Blog Name vs domain name for niche

15 Aug 10 2:33 am

Hi Susi, welcome to affilorama. horses is such a broad topic, perhaps a tighter focus would be better. really the domain wont matter that much, although it may to some. the hard part will be getting direct traffic if it is to hard to remember, and relate to the topic of your site.

your blog is looking nice, but I would keep it targeted. if your site is about horses, get rid of the make money content. put it on its own site, but keep your focus on the niche that your site is about.

15 Aug 10 1:08 pm

I were you, I would create/buy/outsource a free report (or a mini course) about owning a horse and put the opt-in form in the sidebar of your blog. You can also create a popover opt-in form to increase your opt-in rates.

Yes,you can link to affiliate products from your blog, that's fine. But these products have to be relevant, you don't want to promote make money products.

15 Aug 10 3:28 pm

You can build a squeeze page on the same domain name, but on a separate page (such as www.carouselmarketingco.com/free-report). Test both and after a while you will see what works best for you.

I think I would go for sending your visitors to the blog so that they can read your blog posts and get some value out of them. Have your opt-in form in the sidebar and consider having a popover that appears after some 30 seconds.

15 Aug 10 10:59 pm

What I like to do is a combination. Ihave a squeeze page, but I also have an opt in on the sidebar.

you need a plan for what your intentions for the blog are. do you want to build a comunity blog or do you want to just use the blog to build a bunch of affiliate pages because of the simplicity of WP?

The reason this is important is because the way you run your blog content will be different. IF you want a community blog, you would want your home page displaying your latest posts. you also want to write more conversationally, and link to lots of free stuff. the focus should be more on building relationships, starting a conversation, and creating a community for people to hang out on.
with this type of blog, occasional promotions are ofk, but I recommend doing it only 1/10 posts. Give lots of stuff away that other people would sell. this will build your relationship with your followers, and people will not only come back, they will share your blog with others. People will be doing your link building for you, and you can focus more on creating fresh new content, although you still need to spend time promoting too.

if you just want to build up a promotional affiilate site using wordpress, then its ok to promote in every post, but you wont build up a strong community of followers. you would focus more on one time sales and opt ins.

Personally i find the blog community more fun to run, althogh it is harder, and a long term commitment.