Too many people think that it's easy to set up a website using an affiliate feed, get it listed on the search engines and sit back and wait for the cash to roll in.
I even had people come to me and ask me to build the sites for them. They look blankly back at me when I ask them how they will promote the website, expecting me to produce a website for £300 that will do all of this for them.
Well, if I could spend a couple of days to produce a website that would earn thousands of pounds per year, would I be charging a few hundred for it? Or would I be producing those websites for myself...
What I try to offer is the opportunity for them to add something themselves to the website. Product reviews is usually a good one and let them choose which products they try to sell and add just these to the website.
If you are a travel affiliate then instead of just listing the same old huge list hotels or villas, make sure that you are including resort guides researched and written by yourself just for the site. Maybe even start a travel blog and include the accommodation details in that rather than just listing the 10,000 hotels available.
Whatever you are trying to sell, make sure that you add something to the information available. This means that there is less risk of falling to the search engines duplicate content filters and more chance of visitors stumbling across your new website. Just remember that if you are expecting to make a couple of thousand per year from the affiliate scheme then you are probably going to need to invest the appropriate amount of time to that site.
Feel free to post ideas in the comments!
Showing posts with label affiliate earning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label affiliate earning. Show all posts
Sunday, 29 June 2008
Friday, 27 June 2008
Adsense - Friend or Foe?
There's a lot of debate around about whether Google's adsense should be included on websites or not. One side of the argument states it's a good way to earn money. The other says that often little is earned and it can detract from the content of the website.
Which is right? Well, I think both (not really sitting on the fence!!!).
Simple. For a corporate website selling their own product then it's unlikely that adsense will bring in any significant revenue and the adverts will distract from the content.
But if you are running a blog, ezine, review or information site, then why not? If your main income from the site (or the site doesn't have an income stream) is affiliate selling, then I think it can be very worth while adding another source of income.
Some people will shout me down saying that it's rare to earn much from adsense. Yes, plenty of people earn very little, I'm sure. But in my experience the adverts can be well worth while. If your site has original content, plenty of traffic and especially if it's targeting keywords that are likely to be move expensive, then it's well worth the short amount of time it takes to sign up and add the code to your site.
Which is right? Well, I think both (not really sitting on the fence!!!).
Simple. For a corporate website selling their own product then it's unlikely that adsense will bring in any significant revenue and the adverts will distract from the content.
But if you are running a blog, ezine, review or information site, then why not? If your main income from the site (or the site doesn't have an income stream) is affiliate selling, then I think it can be very worth while adding another source of income.
Some people will shout me down saying that it's rare to earn much from adsense. Yes, plenty of people earn very little, I'm sure. But in my experience the adverts can be well worth while. If your site has original content, plenty of traffic and especially if it's targeting keywords that are likely to be move expensive, then it's well worth the short amount of time it takes to sign up and add the code to your site.
Wednesday, 14 May 2008
Cracking the XML
After a lot of struggling I finally got the XML feed working and the first 2 directory pages, linking to 9 merchant pages are up! I started on the 2 smallest categories I could find and even they took a while - and I'm not even 10% of the way through the list of merchants! It should get quicker as I work through them, I was still ironing out problems and smoothing the system into place at first.
So I've created an XML based feed for Mortgage Providers and Car Breakdown Providers. I suppose that by adding 1 new section a week, or maybe say a handful of merchants each week, then that's probably best as far as the search engines are concerned.
If I go full out to get all of the merchants up it would be a good sized directory structure, but there might be more appeal to the search engines if I can build it steadily. That way, every time they return to the site there are new pages to uncover. It's giving a more maintained look to the site. And along with the merchants updating their XML feeds, this will provide a series of pages on which there are regular updates.
Hopefully, this area will be wonderful bait to the search engines and will start driving in more traffic to the site, and maybe even a few more affiliate commissions. It wouldn't take many affiliate commissions for me to be really happy. Some of them pay really well and just 1 payment would out a huge smile on my face!
I did decide last week, aside from this area of work, that to get traffic back to what it was on CompareMortgageRates I probably needed to start adding new content pages weekly. Well, whilst I work out what I'm going to add this is a good starting point! I'm also trying to add 'news' to content pages (as well as the home page) to also keep these pages fresh. Since the site made it's drop through the search engines I've been trying my best to recover it. One day I will, but the traffic has dropped further over the last week, even though it's position on Google searches remained constant. Presumably other search engines have now also lowered it!
So I've created an XML based feed for Mortgage Providers and Car Breakdown Providers. I suppose that by adding 1 new section a week, or maybe say a handful of merchants each week, then that's probably best as far as the search engines are concerned.
If I go full out to get all of the merchants up it would be a good sized directory structure, but there might be more appeal to the search engines if I can build it steadily. That way, every time they return to the site there are new pages to uncover. It's giving a more maintained look to the site. And along with the merchants updating their XML feeds, this will provide a series of pages on which there are regular updates.
Hopefully, this area will be wonderful bait to the search engines and will start driving in more traffic to the site, and maybe even a few more affiliate commissions. It wouldn't take many affiliate commissions for me to be really happy. Some of them pay really well and just 1 payment would out a huge smile on my face!
I did decide last week, aside from this area of work, that to get traffic back to what it was on CompareMortgageRates I probably needed to start adding new content pages weekly. Well, whilst I work out what I'm going to add this is a good starting point! I'm also trying to add 'news' to content pages (as well as the home page) to also keep these pages fresh. Since the site made it's drop through the search engines I've been trying my best to recover it. One day I will, but the traffic has dropped further over the last week, even though it's position on Google searches remained constant. Presumably other search engines have now also lowered it!
Tuesday, 13 May 2008
XML Feeds - Made to make you work?
I decided last night to have a play with the OMG XML feed for their editiorials, intending to use it to display merchant information on my mortgage rates website. Basically, starting a financial directory that I can later add to. In the day I'd noticed another site that ranked quite well doing this, but manually updating the displayed information (the offer details were out of date).
Now OMG provide their editorials in 3 formats - javascripts, which I usually use, I-Frame, which I've never tried, and XML, which I'd not tried before from them. I've used XML from other providers plenty of times - other affiliate schemes, news readers etc. So I've got plenty of the basic code about.
The problem with Javascripts and I-Frames is that it doesn't add anything to your webpage as far as the search engines are concerned - to my knowledge, they just ignore these parts of the code. At most, they will actually follow the I-Frame (I have seen that in some of the sites I've built), but they the benefits of the content lay with the provider. There's not lots of pages of text that I can create and add further bits to.
So taking the XML feed in real time seems a good idea. Why not just copy the text?Well, as I mentioned above the site I saw yesterday did this and said that the insurance offer was a 15% discount, whereas it is now 20%. OMG don't like affiliates taking the text alone as out of date offers and rates are displayed. And I don't want to create a large nightmare for myself of continually having to update text - it's bad enough when they don't update the dynamically served content and email me to complain (you know who you are if you are reading this!!!).
So last night I started to build into my standard code the OMG feed. It looked as though it would be easy - not exaclty a hard layout to use. But I was playing with it for hours as it just wasn't working. 'ROOT' was appearing at the end of the text - it's actually from the closing tag (<\ROOT>) and control characters were appearing where they shouldn't be - something like 
 instead of carriage returns. I thought it should be simple, change 
 to <br>. But it just didn't work. I could remove the & on it's own and the #, but the string just wouldn't go.
Then when I looked at the output in notepad it appeared that the text was full of non-printable characters. Between every displayed character appeared a space in notepad, which didn't appear on the screen. Not knowing what these were, made it very difficult to remove them. I suppose some sort of regular expression could have done it - just thought of that now!
What their purpose is and whether it's something I was doing wrong, I just don't know. But something wasn't right. It could be that they are there intentionally to make sure that the text isn't read by the search engines - either to stop them caching text which goes out of date or to prevent problems with Google's duplicate content filter. Either way, it was a pain I was trying to sort for about 4 hours. I had hoped to get the feed going in 30 minutes and spend the rest of the time getting most of the pages up. It wasn't to be.
Would appreciate any more thoughts on this problem and hearing what others have done.
Now OMG provide their editorials in 3 formats - javascripts, which I usually use, I-Frame, which I've never tried, and XML, which I'd not tried before from them. I've used XML from other providers plenty of times - other affiliate schemes, news readers etc. So I've got plenty of the basic code about.
The problem with Javascripts and I-Frames is that it doesn't add anything to your webpage as far as the search engines are concerned - to my knowledge, they just ignore these parts of the code. At most, they will actually follow the I-Frame (I have seen that in some of the sites I've built), but they the benefits of the content lay with the provider. There's not lots of pages of text that I can create and add further bits to.
So taking the XML feed in real time seems a good idea. Why not just copy the text?Well, as I mentioned above the site I saw yesterday did this and said that the insurance offer was a 15% discount, whereas it is now 20%. OMG don't like affiliates taking the text alone as out of date offers and rates are displayed. And I don't want to create a large nightmare for myself of continually having to update text - it's bad enough when they don't update the dynamically served content and email me to complain (you know who you are if you are reading this!!!).
So last night I started to build into my standard code the OMG feed. It looked as though it would be easy - not exaclty a hard layout to use. But I was playing with it for hours as it just wasn't working. 'ROOT' was appearing at the end of the text - it's actually from the closing tag (<\ROOT>) and control characters were appearing where they shouldn't be - something like 
 instead of carriage returns. I thought it should be simple, change 
 to <br>. But it just didn't work. I could remove the & on it's own and the #, but the string just wouldn't go.
Then when I looked at the output in notepad it appeared that the text was full of non-printable characters. Between every displayed character appeared a space in notepad, which didn't appear on the screen. Not knowing what these were, made it very difficult to remove them. I suppose some sort of regular expression could have done it - just thought of that now!
What their purpose is and whether it's something I was doing wrong, I just don't know. But something wasn't right. It could be that they are there intentionally to make sure that the text isn't read by the search engines - either to stop them caching text which goes out of date or to prevent problems with Google's duplicate content filter. Either way, it was a pain I was trying to sort for about 4 hours. I had hoped to get the feed going in 30 minutes and spend the rest of the time getting most of the pages up. It wasn't to be.
Would appreciate any more thoughts on this problem and hearing what others have done.
Monday, 24 March 2008
Affiliate Marketing - Trusting Cookies
I was interested to notice as I logged onto Affiliate Future that they are no longer relying on cookies for their tracking. They instead talk about their new tracking system, that stores non-personal details in the visitor's browser instead.
It doesn't really say what they do different or how they are doing it. It just sounds like cookies, without any personal details
They claim in it's response to an increasing number of people disabling cookies; virus / anti-spyware disabling cookies etc. And probably, they are right. But their system sounds like they are possibly just storing the affiliate details in hidden fields or something similar. Which begs the question, how easy is it to forget to code this on one page and how, if it's not cookies and it's using the browser, do you track returning visitors
Intrigued, I decided to take a look at one of my own links through them. But it didn't work, nor did any of their links I tried! It looks like they have implemented something so clever that it doesn't work on older machines / operating systems
I wonder how many potential sales could be lost through their system by not supporting older browsers?
I was about to update my comparemortgagerates site as part of the follow up to my main provider deserting me, to include one of their merchants through loads of pages - I couldn't test so I'm looking elsewhere.
It doesn't really say what they do different or how they are doing it. It just sounds like cookies, without any personal details
They claim in it's response to an increasing number of people disabling cookies; virus / anti-spyware disabling cookies etc. And probably, they are right. But their system sounds like they are possibly just storing the affiliate details in hidden fields or something similar. Which begs the question, how easy is it to forget to code this on one page and how, if it's not cookies and it's using the browser, do you track returning visitors
Intrigued, I decided to take a look at one of my own links through them. But it didn't work, nor did any of their links I tried! It looks like they have implemented something so clever that it doesn't work on older machines / operating systems
I wonder how many potential sales could be lost through their system by not supporting older browsers?
I was about to update my comparemortgagerates site as part of the follow up to my main provider deserting me, to include one of their merchants through loads of pages - I couldn't test so I'm looking elsewhere.
Sunday, 23 March 2008
And Then They Were Gone
I noticed that the mortgage charts on my mortgage site weren't showing properly. I thought maybe after a day or so they would be fixed by the provider, then a week or two later they were still faulty.
These are provided by a third party provider, who passes all leads they generate onto a mortgage broker who then pays me for any successful applications, although he never seems to generate much revenue for me.
So I contacted the guy to ask him what was going on. 'Oh, it's probably because we don't use them any more.' I replied to him, asking him how leads should be sent 'Just email me'.
This is very useful. For at least a few weeks the forms had been down, although I didn't know it. And in that time he's been asking me how's my website traffic and any chance of generating more leads for him.
The main reason I used him was for his mortgage charts. I can't create them myself, so now I've got loads of pages on that website to remove the forms and put something else up - no idea what yet. A quick fix first, I think.
But in the absence of these charts, all of the static pages referring to them are going to have to change as well. I can't proudly boast that the site displays 'every UK mortgage', when in actual fact the removal of the charts means that none are displayed. Maybe, as I've thought for a while, it's time to move that side of the business on to the travel industry instead.
These are provided by a third party provider, who passes all leads they generate onto a mortgage broker who then pays me for any successful applications, although he never seems to generate much revenue for me.
So I contacted the guy to ask him what was going on. 'Oh, it's probably because we don't use them any more.' I replied to him, asking him how leads should be sent 'Just email me'.
This is very useful. For at least a few weeks the forms had been down, although I didn't know it. And in that time he's been asking me how's my website traffic and any chance of generating more leads for him.
The main reason I used him was for his mortgage charts. I can't create them myself, so now I've got loads of pages on that website to remove the forms and put something else up - no idea what yet. A quick fix first, I think.
But in the absence of these charts, all of the static pages referring to them are going to have to change as well. I can't proudly boast that the site displays 'every UK mortgage', when in actual fact the removal of the charts means that none are displayed. Maybe, as I've thought for a while, it's time to move that side of the business on to the travel industry instead.
Monday, 4 February 2008
Earning Online
I'm sometimes approached by people wanting to earn extra cash online. Some arrive with the view that if they pay me £300 for a single website, then they will be able to retire and just watch it's earnings arriving every month. Maybe, if they have a really special idea and are willing to put work into it, but I've had people approach me like this with 'I want a mobile phone site' or 'I want a travel site' as their idea and no intention of putting any work into it.
Yes, both of these ideas work - with suitable input. I was able to give them ideas for how to make the sites work, but these fell on deaf ideas. A site won't just make you a constant line of income, no matter how well search engine optimised it is.
Any idea takes some input from the owner to allow it to sit there, tick over and earn an income. Whether it's blogging, article writing or just links building, some effort is always required.
If that wasn't the case - would I be building the sites and selling them for £300? No, I'd build half a dozen and sit back myself and watch the cash roll in! I do have a couple of sites that work for me like that and need time and effort - the Compare Mortgage Rates and Holiday Cottages sites being the main two.
But to earn online doesn't just involve websites. Some use affiliate selling, other people use surveys (I've done this one, but just don't have the time at the moment). There are so many of these ideas that I've decided to document them separately - so keep an eye on my Earn Cash Online Blog to see what's going on there.
Yes, both of these ideas work - with suitable input. I was able to give them ideas for how to make the sites work, but these fell on deaf ideas. A site won't just make you a constant line of income, no matter how well search engine optimised it is.
Any idea takes some input from the owner to allow it to sit there, tick over and earn an income. Whether it's blogging, article writing or just links building, some effort is always required.
If that wasn't the case - would I be building the sites and selling them for £300? No, I'd build half a dozen and sit back myself and watch the cash roll in! I do have a couple of sites that work for me like that and need time and effort - the Compare Mortgage Rates and Holiday Cottages sites being the main two.
But to earn online doesn't just involve websites. Some use affiliate selling, other people use surveys (I've done this one, but just don't have the time at the moment). There are so many of these ideas that I've decided to document them separately - so keep an eye on my Earn Cash Online Blog to see what's going on there.
Wednesday, 31 October 2007
Adsense Alternative
Update 14/12/07 - read the latest about my experience with JustGoMedia Here.
I was phoned a couple of days ago by a lady called Esther from JustGoMedia, asking if I would be interested in displaying their Yahoo adds on my Mortgages site. Quite badly timed since this site has just taken a nose dive in the search engine ratings, but aside from that I was interested in her offer.
What they offer is not contextual advertising so as long as it doesn't look the same as the Google adverts, they are happy for the same page to run both adverts. What their system does instead is to allow the web designer to specify a keyword.
There are restrictions in place to safeguard the system, which is good. But this does mean the potential for more accurate targeting. I agreed to give it a go.
I replaced the current Google adverts with the Yahoo ones yesterday. Results were a touch disappointing, but then Google has been poor the last week so it's not a fair time to compare. I found the click through rate seemed lower than Google is normally, but the earnings per click higher.
A lot of this could be that I'd unfairly only spent the time putting their advert onto the home page of the site and never bothered to track what happens with Google on that page. The Google CTR was also down yesterday.
Hopefully, with time I can get the site back up the search listings and then trial the schemes properly! Watch this space.
I was phoned a couple of days ago by a lady called Esther from JustGoMedia, asking if I would be interested in displaying their Yahoo adds on my Mortgages site. Quite badly timed since this site has just taken a nose dive in the search engine ratings, but aside from that I was interested in her offer.
What they offer is not contextual advertising so as long as it doesn't look the same as the Google adverts, they are happy for the same page to run both adverts. What their system does instead is to allow the web designer to specify a keyword.
There are restrictions in place to safeguard the system, which is good. But this does mean the potential for more accurate targeting. I agreed to give it a go.
I replaced the current Google adverts with the Yahoo ones yesterday. Results were a touch disappointing, but then Google has been poor the last week so it's not a fair time to compare. I found the click through rate seemed lower than Google is normally, but the earnings per click higher.
A lot of this could be that I'd unfairly only spent the time putting their advert onto the home page of the site and never bothered to track what happens with Google on that page. The Google CTR was also down yesterday.
Hopefully, with time I can get the site back up the search listings and then trial the schemes properly! Watch this space.
Tuesday, 2 October 2007
Affiliate Linking In Blogs
What is the most efficient way to link to affiliate schemes within your blog?
Well here I'm not talking about the high earning affiliate for whom the blog is an essential sales tool - they know exactly how to work. I'm referring to those who blog for fun and then decide that a product or two could be included as affiliate links to try to earn a bit of extra cash.
Here's the way I would do it.
First, assume I have a successful marathon blog and have decided to buy a pair of shock absorbing soles - and they are available through an affiliate scheme. Well in one post I would say I've heard how good they are and am going to try them. From this post I would use an affiliate link to link directly to the item. Avoid linking to the merchant's home page - if someone is interested they might not find the product. Send them directly to where they need to go.
The next thing is that these fantastic products arrive. Another post describes them, what they look like etc before I've tried them. But this time the post doesn't link to the item, it links to the FIRST post, in which there is a link to the item.
Yes, this goes against what I've said on the first post - it's making it harder to find them. So, make the first post short & snappy and the link easy & clear to find.
But why add in this extra step? Because if you add in an internal link, expecially one using the product name as the anchor text of the link, you are building up your internal linking and this is good for the search engines.
Later, add more posts as you try the items, start to feel the benefits etc. In these again you always link to the first post, not to the merchant.
This also has other benefits. Say you notice the same item for sale cheaper, by a merchant offering more commission; or the merchant closes their scheme or changes the page name. Using this method you can just pop into the first post and update the link. Otherwise, you would have to search your blog and update every link.
Also, there's a theory that affiliate links can damage your page ranking (keep coming back and I'll tell you why I believe this). Therefore, by keeping the affiliate link to just the one page, rather than loads of pages, if there are any consequences they are limited to just the one page.
Hope this helps.
Well here I'm not talking about the high earning affiliate for whom the blog is an essential sales tool - they know exactly how to work. I'm referring to those who blog for fun and then decide that a product or two could be included as affiliate links to try to earn a bit of extra cash.
Here's the way I would do it.
First, assume I have a successful marathon blog and have decided to buy a pair of shock absorbing soles - and they are available through an affiliate scheme. Well in one post I would say I've heard how good they are and am going to try them. From this post I would use an affiliate link to link directly to the item. Avoid linking to the merchant's home page - if someone is interested they might not find the product. Send them directly to where they need to go.
The next thing is that these fantastic products arrive. Another post describes them, what they look like etc before I've tried them. But this time the post doesn't link to the item, it links to the FIRST post, in which there is a link to the item.
Yes, this goes against what I've said on the first post - it's making it harder to find them. So, make the first post short & snappy and the link easy & clear to find.
But why add in this extra step? Because if you add in an internal link, expecially one using the product name as the anchor text of the link, you are building up your internal linking and this is good for the search engines.
Later, add more posts as you try the items, start to feel the benefits etc. In these again you always link to the first post, not to the merchant.
This also has other benefits. Say you notice the same item for sale cheaper, by a merchant offering more commission; or the merchant closes their scheme or changes the page name. Using this method you can just pop into the first post and update the link. Otherwise, you would have to search your blog and update every link.
Also, there's a theory that affiliate links can damage your page ranking (keep coming back and I'll tell you why I believe this). Therefore, by keeping the affiliate link to just the one page, rather than loads of pages, if there are any consequences they are limited to just the one page.
Hope this helps.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
