Turnkey Websites: 5 Important Considerations If You Are Thinking About Using Them For Affiliate Marketing

Turnkey websites should be considered by anyone thinking about starting an affiliate marketing program. Turnkey websites are out-of-the-box sites that let you use the best work product of marketing professionals without the prohibitive cost of hiring these consultants on your own. You can also immediately deploy these sites to start generating income. If you are thinking about turnkey websites, here are some things to consider.

1. Expert Help Can Make All The Difference

No one can be an expert at everything, even you. If you are new to affiliate marketing, you have a tremendous amount to learn about the nuts and bolts of affiliate marketing. But what about the expertise required to design your web page?

Your website must be optimized as a sales tool. Nothing could be more important to the success of your affiliate marketing business. Your site has only a few seconds to grab a potential customer’s attention. Effective websites require graphic design, web design and copywriting. Unless you already have expertise in all of these areas you should rely on experts to help you put your best foot forward. You could hire a team of experts to do this work, but that would be cost-prohibitive to most individuals beginning an affiliate marketing business. An alte
ative would be to purchase turnkey websites that were created by a team of experts.

2. Tested And Proven Sites Can Give You A Leg Up

Some turnkey websites have already been tested by the vendors that created them. This can be a tremendous value to you. Rather than working by trial and error, marketing experts have already taken the very same websites and have determined whether they have a high conversion rate. Generally this is done by running a Pay Per Click ("PPC") marketing campaign with the turnkey website along with similar sites for control and comparison. By tracking click-through and conversion rates, the vendors can determine the most effective websites. and tracking the click-through and conversion rates.

If a turnkey website vendor represents that its sites have been market-tested ask for the specific methodology of the tests and the results. Do not be immediately swayed by "proof" sheets that merely list the profit earned from a particular PPC campaign to a website. You need to understand exactly the methodology of the PPC campaign and makes sure that you understand what was spent in advertising to obtain the gross revenue from the PPC campaign.

Buying a turnkey website is not your only option. You can create your own website. Some website design software, such as Dreamweaver, is incredibly powerful but can be very difficult for a newcomer to master. Other design software is more accessible, and it may be possible for you to create a rudimentary site with a template.

No one can make this choice for you. But strongly consider using a turnkey website because of the importance of having a polished and compelling website for your affiliate marketing business.

3. Turnkey Websites Are Not All Of High Quality

There are many turnkey websites for sale, but not all turnkey websites are created equal. When shopping for a turnkey website, you should be careful to understand what you are getting and whether it serves your needs.

Some reputable vendors offer high quality websites created by a team of experts. Other vendors offer facile templates. These templates do not contain valuable content, and have not been tested in any way. You are at as much risk, if not more, by using these low-quality templates than if you try to muddle through with creating your own site. The reason you considered purchasing a turnkey website is to avoid the exact risks that these low-quality sites present. Be careful and make sure that you are purchasing high quality turnkey websites from a reputable vendor.

4. Understand the Risks of Duplication

Turnkey websites should not be used without modification. The same website you have purchased has likely been sold in similar form many times before. If you put up a duplicate website, you will be ignored by the search engines and will receive no traffic. Moreover, if you choose to try to make sales through PPC, Google will refuse to accept your site because it does not contain unique content.

5. How to Customize Your Turnkey Websites

To avoid the duplication penalties discussed above, you must customize your website to make it unique. There are lots of ways to do this: 1) Are the affiliate products that were pre-installed in your turnkey website the best ones on the market or the ones you wish to truly market? If not, change them. 2) Do you want to modify the content of the landing page in any way other than changing the products? Do you have some different view on the product or an angle that the vendor did not consider? If you tried the product yourself (and you probably should), is there any aspect of your experience that would help sell the product? Change the content to your taste, and these changes will help you avoid the duplicate content penalties. But make sure you don’t make the site less persuasive. Remember that if you bought it from a reputable vendor, it was designed by experts. 3. Add a blog. An attached blog with fresh content will make any turnkey site unique in the eyes of search engines. Moreover, if you regularly add fresh content to your blog, your dynamic and evolving website will be the darling of search engines and will rise in page rank.

Make sure you purchase your turnkey website from a reputable vendor and that it is more than just a stock template. Spend some time to customize your website and make it unique. If you do these things, a turnkey website can be an invaluable way to bring in expert help and get your new affiliate marketing business off on a powerful footing.