LAST EDITED ON Dec-31-07 AT 02:42 PM (PST)
 
Please post any good revenue streams on this thread...

Revenue streams need to be used with caution in SEO. It's really easy for Google (and others) to track who the owner of a site is.

Google also has a term "thin affiliate site" which refers to pages they feel were created merely to geneate affiliate income.

Toss in an extremely important SEO concept known as "hilltop", which we will refer to as "Trust Rank". They are NOT the same thing, but close enough for this discussion.

Basically, the less two sites are associated with each the more link juice they will give. Sites are associated through the use of the same IP, same domain name info, etc. Links from associated sites mean very little.

Affiliate programs that use tracking IDs are giving Google a lot of info, not to mention if you use AdSense. Putting AdSense on any page or site tells Google EXACTLY who owns the page, YOU. They know your name, address, bank account, etc.

It gets worse...Let us say that you put Amazon and Adense on Site A. You only put Amazon on Site B. Google knows YOU own Site B.

Use affiate programs with caution!!! A huge noob mistake is to think you need to add that revenue stream immediately to every page they make.

Many SEOers disagree with me and feel each site has to pay its own way. I strongly disagree. I believe you WAIT until a page is getting good, solid traffic before you place an affiliate ID on the site.

Once a site is getting decent traffic, then and only then consider adding a revenue stream. If you have 100 sites you should probably have an affiliate program on less than 10 of them.

Be sure to use a variety of affiliate programs on sites that are getting traffic, using only one program per site/blog.

In poker you don't show your unless until you have to, and in SEO don't show your hand until you're getting traffic.