Thesis WordPress Theme, XSitePro and Affiliate Marketing
Jan 22nd, 2010 by Andrea
I recently discovered the Thesis WordPress theme and my dislike of WordPress started to go away. In my experience, most WordPress themes are achingly difficult to customize. And upgrading or changing your theme could blow all your hard-won customizations out the window.
Needless to say, because of this, I didn’t get into using WordPress as a Web design tool for affiliate sites (as recommended by Google Sniper and other affiliate programs) and would always cringe when clients wanted me to create a custom blog for them. Well, let me tell you, all that has changed. The way the Thesis theme works is to keep all your customizations separate from the base WordPress code. So you never have to worry about blowing up your design when you update or when you want to redesign the look of your theme. And it uses hooks to customize your site (hooks are like “positions” or “panels,” if you’re an XSitePro user, to which you can add custom HTML, PHP, JavaScript, etc.).
I’ve created an affiliate site for you to have a look at using Thesis. It intentionally looks more like a Web site than a blog, but it’s built on WordPress. I wish I could say it’s doing really well in the search engines for my keywords “eczema in babies,” but it’s not. I think the topic is too competitive, although I did do my research and it seemed okay at the time. I also did several hours of social bookmarking and put up a YouTube video (which is where I’m getting all my traffic from at the moment).
Now, the other affiliate site I published recently was built in XSitePro… and that one is doing great in the search engines. It’s on P. 2 of Google for my keyword phrase “kids kitchen playsets.” It’s actually on P.1 of Google.ca (the Canadian version of Google)! With this site, I didn’t do any social bookmarking, nor did I put up a YouTube video. All my traffic is coming from the search engines. (I am not using PPC for either site.)
Needless to say, the “kids kitchen playsets” site is the one I’ll be putting all my attention on. Don’t make the mistake of trying to get a dead dog to sit up and beg! Put all your attention on teaching new tricks to that healthy, eager pup who’s already showing star qualities. The only thing I will use the “eczema in babies” site for is to learn more about Thesis… or I might just start a new site for that purpose… and use up some of those domain names I’ve got stashed in the closet.
And you know me… I’m all about tips and tricks! So, I know I’ll be compiling tips for using Thesis once I get a bit more familiar with it. I already figured out how to make one of the menu items bold so it stands out! (When you go to the “eczema in babies” site, notice that the last item on the menu “Articles on Eczema in Babies” is bold. Neat trick, eh?)
The long and short of affiliate marketing is that whether you use XSitePro, Dreamweaver or WordPress, your site can do equally well (or not!) in the search engines. If you think you’ve found a good keyword phrase (do your research!), then all you should need to do is to overwhelm Google with your keywords. I’m not talking about keyword stuffing! I’m talking about making a site totally devoted to one topic! Make your site as close to an authority site as you possibly can. Even my “eczema in babies” site could probably end up doing well if I kept adding content and plugging away at it, but with affiliate marketing you’re going for the low-hanging fruit.
8 Comments to “Thesis WordPress Theme, XSitePro and Affiliate Marketing”
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good day
My name is Rafael Araya, I am trying to learn xsitepro using a trial copy and I also took all those videos, my question is, I would like to know how can I create input boxes that are now the regular yellow box, I need to create and input form, like for instance a custumer information data entry form, then how can I edit those fields using javascript and also eventually how can use php to handle my own mysql data. my dummy javascript code does not even print “hello worlds” the codes is there in the source but it is ignore, all I see in the design tab is a yellow object but no message is display.
thanks in advance
Rafael
Hi, Rafael,
XSitePro shows a yellow Javascript tag in the software, but when you Preview or Publish the Web site, the Javascript should be activated so you see the form fields, submit button, etc. You might want to create your form in Aweber (or your autoresponder of choice), copy the HTML version (not the Javascript version) and then paste it into the Source view in XSitePro. That will give you more flexibility to edit the form.
Thanks for the explanation, I tried aweber but all I get is a form object with two to three fields, I do not see a way of putting a whole customer data entry screen using the forms wizard.
I think xsitepro is a great presentation tool, but it lacks the ease of creating free forms, also using our own javascript code, never the less using php, which I made worked by moving the code on my root domain and using a reference to the file in my source code.
thanks so much
best regards
Hi, Rafael,
You need to create the form in Aweber, NOT in XSitePro, then you can build any kind of form you want, as long as you add the Custom Fields first (in Aweber). You can have up to 20 Custom Fields. In your form, you can create drop down lists, checkboxes, radio buttons, as well as text fields and text areas. Then you copy the HTML code from Aweber into XSitePro (Source view).
Thank you sweet lady, I did not know about a product called Aweber, I will look into it
thanks for taking your time to write
Hi, Rafael,
Aweber is an autoresponder service. It has a monthly fee. Internet marketers use it to gather contact information online from prospects and clients and to build a mailing list. If you just want a way to make more complex forms you can try one of the various options I suggest on my Web site: http://www.xsiteprodesigns.com/xsitepro-templates-resources.html#forms. Most are free; one is fairly expensive, but it works best with XSitePro.
Andrea, big hug
thanks for all your help, it ceartainly helped
do you know of a way to track down the number of visits on a website created with xsitepro, is there any feature build in that you might know? I just want to display or have to program for it?.
thanks again.
ralph
Hi, Rafael,
Your hosting service should include a statistics package like AWStats that will give you the number of visitors to your site, as well as a lot of other useful information. You access these stats through your hosting account’s cPanel or Admin panel.
Putting a visitor counter on your Web site isn’t considered professional, so I would avoid that.