Forum Moderators: skibum
I have owned a fair number of websites over the past 5 years, but have always been leery to monetize them much, since they were developed around writing quality content about each of the subjects.
Recently I have taken a step forward with one website and have monetized it by offering affiliate banners to the top 3 products in the sector. The links are on the right hand navigation.
I placed two buttons under each - one that says 'learn more' and links to a product page which talks about that product, and another which says ' buy now' which uses the affiliate link.
My question is - is using buy now a fairly standard recipe in affiliate marketing, or should I stay away from using this and use the 'learn more' button. When I added the buttons to the website and banners I immediately started making sales, but I want to know the the website will not be hammered in the SE's in anyway by using buy now buttons.
It's pretty common practice, though different affiliate schemes favour different approaches.
If in doubt, add nofollow, but I know of no particular reason why SEs would treat one affiliate link different to another.
As a general rule, I find the more you distinguish your site from the affiliate crowd, the more it succeeds - with people and with SEs. I call it Schindler's Law ;)
