Affiliate Programs

[Greg]

I'm thinking about starting an affiliates program, because of all the Potential traffic it Could generate. However, if I tried a pay-per-click affiliate program, how much should I give per click, anyone have any stats on the average? Also, does anyone have any recommendations for a cheap but reliable affiliate program I could purchase (free would be good :-))?

[rcjordan]

Mostly, I've seen .02 to .10 per click.

[GWJ]

Globill.com has a third party interface for affiliate programs. I have not tried yet but have been thinking of using them for affiliate refferels (?) that result in sales on my site.

Brian

[Greg]

Has anyone tried either beFree, Commision Junction, linkshare, or advertising.com to handle affiliate programs? I'm more interested in having a company handle the mailing of checks... Any recommendations?

[Air]

Not sure what you sell, but if you need a payment processor and want an affiliate program where they track stats and mail out the checks try [regsoft.com]

[Greg]

Well, I'm starting a new site travel site (see profile) and wanted a cheap way of promoting it. I was hoping to pay about .02-.05 cents per click to affiliates. However, I need an affiliates program, and was hoping to have as little maintenance as possible, other than recruiting affiliates and answering questions.

[rpking]

Has anybody any experience of writing an in-house affiliate program? My main reason for considering one is the lack of link popularity created by third party schemes where the link to your site goes via their domain and various question marks in the url.

I'd just like to know whether the effort would be worth it.

[Brett_Tabke]

Starting an affiliate program is tricky business. Always start with the top possible per-click you can tolerate. You can come down from there. Often you can continue to pay those original sites at the original rate, or drop their rates too. Either way, it takes some tricky PR work to keep everyone in the fold.

You can also try the gizmo of building a affiliate program and then calling it quits. A large number of people will leave the links up.

I think the full wave of affiliate programs is slowly winding down. There aren't to many sites eager to jump at them anymore because they just don't pay like they did.

[shri]

Brett, Its not all that bad! I am averaging about $0.90CPM on my CJ.Com account.

Rev: $1,062.89
Sales: 0
Leads: 995
Clicks: 7914
Impressions: 1263927
CTR: 0.01
CPM: 0.84
Conversion: 0.13

The trick from a webmasters perspective is to find the right affiliate program to linkup with. I signed up for one with a multi-lingual e-mail program provider. Get US$2/signup I send in their direction and that accounts for about $20-30/day revenue for me. IMO, this provider did it right... no click through payments, just US$2/signup. (If you run a site that attracts Eastern European / Asian audiences the provider that I'm talking about is www.langoo.com )

[Brett_Tabke]

I was referring to running a program shri. Ya, there are some affiliate programs that are ontopic that will 'top off' your revenue; but the days of running amazon links and making cash, are about over. As you said, the whole trick is getting something tightly ontopic.

[Drastic]

I have a lot of experience with affiliate programs, from the affiliate side.

If I were to start a program, where upfront investment was not an issue, I would definitely use commission junction. They have a proven track record and are a favorite of many many affiliates. You have immediate exposure to thousands of affiliates when you start a merchant program with CJ. Negatives - high startup cost, and strict contract.

Another good one, and much cheaper to start out, is clickxchange.com. They have a lot of CPC merchants, cheater protection, and you can see your applied affiliates' stats, which can pretty much tell you which ones are cheaters. I would definitely stay away from linkshare, befree, and advertising.com. These programs are not "affiliate friendly" and will affect your program as such.

Since you are wanting CPC, this program does not apply, but I would like to mention in this post - clickbank. They only handle % of sale commissions (no CPC), but this is another good one to start out with.

I would stay away from running a program in-house. Affiliates will be afraid they won't be paid, and you will have problems with cheaters. Affiliates are well aware of programs starting and shutting down once everyone has linked, and no one will be willing to trust you until a few risk takers check you out. You also don't get the exposure you gain from being in a merchant warehouse.

As far as what to pay for CPC, as Brett said, pay as much as you can. I would figure out the site's EPV (earnings per visitor), if possible. Divide a given month's revenue by the number of visitors that month. That will give you your EPV, then decide what you would pay for those visitors. Personally, I would not pay more than 50% of the EPV. I would be close to 25% max, myself. (I use CPC SEs)

Good luck,
Ken