Forum Moderators: skibum
I have set up some banners and text links to some affiliate programs (pharmacy, dating, and posters), but I have only gotten $35 in sales from the affiliate program with a site that sells posters.
Judging by the posters that they bought, and the traffic that each poster on my site got, the traffic probably consists mainly of male college students.
I would really like to take advantage of this traffic. I know that most guys in college do not have much money, so I am wondering which affiliate programs (and which product categories) to go with that will be the most profitable, and have the most amount of sales, as I will definitely have to deal in volume in order to make any kind of decent money with this traffic.
And I do have high aspirations. I have been reading about affiliates making upwards of $40,000 to $50,000 per month. I want to pass that. I realize that these guys have a lot of sites and a lot of cash to advertise, but I am sure that they started small as well.
Some of you may call me a dreamer, but I know that people are actually doing it. So it is possible.
Now I know that I most likely will not even come close to those figures with a college crowd, but I have to start somewhere.
Anyway, could some of you give me some ideas as to which affiliate programs (specifically) would be the most profitable with this demographic? And which products? I'd appreciate it.
Thanx.
And maybe you could expand your site (more pages) a little bit with the stuff you have on your landing page (and keep applying all the tips from this forum).
Good luck!
Just curious but how much bandwith does your 10,000 uniques per day use?
Well, the first day, when I got hit with almost 11,000 uniques, I originally, I had a 500kb file on there, and that was going to eat up my badwitdth like crazy. Within the first two hours, it has used over 225mb in bandwidth. At that rate, I'd be over my limit in no time. So, I made another page with the file on another server,and just linked to that. That day ended up being around 250mb of bandwidth. The next day is when I started this thread.
Since then, the traffic has been slowly decreasing, as I only have one page on the site so far. I just have not had time to put more pages up. I will do that within the next few days. But to give you an idea, 6500 uniques uses about 40mb of bandwidth. Keep in mind, that is only bandwidth for one page.
Some topics that you may want to consider in addition to what has already been mentioned.
job sites ... all these kids go to college to eventually get jobs and some students intern while going to schoolresume preparation ... same reason as above
credit card programs ... help facilitate your visitors Internet shopping with you by getting a cc into their hands
student loans ... increase their buying power by putting more money in their pockets
test preparation ... students want higher grades and save time studying because they know what to expect and study for
IMO, you are wasting time promoting dating affiliate programs. College is probably the easiest chance for singles to interact.
Very good advice. Thanks. I have already taken down the link to the dating affiliate, and will be putting up links to many of the types of businesses that you suggested.
And maybe you could expand your site (more pages) a little bit with the stuff you have on your landing page (and keep applying all the tips from this forum).Good luck!
Within the next few days, I'll be doing just that. Thanks.
1. one day this student will graduate. Figure out how if he can pass on his site to another student, have another student start something comparable, if you can generate enough traffic that your site can become popular on its own, ..... but your traffic does have an end point. It may be at the end of this term!?
2. Think of new students to the area, a best of, local pizza, laudrymats, ..... a top ten of what you need to survive, .....
3. Think of graduating students, tuxs, .....
4. Go and talk to 20 or 30 students (males), offer a $5 off a pizza coupon, what are the last 5 things they spent over $5 on? Where did they buy it? What were the last two gifts they bought? What is the biggest time waster for them (on-line banking?), ..... you get the idea.
5. Think of foreign students as well. They may be a small component but larger spenders.
Also, do a gut reality check, look at your traffic and compare it to the number of students enrolled in the school.
Sounds like an opportunity though.
Good Luck,
Shane
Also, what is the timing of your traffic. If it is all at 10:00, 1:00 and 3:00 you may be part of lab work :(
From the traffic you are getting, it does not appear that the school is a small local college. Another area to evaluate is long distance calling plans and calling cards. This is only relevant if you are dealing with a national college or university where parents send their kids off to a distant school. Some of these offer residual commissions as long as the referral remains a customer instead of a one time payment.
Ted
Javi
College Student
magazine subscriptions: maxxim/playboy/details
sex tips
instead of pharmacy try to do focused ones for "yellow jackets" and other "legal trucker speed" type products.
also you may want to do ones for drug test passing kits
on the topic of drugs perhaps do one for "legal extacy"
and you mentioned that most students burn cds...do one for blank cd media, another for cd burners /dvd burners/mp3 players
maybe calling cards
also why not think locally? make an entire coupon site where students can print out coupons for pizza/cd shops/bars/restuarants etc.
go around and sell the packages directly to the stores.
college spring break travel packages
and maybe "girls gone wild" type video links
also maybe some sort of job finder links
local temp agencies
Just to give you an update, I now have almost 30 pages on the site. The traffic has slowed down a lot since the first few days. Everyone rushed to see the site in the first few days, and then it slowed down after everyone had seen it. I am now averaging between 1500 and 2000 uniques per day. However, it is increasing as I add content.
I have gotten rid of the dating affiliate, and have added a few so far:
magazines - just added
college gear - just added
entertainment coupon books - not response so far
inboxcash - have gotten a fair amount of response from this, however, affiliates don't get paid until the people who signed up via their links receive their first check from reading/replying to advertisers' email. It's free to sign up, and I'm sure that people will forget about it after a while and not even follow through. So, I am not sure how much money I will get from this site.
posters - over $100 in sales
long distance co. - just added
I plan on adding more of the links that you guys mentioned.
werty, you had a lot of great suggestions. Thanks.
also why not think locally? make an entire coupon site where students can print out coupons for pizza/cd shops/bars/restuarants etc. go around and sell the packages directly to the stores.
This has been mentioned before and is a great idea. What kinds of packages should I offer the local businesses, and how much should I charge?
[edited by: LABachlr at 1:05 am (utc) on Mar. 3, 2003]
Also, what is the timing of your traffic. If it is all at 10:00, 1:00 and 3:00 you may be part of lab work :(
What do you mean by "lab work"? I know that you are referring to a computer lab, but how/why would they be using my site as "lab work"?
term paper
Will be adding this very soon.
From the traffic you are getting, it does not appear that the school is a small local college. Another area to evaluate is long distance calling plans and calling cards. This is only relevant if you are dealing with a national college or university where parents send their kids off to a distant school. Some of these offer residual commissions as long as the referral remains a customer instead of a one time payment.
Done. ;)
FreeCondoms.com from CJ might work.
Very good idea. Thanks. Already applied at cj for it. Also applied for freedvds.com program at cj.
something else that may be a good one is some survey type thing...the kind that offer people 25 dollars to fill out.
I know how it is to be a broke college student.
You may also want to research looking into bloodbank/plasma donation. no joke. I have a known a few kids who would donate plasma every month just to get the 40 dollars.
a newspaper I worked for always ran ads for 2 blood banks, every week.
Also you may have gotten the spam about these in the past but i would search for one. "get paid to have sex", "get paid to smoke marijuana". It is some book that you buy for 25 dollars that gives you "further information". I know a few college kids who bought it. They are always running ads in the papers and magazines so you may want to hunt them down and see if they offer affiliate programs.
Also non amazon music/dvd
music wise: insound
dvd: deep discount dvd
also you may as well look for a webhosting affiliate and just put a simple text link on the bottom of each page:
hosted by XXX.
One other thing you may want to add to the site is a forum or some sort of local directory. This would help with the repeat visitors. Also if you main market is this college campus/college town you could simple do a yellow page search and add like 20 pizza places, 20 bars, and 20 stores
build each one on their own page and get a reviews script.
as for the pricing of the coupon thing, no idea. i think if you could prove the traffic was local you could sell it without a problem.
I would research your phone books coupon section and go after them. Also see who is in the direct mailing packets and go after them.
Also search here for tips on how to reduce bandwidth. Optimize all images, Eliminate html formatting
CJ.com = Commission Junction (and commissionjunction.com is not the same thing; judging by the creation dates in their whois info, it looks like someone got word that cj.com was going to come into being and did a classic cybersquatter move)
Bloodbanks are a good idea. I'll look into affiliate programs. They have to be making money with those ads that you mentioned. Otherwise they would not continue to run those ads. Unless, of course, they don't track their advertising.
Yeah, I wanted to hook up with deepdiscountdvd.com, but they don't offer an affiliate program. I was trying to find a site that has similar prices with the same great reputation, but no luck yet. Amazon just can't match their prices, and with college kids, it's all about price.
And just so you know, there is also deepdiscountcd.com.
I hadn't heard of insound.com, but it looks pretty cool. Thanks.
The hosting company that I am with now does not have an affiliate program, unfortunately. And they are a killer company. They are already growing very fast via word of mouth, and do not want to grow too fast, too soon. Smart.
But if I have to move this site, I will definitely have that as one of the criteria that I will need in a hosting company.
Although most of the traffic is coming from that one link, I pretty quickly realized that that does not necessarily mean that they are all coming from his college. That's the deal with the internet. People can be posting his link (that links to mine) all over the net, and then it looks like everyone is coming from there, but they actually are coming from somewhere else.
Most of the traffic is coming from .net and .com domains (ISP domains; .net domains account for double the traffic than that of .com domains). I am not sure how colleges work nowadays with respect to computers, and students' connections to the net. Do most students use their college's connection to the net in their dorms? If so, is it dial-up or broadband? I realize that it may depend on the college, but I was wondering what the deal is in general.
If most of them do use their college's ISP (.edu), then there is not much traffic coming from them at all. If however, many students use their own ISP, then yes, most of that traffic could be college students.
Great idea about the forum! With 1500 to 2000 uniques daily, the forum would quickly fill up. What categories do you think I should have in the forum?
Also, great idea about the review pages for the restaurants/clubs. I just want to be sure that the traffic is coming from that college before I dedicate a lot of time and effort to localizing it there. I also want to keep the site pertaining to as many people as possible, including people that do not go to college, and also people who go to colleges in other areas. That would be one thing that I would want to consider when pondering the thought of making part of the site local.
I also thought of the "donate via paypal" link, but I don't want to appear "unsuccessful".
And I did try to optimize my files as I was putting them up, but I will search this forum to make sure that all of my file types are optimized. Thanks.
Don't forget about the affiliate policies that you agreed to when you signed up for your programs. Promoting anything illegal, mature / adult content, controversial will likely get you booted from most mainstream affiliate programs. A breach of your contract will probably result in forfeiture of any earned commissions.
Ted
Don't forget about the affiliate policies that you agreed to when you signed up for your programs. Promoting anything illegal, mature / adult content, controversial will likely get you booted from most mainstream affiliate programs. A breach of your contract will probably result in forfeiture of any earned commissions.
Thanks. I don't plan on going that route. On top of what you mentioned, I would lose my hosting company as well. And they are too good to lose.
I have a fair amount of affiliates now:
poster site
magazine site
college items site (things with the college emblem on it)
entertainment coupon books
cell phone site
2 travel sites
making money reading email site
car loan site
long distance (phone) site
They all have text links on every page of content on my site. They are at the bottom of each page nicely organized. I also have a "links" page which has all of those links as well as the ones on which I don't make a dime. So, it is not like they are not seeing the links.
I have received almost 19,000 impressions in the cj.com stats, but no sales. Is that normal? Is it possible to get all of that traffic without anyone buying a single thing? Of course a few people have bought some posters, but compared to the amount of people who are visiting my site, it's nothing.
Yes, I could ask for donations via paypal, but first, won't that make the site look less than stellar asking for donations, and bring down the site's rep? Second, since no one is spending any money anyway, why would they send me money? It seems like they just want the content for free.
I could also make it a membership site, but I just don't see that working.
Any thoughts?
What's CPM? Is that like "click per thousand" ads? Banners that pay you everytime there is are click-throughs? I don't want to use banners either. I know that I am asking a lot, but I just want to keep it a quality site, and not have it become a banner farm.
the whole thing is tricky. you may want to add "check out our sponsors" text above the links.
I wil be going through the same whole thing in about a month or two with a site i am working on. I just need to make up around 30 dollars a month to pay for the hosting. If i can profit beyond this it would be great.
Since you're getting all this traffic from local guys - setup a job-search for students. Ask the companies in the area to submit their applications. Since of of the students look for jobs constantly, they will start recognizing your site - will come back.
I can tell you almost for sure that most college/university sites are heavily updated at least 2-3 times per year, so your link may be gone with the next update - nobody knows. So, while you get all students to visit you - make something that will keep them coming back after, make them remember your web site.
Hope this helps.
I get $150-250 a month from posters and I did ask Alposters.com just after Xmas about back about seasonality.
They reckon AUgust and December are their peak months.
The August one being college kids starting a new year and
wanting something for their walls.
So don't neglect the posters.
If your go to Allposters.com or art.com and go to the college sections then the first page is highly to be their best sellers, so it will give you some ideas.
