I'd like to know how much people are making from their affiliate programs. Currently i make 2k-3k/month, but I want to go back to school and get my masters and in order to do this I will need to get up to the 7k+/month range. I just really started toying with affiliate programs in July, and have now built an entirely new site that is much better than the last. So, let me know how much financial success you guys have had with your affiliate programs and how long you've been doing this or how long it took you to get to the point that you are at.
Why don't you tell us how you are making it, that way I can quit working on a concrete construction crew. I ain't making enough to feed my 12 cats, so let us know how you are doing it and others will help you get to 7K a month.
If i told you would it be helping me or helping you? (lol). Mainly, spending 8 hours a day creating pages for a niched directories. I didn't post it to brag about it... I really would like to know how much is being made by others.
No one thinks you are bragging, no one is going to get rich on 2-3 grand a month, you are right, you and I need to do better, but you are doing better than a lot of folks so you should help us also if you want help back. You do all the standard stuff like www.cj.com and www.linkshare.com and www.shareasale.com Right?
adsense and cj only... basically i try and find a keyword that is searched alot in a regional aspect. For example, since the term "insurance" would take forever to get solid rankings for, maybe if you break it down regionally like "seattle insurance". Although it is searched much less, it is more likely to get good results and if you break down your site good enough, that traffic will add up. However, let me warn you, you are looking at months of tidious work to do something like this. I hope no one is going to get pissed at me for telling others this... will probably screw me too by bringing more competition. Hope this helps.
We give out trade secrets here 1,000 times a day, how many secrets can someone take advantage of? Even if someone tries to duplicate your sites they will not be as successful as you because it takes a lot more than a simple "tip" to find success. Don't worry about others going out and taking your advice and using it against you, that is almost as probable as Tiny Tim becoming more popular than the Beatles.
The Who? I mean... Regionalization is key. That's the way you're going to be able to fight as a small time publisher. You won't be making big bucks with one site, but by creating several you'll do ok for yourself.
cgo85, congrats on doing so well...not bad earning 2-3k/month since you only started in July. Few ways you can increase your revenue. Since you already know how to actually do it, one way is to simply duplicate the entire system. Create a new website for a similar but unrelated market to pull in more revenue. Do a horizon expansion and then link the sites together. Eg. You might have a site about tennis equipment (tenniseq.com). You could start up another site on tennis coaching and techniques...(tenniscoach.com). After you have started a few more tennis sites, you can link them all up at (tennis.com). Another way is to look at what you are currently doing and see how you can increase your revenue from your existing customers. Do you upsell and are you making any backend sales?
Use the same ideas you are using in your current model that is generating the 2k and expand it over more quality programs.. try new things if you don't see quality progress on each as each product has different buyers with different ways of finding products.
Couldn't agree more. I have a few sites that do well, and for the past year I started getting distracted and trying different ideas. Then it hit me upside the head and I realized, well if 2 sites make me this much, imagine how well I'd do if I have 10 sites just like this?? Then I'd be sitting on my computer in the bahamas. It may take longer given sandboxing of new sites etc, but I'm looking down the road.....
I have a website on a famous painter from the late 1800's that gets a fair amount of traffic I guess. Well I had it up since 1997 moved the domain name a couple times and added things. Lots of people really love the site and just two months ago it made its first $25 lol.. amazingly the next month it made another $25 which really shocked me. That was from allposters! I had some amazon things on there for a long long time too and they never made anything. I have some adsense ads on there but i just dont think they are relevant enough for many clicks because people go to that site to find infomation, not buy someones paintings they never heard of from this year.
In a way you're right Design1 but you can research more products and categorize them on your site (such as books from Amazon) Adsense, and other affiliate programs from cj.com It's wise to mix in a bunch of revenue streams so it ensures that you make money no matter what your visitor's interests are.
I doubt sharing that info is going to screw you are anyone else for that matter. There is plenty to go around obvisouly. As to the regional aspect, that is a good idea, but no big secret. Just look at overture or google for keywords and you will regularly see, Wisconsin Attorney, New York lawyer, etc.. Good idea though! As to how I do, like most, I am not gonna share the $ amount, as for one, some programs consider this a violation of the TOS, however what I will say is that I had a few sites that I did nothing to, ie., no promotion at all.. Just slapped some affiliates/adsense code in and they make money. No work really as they are already there, already popular, etc. I am just capitalizing off of what is already there. Once I started to see a revenue stream I figured I would dedicate the 4 hours I sleep a night to actually working on promoting these and other sites we have. If it pays off with NO work, what will it do with work? Better....
I am curious about that being the best route, as I have also heard it tends to confuse your shoppers. Having just a few merchants tends to do better, then tons of options I have read... because it's more focused, and not overwhelming to your visitors. I've even considered removing adsense from my sites, because I, personally, would rather score an affiliate sale on a click then 15 cents. But again, that would be an experiment for me... and mainly I have considered changing it, because the multiple stream approach hasn't worked with the little traffic I've had. Anyways, wasn't saying you're wrong or anything.. just stating what my experience has been so far, and it made me wonder if I should be more focused and use 1-3 merchants, as opposed to any affiliate program who fit in with my topic.
Like most of us on this forum, I have experimented with tons of ad and affiliate programs. The key to success is putting in your time... You have to research and experiment with as many programs as you can to find the ones that work. There are so many junk programs out there that don't pay a dime, or they only pay a dime even though you may be driving tons of traffic to their product. Once you find a few that work, focus on building a relationship with them and building your sites around them. In the past I've wasted a lot of time on building sites before I had found a good affiliate partner to market with, and in the end, regardless of how good my site was, the programs I used just didn't pay out. Hope this helps.
Big Congrats on 2-3K a month and Best of Luck going on to 7k! I love it when people talk about success and ways to improve on current results. We have affiliates getting individual monthly checks for 8K - 15K from some of our programs. I know it's not easy and they work very hard to get to that income level in this industry, but it can definately be done. It takes work, time, effort, trial and error and finding the right programs. Knowing how to generate lots of traffic is the biggest part. I hope you all earn more and reach your goals in 2005!