Are affiliates like pricegrabber, shopping.com, etc worth it?

Is the connversion rate that good?

[akmac]

I'm curious if the conversion rate for click thrus from affiliate sites like pricegrabber are that much higher than organic traffic from serps.

If anyone has some before and after figures-I'd be interested in hearing what they were.

[stevenmusumeche]

In my experience, no.

[gibbon]

for us, lower even than PPC referrers

which is suprising since shopping portal traffic is highly qualified

[sqlgod]

Our conversion rate on average with all the shopping portals is 3% and we usually pull about 10 orders per day from the bigger ones.

[Matt Probert]

NEVER recieved any payment from any affiliate deal. We are very skeptical of them, and instead use advertising agencies for CPM advertising instead - having found CPC advertising to be heavily biased towards the advertiser, with little or no return to the publisher.

Matt

[derekwong28]

In our experience, the conversion rate from shopping.com is higher than any PPC engine including OV and Adwords. Traffic is quite decent as well.

[gibbon]

derek, why do you think your conversion rate is higher than PPC?

do you tweak your feeds in any way?

[incrediBILL]

Matt,

Really? No affiliate payments ever from anyone?

They do work when topical to the material of the web site, I get a small flurry of them in the mail every month. Guess it depends on what type of site you have. CPC vs CPM is an interesting issue too... I sell both on my site and they come about about the same.

The questions that comes to mind is perhaps you're putting the wrong product in front of the wrong visitors?

[desertjedi]

Can you set up an affiliate relationship with shopping.com? We used them for PPC and had decent conversion. Had to drop them when their PPC rates went through the roof though.

[derekwong28]

I think the reason why the conversion rate is higher than other PPC is that customers can immediately compare prices of the same product across a range of merchants. Therefore if they click onto your product, their intention to buy is much higher.

[akmac]

Thanks for the responses thus far-very illuminating.
It seems to me that the prime benefit of using a cost comparison site (for the user) is to be able to compare apples to apples. My next question is:

Does anyone with a unique product (and by this I mean a product that isn't available elsewhere) use these price comparison sites?

If the nature of your product makes an apples to apples comparison impossible-do you still find that your conversion rates are higher using a price comparison site?

My concern is that I will be marketing an "incomparable" product to a demoghraphic that is looking for the opposite. Has this been your experience?

[ivancicas]

When you put it like that, it surly doesn't make any sense. As you yourself pointed out, you will be marketing an "incomparable" product to a demoghraphic that is looking for the opposite.

[akmac]

Please relate your experience with marketing a unique product on a comparison site.

[bcc1234]

"One test is worth a thousand opinions."

Spend a $100 and you'll know the answer.

[otnot]

My $100 dollars has returned thousands. The conversion rate is much higher than AW or OT and the cpc is much lower.

[akmac]

"One test is worth a thousand opinions."

Spend a $100 and you'll know the answer.

bcc1234- I agree-and that's what I'll do. However-as long as the opinions are free, I'll happily read them. Hopefully some others have the same question and will benefit from the tests conducted by others. You are right, though.

"My $100 dollars has returned thousands. The conversion rate is much higher than AW or OT and the cpc is much lower."

Excellent! Can you give us a "nondescriptive description" =) of the type of products you sell?

[otnot]

Seafood