Marcia - 6:01 pm on Mar 1, 2002 (gmt 0)

>>Build the affiliate mall as a test bed to see what works for you. Then build additional individual sites that focus on those things that work really well for you.

mayor, I'm glad you said it first. I've had exactly that idea and its worked with a very limited test. But it's only in early planning stages for a whole site. I'm a big believer in small mini-sites of 10-15 pages and under, they've proven themselves well..but there are other advantages with a mall situation, and to be honest until now I never thought of setting it up calling it that.

I'm almost afraid to admit it publicly, but I absolutely love Inktomi, particularly for this reason. It takes no time to see what something can do if the keywords are carefully chosen. With legitimate pages, it's a great way to test in a short period of time. With the restriction of not being able to change pages to a different domain, putting products on as part of a larger site is an economically feasible way of knowing what's worth continuing and/or getting a separate domain for.

The only problem I see is that once there's good placement with Google it's hard to give up by moving a site, since the rankings are so dependent on site-wide criteria. If a mini-site is part of a site that's already PR5 and it's got legit linking both internal and inbound, it makes things very simple.

It's all being thought out slowly so that any risk of doing it the wrong way can be avoided. I've seen a number that are well done but also a few that are headed for trouble down the road.

>>I've suggested to Brett a forum dedicated just to affiliates.

mayor, a good place to make such suggestions is right here [webmasterworld.com]. Gets his attention every time. :)