I'm sure the experienced marketeers amongst this forum have heard this question time after time but here goes; ... how do you get companies to advertise on your website? See I told you so! Let me elaborate a little, I run a popular holiday website, which at it's peak in January receives approx 80,000 unique visitors, these visitors are holidaymakers in the UK, Europe, US etc and are looking for holiday property to rent. Every day (and I'm not exaggerating!) I receive emails from holidaymakers asking where the best deals are for flights, for car hire etc and I end up sending out an email with some URL's. SO I thought, why not take advantage and set up a 'Travel Shop' where companies can advertise on our site, and provide holidaymakers with a better online experience. Excellent idea I thought... but I have telephoned, emailed, and only two companies have signed up in over four months... Help! Darren p.s I have thought about Adsense, not sure about that yet.
AdSense is probably the easiest route... you don't have to get relationships with individual advertisers, and the payout generally is higher per click than a private deal.
You can also join an affiliate network like Commission Junction, where you choose advertisers and advertisements from a huge selection. Then, just choose travel-related advertisers. More data at: What are affiliate programs?
Assuming your site has decent PR value you should be able to sell text links off the site at anywhere between $10 and $25 per month per link.
Thanks for your comments everyone! I'll check out the affiliate section, and see what I can find out - with regard to PR, it's up and down like a see-saw at the moment, the actual Travel Shop page was PR5, is now only PR4. I can see another day link building coming up! Darren p.s. my reasons to contact companies direct is because 1) sometimes it's best to have a contact, and liaise with them if they have special offers which can be posted in our newsletter and 2) If large companies advertise with us, it improves our company profile to visitors.
Go ahead and set up your shop/recommended sites/whatever and list a few companies for a week. Then pull the links and e-mail them. Give them a taste of what they will be missing if they say no.... P.S. Hi Darren!
If people are visiting your web site for genuine independent advice then you've got to be careful that you don't compromise this trust in you by providing links/adverts to places that you wouldn't normally recommend. In this case I would recommend using AdSense. Cheers James
Hi, have a look at the signature domain it may give you some ideas. There is also propriatry content that is syndicated like who flies where and taxi DB's etc. Send me a PM if you are interested maybe we can do something together. Also once a year there is the WTM in London - mandatory for everyone in travel. M
Expat - I'll have a look at the website in more detail this evening, but it looks like some of your content could be useful to use especially where flights, and who fly's where is concerned. I've been to the WTM for the past two years, and I'm sure I'll be heading that way again this year! (for those not sure what I'm talking about the WTM is the 'World Travel Mart' which takes place in a different country every month. It's a BIG event for travel companies, and it's even better if you manage to get hold of some 'first day' passes with free food and beverages included! Hi Bernard - I'm not following you around from forum to forum.. honest Good idea about putting the links, to the type of companies who I would want to be listed with, and then contact them with a link. Thanks everyone.. some useful guidance here! Darren
That would be one of the reasons why I might not choose Adsense, because I don't have control on the companies listed (well I do but it takes a lot of messing around!) where if I contact companies who I know are reputable and offer a good service, with good rates then I feel more comfortable referring people to them.
As long as you make it clear that the AdSense web sites are sponsorships then there won't be a problem. Cheers James
It's been my experience that Google is pretty good about watching Adwords advertisers. Maybe that's my bad for being too trusting in Google, but I have never heard a complaint about any of the ads on any of my sites.
Nor have I. I feel they do a great job with the program- easily the best I can see having for on a forum or dynamic pages.
I am in aggreement with James W. Once you begin charging for your rec your credibility automatically will be questioned by your site visitor. In their minds will be the question are you simply advertising them for the money or is it a true unbiased rec. You can do a combo of both, a resource section of unsolicited recs and adsense for revenue
Maybe not use Adsense. If you say "these links are adverts" then less people are likely to click on them. I like sites which when talking about a certain subject, provide you links to buy/look at in detail the product they were talking about. I'd go back and look at who you can contact. Perhaps stick with the "online stores" rather than "high street" based ones...
If you could only get two companies to sign up, could it be because that you did only a couple of thousand hits a day? Could it also be that your site isn't appealing? I don't know, I'm just throwing it out there.