By banner I meant the header...
Hi Simon,
I meant the Header banner, sorry for misleading. But the advert banner at the bottom is better - I didn't think of that!
The Header would look more consistent if the same size as that of the other pages. The Search facility is pretty prominent, I wouldn't worry about that. Besides, a lot of visitors may visit initially for that exact purpose - to translate a word - so they'll realise what to do and easily find the Search box.
Affiliate products: On the main page, you could write a short paragraph on something like how to "learn Irish quickly at your own pace from the comfort of your home" and add your aff. link or, have that paragraph point the visitor to a page titled Resources (or something) then use that page to promote multiple related affiliate products. When I say related, I don't mean just dictionaries, you could promote Irish
travel products or books (maps, explore Ireland guides, best golfing retreats) etc.
Of course there's a delicate balance here, you don't want to turn the site into an advertising portal, that's where a Blog would be very useful...
Or,
Add the afore-mentioned Resource page and write say, three reviews on three dictionaries/products. If you actually own any of these products then you're in a good position to write an honest review about how it works and how useful/beneficial it is.
Or,
If you don't want to add reviews and affiliate links to your site, write or have written a free report on say, Irish Idioms or something to do with learning Irish. In that report (free for download), you can promote the product(s) in more detail.
In fact, you could write a report on the Top Three Irish Dictionaries 2009 ...just review three products and use your affiliate links in the report. For someone interested in buying a dictionary, such a resource would be
very useful to them, especially if it's free. You can write in Free Giveaway Rights to get it viral (excellent way to market and build up a passive income).
So, to do the above you'll need an autoresponder and if you're gonna go that far, you might as well add a Newsletter Subscription form. A newsletter doesn't have to be written by you real-time; that's the beauty of an autoresponder..you can set it and forget it. Set it to send out say, one email Newsletter every week - you can pre-load three months worth of Newsletters and every person to subscribe will automatically receive their weekly Newsletter. Then over the next three months you can come up with more content for the following three or six months or whatever.
Sidenote: I'm not saying this is the best way to perform email marketing, I'm just generalising above - giving an idea of what is possible. Optimally to use email marketing, it's very important to develop a relationship with your list and gain their trust to let them know that you're a real person, there, available and paying attention. When I said "set it and forget it" I only meant the Newsletter part.
For Newsletter articles...plenty of resources out there from How Irish Died (!) to how it's being revived throughout Ireland - the effort of schools to teach it better, government bodies offering all literature (forms etc.) in Irish, Irish and the EU - it's officially recognised throughout the EU (I dunno anything about that, just giving a topic example), Obama's views on the Irish language (sure to arrtract US visitors)...
If you're stuck on what to write about, start with what's currently going on in the world - current affairs. You'll stumble onto a topic and find that there are a whole load of sub-topics that you could write about. Search Reuters for "irish language articles" for ideas or RTE.ie or whatever.
You did mention having the time for all this - of course it's time-consuming but start gradually. Set aside half a day each week for research and within one month you'll have enough articles to split up into a series of Newsletters. Or if you have the budget, outsource the research & writing to folks at elance.dom or guru.com or similar (probably best to find someone who can speak Irish... maybe ask here on the forum in the employment section).
Right, I'll shut up now. I'll try to keep my replies brief in future folks...sorry!!
Rita
