when choosing a site builder for your affiliate site: 

Cost: The various pricing plans that each offers.  

Ease-of-use: The difficulty level of their editor. 

Features: What additional features they provide such as marketing tools, analytics, and SEO assistance.  

We will be assigning each platform a rating for the above categories ranging from ‘okay’ to ‘good’ to ‘great’. 

A final Affiliate Marketing Compatibility section will then provide a summation on how suitable the platform is overall for affiliates. 

Here are our top three website builders for affiliate marketing. Pay close attention to what each excels at to help determine which will best suit your specific needs. 

Squarespace

Squarespace is a premium website builder that prioritizes gorgeous looking sites that are both easy to make and navigate. 

Although you won’t have a ton of visual customization available, what is available guarantees your site always looks clean and professional. Over 110 striking, responsive template designs also ensure it looks great on both desktop and mobile. What this platform lacks in control it makes up for in both aesthetic and intuitiveness.

Squarespace also does an admirable job at providing additional features such as social media integration and marketing tools like SEO. These can be beneficial for connecting any social pages that you utilize for promoting affiliate campaigns and pushing your site content through them. 

It’s also extremely easy to make changes to specific elements on your site even after you’ve published it. 

Think that font is too big or that image is too small? You can quickly adjust these elements with just a few clicks of your mouse. 

Cost: Good

Squarespace’s pricing sits somewhere in the upper-middle average among its competitors. 

You’ll benefit from unlimited storage and bandwidth on all plans as well as a free domain name for a year. 

Click here for more in-depth pricing information. 

Ease-of-use: Good

An intuitive editor and interface make this a decent option for affiliates with limited experience creating their own websites. However, it may take some time to completely familiarize yourself with the editor’s functionality.   

Features: Good

Squarespace allows you to create email campaigns, manage your SEO settings, create promotion pop-ups and analyze your site’s performance. These are helpful for affiliates who would prefer to do as much as possible in one place. 

Affiliate Marketing Compatibility:   

If visual presentation and an easy-to-use editor are your top priorities as you’re looking to build an affiliate site, then Squarespace might be the best platform for you. There are also some valuable built-in marketing features that every affiliate marketer will find useful. 

Be mindful that customization is somewhat limited. However, that might be a good thing if you’re new to site builders and/or only require a straight-forward site design. 

WordPress

WordPress is the king of flexibility when it comes to website builders for affiliate marketing. That’s mainly a by-product of its 3rd-party integration capabilities through the form of plug-ins and self-hosting. 

Be aware that there are actually two different WordPress platforms: WordPress.org and WordPress.com. 

WordPress.org is self-hosted software that you download and utilize through third-party hosting with unlimited plugin options. 

WordPress.com offers less control and features but also less responsibility by freeing you of hosting and security responsibilities.

Although most affiliate marketers use WordPress.org because of its greater control and lower cost, you can upgrade your WordPress.com site to unlock similar features of WordPress like plug-ins and a custom domain name. 

If you’re intimidated by WordPress’ editor, Elementor is also a great plug-in that will allow you to use a simplified drag-and-drop format. 

This is just one example of how you can ‘upgrade’ WordPress to tailor it to your specific needs. 

Cost: WordPress.com – Okay / WordPress.org – Great

WordPress.com offers a variety of pricing models. To run a fully-functional affiliate site you will likely need to purchase at least the Business package. 

WordPress.org is entirely free for you to download. You’ll only have to pay for third-party hosting which usually works out to less than the cost of your average site builder. This makes WordPress quite inexpensive, especially when you factor in what you get in return. 

Ease-of-use: Okay

Some extra knowledge and time is required to take full advantage of what WordPress can offer. 

Their editor and additional features on both platforms is the least straight-forward out of the three site builders on our list. 

If you’re choosing to self-host through WordPress.org you’ll need to set-up hosting on your own while ensuring your site is secure. More complex designs may also require some knowledge in HTML/CSS to achieve desired functionality and to troubleshoot any issues that may occur.  

Features: Great

WordPress offers more plug-ins and integrations than any other site-building platform on the market. Whether you need SEO assistance, writing guides, visual add-ons or advanced analytics, you can find multiple free or paid plug-ins to help you achieve any goal. 

The WordPress.org version of the platform is untouchable in this category. 

Affiliate Marketing Compatibility: 

WordPress is a popular choice among many affiliate marketers because of how much control and flexibility it provides users. You can tailor it for what you specifically need your affiliate site to accomplish. 

The platform’s ability to adapt to any need is balanced out by the fact that it’s not the most beginner-friendly. However, If you’re able to build your knowledge and utilize the immense number of plug-ins available to your advantage, you’re left with a platform that’s truly limitless.  

Wix

Wix is the best website builder for those who hold customizability and easy editing in high regard. 

If you’re particular about how your site works and functions and want your vision to come to life with relative ease, Wix was made for you. 

If you want to do even less work, you can simply supply information to the Wix ADI (artificial design intelligence) platform which will then generate a site design based on your preferences. 

Even if you prefer a more hands-on approach, utilizing the ADI to start and then tweaking your site from there is a great way to ensure your design matches the needs of your affiliate site. This is a great feature that other site-builders don’t offer. 

Over 900 templates also provide you with a great starting point for building your desired affiliate site. 

Wix also offers some great built-in features such as personalized SEO plans that will analyze your site’s weak points and provide helpful tips for improvement.

Cost: Okay

Wix has slightly more expensive plans than Squarespace with their cheapest plan lacking some key features like unlimited bandwidth unlike Squarespace’s cheapest plan. This makes it one of the more costly website builders. 

Ease-of-use: Great

Wix has the most beginner-friendly editor out of the three platforms we’ve discussed. Its ADI feature can help you create your ideal affiliate site quickly even if you are completely new to affiliate marketing and creating websites. 

Features: Good 

In addition to valuable features like ADI and personalized SEO plans. You can utilize over 250 apps through the Wix App Market. These can have similar benefits to the WordPress plug ins we mentioned albeit on a smaller scale.

Affiliate Marketing Compatibility:

Wix is a “get what you pay for” site-building platform that offers an abundance of customization. 

If you’re completely new to creating your own website and want to do so easily, it can help you accomplish that in a short period of time. 

If you’re still struggling to decide witch of these three site builders is best for you, here’s a quick one-sentence description that highlights each platform’s speciality.  

Squarespace – The best option for those who want to be able to create a beautiful looking affiliate site with relative ease. 

WordPress – The best option for those who want to harness the power of 3rd-party plugins and 

WIX – The best option for those who want to be able to easily customize the look and functionality of their affiliate site.

The post The Top 3 Website Builders for Affiliate Marketing appeared first on MaxBounty Blog.

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Treasury Wine Estates is one of the world’s largest wine companies.

The character, quality and scale of Treasury Wine Estates’ global brand portfolio is unmatched.

Fill in the blank – Affiliate marketing means to me:

Affiliate Marketing is an ever-evolving channel that grows and changes to meet the needs of the consumer. It allows Treasury Wine Estates to introduce our 8 brands in multiple formats such as product reviews where customers can discover what we have to offer with top tiered publishers through to loyalty sites where we can encourage the customer to purchase again through competitive cashback.

What’s your “elevator pitch” for potential partners or those
who are unfamiliar with your company?

Our brands are among the most recognized and awarded in the
world. Sourcing grapes from some of the world’s most acclaimed vineyards, we
are the leaders in the modern art of winemaking, using innovative techniques
grounded in centuries of winemaking tradition.

What sets your company and affiliate channel practices apart
from others in your niche?

Treasury Wine Estates has an unrivalled portfolio of
well-known and trusted premium wine brands with a rich history behind each. Our
customer can experience this history by visiting the vineyards of each brand or
getting their favorite wine delivered to their front door. We promote our 8
brands as the full package from highlighting the vineyards, offering monthly
promotions along with encouraging the consumer to make their first purchase
with a rich offer. With these multiple ways to get the consumer excited to
shop, we make sure to be represented across the many different partner types
from loyalty through to content.

What are the benefits to working with you in the affiliate
channel?

We offer competitive commission rates, which are the same
across all 8 brands, with our average order value being over $300.00. On top of
having monthly promotions on both bottles and cases, we have first time
purchase coupons and are open to discussing exclusive offers.

What makes a great partner in your eyes, and what kind of partners
are you looking to work with?

Great partners are wanting your brand to win while providing
the best offers for their consumer. With having 8 brands to promote, we are
looking for partners who can highlight each on their own but also make it easy
for their consumer to find each through discovery on the partner’s site. And of
course, continuous communications about opportunities to promote the brands
& offers along with staying active on ways to optimize.

In addition to what you consider to be a great partner, how
do you measure success of said great partnership?

Our affiliate program is a revenue driving channel. We expect
partners to not only drive healthy traffic to our brands, but we also expect
them to drive sales.

Do you have any advice for those who are new to affiliate
marketing?

Appreciate the process. The affiliate channel is a slow game
as it takes time to get established. Not only does it take time for your brand
to be known within the space, but it’s also constantly changing which means you
must evolve as your program develops.

What is your favorite part about working with ShareASale? Do
you have a favorite tool or feature?

We have 8 active brands within our affiliate program and
ShareASale allows them all to be under one account. Not only can we pull total
program performance, but we can also review performance by brand by utilizing
the Summary by Store report. This allows us to save time while reviewing
performance since we can seamlessly pull reporting.

What are the brands under Treasury and how do I join each?

Treasury Wine Estates has a total of 8 brands within the
affiliate program that cater to a multitude of palettes and budgets. This
includes Stags’ Leap Winery, Sterling Vineyards, Beringer, Beaulieu Vineyards,
Provenance Vineyards, Chateau St. Jean, Etude Wines and The Wine Shop. We allow
partners to promote all brands and encourage them to do so to ensure their
audience preference in wine is available. If a partner doesn’t have all brands
on their site and would like to, they can email treasurywines@dmipartners.com to requests assets and brand information.

The post Advertiser spotlight: Treasury Wine Estates appeared first on ShareASale Blog.

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