Any Affiliate Marketers in here?

[deronsizemore]

Have any pointers for someone thinking about trying it out?

[mobilebadboy]

What kind of pointers are you after?

My first piece of advice is to try and go with something you have a general interest in, a hobby even (atleast to start with). Find merchants that sell products that pertain to your interest (think broad, not specific). Even find merchants that may have products you know something about and can write reviews on. Write other general articles related to the interest.

Like Chris with his gardening stuff.

Present yourself as knowledgeable about the interest, and that will gain credibility and trust with your visitors and make them more likely to buy through your merchants.

Or if you're a good B.S.'er, you could do it with a non-interest. But I've tried getting into fields I know very little about and have no interest in, just to try and make a buck, and the results have been way less than stellar.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to follow up. I'm sure someone can offer up advice.

[FPU]

Find some great affiliate networks, maybe the members can list those they use.

Shareasale.com is a good one, so is Commission Junction, there are a ton of them out there today.

You have to match the right programs with your web pages and drive traffic to make money.

[deronsizemore]

Have you heard of CPA Empire Affiliate Network before? I was going to sign up there but the sign up page where it asks for your bank info and social wasn't totally secured it didn't look like, so I was a little unsure of doing that.


What kind of pointers are you after?

My first piece of advice is to try and go with something you have a general interest in, a hobby even (atleast to start with). Find merchants that sell products that pertain to your interest (think broad, not specific). Even find merchants that may have products you know something about and can write reviews on. Write other general articles related to the interest.

Like Chris with his gardening stuff.

Present yourself as knowledgeable about the interest, and that will gain credibility and trust with your visitors and make them more likely to buy through your merchants.

Or if you're a good B.S.'er, you could do it with a non-interest. But I've tried getting into fields I know very little about and have no interest in, just to try and make a buck, and the results have been way less than stellar.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to follow up. I'm sure someone can offer up advice.

I guess there are many forms of Affiliate Marketing? What you described wasn't necessarily what I was referring too. I was meaning when you sign up for an affiliate network and a PPC network like Yahoo Search Marketing and push your offers through the sponsored results pages...

[Cutter]

CPA Empire has a reputation of f*ing with affiliates, as long as your are only sending them a few thousand $ of leads a month you should be ok.

You can make a ton of money from affiliate marketing, but you must have the ability to drive traffic volume.

Here is what I would recommend to get started, before doing anything you need some tracking software. You have to have to ability to know exactly what keyword is being searched, what website referred the click, which ad the visitor clicked from -- at the bare minimum. I hired a programmer and had him custom write me a system, along with a bunch of other management stuff.

Next contact your affiliate manager and ask which offers are hot and working well. Then start out getting traffic as cheap as possible, move the bids upwards for what works, and move then down and kill off what doesn't. You basically repeat that process over and over. Software can automate this for you but you are still going to need to think out of the box and build your own sites (direct linking to affiliate offers doesn't work very well PPC.) Its a full time job, and a hard one at that.

[deronsizemore]

Hey Andrew, thanks for the info.

What other Affiliate Network would you recommend? This is the first bad thing I've heard about CPAEmpire, but I don't like the sound of it. I'm a member at Azoogle right now, but that's it. I've heard a lot of bad things about CJ too (I was banned for low activity a while back because I thought I was going to get into it and didn't get around to it).

For moving bids up and down for what's working and what's not, what software can do this for me? I'll be doing it myself to start as I won't have a lot of offers going on at once anyway (thinking of starting out with 3-5 offers to start, does that sound right for a complete noob?).

I'm glad you said that direct linking to affiliate offers doesn't work well in PPC, because that's exactly what I was going to do. From some other guys I've chatted with, I thought this is what they did and was one of the main forms of the business. Since that doesn't work well, what does?

Thanks again.

[FPU]

Andrew gives good advice on running with your winners and cutting your losses when it comes to PPC spending.

CJ has always deleted accounts for lack of activity, I think too quickly and have had the same problem with them, but they are a giant and purge non-performing affiliates for a reason.

Try Shareasale.com, they don't dump small affiliate marketers like CJ does and they are solid.

As far as CJ is concerned you just have to sign up again and pick a few programs and focus on them to stay on with them, they want to see activity and some sales generated or they will dump you again.

You don't need software to raise and lower bids, you can do that be reviewing your success rates and adjust your bids accordingly.

[deronsizemore]

Thanks for the thoughts FPU. Yeah, honestly I probably won't sign back up with CJ. I don't want to use another email address to be honest.

[agua]

Yeah don't use CJ ever - I just built a site around an offer of theres... it took me about a week and a half to build, then I started promoting it (about 2 weeks), but didn't seem to be getting any clicks or sales so started investigating in CJ's backend - It turns out they have dropped the advertiser (or the advertiser dropped CJ - more likely) with no emails going out to me to warn me - now that totally p*sses me off.

Now not only have I wasted the best part of a month on this site (the advertiser was quite unique so its not as if I can find an easy replacement) but I had to find out myself the hard way with absolutely no communication from CJ, not even a simple email to publishers who are signed up to promote the specific offer (surely that can't be hard) - but also a months worth of potential profit wasted. For all I know the offer was pulled the day after I started building the site.

I never really made good bank with CJ - but now I'll be making absolutely nothing cos I ain't going to go near there site again - well until they sort there communication out.

ShareaSale 100% - never a problem and great communication.

[FPU]

The same thing happens with Shareasale too, companies drop out and their links don't work, it is up to the webmaster to stay on top of each program you run on your pages.

If CJ drops you, take their banners off your site, if a company drops out of Shareasale or their program is temporarily offline take their banners down and replace them, like Cutter said, it is a lot of work, if you don't keep up you are ripping yourself off.

[agua]

Agreed - although Shareasale provide a single page to enable you to view all the programs you promote, view their online status and also view their online history - whereas CJ just provide the most user unfriendly publisher area ever :)

I've just seen that SAS also have a rss feed showing merchants who have gone offline

[Cutter]

Azoogle is good, PM if you want more good networks. I wouldnt mess with CJ, shareasale or any of those types networks for beginning (pay per sale.)

Software.. i have looked at a few, but all have big downsides... I am traveling and need to check my desktop for the links. I will try to post them on thursday.

[amberstar702]

For several years, I was a Friendfinder affiliate. They are easy to work with, pay promptly and can be contacted by phone. I created a website for each of their programs that I felt comfortable with and did reasonably okay financially. It was a lot of work adding content, etc. Their stats are easy to read but sometimes I wondered if I actually got paid for all those members who signed up. That's one of the problems with affiliate sites - there is no way to really KNOW and you have to trust them.

Now I have a dating directory with some affiliate links and others which are just informational so I will not be banned by directories that call sites with all affiliate sites "link farms". I guess Google likes me because I went from a PR0 to PR3 pretty quickly.

I am signed up with CJ and did not know they dump you if there is insufficient activity. I'm wondering how long they allow you before they do so. :eek: I have sooo many links that following up on them will be a big job. Thanks for the info. I also am signed up with individual/independent affiliates so do not have all my eggs in one basket.

[artcoder]

What do people think of using Amazon instead of CJ? Afterall, amazon is not likely to "drop out".

[amberstar702]

ShareaSale 100% - never a problem and great communication.

I think I will investigate ShareaSale if you speak so highly of them. :)

[amberstar702]

I received a message from CJ this past weekend advising me that I will be dropped since there has been no activity. If I had not been forewarned on this forum, I would have gone into shock. Apparently, the time period they allow you is six months. I added my first CJ link back in May but my website was far from operational then so I think that is unfair regarding time.

They did advise me though to consider making a purchase thru one of my affiliates to avoid being penalized. Not a problem as I was going to buy a perfume set as a personal gift thru a nonaffiliate site and made the purchase thru an affiliate - which turned out to be a good company. Now I can make a personal comment about how good they are. :)

Hopefully, things will pick up so my purchases are not important as I have about 26 links thru them.

[Cutter]

You can just reactivate your CJ account anyways.

They are screwed up and both advertisers and affiliates have been slowing baling out for years now.

[amberstar702]

Even though I made my perfume purchase, the company DID NOT have it listed so I had to write to them with my particulars and am awaiting a response. I know I can reactivate but doing so is a pain and just a waste of time that is needless.

I hope they can sort this out without any more emails on my part. :eek:

[haute_hunk]

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[stream]

I would learn html it willl help you understand the workings of a linking structure and make it a heck of a lot easier to edit code. I dont think you need to get educated to the point of insanity but at least get the basics.