So you’ve got your very own website and signed up for the awesome EpicToon Affiliate Program. Your affiliate links and banners are in place and you’re ready to make money. To do that, your website needs to be attractive, easy to use and read. You want to hold their attention and keep them on your website for as long as possible.

To help you maximize your earning potential, EpicToon has put together website tips for your website. Read on for the list of Website Dos and Don’ts:

Do…

Keep it simple. All the successful, multi-million dollar websites have simple designs (see: Google, Yahoo). Don’t bog your website down with heavy images, flash, java and other complicated stuff. Stick to the basics and concentrate on giving your users what they really need.

Use a readable font. Nothing is more irritating than a website with a weird, non-standard font in a tiny size. Make sure that you’re using standard Windows fonts and have them at a comfortable reading size (10-12 pixels). Avoid fancy fonts as much as possible.

Check your spelling and grammar. It’s hard to trust a website with your money if the site itself has spelling and grammatical errors everywhere. Pay attention to these small details and show that you take your business very seriously.

Include a link to your homepage on every page. If you have a big website, users can easily get lost in all the sub pages. Having a link back to “Home” makes it easy for your users to navigate your site in case they get confused.

Provide interesting and relevant content for your pages. It’s very important that each page on your website offers useful or interesting information to the users. Write clear and informative instructions in your pages, add helpful or entertaining images and videos, the latest industry news – anything that gives readers something of value.

Don’t…

Don’t use image backgrounds. Sure, that image of a flaming skull on a black background might look cool as a desktop wallpaper but NEVER use it as the background of your website. Image backgrounds are terrible to look at and load significantly slower, too.

Don’t use annoying flash, animated GIFs, etc. Have you ever seen those teeny bopper MySpace pages? The ones with an annoying pop song on page load, flashing images and an obscene amount of glitter – you don’t want to look like that.

Don’t make your users guess links. Many good designers make the mistake of changing the color and removing the underline from text links. How are users supposed to know which ones are links and which ones are not? Make it easy for your users to navigate your pages and leave the guesswork to Sherlock Holmes.

Don’t use pop-up windows. There’s a reason why people have pop-up blockers on their computers. Pop-up windows are just annoying and can turn off most of your visitors. Keep everything in one window and your users will thank you for it.

Don’t use dark text on dark backgrounds. Your objective is to be read, not to give your readers cataracts. Use colors that contrast each other (black and white) and make your text easy to read. If you’re thinking of using neon green on yellow, STOP this instant.

Keep these in mind and you’ll be earning from affiliate links in no time.