Are affiliate programs even worthwhile

Am I missing something big? If so, what is it?

[aschrage]

A year or two ago, when I just starting working with affiliate programs, I found the conversion (clicks->sales) rates decent. I was working with the site in my profile and getting very little traffic (<500 page views per day) and I had a couple of accounts with CJ and Linkshare in which I got checks mailed to me once. I am much more sophisticated now and am getting at least 5000 pageviews per day on the same site. My click through rates are low to reasonable(ranging from 0.05% to 0.4%). Over the past few months I bet I got 300-400 clicks if I added all of the programs up. However, sales are almost non-existent. I have played around with many things on my site and have seen continued significant improvement in the total number of click-throughs but no improvement in sales. Here are just some of the things I have tried:

- I drastically (I think) improved the look and usability of the site
- I spent time learning about my customers so that I could choose more relevant banners and product offerings
- I carefully selected the banner(s) to be relevant and of high quality
- I have been contacted by some independent vendors and have experimented with them (rather than bulk programs like CJ)
- I found products that relate very closely to the site content and linked them in with text links
- I have tried multiple affiliate programs (just in case they weren't reporting the sales to me)

I hope I haven't come across as just another "CJ Whiner". Is it just the economy? Do I just need to keep working at it? Or should I be doing better than this?

[QNetwork]

I just took a quick look at your site. Most (or all) of your banners are below the fold. Not many users scroll through the whole page. Traditionally the banners over the fold (horizontally at the top) generates more click-through. The glory days of banner advertising are gone. CTR & sale are very low from banners compared to other advertising techniques (e.g. text links). Vertical banners (on the right) do a little bit better sometimes. Even if the users scroll through, the ad is right there. I ran a web site which is primarily based on affiliate marketing. The site is just 3-4 months old. I did not make a lot of sales. But there was enough for a site 4-month old. This month is little bit soft. I hope economy will turn around soon and we'll all make much more.

[vibgyor79]

Replace the banner(s) with descriptive text ad(s).

[Grumpus]

vibgyor is correct - descriptive text links are the way to go. Banners just don't really cut it anymore - many surfers (myself included) are trained to ignore the ads. They're still useful for "branding recognition" but sales, forget it.

The "above the fold" theory doesn't really work anymore either. I have played around with several banner afiliate programs (though NONE ever did much) along with ones that have a more versitile way to link to them (search boxes and text links are king). I do run one banner program, but it's through a CPC/CPM program with no selling involved and is there to merely "cover hosting costs" and does nicely at that...

One thing I've found is that if your page is "informational" putting your product/afiliate links at the end of the page actually provides BETTER click-thru rates than putting them above the fold. If the page is geared to sell and the traffic coming in is already qualified to "buy" then above the fold is best.

The reasoning here is that people come to your page looking for something. If they are looking to buy, you've got to get that opportunity to them right away. BUT, as with many sites, most of your traffic is coming in from people looking for information - they want to know "about it" not "how to buy it". So, if you tell them about it, and keep them interested, they move down through the page becoming more and more informed. By the time they get down to your "Buy It" link, you have now (assuming you did your job right) converted them from an uninformed info seeker into an informed consumer. The next logical step is to make the purchase.

Hope this helps.

G.

[Trisha]

I would put a bigger emphasis on the links to buy the t-shirts with the quotes on them. I didn't think they were that easy to see. Maybe even add a small image next to the quote of a shirt with the quote on it.

I have a slow internet connection, but it also seemed it took a while for the t-shirt link page to open. If that is not just me, some people might get tired of waiting and leave.

A little OT, but why did you choose that company over Cafepress (hope it's ok to mention cafepress specifically, it seems to be the main company people use for this kind of stuff)? Is the quality of their shirts better?