Affiliate programs - success?

Amazon has been OK. But our best has been a sports specialty affiliate. Just a matter of then good tags and search engine placement. Funny thing, when you search for the parent company on most search engine my site comes up higher than the parent company's site!!!

One thing I would suggest is making at least one page dedicated to the affiliate. List some reasons why the affiliate company is so good, maybe show some example products etc. People are more likely to click on the affiliate link than just as a banner or button.

if an affiliate programs is targeted towards ur site's visitors/content it will most likely be successful.

Fair - Agreed. Don't go affiliate happy. Pick well known or at least unique affiliates that add value to your site.

As Jaiem said, don't overdo it with affiliate programs. There's a certain limit, and if you overdo it, your profits will not be good.

o'yeah, text links seem to do better for me than banners do.

I have no experience with making money from my website, but I want to use one of those services that pay per impresssion. Which is the best? Do any of them allow me to use text ads, or button sized adds?
Do you reccommend them, and which is the most effective free afiliate service, that offers button sized ads, and text ads, and lets me use ads that wold be suitable for my visitors?
Thanx

Quote: Originally posted by http://www.digiology.cjb.net
I have no experience with making money from my website, but I want to use one of those services that pay per impresssion. Which is the best? Do any of them allow me to use text ads, or button sized adds?
Do you reccommend them, and which is the most effective free afiliate service, that offers button sized ads, and text ads, and lets me use ads that wold be suitable for my visitors?
Thanx

Hi there,

A good starting point is CJ.com. They offer you many options (banners, buttons, and text ads). They usually pay by lead, sale, or click.

I'm not aware of a text link impression-paying program, but I like BurstMedia.com, who pays per impression. Good luck!

Doesn't CJ cost moeney?. Something I have little of.
Any free services?
Thanx

Any decent affiliate program shouldn't cost you anything to join (no fees). It does "cost" you in the sense of your time to setup and space on your site. But you shouldn't have to pay to join a straight-forward affiliate program.

I'd like some button ads, and text ads.
That pay either per click or per sale, or per impression. I want the service to be free.
And I want to have a good selection of ads to chose from so I can target the ads at different kinds of people at my website, depending on what page they are on.

Is this too much to ask for?

Thanx

burstmedia requires at least 5000 page views a month.
My website gets only (don't laugh) around 45 a month.
Any affiliate services that don't have restrictions?

Thanx

Digi - I'm not sure want you're looking for. There are zillions of affiliate programs that pay per sale. Take a look at places like LinkShare.com , Amazon, Reporting.net etc. etc.

If you want pay per impression you'll need some major traffic to get it.

Quote: Originally posted by http://www.digiology.cjb.net
burstmedia requires at least 5000 page views a month.
My website gets only (don't laugh) around 45 a month.
Any affiliate services that don't have restrictions?

Thanx

Don't worry, we're not laughing, we are started at the bottom at sometime. My advice to you is NOT to worry about making money from your site when you get that little traffic. You will be lucky to make a quarter, seriously. Instead, promote, promote, promote! Trade links with related sites, get listed in search engines, and tell all of your friends about it. You will be on your way in no time!

I've had some success, on some of my smaller personal web pages, by stressing very narrow targetting.

My favorite example is a "links" page I created several years ago, to help people find web sites about music artist Michael W. Smith. It gets modest traffic (3,000 to 5,000 pageviews per month), mostly drawn from a Yahoo! listing.
Back when I was evaluating early affiliate programs for my old business (adbility.com), I put links to buy CDs from CDNOW and several other online music vendors, and to buy sheet music from SheetMusicPlus.com.

I generally found that 3 or 4 people would buy CD's each month from CDNOW, and 3 to 5 people would buy sheet music from SheetMusicPlus.com. Not a lot of money, but a reasonable return for the small traffic the site got. What I found interesting was that in general, only 10% as many people buy sheet music as music CD's, yet the numbers were equal on my site. I think this is because you can buy these CD's at stores in every city, but a wider variety of sheet music is harder to find.

It's also important to note that when someone clicked on the CDNOW link from my "Michael W. Smith" site, they were taken directly to a list of CD's by Michael W. Smith -- results are not as good if you use a single link across many pages that just takes people to another site's home page, where they have to re-type their favorite artist's name into a search box.

When I tried the same experiment for my "Smashing Pumpkins" and "Semisonic" music pages, I found that few sales resulted, quite simply because neither group has sheet music available, and these pages drew less traffic anyway.

I have dozens of other narrow-interest pages at markwelch.com, but none have provided the same percentage of return that the "Michael W. Smith" page did. On the other hand, at my peak I was getting about a dozen checks each month from affiliate programs, for sales generated by a variety of web sites.

(Recently, since selling adbility.com, I've been focused on working for MovieGoods.com and haven't updated most of my personal web sites, so returns are dwindling as cobwebs gather on my sites.)

Unfortunatly I don't know of any website simular to mine (i've looked around) and search engines don't help much, I was hoping to buy a domain name out of the money I'd make from ads on my site.

Hi Marc,

I agree with much of what has been said - use text links and not banners; integrate affiliate links into your content; choose quality programs which match your site topic/s etc. I would just like to add a couple of things that have worked well for me:

Pay per lead programs are good - it is much easier to get your visitor to sign up for a free trial/ free service or free product sample (or request further information on a product or service); than it is to get them to BUY something. In any case, a lot of people will visit a site more than once before making a purchase and so you lose the sale on programs like amazon where they have to buy within that visit to earn you commission. That is why CJ is good - there is a 45 day cookie on all programs (if your visitor returns to the site within 45 days you still get paid). However, CJ recently changed their contract meaning that not all merchants will offer 45 day cookies. A lifetime commission is even better, but very few programs offer this! (where you get commission on future purchases).

Good content helps too - if you offer something interesting and useful, people will return to your site, bookmark your site, link to your site, recommend it to others etc..and your traffic will grow. A page plastered in banners is not going to earn much money!

Starting your own newsletter is good too - it takes a lot of work, but as you build your subscriber base and as people begin to trust you, your earnings potential grows. You can recommend prducts or services in your newsletter, with your affiliate link or you can sell ads in your e-zine.

Quote: Originally posted by http://www.digiology.cjb.net
burstmedia requires at least 5000 page views a month.
My website gets only (don't laugh) around 45 a month.
Any affiliate services that don't have restrictions?

Thanx

Hi hate to advertize my site on forums but... (don't beleive me: I'm just bullsh***ing!)

...my own affiliate program directory only lists the best affiliate programs. To get listed they have to fulfill very strict criteria. Among those: they have to accept low trafic sites!

As a matter of fact affiliate programs not accepting low trafic sites are just... living under a rock (as Jaiem says), since a site receiving 40 hits/month today, could reach 10,000 hits/month within one year. There is not really a costs difference for them to have 500 or 50,000 affiliates!

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[Edited by Marc James on Feb. 18, 2001 at 11:46 PM]