Does anyone really make any money from Affiliate Marketing?

mikeb222

I have just started to get interested in AM but I really don't see how people earn good money from it.

My experience has been one of confusion and frustration.

Does anyone have good experience of AM?

Here is my confusion.

Lets say my web site is all about Fishnet stockings, (it's not and I don't know why it came into my head)
So I go to the Affiliate companies like buy.at, affiliate windows etc and sign up to them.
I then sign up to various sellers of fishnet stockings on these Affiliate sites.
Then I advertise these sellers items on my site.
But I only get paid a small commission of say 5%

No saying that I also advertise my site by Click throughs which will also cost me, how the hell do I earn an income form my small 5% commission?

I know I really must be missing something sooo obvious here that it will be embarrassing when you guys identify it, but I am really confused.
Where am I going wrong?

cally6008

You have to be careful with using PayPerClick and read what the program terms are for the site you are advertising.
I'm beginning to find that people to my website want other things besides what my website is about.
You could try setting up a part of your website solely for affiliate links and create a directory of them.

DKLS

My mate does, he earns a shed load, but he did get in very early when ebay first started, and built a load of free ebay tools for buyers and sellers to use of which he gets a commission on every purchase and new member signing up to ebay.

He has now just bought his 7th house in Cyprus.

gracebiz

Yes you can make money with AM but it takes time and a lot of work. Don't start with PPC or you will quickly go broke. Using your fishnet stockings example (I wonder why this was the first thing to pop into your head?) - I would make a free 'fishnet stockings' site at Squidoo or somewhere similar, post some information, pictures and your affiliate links. Then write several articles about fishnet stockings and post them to ezine articles and other article directories with links pointing back to your squidoo. Then repeat the process with a different product, and another, and another and so on. Eventually you will start making money.

Better still if you make one site for blue fishnet stockings, another for red fishnet stockings etc then link them all up together.

mikeb222

gracebiz wrote: »

Yes you can make money with AM but it takes time and a lot of work. Don't start with PPC or you will quickly go broke. Using your fishnet stockings example (I wonder why this was the first thing to pop into your head?) - I would make a free 'fishnet stockings' site at Squidoo or somewhere similar, post some information, pictures and your affiliate links. Then write several articles about fishnet stockings and post them to ezine articles and other article directories with links pointing back to your squidoo. Then repeat the process with a different product, and another, and another and so on. Eventually you will start making money.

Better still if you make one site for blue fishnet stockings, another for red fishnet stockings etc then link them all up together.

I get what your saying about linking them altogehter, but how does the ezine bit work?
Why would anyone read my link on a ezine site?

mikeb222

DKLS wrote: »

My mate does, he earns a shed load, but he did get in very early when ebay first started, and built a load of free ebay tools for buyers and sellers to use of which he gets a commission on every purchase and new member signing up to ebay.

He has now just bought his 7th house in Cyprus.

That really is greedy.
7 out of the 9
Bah!

PasturesNew

Ah, you're doing it wrong ....

Forget PPC if you don't know what you're doing first, it's a way to burn up money and lose all hope.

I can't write here what you'd need to do as it'd end up being a book. But the brief outline is:

SEO your site
Write good articles
Watch your stats
Give them what they want
Get yourself a list
Get yourself all those lovely opt ins
Mail them

Then, once you've got that working/converting well, do PPC.

gracebiz

mikeb222 wrote: »

I get what your saying about linking them altogehter, but how does the ezine bit work?
Why would anyone read my link on a ezine site?

ezinearticles.com is a hugely popular site with millions of visitors, articles published there also rank well in the SERPs. Submit your articles there (they need to be unique, at least 250 words and not overly promotional) and they will get read and you will get people clicking through to your site.

GavB79

I would echo not using PPC to begin with. Stick with free traffic generation methods like article marketing as mentioned.

Nobody has talked about your actual site. Did you research your site well? Is it optimised for your keyword, one that has good search volume but weak competition?
Sticking with your example of "Fishnet Stockings", 27,000 people are searching for that term each month. In contrast, "Black Fishnet Stockings" is only searched by 1,000 and the competition is mostly weak. You could dominate the SERPs for the second search term. Buy blackfishnetstockings.net, write a couple of content pages, a couple of articles linking back to it. Get 500 visitors a month, 50 of them buy something = £££. (I wouldn't actually pursue something with only 1,000 searches, but you could test your site layout etc. before going for something higher)
Then repeat again and again with more sites and it all adds up.

Use Google Keyword Tool to get stats on keywords.

SunnySusie

Yep, I make some cash through personal projects in this way, normally around the £500 mark but sometimes up to a £1000 or so each month. I also do it professionaly for a large UK website.

https://www.affiliates4u.com is a good place to go for more help. I didn't want to hijack your thread so I started a quick tips thread of my own that outlines what this is all about. It is definitely something that anyone can have a go at and I'm surprised there isnt more chat about it in this part of the forum .

red_devil

what are the best ads to have on your website than you can get a commission from if people buy!