Affiliate your website... official MoneySavingExpert.com discussion

Zebedee69

geordie_joe wrote: »

last time I looked Clixgalore was far cheaper than AF.

There is a lot of affiliate software out there which might seem expensive. But compared to the start up fees for affiliate networks it is pretty cheap as it's a one off payment and not an ongoing fee.

There ya go, did you find it hard to obtain new affiliates?

Gregm

I am late to this thread and only just read it. One thing that concerns me is the impression I am getting that some think they can create a site and earn money straight away from it.

If you have a site that only a few people visit then chances are you will not earn much if anything at all. Many affiliate/advertising networks monitor who is click their ads and if they see 'clicks' by someone a HIGH number of times they will not be counted. Google adsense for one is very strict on this and do ban 'publishers/webmasters' if they think their is click fraud going on, ie one person clicking on a lot of ads on the site.

You need to attract traffic/visitors to your site, this is probably the hardest thing to do. As Google is the #1 search engine and this is where most of your traffic is likely to originate, your site needs to be indexed in it and indexed well. To improved your chances if this you need :

1. Good Content : If your site has original content you will do better in the search engine rankings, if your site is made up from content from other sites ie affiliate or supliers sites (duplicate content) then chances are your site will not be indexed for long, likewise if your site is just full of affiliate links it will be unlikely that your site will do well in the search engines.

2. Links from other sites: if you can get other sites to link to your website then this will help as google takes into consideration how many other sites link to yours when ranking the site in their search engine. But links from poor or 'spammy' sites can have a detrimental effect.

3. Do not advertise your site with 'pay to surf' type sites, these are sites that pay people to visit other sites. It is a false economy and networks such as Google Adsense will ban you if you use them.

4. Do not do anything Google may consider 'tricking' to improve your position, they will penalise you for this and you could find yourself out of their index. This happened to me recently.

In my opinion before anyone considers trying to moneytize their website with affiliate/adsense type ads they should first concentrate on getting the traffic.
Do not try setting up a site specifically to earn money from advertising, it just doesn't work. Set up your site about something you know, that is close to your heart etc and once you get the traffic then monetize from it, it takes time but should pay off in the end.

Remember, not all sites/niches will make money from advertising, some do some don't.

I have been using Google Adsense on my sites for 4 years, I have a few sites that use it. All but one of my sites are lucky if they get a few hundred visits a month and earnings from each can be as low as just a few dollars a month from each one, I have one site though that for about 8 months of 2007 was getting over 1,000,000 page impressions a day which more than made up for the low earnings on the other sites. Unfortunately Google thought that I was trying to 'trick' them to improve my rankings for some searches and penalised me for it by banning the site from 'Adsense' and removing it from their search engine.

Please don't get me wrong, I am not trying to put anyone off going down this route but just saying it takes time and effort and if your niche is one that can earn well hell it can earn very well. Heck the monetizing of just one site in 2007 turned me from someone about to be repossessed at the beginning of the year to someone debt free apart from small mortgage and having savings by the end of the year.

St8_2

Gregm wrote: »

I am late to this thread and only just read it. One thing that concerns me is the impression I am getting that some think they can create a site and earn money straight away from it.

If you have a site that only a few people visit then chances are you will not earn much if anything at all. Many affiliate/advertising networks monitor who is click their ads and if they see 'clicks' by someone a HIGH number of times they will not be counted. Google adsense for one is very strict on this and do ban 'publishers/webmasters' if they think their is click fraud going on, ie one person clicking on a lot of ads on the site.

You need to attract traffic/visitors to your site, this is probably the hardest thing to do. As Google is the #1 search engine and this is where most of your traffic is likely to originate, your site needs to be indexed in it and indexed well. To improved your chances if this you need :

1. Good Content : If your site has original content you will do better in the search engine rankings, if your site is made up from content from other sites ie affiliate or supliers sites (duplicate content) then chances are your site will not be indexed for long, likewise if your site is just full of affiliate links it will be unlikely that your site will do well in the search engines.

2. Links from other sites: if you can get other sites to link to your website then this will help as google takes into consideration how many other sites link to yours when ranking the site in their search engine. But links from poor or 'spammy' sites can have a detrimental effect.

3. Do not advertise your site with 'pay to surf' type sites, these are sites that pay people to visit other sites. It is a false economy and networks such as Google Adsense will ban you if you use them.

4. Do not do anything Google may consider 'tricking' to improve your position, they will penalise you for this and you could find yourself out of their index. This happened to me recently.

In my opinion before anyone considers trying to moneytize their website with affiliate/adsense type ads they should first concentrate on getting the traffic.
Do not try setting up a site specifically to earn money from advertising, it just doesn't work. Set up your site about something you know, that is close to your heart etc and once you get the traffic then monetize from it, it takes time but should pay off in the end.

Remember, not all sites/niches will make money from advertising, some do some don't.

I have been using Google Adsense on my sites for 4 years, I have a few sites that use it. All but one of my sites are lucky if they get a few hundred visits a month and earnings from each can be as low as just a few dollars a month from each one, I have one site though that for about 8 months of 2007 was getting over 1,000,000 page impressions a day which more than made up for the low earnings on the other sites. Unfortunately Google thought that I was trying to 'trick' them to improve my rankings for some searches and penalised me for it by banning the site from 'Adsense' and removing it from their search engine.

Please don't get me wrong, I am not trying to put anyone off going down this route but just saying it takes time and effort and if your niche is one that can earn well hell it can earn very well. Heck the monetizing of just one site in 2007 turned me from someone about to be repossessed at the beginning of the year to someone debt free apart from small mortgage and having savings by the end of the year.

I agree with everything you mentioned above. I have a site getting about 3000 unique visitors per month earning about $120 from adsense, and that has took some time and effort. Out of interest, on what grounds did google ban you?

Gregm

St8 wrote: »

I agree with everything you mentioned above. I have a site getting about 3000 unique visitors per month earning about $120 from adsense, and that has took some time and effort. Out of interest, on what grounds did google ban you?

Google being Google they don't give much info but they said they have found violations of the Adsense terms and the gave a few examples of what the violation MAY include. This was after the site had adsense running for just over the year without much changing in the way adsense is displayed.

Fuzzyrugby

Hi i'm newbie and been thick i havea website i started for my business and get around 60 to 120 hit a week but not sure which ad banners to go for as my site is regarding children resources and care. any help would be great?? completely new to this.

trojjer

Just wondering if I'm the only one browsing this forum with Firefox and those great extensions known as Adblock and Flashblock? I often forget what annoying banners look like -- and I can't be alone in rarely, if ever, actually clicking such things, surely?

But I can't help wondering if I too could finally scrape a decent enough site together and "monetise" (or "monetize", if you prefer) the traffic... Pah.

MrsChips

Hello - I'm new to this thread and just after some advice...

I currently have a website but would like to add Affiliates so I can start earning more money from it My site is currently linked to Google Adsense but I would like more targetted Ad's and Banner Ad's. However, my site is a Free one (Used Webeden who are brilliant and really easy to use) but I cant add my own HTML or Banner Ad's etc. Can anyone reccommend a FREE Web Builder (One thats easy to use) where its possible to add Affiliate banners and Ad's?

Thanks in advance

geordie_joe

MrsChips wrote: »

Hello - I'm new to this thread and just after some advice...

You could try squidoo, not really your own web site but easy enough to create a web page and earn some money.

I have a site on freehostia powered by wordpress, all for free. I know that when you mention Wordpress most people think "blog", as that is what it is meant for. But if you have a Wordpress site and never post any blog posts and just create pages you end up with a web site and not a blog.

MrsChips

Thanks Geordie - I'll try the ones you mentioned, just been trying BlueVoda but its much more technical in comparison to Webeden.

kingnutter

My website pulled in quite few bob for a while. It was a bit sneaky, but I thought you guys might like to know how it worked.

Basically it was an archive of eBay auctions that were in the news but were pulled by the auction site. They were usually people selling stuff that wasn't their’s such as football teams, wives and various DNA related listings. Pretty dull stuff, but it covered by the media so people wanted to see them. Tens of thousands of people a day in fact, it turned out.

Sometimes I would spot a breaking news story about an auction and manage to archive it before it was removed. Most of the time however I would simply have to search "completed listings" and the whole listing would still be sitting there on their servers.

I would post a link on eBay to my website using keywords in the heading relevant to the removed auction. People would visit "my auction" and click through to my site to "find the information".

Once on my site they could read a small bit of copy and then "click through to the listing on eBay". Naturally the click back to eBay was an affiliate link with Commission Junction.

This paid my mortgage for a couple of years for about half an hour's work a day. Most of my readers were in The States and I ended up on quite a few US radio stations as King Nutter giving the latest from the auction scene. It became cat and mouse with eBay as they kept closing my account and I had to open new ones, but it got to the point where I would open fifty accounts all at once with a new credit card number.

Media interest in eBay faded, but then YouTube came along and started banning vids so I did exactly the same with their keywords. If you entered "Daniella Cicerelli video" (half a million hits one weekend) a short video would play saying "Visit kingnutter.com to see this vid".

Not as lucrative as there was no affiliate incentive, but still good fun. I had Google ads that paid for my server costs at least thrice over. Which may have been the problem...

The site was going really well and about a year ago I had an interview with Google for the position of UK Editor of YouTube.

They seemed very interested about my ingenuity and ability to help users find the content they wanted, so I told them how it all worked.

I soon discovered they were not that impressed. I didn't get the job, YouTube permanently disabled my account and amended their T&Cs to stop people linking to sites containing Google Ads. To be honest it wasn't about the money at this stage and I could have easily dropped the ads. Bypassing their ban by opening any number of accounts was possible too, but it's not as fun without my own username.

I'm not disheartened. I have another idea up my sleeve which will make far bigger bucks. And this time no big corporate will be shutting down my accounts!

There was always something fun about getting caught though.

Good luck everybody.