Hello all! I am sorry for starting a new thread but.... My history with affiliate programs has been lukewarm at best--from the perspective of a publisher. My main site (what I call a "hobby" that will one day make me millions...i wish) is a sports site and the majority of money I've made has been through AdSense, Commission Junction (Stubhub) and a gambling site (most profits have come off-site from forums). I've also joined AdBrite, LinkShare and others in efforts to waste time and not make much money. My site is a community site that's produced tons of content and a decent amount of traffic in year 1 (20,000 + uniques monthly). I barely make enough to cover hosting on a dedicated server. And even those profits I'll probably invest in content. BTW--I can't believe my server costs (LunarPages) and my site is still always down it seems. I use Joomla, which can be a mess, but still it's crazy. Now I'm on the merchant end of things, working as a E-Marketing rep for a national car company, with over 18 locations (3 countries) and over 2 million internet sales profits per year. We currently have a custom affiliate program that is pretty sweet, in that clients can take any link on the site and easily convert it to an affiliate link. The program itself is very new, so we've begun reaching out to bloggers/webmasters in efforts to get them to join. Well, we've also begun looking at affiliate programs for a merchant account. So far I've talked to CJ and Linkshare. CJ is priced lower and by our ROI projections we would only need to increase sales by 2% to be profitable by month 2 based on their prices and fees (we'll call it 4 grand for year 1). They told us to expect a minimum 5% increase. LinkShare is much more expensive ($17,000 yearly) although the guy told me they'd haggle on the price. I'm also looking at other programs like merchantzoo, shareasale, maxbounty, icentaclick and RocketProfit. My question is, for a company our size in the rental car business--what would you all suggest? Right now we are leaning towards CJ because we think we'll easily be profitable in year 1. Plus they allow us to maintain our private affiliate network. Also, do these affiliate links help with SEO at all? I know they are all URL redirects but I'd like to think they'd help some. Also, my sports site, any suggestions on how the hell that can make some flow, so atleast I can pay some writers candy money without dipping into my party funds. I have other community sites too (entertainment, politics) and our main audience would be 18-35 year olds. Obviously my side projects and real job have quickly merged into one, which is pretty sweet, as I pump them (us) full of nice backlinks and I'm simply a part of our very new affiliate program. It's a win-win because I'll get commission for however much I can bump up our search engine rankings/sales. Any advise is appreciated. Thanks, Jesse Herman
I would go with CJ as well to advertise your rental, but look outside of the internet as well to billboards around the areas. Check out AFF for your sports site, it is adult related but you can get some good money with the sign ups. Or start selling adspace on your own or through adbrite(adbrite you can request any amount for your links) How are your ads on your site? If its possible include ads in the first two posts as well. Good Luck
Billboards eh? That's interesting...It seems commission junction will be the way to go but I'm going to keep contacting affiliate merchant services and will update this when deciding on a program. I'll look into AFF. I wrote a sports article titled "amanda beard nude in playboy" or something and it still gets tons of hits on search engines. I'm staying away from porn, just because I feel I can make it in other ways, but I'm not above advertising if it can make cash. That article I wrote certainly opened my eyes to the industry. Lot's of porn browsers for sure. I've played with adbrite. I'm just not big on linking content to their site or another random site. Much of my sites content is auto linked so I try an focus on affiliates in that way...without much luck but I see it as a long term thing. I have been using adify lately, which seems to operate like adwords, and the results have been slightly worse than adwords but I like the ad appearance better. DeathRattleSports.com is the sports site if you want to check it out yourself. Any feedback is appreciated.
I'd totally go with Commission Junction. They have some top travel advertisers in the network and I'll even probably promote your company as i'm very active in the niche. Not every link will be a redirect and the affiliate links do definitely helpout with your sites SEO. Best of luck!