Has anyone here ever thought of the idea of looking at the best paying ads on your site, finding out if they have an affiliate program and signing up with them directly? Thus, cutting Google out as a middleman? Is this against the terms and conditions of AdSense?
That wouldn't cut out the middleman, because you'd just be replacing one middleman with another. The only way you can cut out the middleman is by selling your ad space directly and running your own tracking scripts.
I'm not talking about using an affiliate network, but if the merchant themselves runs an affiliate program.
Well, strictly speaking affiliate links and Google ads can appear on the same page without violating TOS. So whether you found them through adsense or without adsense I don't think is a problem. Skinny
I think I read once in the TOS that it is against the rules to contact advertisers directly. The question is, does filling in the 'apply to be an affiliate' form qualify as contacting them directly?
Then the merchant themselves becomes the middleman. By this I mean, they will take a cut for administrating and running the programme, and your payout will be less as a result. You pay for the convenience of having someone else set everything up, tracking clicks and checking for fraud, and ensuring the system runs smoothly.
I see your point. Still the amount must be lower as a proportion than the amount Google is taking. At the moment Google is taking huge profits through what should be a commodity service. I guess the way to determine what is more profitable is through analytics. If you know the CTR of the AdSense ads and the price per click, then you can quite easily determine how an affiliate ad is performing compared to that.
The Google TOS says: In my interpretation (which may be wrong) I would think it is OK to contact them regarding an affiliate program. You are just not allowed to contact them about the ads on your site.
Affiliate programs pay more but pay far less often. Affiliate programs require you make a sale directly right then and there. If a visitor clicks on your banner but decides to come back later without going through you, you don't get paid. With AdSense people just have to be curious and you get paid. Overall AdSense will net a higher return unless you dedicate a site for every affiliate program to generate sales.
I fully understand the idea of cutting Google out of the middle in the relationship between you and the advertiser. However, just because someone advertises on your site via Google does not mean that they would want to do so directly. This is a major element of the success of programs like AdSense. They get ads on sites which otherwise cannot atttract advertisers. These programs also work for advertisers, who only need to manage a small number of relationships to advertise on the internet instead of managing a multitude of relationships, agreements, and budgets. If your site is "important" enough to successfully attract direct advertising -- then you will quickly advance beyond Google's AdSense. The ony way to find out if your site is ready is to contact people you think should advertise on your site and close them.
Not all of them. My best affiliate program gives me my customer for life from the minute they visit through my link. Interesting - this means that most merchants must be underpaying their affiliates relative to the true economic value of the visitors being sent.
No, I've never thought about it as it's too much pain, but I've just listened to a teleseminar on this topic a while ago. It's not really about cutting Google as a middle man, but rather going straight to advetisers and offering them something. The seminar was devoted to real estate, distressed properties, foreclosures, refinancing and such. And what these guys did was the following. They provided some free information in exchange for e-mail and postal address. Then, they went to mortgage brokers or some real estate related companies and said - hey, I know you use google to advertise you site. We have e-mails and postal addresses of all these people who are interested in whatever you offer. We want to sell you those leads for buck fifty a pop. If they don't convert for some reason, we'll give you money back guarantee. This was a total underground teleseminar and reminded me of traffic arbitrage - three years ago nobody knew what arbitrage was, now everyone. It makes total sense to use site as a lead capturing mechanism and selling those leads to interested parties, so that they can be followed up offline via mail or phone. I'm sure it's the next big thing.