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How to implement affiliate programs

[da95649]

Hi there,

I am receive quite alot of targeting traffic for hotels in London. However as I am unable to keep up with the demand I have decided to use one of two possible partners as an affiliate program.

What I really need help on is the most effective way to implement the program. I do not really want a large banner or text link hidden somewhere, as I want to sell my own products. However what I was thinking is when somebody clicks to my site, a piece of JavaScript that opens my affiliate link in the back ground, so that if they close my site, they then have the opportunity to purchase something from my affiliate.

The questions I have are:
1>Is their such a JS to do this?
2>What does Iframes have to do with this?
3>Will this JS effect my Google rankings?

I've been bashing by head looking around for some information, however cant find any real resource.

Please let me know if anyone can help.

Thanks
da95649

[edited by: eljefe3 at 3:02 pm (utc) on June 7, 2006]

[vincevincevince]

However as I am unable to keep up with the demand

Seems to me you need to either send a portion of your traffic straight to the affilate, or decide that after 3pm all traffic goes to the affiliate.

Pop ups and popunders, especially on exit, are almost always blocked and I'd forget about them altogether.

[da95649]

The thing is we are a hotel, not an agency. So we cannot just redirect traffic to an affiliate as a visit may actually want our domain.

Looking at our stats, I can see that a good 40% are leaving from touching the home page from the Search engines. This maybe becuase we are not what they are looking for, or maybe they just don t like the look of our site. So I basically want to profit on the lost traffic. Would like to redirect my non-converted traffic to an affiliate somehow....

[vincevincevince]

I know the feeling, and it used to be something you could do quite well. Unfortunately it's difficult or impossible to do now.

Perhaps you can identify who doesn't want your site in advance and send them to the affiliate. Perhaps visitors from certain countries, at certain times, or even those using certain browsers.

My personal feeling is that you will achieve more by trying to reduce the 40% by improving the site design and content.

[jomaxx]

My suggestion is to make sure you have all the information needed to do business with YOU front and center. Then offer visitors an alternative way out, along the lines of "Looking for other London hotels? Click here to search for availability."

Most business don't do this at all, for fairly obvious reasons. But by using a clear but low-key plain text link, at least you don't annoy your own valuable customers with popups or banners. You have to take care of your core business first; I'd be pretty annoyed if I was planning on paying hundreds of pounds to a hotel, and they insisted on trying to earn an extra few pennies by harrassing me with popups.

[jomaxx]

P.S. You might even mark the affiliate link "(commercial link)" or "(sponsored link)" or "(external link)".

It gives the user a bit of extra information (although most people will understand what the link is anyway), and also conveys the idea that you're slightly above the whole thing -- that you'd rather not have it there but it's what one does in order to keep costs down.

[da95649]

Thanks Jomaxx, really helpful information.

What is IFRAMES and could this be used at all>?

[jomaxx]

An iframe is a way of inserting a separate frame into a page. It's a design option; neither it nor Javascript are required to insert a plain text link.

You might want to look at the code provided by your potential partners. I imagine they will provide a variety of linking options, and may require you to use certain text as well.

[hunderdown]

Join Google AdSense and put one small Adlinks line on your home page. No ads will show until they click through.

So if they don't want your hotel, this gives them a place to go for other hotels (or whatever related topics the keywords on your home page case Adlinks to throw up) -- and you earn some income.

[da95649]

are the adware programs from google able to pay 5-8 percent like some hotel agencies?

a £200 booking could earn me £10-£16, whats the return rates on Google adwords?

[hunderdown]

It's hard to make a direct comparison. AdSense (the publisher side of AdWords) pays out based on clicks, not conversions. So even if you were only getting a couple of pounds per click you might do better overall.

If you're interested, I think the only way to find out how you will do is run a trial, which is easy to do.

[jomaxx]

IMO a couple of pounds a click would be far too much to expect, but all you can do is try out both alternatives and see what performs best overall. Assuming that this is quite highly targeted traffic, I think I'd bet on the affiliate program.