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March 03, 2003
Existing LoveCompass Partner Advise
An advise letter written by one of the LoveCompass partners - Sue England ( LoveBells ). This letter brings some interesting points on how to maintain and promote LoveCompass Partner Site.
About myself:
Hi there, my name is Sue; I am the owner of LoveBells.Com, just one of the many proud Partners to LoveCompass.Com
I hope that with my own personal experience given here that you will find your new partner site as easy to maintain as mine is.
How & why did I Become a Partner with LoveCompass.Com?
I was just looking for something extra to do in my spare time, preferably something that involved using my computer and internet connection as well as helping others out, oh and of course to earn a little extra cash too.
I did check a few different dating affiliate sites, none of which offered the same as LoveCompass.Com. I had emailed LoveCompass.Com before I went ahead with becoming a partner, asking a few questions as I had joined as an affiliate to another big name dating site some time ago, I had more than 80 members join and so far still no payment from them, with a total of more than a hundred dollars to be paid they shut my account, so they didn’t have to pay, so as you can imagine I did not want to get myself tied up in something of this nature again. I am happy to say that LoveCompass.Com is nothing like these other sites, if they where I would not waste my time and effort with them.
If you have not yet joined than you can do so at http://www.lovecompass.com/partner .
And if you are unsure about something then send then contact them, you will find that they are a very friendly & helpful team of people.
Once I had decided to become a partner, I filled out the online form and was sent an email with my details. I had decided that I wanted a fancy looking URL so I chose to get my very own domain name, http://www.lovebells.com
The thing is you don’t need to do the same as me, you can just use your current website or even get one of them free websites, from where people can join as your new member.
I was a little worried about putting my website together, as I am not a web professional, in fact I am far from it, but I can tell you that I am learning a lot from my new site and enjoy every moment of it. :)
A few months back I had no idea about exchanging links or even submitting my domain name to search engines, I am still no mastermind, but getting better as I go along. I plan to be good at what I do and so far so good.
As a new partner:
Now that you are a new partner there might be a few things that you are a little unsure about.
First of all, I would suggest you enter to your database and have a good look around, click on things and see how they work, even place your own profile to your site, it is one of the best ways to get yourself familiar with your site.
Maintaining your site:
As soon as you have your site working or links in place then you will start to have new members joining, and it’s your job to take care of them.
Don’t expect to have an unbelievable amount of members to join if your site is new and unseen by search engines, because it’s just not going to happen, you now need to spend some time with your site, work with it a little each day, the more people who know about your site the better, and what better way then exchanging reciprocal links with other popular sites.
Exchanging reciprocated links:
Exchanging reciprocated links with other sites is a great way to get traffic into your site, this is something I have done at the beginning and it has worked wonders, I was not listed with any search engines, yet I was still able to have a little over 50 new members join my site, all because they seen my reciprocated link on someone else’s page.
How do you do this, very simple…
Just search for sites that will exchange reciprocated links with you, follow their information on how to exchange or send the webmaster a friendly email, tell them briefly about your site, offer them the URL to take a look at your site, also offer them a “Link Title” “Link URL” & “Link Description” (by the way I would be interested to be one of your first link swaps) so there you are, you already had a link exchanged!
Once you start to get people saying yes I would love to exchange links then you need to place their link into your links page, do so by clicking on “links” at the top of your partners account, and enter their details, within no time you will start to have a decent flow of traffic. From these links that you have exchanged, you will see that some search engines such as googles will pick you up from other people’s sites and will index your site automatically for you, so realistically you don’t need to submit your site to all major search engines.
Placing articles:
You can also place an article on your website in much the same fashion as placing a reciprocal link, just click up the top where it says “Articles” and place the information. You can get an article from a website by asking the webmaster if they have one for you, not all sites can offer you and article but if you don’t ask then you won’t get anywhere. I would not accept any articles from a site unless it was of high quality and in some way relevant to your site.
Submitting to search engines:
It is also a good idea to submit your site to the major search engines, there are millions of them, but its best to only concentrate on the big name ones, you should know some of them, and for instance where do you go to search for something on the internet? Don’t forget to submit your site there.
Other advertising ideas:
Some other things you can do is place advertisements in your local papers, drop flyers in your area, notices on message boards and much more, use your imagination, I have a sticker on the back of my car window with my website, have you ever stopped to think how many people are driving along the same road as you, who are looking for romance, friendship or marriage?
What not to do:
Ok one thing you can not do is send spam as this is illegal and will cost you your partnership site, for those of you who don't know what spam is, it is: sending unsolicited email to people you don’t know, telling them about your site and how to join, so if you are serious about your site you will not stop to this level.
Now that you have a few members joining your site you need to maintain their profiles, you will be able to do this from your partners account. Each new member needs to have a contact price set on their profile, this is where you will start to earn some income, the price in entirely up to you, remember it’s your partnership and if you wish to set your prices high or low then you can do so. I would suggest that you place your members profiles around the same figures, keep a watch on your profiles to see if they have been contacted and if for some reason a few have not been contact as yet do yourself and them a favour by change the contact price slightly lower, and in the same manner, if you find one members getting a lot of contacts then you might decide to place the contact amount slightly higher, be realistic, would you pay that much to contact that person?
How do you set the contact price?
In your partners account, click on Profiles Database, you will have a list of profiles of your members, click on one of them to edit the contact price, once you are in the profile you will see merchants price $ simply put your price in here and save.
The total price you see is slightly higher than your selected price, this is because LoveCompass.Com needs a small commission passed back to them, to maintain billing sales and so on, and you will still get your contact price you have set. If you then click back home at the top you will see “Payable” well every dollar you see here is yours.
Assisting your members:
Sometimes you may have one of your members contact you and ask you to place their photos for them, just ask them to provide their Profile ID, from there you can find their profile and upload their picture for them, the profile will be checked and approved, once you click on their profile you will see the option that say upload photo, save their photo to your hard drive and upload it to their profile for them, its always nice to send a quick return email telling them that you have done this for them.
Where to find more help
Now that you are a partner and understand the basics, it should all be smooth surfing.
I would suggest that you check your site ever 24 hours.
As a new partner you can join the LoveCompass.Com Partners forum
http://www.lovecompass.com/forum/
This has been a great help for me, I have provided some ideas that might help and also asked many questions, you can do the same too, and we all need extra advice. I am like you, I come across things that I don’t understand and things I want to know too, so we are not alone.
One thing I do like about being a partner with LoveCompass.Com is the support and friendly responses, we are all people from different walks of life, however we all come together and work as partners with our sites.
If there is anything I can help you with to start up your site then please feel free to contact me, you can do so from my website at http://www.lovebells.com
It would be a pleasure to work together.
Posted by LC at March 3, 2003 11:31 PM
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