Here's a simple
definition: It is a marketing practice, in which
an online business rewards an affiliate (a person
who places advertising on his or her web site) for
each visitor or customer acquired through the
affiliate's advertising.
Every PTR website can
benefit from affiliate advertising; in fact most
sites rely upon it to boost site revenue to an
acceptable level.
There are several places
on the standard Cash Crusader templates where your
own affiliate ads can be added to the rotation, in
addition to some other areas that can be customized, as previously shown. Anywhere that an
advertisement paid for by an outside advertiser
can be shown, you can show some affiliate ads too.
Where to Find Affiliate
Ads
The ads you will need are
obtained through "affiliate networks". An affiliate
network is a web based business which acts as an
intermediary between publishers (the affiliates)
and merchants, i.e. the originators of the
affiliate programs. It allows publishers to find programs
that are suitable for their
website, and it assists websites offering
affiliate programs to reach their target
audiences.
After signing up for
membership, and following approval of your site,
you will be able to select from a number of
affiliate programs. Membership is free in most
cases, but don't discount those that charge a
small fee to join - they are usually of a very high
standard, with a wide selection of excellent
programs to choose from, and a range of
useful reporting tools.
Reporting Facilities
All good networks will
have facilities that allow you to check how your
ads are performing in real time (number of clicks
received,
number of leads generated, sales made, etc.), and
may offer enhanced promotional methods such as
deep link generators, allowing you to link to any
page in the affiliate site in addition to the home
page. This is useful if there is a specific product you
want to promote (for example, you may want to
advertise a particular software application, which
is just one item in a range).
They may also supply search boxes,
which allow the surfer to find exactly what they
are looking for in a merchant's range, and "shop
windows", which are customizable display ads that show
off a selection of products in an attractive
display area.
Types of Affiliate Ad
There are three types of
ad campaign that you can earn from on your site:
Cost-per-click or CPC:
You earn commissions with CPC campaigns by
providing a link that visitors to your site click
on, to get redirected to the campaign's landing
page. The number of visits, and hence click
payments, is usually limited to one a day for each
visitor. This type of
ad is now very much out of favor with merchants,
because they can be expensive to implement.
Cost-per-lead or CPA:
With these, you earn commissions when members
click on an ad, are redirected to the target
landing page, and complete a signup form. They
could be signing up for a newsletter, a free trial
offer, or entering a contest. For you to receive
credit, the visitors must complete the entire
signup process from beginning to end.
Cost-per-sale or CPS:
These campaigns are similar to CPA campaigns,
except that instead of signing up for a service,
newsletter, etc., your visitor must complete a
sale (buy a camera, for example).
Choosing Ads
When you are first
confronted by a long list of possible programs to
join, it is very tempting to just select the best
paying ones and throw them onto your site without
any thought whatsoever. This is nearly always a
mistake, because not only do you have to consider
which ads are right for the site as a whole, you
also need to tailor them to specific areas of
the site for optimum results.
To illustrate the point,
it would be silly to promote sportswear (unless
the company has an absolutely irresistible offer
that would appeal to everyone, e.g. a free camera
with every pair of Nykee trainers purchased).
Your PTR has a very
specialized audience, and because of this you must
target your ads to that specific interest. Your
members are looking for:
Free ways to make money
Cheap ways to promote
their sites
Cheap web hosting
Quality traffic
exchanges
Other PTR/PTC sites that
pay on time
Franchise opportunities
Contest sites
Free giveaway sites
Cashback sites
Paid recycling sites (e.g. money for old
cell phones/mobiles)
Probably the only time you will get a good
response to general interest ads is at Christmas,
when most people are on the lookout for gifts and
such. Other holidays such as Easter and Mother's
Day can also bring in good results, if you are
careful about which ads you upload.
Keep up to Date with
your Programs
It is a good idea to
subscribe to the e-mail list of any site that you
affiliate with, so that you will receive advance
information of any special promotions, customer
voucher codes, or the date on which the program is due
to expire. You can then promote a particular item
or service while it is "hot off the
press", and be ready to remove the links you
are using as soon as they become unusable.
Affiliate Links on the
Home Page
The index page is your
site's shop window, so your ads must be well
chosen, and they must dance or die. The nearer to the top of the
page your ads are located, the
better, as members will eventually be showing your
home page on other websites, so concentrate on keeping
the ads "above the fold", i.e. that part
of the page that is entirely visible before you
need to scroll down to see more.
Content near the
top of the page is also more likely to be picked
up by search engines, potentially bringing more
traffic to your site. It is well known that search
engines are attracted to textual content near the
top of the page, and that is why you should create
some extra text ad areas under the top banner
position.
You may
remember the three adbox text ad positions I
created under the top menu bar? Having checked several search engine results
for my site name, I found that the ads in the
boxes were often listed in the page detail
of the results. If there had just been a banner in
that position, the results would have been very
poor, because most search engines crawlers do not
recognize images as relevant content.
In addition to your own
links and outside advertiser links, you should
also consider adding an "ADVERTISE
HERE FOR ONLY $x PER MONTH!" message, with a link to your Advertising page
(advertise.php) to attract prospective
advertisers.
Affiliate Links in the
Paid to Click Area
If the site is not yet
ready for launch, and paying advertisers are
non-existent, you can start off the Paid to Click
section with a couple of affiliate links. You must choose these VERY
CAREFULLY, because when members click on these
ads, you will be paying for them in the same way as an
advertiser would (the amount earned per click,
plus any affiliate referral commission earned).
So, go for ads which will earn their upkeep, such as
shopping search portals, which pay so much per
lead, or search result clickthrough.
Set your click value to be
a percentage of the amount earned per lead (e.g.
for 2 cents per lead ads, set the reward at 0.002
cents, or 1/5 cent). It sounds a bit mean, but as
you are not guaranteed a click on a paying search
result from every member, you have to allow for
it. That way, you should turn a profit, because
although only a proportion of members will click
on a search result, the ones that do will generate
2 cents per search in revenue.
Initially, set the number
of clicks to 100, and when members eventually
arrive and start clicking, let the ad run its
course, and study the results on your ad stats
page at the affiliate network. If the program is
paying, you can keep it as a permanent (or
semi-permanent) click ad. If not, drop it
immediately.
You may need to experiment
a little to find the programs that pay, but it is
worth the effort if you happen to come across a
program that pays consistently. I found a program
which offered excellent deals on mobile phone (cell phone)
packages, and made a considerable amount of money
from it for a year or so. It was bringing in £40
per sign-up, and there were at least three sales per week. It's a shame the program has
closed now!
At one time, ads which pay
a certain amount per click (CPC) were commonly
available, but these are very rare now, as they
are uneconomical for a merchant to run. If you do
have the good fortune to come across any, pounce
on them immediately (no matter what the product or
service they are promoting) and put them into your
Paid to Click section as regular money earners.
Even an ad paying 1/2 cent per click is worthwhile,
because it is guaranteed income. Set the click repeat time to 24 hours, and set a
click value of around 1/5c. Any profit is good
profit!
Don't forget to add a
"below paid to click" ad position as
shown earlier, so you can mix in some affiliate
links with the rotating ads of other advertisers.
Affiliate Links for
Paid E-mails
The comments above also
apply to paid e-mails, but in this case you may
get better results, because e-mails have a more
personal feel to them. Generally, more members will read the e-mails you send out than click on
the on-site ads. You can also write more
convincing advertising copy in the extra space an
e-mail affords.
E-mails are ideal for
publicizing special offers at online stores,
especially if the merchant supplies a
"discount code", i.e. a small
number/letter combination which gives the member a
discount when entered into the advertised site's
order form at the checkout stage. You would send
out an e-mail that looks something like this:
Don't go overboard when
writing your ad copy, just a few lines is
sufficient. If you put in too many words, the
member will simply skip the message and go
straight to the paid click anyway.
E-mail Footer
You can also put permanent
affiliate links in paid e-mails as footers, but I
personally avoid these as they confuse the member,
and can detract from the main e-mail message. If
you must use them, stick to just one message and
clearly separate it from the main paid message to
avoid confusion, as shown:
