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What is your experience with affiliate programs?

Posted by zakman • 4/28/07 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: affiliates, ctr, impressions, sales

Hey folks, I've been wondering quite a bit lately about the effectiveness of affiliate programs like LinkShare, CommissionJunction, etc.

Approximately, what CTR (click-throughs) should you have in order to realize a sale/order? I see 2,500 impressions, and a CTR of 6.8 per cent, but no sales. On the other hand, on some ad, I have 440 impressions, a CTR of 1.2 per cent, and I make a sale.

So I'm wondering if I must keep the high CTR's or the ones with very low TR's but which made a sale??? Is there any decision making model to go by?

Thanks! Any remarks welcome

User Comments

4/28/07

jphillips

Hey Zakman, nice to see you on here
Are you using google adwords? If so that's whaat i have the most experience with, so i can try to help you a little.

Honestly i would keep both the one that's at 6.8 and the one at 1.2. It really depends what is your daily budget, to what site you're sending the traffic (what does the sales page looks like?), what payment methods are availaable to the potential customers once they click "join" or "buy", how many keywords you have in your ad campaign, how much you pay for each of them, which ones are your top keywwords (remove them from that ad campaaign, create a new one, and put only the ones that perform well, and leave your other campaign with the poor performing keywords, see if it catches up, if not, delete) Perry Marshall callls this the "peel and stick" method.

I had some problems with a campaign a while ago, sspeend 400 bucks, made 11 sales, on which i made a nice pay. But finaly to realize the "purchase page" was down 6-8 hours everyday. So i dropped them. Maybe i would've made way more money if their website was not dowwn so often....

There are a lot of things to take into account before deleting a campaign.

Do you send the traffic ddirectly to the affiliates' sales page, or you build your own pages and send the traffic there instead?

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4/28/07

borzack

I'm fairly new to affiliate marketing, but few weeks ago I made 2 sale in a day, one was for $40 and the other one is for $175 Boy was i happy!!! I'm still learning though, I've made a blog tracking my progress, but it's not approve by BlogCatalog, i guess it's new. Cheers

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4/28/07

ChurchOfIntegrity

Well it also depends on what your blogs talk about. Perhaps the blog that had the lower CTR but higher sales is simply better suited for affiliate sales so I think you should definitely keep the affiliate ads there. The other blog is perhaps not as well suited for sales but because it has such a high CTR rate then maybe you should switch over to Adsense or some other ad format that pays directly for CTR. Just food for thought.

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4/28/07

zakman

Thanks Jon for the tips and adwords (which, BTW, I've cut and pasted in my scrapbook:) but I'm into any kind of advertising that involves spending money.

Sorry I guess I shiuld have made it more clear -- I was talking about the affiliate links I carry from LinkShare and other programs. I'm trying to extremely choosy in what ads to display cause I don't want the blog to look like a collage of ads! I guess I'll keep them both ads for some time -- the one that had a high CTR but no sales, as well as the one with low CTR but made a sale.

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1. 4/29/07
  
  jphillips
  
  ah well, if you need adwords advices, you know where to find me hehe
  The ads you're talking about are on Celebritybrands.net?
4/29/07

zakman

Yep its the celebritybrands.net, and I've taken up a truckload of programs from LinkShare and CJ and a couple others. Trying to insert relevant ads inside the posts. I'm now almost certain that the ads in the sidebar are worthless, including Google ads, they just hit the blind spot of the readers. But I think if you spoonfeed the reader it might work - like a make-up ad inside a Cindy Crawford post! lol

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4/29/07

seedsofpurpose

Hey Zakman, I have spent a lot of money over the years marketing in magazines, e-zines, newspapers, etc... I learned some years ago from a "marketing whiz" that a person's eyes are naturally drawn to the upper right-hand side of a page. I too, have found this effective. If you a have a choice, try putting your most important ad in the upper right-hand side of your blog and then trail down from there. I have seen others have a lot of success by using a web page to showcase the ads or whatever product links you wish to focus on and then using the blog as a forum to discuss the different product or services. The blog can be a form of word of mouth advertising and can be used to lead those interested, to your site or page. Keep in mind that CONTENT IS KING. Word of mouth advertising is pretty powerful and is highly sought after these days. A few bucks will get you a domain name from godaddy and most internet providers make free web pages a part of their service. Check with yours. My 13 year-old daughter is constantly building free pages through our server (Bellsouth). Just one way of doing it. I hope I helped. Good luck!

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1. 4/29/07
  
  zakman
  
  Thanks for your input seeds. I guess the top right-hand corner could be a 'catchy' location. At the moment I have the Google search box, but I figure that's a mighty waste, since I see from the analytics that on one is using that (after all, almost everyone has the Google toolbar on their browser.) I figure I'll experiment with appropriate 250x250 ads in the top right corner for a while.
  
  And I believe that a blog discussing products or services could definitely be the right place to sell the same! But I think you need a strong knowledge base or networking to kick off a topic and keep the comments coming in. For example, I see new products or services being launched all the time, but I also find myself completely under-equipped to even make a comment on them, since I've not used them. I think a blog without expertise in such areas could lose its credibility in no time!
4/29/07

syafthegeek

I haven't made anything from it

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4/30/07

5staraffiliates

Hi zakman,

There are a ton of factors that influence click through and conversion rates. NOTE: #5 is very important even though I put it last.

1) Targeting - how targeted are the products to the demographics of your blog?

2) TYPE of blog - Some blogs attract buyers (product review blogs as example. Some attract info-seekers, not buyers. Many entertainment related blogs for example are tough to monetize because reader want to be entertained and are not there to buy anything.

3) Product Category - Conversion rates vary widely by market. Click through rates do too.

4) Merchant Creative - The merchants creative could have an impact on CTR and one merchant could give higher CTR for the same products.

5) Merchant CONVERSIONS - Your job is to send traffic. It's up to the merchant to convert from hit to sale. SOME MERCHANT SITES SUCK and are not designed well for conversions. OTHER MERCHANTS HAVE LEAKS. You could send your traffic to a merchant with leaks and the customer could buy and you never see a dime. What are common merchant leaks? Large 800# phone order numbers. (Good merchants have a way to still track phone sales but MOST do not.) Adsense, other ad banners or other affiliate programs on the merchant's site. You send traffic and they click away, making the merchant money but not you.

I've only skimmed the surface but the 5 Star affiliate blog has tons more info on all the topics above, if you need more info. :-)

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1. 4/30/07
  
  zakman
  
  hi 5star,
  
  I'm just returning after a mind-'blogging' visit to 5staraffiliates.com .... wheeeeeww.... the more you learn, the more needs to be learned!!!
  
  I'll need to take another look at niche sites with a fresh brain ... lol... but as of now:
  
  #5 is scary ... I had no clue something like 'leaks' existed.... plus, of course the orders from 800 numbers, there's nothing we can do about that, I think
  
  #4 - of course don't we have some control over them, in choosing the creative?
  
  #3 - No comments. Actually, i don't understand what's that about.
  
  #2 - I might want to disagree a little here. You write "Many entertainment related blogs for example are tough to monetize because reader want to be entertained and are not there to buy anything."
  
  With a rather entertainment/celebrity news oriented site, I'm finding that 80 per cent of my traffic is coming from search engines, and the searches are specifically for products used by celebrities -- not for information/gossip on celebrities. So, if they're looking for specific products, I put an affiliate link for that product right there on the post (not somewhere else, like, say, in the sidebar or top of page).
  
  I feel that my 'entertainment related blog' is getting trafic from people who are looking to buy, even if it's not a niche product.
  
  Well, maybe it's too early to say anything, cause my visits are low, but they're shooting up like crazy every day, and I'm starting to see a pattern in the search items.
  
  #1 - The ads are okay, but they're targeted at women, and I have no clue if my visitors are men or women! ... lol ... must be all men for the ladies' pics I publish .... lol
  
  And now I need a smoke.
  
  Thank you for your reply!
1/16/08

blerim

Affiliate programs are great moneymakers, with minimum work, but there are a few tricks to know to really achieve the success you are looking for. Affiliate programs vary in the amount of money they will bring in, as commissions vary greatly. If you really want to make a good living with affiliate programs you need to be very aware of what you commission will be.

bostonseofreelancer.blogspot.com/

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