New to this biz... plzz help

with website in India, how do i earn money from affiliate programmes?

[rishi321us]

I'm having a small greetings card site and is located in India. I've heard that money can be made from affiliate programmes by signing up for banners, popups , popunders and the like. But i don't have any particular idea about how the work is done. can anyone plzz advice me as to which sites can provide me with the best suitable programmes and how do i go along with them? (plzz mind , I'm in India, coz a few of them doesn't accept Indian publishers)
By the way, I have around 1000 unique visitors per day
and each viewer gives me minimum of 4 page views (as that is the bare necessity to send a card)

[gopi]

Rishi , IMHO , Greetings card site visitors are not best known as buyers :) ... Making money thro aff programs in a Greeting site is very difficult if not impossible...maybe you can make little money thro CPM programs ...

The best way to succeed in affiliate industry is to create mini sites around a single product/service/industry and promote it.

You can promote the site either using SEO techniques (if you know how to do) or can use paid listings (Google Adwords is good , we have several resident adword experts here ).

Yup , many affiliate networks including CJ dont allow indian publishers ... But thats not a big problem , for $20/month you can get a mail forwarding address in many other countries :) . Just get a mail-drop in say UK and join CJ as a UK publisher :)

And for you information there are many succesfull affiliates from india in WebMasterWorld :)

[vibgyor79]

Rishi, you maybe from India but where are yours visitors coming from? Check the demographics of your visitors with a good webstats package.
Also, what kind of greetings do you have up there? Diwali/Ganesha Chaturthi (Indian oriented) or US oriented?

To be frank, selling something to an Indian audience online is really tough. And selling stuff to Indian audience on a greetings site is much tougher! You can sign up for affiliate programs of some of the Indian music/book/grocery sites. (Fabmart, for example)

If your audience is international, then you have a much better chance of earning money. I suggest you checkout other affiliate networks like Linkshare, BeFree etc and select affiliate programs related to software, books, music and so on. Financial products like credit cards/insurance etc have a wide audience and MAY interest your US visitors.

Don't go overboard with popups/popunders but don't just stick to banners either. When you send email notifications to your visitors, you may try to insert a few text ads too.

[Drastic]

I don't know if it's still available, but I remember in the past (couple years ago?), greeting card sites could make SOME money by using paid tell-a-friend programs.

You just use the TAF as the method of sending the card. Might be worth looking into.

[rishi321us]

Thank You all for your responses.What it seems to me from the replies , it's gonna be very tough to make some money from a greetings card site like mine where the visitors are mainly indian.So the other option left with me is to go for banners and popups, pop behinds and smilar things. But i found going through a few such sites that many of them don't accept Indian publishers. can you suggest me some of the sites that are reliable and will accept indian publishers? and how do i go about that?
once again thanks to all who have replied my earlier quiery.

[India_max]

Hiya Rishi!

Please see your Sticky Mail.

India_max

[firstmark]

rishi321us
Do you have a log program or stats program that gives a breakdown of how much of your traffic is Indian versus Canadian or American?

A lot of adnetworks will accept Indian webmasters on a case by case basis if you write them and ask as well.

We really need to see the url of the site in question to give you a better answer to your inquiry about how to monetize your traffic.
You can either post it here or sticky mail it to me if you don't want others to know.

[Drastic]

>We really need to see the url of the site in question
>You can either post it here
Sorry, but no we don't need the url. We don't do specific site reviews here.

For futher clarification, please see the board TOS [webmasterworld.com] or this forum's charter [webmasterworld.com].

[firstmark]

Drastic how can someone give good advice without a link about the site in question posted for noncommercial study?
He can put the link in his profile. I guess he could spell it out like subjectsite. This just interjects one more layer of confusion and hampers the experience here for others not familiar with ad networks and affiliate programs. But without even that everything is just theoretical.

[gopi]

firstmark , The problem with URL dropping it will quickly lead to message board spammers and also competitors trying to kill sites . I think Brett decided from the begining of WW not to allow this...

Said this , i accept its very difficult to give business advice without seeing a site ...But please remember the sticky is for this purpose :)

[firstmark]

Gopi spammers will still url drop.
They don't care about any rules.
Urls are posted all the time for newsreleases and other things.
It just makes things harder for many on topics where url drops are not allowed, no real gain for anyone.

[Drastic]

firstmark,

Please see rules 21 and 24 of the TOS [webmasterworld.com].

If you need further clarification, contact me directly via stickymail.