affiliates without owning a websites

I'm pretty new at this online marketing game but this is what i've understood so far:
with google adwords, anybody can be a marketer... and you don't need a website for it, just a google account and become an affiliate of another company. So far so good. But what is the best affiliate program to sign up with? CJ is apparently one of the best, but when you sign up, you need to have your own website. They don't seem to cater for for people who only want to use adwords. Are there any other good programs out there that offer a wide variety of advertisers?

 

My experience using Adwords to drive traffic to affiliate sites is not good. The problem is that the affiliate profit on an item is not enough to pay for the advertising.

In my experience I ended up paying Google $500 for adwords that results in $450 profit for me. Not a very good business model.

I think it is pretty easy to understand why this is the case. The same person who is paying you 10% or 15% of the value of each sale is obviously making a lot more than that on each sale. So they can afford to pay higher prices for AdWord ads than any affiliate can and as a result more or less price the affiliate out of the market.

 

So you're saying that using adwords, you are actually competing with the websites that make the sale? but surely a lot of advertisers do not bother marketing their own site and rely on others to do the marketing for them?
if you have to compete with other marketers, it's not that bad b/c then you can try to improve on the keywords or on the ad copy. If i look at how bad some of the ad copy is at the moment, i'm sure i could write a better ad, with a higher click through rate and better conversion. Especially in the european market, where i think people are not as clued up just yet about the possibillities of google adwords.

 

Ok. You seem to have your mind made up. I'm not quite sure why your asked the question under those circumstances.

I have heard of specific products or service where AdWord advertising works for the affiliate. So give it a try and come back in a month or six week and let us know how you are doing.

 

yes, i do want to give it a try, but my original question was:
how do i sign up for an affiliate program if i don't actually own my own website?

Cj requires you to own your own website before you can become a publisher (i don't have one and also don't want to go through the trouble of getting one). Basically, i'm looking for a (european) CJ-like service that doesn't requires you to own a website in order to join the program.

 

OK - Here's what I heard....

The Google Adwords thing can work with affiliates that pay for things like memberships or who have a tiered structre where you can earn based on what people you get to sign up can earn.

Example: some of the dating sites out there pay a monthly commission for each member you get to sign up. IN this case, getting one person to sign up might bring you 12 months worth of income at say $5 a month. And maybe they give you a little bit for each person taht person gets to sign up.

Or Ebay - where you get a little dough for each person you get to sign up and you can get a little dough for each person THEY get to sign up. Som e programs go several levels deep.

If you can use it to generate downstream income, it MIGHT be worth it.

 

I don't have an answer to that question. But I'll rent you a page that you can give to these people. We will put all your affiliate links on it and then you can do whatever you want with Adwords.

Are you sure that AdWords will allow you to use your affiliate code as part of the click through URL when you buy and ad?

 

Compar:

yes, adwords lets you customize the url on your keyword as follows:
ie for CJ affiliate program: http://www.qksrv.net/click-*affilateID*-*AdvertiserID*

I've spent quite a bit of time already researching adwords, and i think i know how it works pretty well, but I need an affiliate ID of course.

there's this 'e-course' out there which one can buy called 'google cash', but from the looks of it, it can't tell me what i don't already know (except of course how to obtain an affiliate ID as an individual)

btw, thanks for all the advice, really appreciate it

 

A good one is www.tradedoubler.co.uk they have a few companies that dont advertise their own products in google, plus they are pretty active in europe.

I dont know many others, I found out that country related programs work way better, and thus I only use a few programs that only work in the netherlands. Let me know if you are interested in dutch programs.

 

I've heard (in the Amazon Forum) of people being kicked out of the Amazon program for opening an account when they didn't own a website.

It was over 2 months ago, and I can't find the thread. Maybe Amazon changed their TOS, but you may want to at least make sure it's legit to do before sinking any money into it.

 

I had a very good experience with the new Netscape ISP affiliate program in March. I did have to give a website name (to commission junction) and I did put a banner on my website but I think I made one sale that way. AdWords made 98% of the sales. It was very profitable but sales eventually dropped off and my commissions went below my daily costs so I had to stop the campaign. I tried a couple others but nothing worked like Netscape who gave, and still does, $25 for every sign up to their ISP. I've been looking for another good program but haven't found one. I tried H&R Block products during tax season but had no luck. So it works. You just have to find a good program at the right time.