Good morning
I run an affiliate scheme for my site, (hosted by WHUK) and I have signed up for the WHUK program, however there is a big but to such schemes.
If its not your main business, a site that exists to attract visitors relevent to the advertising, affiliate links can damage the image of your site as they suggest, to me at least, one of two things;
1) A site that is a hobby, not really atracting many visitors and a bit of extra cash would be welcome by the owner.
2) A corporate site with a similar attitude as 1, but able to spend a bit more on creating the content and with a lot more visitors.
Neither type of site is one that I would visit often.
My WHUK link is simply a text only Severs Hosted By entry at the bottom of the home page, this is a poor advert, but it has no effect on the image of the site. Whether or not it is a good way to do it, I don't know, I am having difficulties explaining the purpose of my site so there is little traffic.
I also have traditional 480*60 pixel banners on my logout page advertising other products that I have written and sell. I can't find anywhere else to put adverts that doesn't seem to change the purpose of my site, from what its real purpose is, to one where the site exists to sell adverts.
I have looked at a number of
affiliate program in the past and generally I don't think that they offer an appropriate reward. This applies to both those managed by the site directly and those managed by the affiliate managing companies.
<ALMOST AN ADVERT>
What I believe to be a fair commission rate is what I offer, which is 30% commission for every purchase by a referred customer and as this is a service site a typical customer will be buying every month.
<END ALMOST AN ADVERT>
Generally affiliates are not respected and are regarded as mugs by the affiliate marketing industry, the agencies that manage the schemes all talk about pay by performance yet they mostly collect a fixed management fee for running the campaign and then a commission per sale that is is up to 30% of the commission that the affiliate gets!
Most schemes try to avoid any form of recurring payout, yet recurring revenue for the affiliate is the important bit. It allows the affiliate to commit a significant portion of his advertising area to a particular scheme as he is in effect being paid for it, not just by the success of this weeks/months sales but also by past success and if he believes in the scheme also future sales. This allows the affilaiate to support the scheme through a quiet patch rather than having to change to another scheme because this weeks sales are down.
Many other schemes that seem to offer good commissions per sale are also ones that you are unlikely to receive a commission for, the time taken to decide to purchase will typically be longer that than the commission eligibility period. For example there are sites offering 10%-20% on a £1,000 sale of a training course, with a 30 day commission period. The reality is that anybody interested in such a course will generally bookmark or remember the site and take longer than 30 days to actually sign up.
Try getting ITV or a magazine to offer advertising on a pay per results basis.
Bye
Ian
Web Hosting Affiliate
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