Obviously some people have a whole store set up for affiliates. Others sell their designs as well as affiliates. It's the latter im interested in. How have yo added them to your store? Do you dump them in with your products or have a different section?

I want to add one to my store but dont want to take away from my own designs and branding so don't know how to 'advertise' such a section.

Hi hotdjgear,

We can't have affiliate links in our own shops.

What you can do is:
- start a blog and promote the designs you like in there
- start your own off-site website for affiliating
- create a Squidoo lens to promote affilates
- create a CPShops site and put affiliates in there

I'm sure others can come up with more ideas for you.

Well i do have my own offsite website, sorry should have made that clear in the original post. But not sure whats the best way to add the affiliate section to it so it fits in nicely and doesn't detract from my own designs.

I've seen where people will include other designs that are related to a topic and post something like "Other great designs from other great designers" or something like that, then list the other designs.

What I do is to find affiliate designs that are not in competion (same niche) with me, then I link to them in one of my websites on a page with relative content.

Example: I don't have any music designs (yet), but one of my websites contains a music section, so I put a "music related" affiliate link or two or three on those pages that are relevant.

I also have a "calendar holidays" subdomain on one site and each holiday contains relevant activites and information, and also includes a "shopping centre" filled with affiliate links to relevant products for that holiday.

I don't look at it as the affiliate designs detracting from my own designs, but rather that they add to what I have to offer on my sites, which in turn gives the consumer more choice.

Look at your website as a "magazine". There is the main content of the magazine, then the advertising (affiliates) that pay for the publication of the magazine.

On my affiliate web site I integrate my designs with the others. I want it to be the "go to" place for designs in my niche. To be that I need to offer a variety of artistic approaches and styles. I want to make sure that even if the visitor doesn't like my stuff that they DO like something, buy it and will come back because I offer a range enough to be interesting. I can imagine a circumstance where I'd be worried about a visitor buying someone else's stuff instead of mine. But as it is, for me, that isn't a concern. I see it as -- if they aren't going to buy mine because the style or approach doesn't appeal then I can let them leave and search on their own OR I can offer them alternatives and still get something for the traffic I generated. In my circumstance I'm pretty certain that if their attention can be diverted to another's design then probably they wouldn't be buying mine even alone.

I totally agree with Diane on this one. I look at my CP shop as being where I want them to just buy my stuff. But, my affiliate sites are set up to promote other people's. I just started to dabble with CPShops. But, mostly I have been using 4th Click. I add my own shop IDs. But, I do not put them at the highest priority because I already have that in my own shop. I want this site to look like a new site, unrelated. My www.teesforbaby.com links to my own shop and my www.cutebabytshirts.com is my 4th click. I get a lot of the similar keywords for both. So, if someone goes to one site and also finds the other in the same search, I do not want them to realize that I operate both.

An afterthought: Also, my affiliate site gets traffic that my other site never does, because of the SEO being naturally different. My 4th Click shop pulls in the descriptions that the other people have used on that product. What I sell on my affiliate shop is always something I do not even have of my own.

Ne',

I was wondering, do you put affiliate stuff in your cpshops store? I got a cpshop store, set up to mirror my main store. Now I'm trying to figure out how to add affiliate designs to it, (or if that would take away from my sales?) I am also opening another store, so I'm thinking I should somehow manage that with cpshop site, also. (I think I can use it for more than one store).
Any input is greatly appreciated!