Affiliate marketing

glowgirl_2

After some great advice on my previous post 'starting a forum' can anyone advise me on affiliate marketing/sales, I have started researching today so haven't got to far yet, can anyone comment on Clickbank? Are there similar uk based sites? I seem to remember reading about this a longtime ago on MSE but cant find the article in the main site, if you know where it is could you please post a link. I would be really pleased to hear from people making money from this if they would be willing to help or share information - thank in advance for any useful info or comments.

PasturesNew

I do a lot of affiliate marketing. I am probably signed up to about 20 different ad networks.

Nobody can say which one will work/not for your website/visitors. It is all trial, error, tracking, watching stats, changing, tweaking and plugging away.

I was regularly making $300/month from Clickbank (OK, that's not big money, but it's just one of 5-6 regular income streams so it was a nice sideline), that suddenly went to $0 for 2 weeks in a row.

But my affiliate marketing is from a website, I don't do any PPC at all.

It's a huuuge subject really. You just need to give it a whirl and keep trying new things out.

If you PM me I can link you to my list of some companies I use. I wrote the list out for a friend just the other month so is pretty up to date.

You won't be accepted for all of them. Everybody/site gets rejected by some. Clickbank will take anybody though. Even yesterday I get the knockback by a network I applied to, second time they've said no to me ... but I'll try them again in a few months.

I made about £80 from CJ last month too (OK, again it's peanuts, but all these bits and bobs add up!)

bankypanky

PasturesNew wrote: »

I made about £80 from CJ last month too (OK, again it's peanuts, but all these bits and bobs add up!)

Sounds good to me, don't be so self-deprecating! I tried affiliate marketing last year (ryan moran's method). I was absolutely transfixed by the free training videos and went out there and started my own website and worked day and night on it.... I've so far made $33 on clickbank! Must be going wrong somewhere :rotfl::rotfl:I still believe there is money to be made though and will get back to it when I have more time.:T

qw3rt7

My simple advise would be to start your site WITHOUT any affiliates / adverts at all.
This is why:
If you dont think about affiliation (apart from knowing its your long term plan) you will concentrate on building your site content. This is the most important thing, as this is why people will visit your site. I mean, you (and hundreds of thousands of others) come to MSE because its packed with great content and information. You dont come because they make some money if you buy certain products linked from the site.
Also, when promoting your new site, you will find many many potential sources of FREE advertising are closed to affiliate sites, because the majority of these sites offer ZERO value to visitors, and simply work as middle men. Included in this is Word of mouth.
How many people have you recommended MSE to? How many have you recommended hxxp://www.super-cheap-sony-psp-playstaion-make-money-online.com
Anyway, using MSE as a great example( it is after all a very successful affiliate website), you are likely to have the greatest success with very targeted affiliation, preferably introduced AFTER you have a good steady stream of visitors.
Once you have discovered what your sites visitors are really interested in (this wont be hard if you are setting up a forum, you can simply read the posts!) then you can start to recommend products. Have you thought about non-affiliate links to start with?
If you recommend the very best products (ie, find them yourself, research like you would if you where buying for yourself) to your customers, on a regular basis, they will start to value this recommendation, maybe even tell other people about it. Then you can start to add affiliated recommendations amongst the normal ones (as MSE do).

Anyway, long ramble over, hope it makes sense to you.
Regards

Kaizen_Marketing_Print

I could have sworn I gave an example of our affiliates and what to look out for in here.

Alas it must have been deemed spam

Kaizen_Marketing_Print

Glowgirl if you want any specific advice put it up here and I'll answer it for you.

If you didnt get reading it yesterday, my thoughts were to look at products you use as you will be most comfortable selling these to start with!\

sorry the rest of the post was deleted

glowgirl_2

Hi Kaizen Marketing Print, thank you I didn't read it yesterday, why was it deleted? Why was it considered spam?

I had already come to the conclusion of only promoting products I really believe in/would use myself. It really is like a minefield, everything I seem to focus on I come up with obstacle after obstacle, I am now going to revamp my existing blog (already with adsense) and start a new one as well shortly, I haven't yet decided if I want to do affiliate marketing on either tbh I have had some great advice and suggestions from mse and elsewhere and have spent about 2 weeks reading constantly so its all going round in my head at the moment, my lack of techie knowledge really hasn't helped either but I still feel enthusiastic and energised so it cant be all bad, I appreciate your offer of help, I might well take you up on that if I need to:T

glowgirl_2

Hi qw3rt7, I found your post to be really helpful, after weeks of research and great help from others I had kind of come to your suggestions myself however seeing someone else put it in writing has helped confirm my idea. Thank you.

GavB79

Google 'Warrior Forum', and prepare to be up late for a few weeks.

If you have an established web presence there are other monetisation methods other than affiliate marketing - I prefer Adsense as a revenue stream as there is no 'product' to sell as such, and you can choose to be quite passive if you wish. And I DO NOT mean Adsense as the basis of the scam 'get rich quick with google' where you get scammed just to pay to sign up to the program, which is FREE!!

Also, I believe that whatever Internet Marketing channel you decide to pursue, the absolute most essential basic thing to get right is KEYWORDS. Spend a LOT of time researching this before doing anything else. Does your existing blog have the relevant keywords to make your adsense profitable?

glowgirl_2

Hi GavB79, thank you for the ideas, I am already a member of the warrior forum, my blog I have at the moment was started mainly to keep me motivated, I put adsense on it to see if I could get it and also as I am sure you know, once you have it you can put it on any other sites/blogs you have.

I would really like to earn from adsense on its own and build two really good blogs, admittedly I haven't read everything they sent me on making the most of adsense, I am lucky enough that I can take a bit of time to do this without worrying too much about the income they bring in but could just one revenue stream bring in enough money to live on? I realise that would be dependent on traffic but is it realistic? You mentioned keywords also, do you have any tips about making the most of these, in fact any ideas regarding adsense would be welcome, I have done nothing at all with my current blog except update it once or twice a week, again, mainly for my own benefit.

Thanks again for any help offered:)

TTMCMschine

I agree with qw3rt7 - forget affiliate ads and concentrate on content. I don't know about you but if I search for something & land on a site full of banners, links, and adsense I generally tend to just hit the back button.

I've been playing around with adsense, clickbank, etc with varying results. I earn about $250 per month from adsense now, about $300 from clickbank (touch wood - I too find it very hit & miss), I get about £90 a month from some adverts I managed to sell, and about £25 from Amazon & affiliate window.

I have to say that I'm really disappointed with Amazon, their percentage is very low & I'm not convinced it tracks all sales, and I'm not too impressed with trying to sell affiliate products either.

It can be a lot of effort for not much return, and my earnings are spread across a few websites.

I've come to the conclusion that it's much better to find a niche, concentrate on it & in making it the best you can, and then start adding products later.

For clickbank products I think the best way is to either concentrate on things that people need right now, like say computer repair advice, or products they are thinking of buying & are investigating - hence reviews can be a good way to catch them.

Be careful not to promote crappy products though or you'll destroy your credibility - & there is lots of rubbish on clickbank.