affiliate schemes - which are best?

danster

hi all,
im looking into doing a couple of affilaite schemes such as http://www.affiliatewindow.com. I just wanted to know if anyone has had any experience of them and if so, which worked for them? As i understand it, you select a business sector (such as home & garden, books, sports goods), then build a website that attracs lots of user interested in sports goods, for example, and then place advertisments on your site.
any help or advice would be much appreciated.
thanks.

Frugaldom

What you have said is correct. I have tried several affiliate schemes over the past few years. My biggest problem is in concentrating so much time on setting it all up, trying to get enough visitors to site to make it worth while and then, just as the money starts coming in, the companies pull out as affiliates! I have just built a steady stream of income from eBay via Commission Junction, now eBay has pulled out to set up on their own!

Google adsense seems to work not too badly but, again, it's a great deal of work for not a lot of income, then income is affected by the rate of exchange as they pay out in US Dollars.

I have never met anyone who is earning a living from affiliate schemes, although, apparently, many are. Personally, I'm happy to make it to £1000 per year, as it covers all the expenses of Internet access, domain names and commercial webspace but it nowhere near covers the hours spent updating sites when all the codes change.

Good luck with your enterprise, build it slowly and concentrate on driving the right customers to your site and things could develop from there.

homeworkeruk

You're right in that you need to choose a theme, but what you'll find most effective is to start by choosing a theme that interests you, or topic you know a lot about and then create a site around it.

Once you've got some genuine content that someone would be interested in reading, then you can look for affiliate programs that fit in with the theme. There are about a dozen UK affiliate agencies alone, plus many more US agencies and a handful of Australian ones, so there are plenty of places to look. If you're ever stuck for relevant affiliate links both eBay and Amazon run their own programs where you can link to specific products or just by key words, and of course there's Clickbank for information products (downloadable guides).

Google Adsense can be very profitable, but does depend on the subject matter of your site. My own homeworking site is on a high paying topic so in a good month I can make $2000+ from Google alone even with quite low traffic, although the exchange rates means I'm lucky to take home £1000.

Personally, I find the biggest problem is keeping up to date as many companies regularly change between affiliate agencies. Not sure whether this is to get themselves a better deal or just fresh eyes but it means I'm forever updating links.

This is a massive topic that I've only touched on but I'm happy to answer any specific questions if you want to PM me.

altyfc

Affiliate marketing is pretty tough. It's what I do in conjunction with doing web design for third parties.

The big problem with it is that it takes time. In the early days you might only make a few £ a month. Stick at it, though, find a niche that works (easier said than done) and achieve high levels of quality traffic and the potential in the longer term is pretty good. The nice thing about is that it tends to be - further down the line - recurring income (so long as you keep your traffic healthy) for modest additional work.

There is a good community for affiliates in the UK called affiliates4u that you might find helpful.

save-a-lot

The problem is most merchants are in the mainstream and everybody is advertising their links, and as such you will face super-competition.

I make more in adsense, as I run some local interest sites which are truely niche. Your site needs to be super sticky, keeping the visitor there, so, interesting content is a good idea. It all starts small, so be prepared for a long wait before you see results

save-a-lot

Just thought google coop is good, you can brand google results to the style of your own site. So run a google powered search engine/directory as the adsense included in the results are commission paying

danster

hi, thanks very much all for replying. lots of useful tips there. thanks homeworkeruk for the offer, i may take you up on that!
so, i think it comes down to find a niche market selling high value products... hhmmm....

xavierforex

altyfc wrote: »

Affiliate marketing is pretty tough. It's what I do in conjunction with doing web design for third parties.

The big problem with it is that it takes time. In the early days you might only make a few £ a month. Stick at it, though, find a niche that works (easier said than done) and achieve high levels of quality traffic and the potential in the longer term is pretty good. The nice thing about is that it tends to be - further down the line - recurring income (so long as you keep your traffic healthy) for modest additional work.

There is a good community for affiliates in the UK called affiliates4u that you might find helpful.

Yes affiliate marketing takes time but its not that tough. I am doing this business last 2 years and i find it quite comfortable now. The income is stable if you have experience and to gain experience you have to keep patience and work hard initially.

Regards

altyfc

danster wrote: »

so, i think it comes down to find a niche market selling high value products... hhmmm....

Hmmm... I didn't notice anyone say that! High value products doesn't necessarily mean good commissions. It doesn't necessarily follow like that. Take flights for instance... the value of a sale can be quite high but the commissions on flight sales are notoriously not that great as the margins they are dealing with are slimmer (or at least so we're told).

savemoney

maxlazermarketing reported for signature

AWinner

This how the company that I mainly work with describes how affiliate marketing works in their sector.

"Let’s use our affiliate program, the XXXXXXX Program, as an example. In a nutshell…
STEP 1 -- You send visitors to our Web site, using whatever creative marketing ideas you can devise. You "warm up" visitors so that they arrive at the XXXXXX sales site with an open-to-buy frame of mind. In other words, you "PREsell" and then, we "sell" XXXXXX products.
STEP 2 -- We identify and track those visitors (via a proven cookie/database-driven system) as belonging to you.
STEP 3 -- If they buy a XXXXX product (now or in the future), you get a commission.
STEP 4 -- (The best part) We pay you.
All you need to do is PREsell your visitors. XXXXXX looks after everything else, including...
• processing credit cards
• shipping products
• providing follow-up customer support