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I've been working on getting some affiliates together for my site, and I've been pondering a lot of questions.  Many sites I've seen have quite a few with both static and scrolling.  So, I'm wondering, how many affiliates do you think is the appropriate number to have?  Where do you put the buttons?  Do you have static, scrolling or both?

 

Currently, I have my affiliates in the description of the adverts forum.  I'm not sure how big I want it to be, though it will stretch to take as many buttons as I want to put.  I'm also concerned that scrolling affiliates will be visually distracting.  So.   Experiences?

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My site has spots for I think 20 scrolling and a bit more than that Static, although usually I think people will have less static than they will scrolling or at least that's what I have seen before on other sites.  I currently use an affiliate table that has sections for each type of affiliate.

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In a description of a forum, I'd say you don't want too many and probably want to limit it to the ones that reflect a similar genre or theme as your board.

 

In a footer, I try to do 6-10 static, not including resource sites and such. And fairly unlimited scrolling. I clear them out monthly so its pretty variable. 

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If you have more than 12 I won't affiliate. I don't do scrolling because that is both garbage for SEO but also garbage for exposure. I actually remove affiliates that have more than 12 of them.

 

The point of affiliating has been lost into an age of "as many links will get me members so all of the links!!!!!!!"

 

I have determined over the past few years that affiliating is an art. Affiliating with quality roleplays actually gets you quality members. These are the sites that take the time to be active in the community and active in their site. I have a stronger love/belief in a site if I see them in the community because they have a base that I know holds. That's how I can recommend sites that are here on the Initiative. I know that their site matters because it not only matters to the staff members that post it, but it matters to their members too.

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I dislike scrolling, moving, flashing thingies on sites. This is because I'm really old and my eyes are really bad. However, I recognize the benefits of having affiliates and affiliating. I don't advertise my sites often. I will be doing a round now that my western RPG has moved from Nova to a forum.

 

Currently, I am using the sidebar and will allow only static buttons. If we acquire enough to warrant it, I'll see what it takes to set up a footer area for them.  I'll have to see what my co-Admin has in mind regarding advertising and allowing advertising because I'm not really interested in chasing sites down, making sure they are active, making sure they allow reciprocal ads, etc. Been there, done that, the t-shirt was full of holes.

 

Can there be too many or what is the perfect magic number? I feel some sites collect affiliate buttons to show how well connected that site is. Personally, I'd rather see connections to fewer high-quality sites listed. However, with that said, if one of the site's purposes is to provide an RPG directory, then more is better.

 

~ My two cents, for what that's worth

 

 

Someone somewhere went to sleep and dreamed us all alive.
Dreams get pushed around a lot, and I doubt if we'll survive.
We won't get to wake up, dreams were born to disappear.
And I'm pretty sure that none of us are here.
~ None of Us Here by Jim Stafford ~

 

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I don't bother with them because people seem to use them more for advertising than not. People have a tendency to remove your links and don't bother telling you and never communicate with you beyond the exchange of buttons. At least, this is my experience of it. If this is what people are going to do, then they may as well just advertise in your ad section. The other problem is that people don't tell you if they are going to close their site so if you don't check them regularly, you could end up with a bunch of links to closed sites. But as I say, the main problem is lack of communication between admins and affiliates is like an endorsement, whereas an ad is not, so I think people need to change how they do them. (If I do them in future, it will most likely be a site that I've joined, or one where the admin or staff has helped out a lot with the creation of my site.)

 

I prefer static to scrolling because the poor sites that are stuck on the end of the scroll will never get as much traffic from your site as the one at the start, and I have a tendency to dislike anything that's 'animated' on a site because I find them distracting, or they slow the site down too much. Load times aren't as bad as they used to be, but people can have older machines or slower internet connections.

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At the moment, my website only has three and we like to keep them at the bottom static. I imagine an appropriate amount would be a dozen and although I've never heard of them, scrolling affiliates sounds like a pain for any visitor.

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I like 2 static rows on the footer of my forum. Usually that maxes out around 20 or less, depending on the overall width of the forum. 

Reality is an illusion. 


 
 

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I counted. I have ~24 scrolling affiliates, which seems to be about where it stays. Ours scrolls fast enough that you can see everything if you hang out for a little bit and is far enough down that it isn't constantly in your field of vision for people that live on board.

14 hours ago, Morrigan said:

If you have more than 12 I won't affiliate. I don't do scrolling because that is both garbage for SEO but also garbage for exposure. I actually remove affiliates that have more than 12 of them.

 

 

Why twelve? That seems kind of... Random.

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I'm picky when adding affiliates - I'll have anyone's ad on my site but when I consider an Affiliate I consider their site seriously. If it is going to have my site on there as an official associated site, it better be a site that treats their players well, is in the same "genre" as mine and follows some of the general standards I expect for a roleplay of that genre.

 

It is a bit snobbish and sometimes if someone asks to affiliate and they mostly meet those requirements I add one and I very RARELY seek them out. I think I have about 5. I would have more but I become easily discouraged if others have hoops to jump through in order to become an affiliate. 

 

I put affiliates at the bottom of our site in the footer with other site links and voting boards. I prefer static to scroll.

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@Rune It seems random but after a lot of time and research, affiliates combined with directories and topsites (that people always have on average) anymore than 12 and the entire footer is a wall of buttons.

 

The way I determined it is that if you get listed in directories/topsites (which are normally listed where affiliates are listed, but not always) you'll have anywhere between 1-8 directory/topsites items, on average, and then from there you stack your affiliates up. Most people choose to do 3-4 rows of 9-10 (if their theme will fit it). Then below that they have a scrolling affiliates bar with an additional 10-30 buttons in it.

 

Just based off of that most sites have at least 20-40 affiliates (whether or not you include directories is another story in this number but if you don't then you have to add those to this total).

 

Looking at a stack of buttons like this:

mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png

 

Obviously they would all be different, some moving, some not, some darker, some lighter etc. and your buttons just gets lost in it. Compared to this:

mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png mainbutton.png

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See, on one of my screens that puts one sad button all by it's lonesome on another line. xD

 

I do like limiting statics to one/two lines. Same with scrolling. There's no point in having a massive wall of them at the bottom of your board. Sticking to ones that might prove advantageous to you both is the way to go. (Though, I do add pretty much anyone from The Initiative to ours.)

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That is responsive design for you. My editor had it perfect but it was three short for a row when I posted. The point is that buttons get lost and so the reason to affiliate is lost. 

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Ten affiliates, five a line. It's a nice round number. Reasons are: faster load times and affiliates get a fair shot at getting exposure. 

 

No scrolling affiliates because ew more JavaScript. 

 

I will only affiliate with sites that allow significantly more than me if they're in the same genre. Otherwise it's strictly like for like. I'm less stringent on those of the same genre because I want RPers to find their new home. My home might not be a good fit for them, but one of my affiliates might fit the bill. 

 

As an aside, it's detrimental to user experience to have them download so many gifs, jpgs, pngs and/or scripts. If your user has slow interwebs so much downloading means that actually using the forum becomes a chore. 

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I don't really limit the static ones just yet. We have about 40 static spots with a little over half taken. With 6 of those dedicated to directories that require static. I normally go through the buttons so it hasn't really been an issue but if it ever does I'll change it accordingly. 

 

As for scrolling I never had a limit in mind until I was checking my button on another board and it felt like I had to wait an eternity to see it. That's caused me to put my first limit on scrolling to about 20 or so.

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