europeforvisitors - 2:54 pm on Mar 4, 2002 (gmt 0)

I have an editorially driven "content site"--more specifically, a European travel site--and I've been using affiliate programs for only about three months. Here are my observations on affiliate programs for content sites:

1) For a niche site with the right topic, affiliate programs can be much more profitable than banners or skyscrapers from the ad networks. My RPM (revenue per thousand page views) was $7.39 last month, during a traditionally slow time of the year for Europe-related travel sales. It would have been impossible to get nominal CPMs (let alone effective CPMs) in that range from the ad networks.

2) Some topics just don't work with off-the-shelf affiliate programs. If you have a site about seismology, forget Commission Junction or LinkShare--the seismologists who visit your site won't be interested in clicking on banners for home-equity loans, Visa cards, flowers, or gift baskets. Instead, try to sell ads or sponsorships to companies in your industry.

3) Test different types of ads to see what works. On my site, banners and skyscrapers don't pull well enough to justify their space and download time. Most of my clickthroughs and sales come from text links (with short blurbs) in my right-hand page margin under a "Book & Buy" heading. (I get my highest clickthrough rates from text links in related articles--e.g., a link to a Paris vendor in an article on Paris--but on a site with more than 2,500 pages of editorial content, the brute-force approach of text links on every page generates the most impressions and total sales.)

4) Maintain credibility. If people trust you to give them reliable information and advice, they'll be more likely to buy from you. (Example: In my city guides, I link to hotel pages from my booking partner. But I also include links to the hotels' own sites when possible, so that users can learn more about the hotels and compare rates. I might lose an occasional sale from users who book direct, but I also gain credibility by letting readers make their own comparisons--and I probably gain overall because users can learn more about a hotel from its own collection of information and photos than from one page on a booking site.)

5) Give vendors a chance to prove themselves. I'm starting to see action from vendors that I'd almost given up for dead (luggage, travel accessories) just because we're now approaching the season when people are getting ready to travel and are thinking about new suitcases, money belts, etc. And my gallery of travel posters looked very unpromising until Google picked up the pages. Now I'm selling travel posters nearly every day.

5) Beware of affiliate programs that are out to screw you. Amazon.com is a good example: It doesn't plant persistent cookies (which means you get credit only for sales during the current session), and it doesn't pay commissions on used books (which are heavily promoted on every page). Maps.com is another: As I learned from another person on this board, Maps.com recently started selling a variety of goods and services through its own affiliate links, thereby placing itself in competition with its affiliates.

6) Commission Junction is probably the best aggragator of affiliate programs, if only because it pools commissions and provides good statistics. But independent affiliate programs can be excellent, too, *if* they're likely to generate enough sales to produce checks every month or at least every quarter.