[MoneySchooled]

I am building what amounts to a mall, comprised of affiliate relationships. I am looking for other malls out there. Please show me your mall.

I know this isn't exactly the best strategy in a niche world - especially the niche world of affiliate marketing. But my niche comes from elsewhere.

How many affiliate relationships is enough? (I'm thinking about 3-500 to start)
Is it okay that I am only doing store descriptions - not product descriptions?
Can I put enough "product keywords" into the store descriptions to not return too many empty searches?
Is it okay that I'm using google search to navigate around my "shopping portal"?

Any advice is VERY appreciated as I have very little idea what I'm doing.
THANKS!
Byron

[jackson992]

You didn't post your url:P Noone is going to show you their site. I suggest simply searching on Google for them and you will find plenty.

[popdawg]

might not want to ask people to show you their sites.
Its generally considered rude although there aren't any real rules about it.

Here is a question...
Why would anyone go to your mall site instead of one of the thousands of other, older, more established ones?

[MoneySchooled]

i've done quite a few searches on G and elsewhere. I'm certainly not looking to see code - just want to get some ideas for front end user interface. i'm a little uncertain as to why it's rude to see front end. it's really just a shortcut for me instead of finding at G. but i'm certainly not trying to be rude as i'm new in town.

i'm envisioning 20 top level categories w/ approx 5 subs for each

they will (might!) come to me b/c they (we) are all looking to accomplish a common goal.

[Snowman]

My personal view is that it is not rude to ask other affiliates to identify their sites. While sometimes there are ulterior motives, often it's just someone looking for ideas. That said, most affiliates choose not to identify themselves or their sites.

[Eathan]

It's not so much rude as a little bit cheeky. An affiliate who poured the effort into building something that works isn't always open to a new affiliate looking for shortcuts.

That said, keep at it, keep reading, keep asking and keep learning.

Best of luck!

[Leader]

What's rude (and can escalate to being worse than rude) is when people try to goad others into showing them, or become angry and insulting when they get refusals. This happens enough that many of us try to discourage people from asking in the first place.

I see no upside at all in showing my affiliate sites to the competition, and I know from hard experience that there is a big downside. So, I don't do it.

BTW, unless you have a really robust system, 300-500 merchants is way too many! Your poor server, trying to handle all those datafeeds! Do you have a dedicated server? I haven't seen a shared host that could even handle the size of a ZIPPED CJ feed with ~70 merchants, much less actually RUN a feed-driven megamall.

And if you're thinking of just listing the merchants by name, with no other info...don't bother. Link farms don't convert worth a darn. It's better to have a minimall with 5 or 10 merchants that actually shows some products and tells something about them, than a megamall that's nothing but a ginormous names-only link farm.

[Donuts]

Some recent "Mall" discussions:
http://forum.abestweb.com/showthread.php?t=91937

[Howard Gottlieb]

If you are wanting to build a mall site and win traffic through the se's, good luck. You think placing some product keywords on a store page with little description will place anywhere on Google?

You would need an entire site designed for a handful of products or about one merchant that has extraordinary relevant content that is better than anything else out there if you wanna be noticed that way. Can be done but not in a mall environment I don't believe.

I love the mall concept but it is not one intended to be won in the se's in my opinion..