I was wondering how many of you use affiliate programs to help promote your directory? I was also wondering if you think that people would be willing to join an affiliate program for a directory even if they only earned $1-5 per sale?
This concept is being used by a number of directories so I assume it is worthwhile but for higher rates than you are considering
Jeff from Aviva uses it as a promotional tool and thats where i've got my inspiration for it from as ill shortly be introducing an affiliate program for the Voisd Webmaster Directory following the redesign and addition of the Voisd Webmaster Blog. At the end of the day it generates traffic, backlinks and (in some cases) more link purchases - so it's gotta be good! Only pitfall is ensuring that the system works correctly and that you don't pay an affiliate when a purchaser hasn't full completed the submission process and failed to make payment...
Its a completely stand alone application/software that has nothing to do with the directory script (in my case phpLD). To my knowledge there is no directory mod for an affiliate system!
Affiliate systems are genious, as sabian said: if the system is fully working and can validate only REAL sales - then everything about them is good - free sitewide backlinks, free extra sales, etc... I wouldn't say do this until you have a big enough site and PR that you can charge 20 or so dollars, per submission, then give the reseller like 25% of that. In the end its all good, thats a sale you wouldn't have gotten before Someone should make a mod for this... Also - you could build it on a Credit system - so you could get 25% of the sale price (say 5.00) or get the equivalent or more in a directory submission on your own directory. This might be even more of a win-win. you could make $5.00 cash or $10.00 in credit for a dir submission... Maybe I'll make this mod... seems like it could be pretty useful, popular and requested...
Well... I dont care for them myself as i dont have the time to be bothered to be honest and im not trying to make another person money of my hard work and investment... Its the same as adding adsence to a directory... not worth it and i will never click your ads as i dont think its right.. but to each his own i suppose... goodluck to you thx malcolm
some of the toppers use affiliate programs and using them (but in vane ) v7n.com avivadirectory.com web1directory.com linksjuice.com
In a way, that affiliate program itself has to be promoted in order to get any result. But some may like the idea of being paid, so it may work for such people. It's just another way to get more people to your directory.