Promoting Affiliate Programs

Strategy.

[kaymeis]

Hi,

I'd like someone to help me with something that has been bugging me for a while.I have a content-based site concerning Internet Issues ranging from Web Design to Affiliate Marketing. What I'd like to know is this: Do you place the same text ads and banners on all the pages or do you you vary them? Hope it makes sense?

[markwelch]

As you must realize, different ads will perform differently in different contexts. This is why most of the major ad systems used by publishers are "dynamic," matching the advertisements to the page content. This is why Google's AdSense ad blocks now represent such a huge proportion of advertising on publisher sites.

Back in 1996-1999, I operated a web site with a similar demographic to what you describe (webmasters, web advertising) and I sold each page placement separately; I earned CPM (cost per 1,000 adviews) rates of $50 and more, and earned more than $10,000 per month total (including both CPM and affiliate earnings) from a site with only about 100,000 monthy visitors. I sold that site in 1999 at the dot-com peak, and rates have certainly dropped since then, and the "model" has shifted from CPM to PPC/CPC.

One key is to avoid "over-saturating" your site with ads; I'd expect the best strategy would be including a single AdSense-style ad block, along with affiliate text links and buttons in appropriate placements.