Affiliations - tips?

[BtR_Wolf]

Hi, I was wondering what tips are out there for affiliations between forums? Are there any common trends?

For example, for your forum do you have affiliates on a separate page or on every page of the forum, under the board?

 

[Yehya]

Types of affiliations:

1. Under/on the sidebar of every page.

2. Under/on the sidebar of the index.

3. On a special page of its own.

Whichever you decide to do, ask your affiliates to do the same.


Try to affiliate with similar-niches forums.

 

[VirusZero]

There are more places than that where affiliates get placed... Other common places I've seen include:
- Inside forum descriptions (particularly in the guest friendly section or a section split off for affiliates. Most likely marquee though.)
- At the bottom of the forum in its own affiliate table.
- At the top of the forum in its own affiliate table.

As for getting affiliates, I personally like to affiliate with a wide range of sites so that my link is posted around on all kinds of sites. This way I'm never limited to the niche I'm in. And people on other sites, who may share a similar interest but the site they're on doesn't fulfill it may see my site and join. (Remember people often have more interests than just one niche so it's worth capitalising on that.)

Though just be aware of some common restrictions on some sites... Some forums won't affiliate with blogs or websites (too hard to see how active or how many guests/members the blog may have).
While other sites won't affiliate with certain types of sites. (EX- a promotion site won't affiliate with a general forum, but will affiliate with other promotion sites.)
Other forums may have activity/longevity requirements for sites. Like a site must be several months old and have more than 2000 posts or 50 members before a site will affiliate. (Or even that if the site doesn't get a post within a month, the admin may remove the banner.)
So you'll need to check with the site you're interested in affiliating with first to see if you qualify (though not all sites have their rules for affiliating posted, sometimes this means asking the admin directly.)

 

[BtR_Wolf]

So, differing opinions on affiliation are common? 😉

Would you recommend affiliating with as any as possible, or a select number?

 

[VirusZero]

There is a fine balance of how many you want to affiliate with. Too many affiliate banners makes you look desperate and can slow down the forum loading time. (Especially if people use large animated gifs for their buttons.)

While you still want a number of affiliates so that your site is visible around and you want enough space to affiliate with a number of different sites.

So my personal optimal number is around 20 affiliates. That gives me enough to be visible on many sites without clogging up/bogging down my site too much.

 

[Yehya]

There is a fine balance of how many you want to affiliate with. Too many affiliate banners makes you look desperate and can slow down the forum loading time. (Especially if people use large animated gifs for their buttons.)

While you still want a number of affiliates so that your site is visible around and you want enough space to affiliate with a number of different sites.

So my personal optimal number is around 20 affiliates. That gives me enough to be visible on many sites without clogging up/bogging down my site too much.

After all you said i expected you to say maximum 10 or so.

I wouldn't go as high as 20. That's a bit much.
7-15 Sounds ideal.

 

[sapper]

Affiliates are the same as reciprocal links, be careful about how many you have, and how they are placed.

It's far better Google wise to get backlinks within posts or texts than with a group of links that Google can recognise as reciprocals.

This is an old article but well worth reading if you are considering link building

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/20 ... al-Linking

You may also want to read this more up to date article on Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_website_linking