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Can anyone point me in the right direction with regards to advertising affiliate programs on Overture UK.
I contacted Overture today asking if this is possible but was told that I can't link directly from my advert to an affiliate merchant and I had to send the click through to my own website first.
I think this is crazy as it will really confuse the user having to be sent through to a doorway site first.
Anyone have any thoughts on this matter or more important know a way of getting around it?
Cheers,
Mike
It's really isn't crazy, if you think about it. eBay was a perfect example of why in the adwords program. When affiliates were able to link directly though the adwords ad to ebay, there were about 10 affiliates listed on the word "ebay" all linked to ebay. A company could conceivably ask all their affiliates to flood a keyword with ads linking to their site and therefore, completly lock down a keyword for their company.
The way that OV shows their listings (in that they look like real listings rather than ads) also means that the end user would become frustrated if they typed in a keyword and every result sent them to the same page.
The rule also protects the company that you are an affiliate for. Many companies are becoming frustrated due to the fact that they are competing with their own affiliates for keywords. It damages their cpc and affiliate programs to have to do this.
Surely the affiliates should have no.1 priority as they can't have it both ways surely.
Just my opinion.
Anyone have any thoughts on this matter or more importat know a way of getting around it?
Two solutions spring immediately to mind ...
1 ... If you have .htaccess support, use .htaccess to redirect to the affiliate URL via your own web site.
You would need a line in .htaccess that looked roughly like so ...
Redirect /directory [domain.com?affid=nnn...]
Where www.domain.com?affid=nnn is your affiliate URL.
After doing this, just set your URL as http://www.yourdomain.com/directory when you enter your listing.
Something tells me that experienced OT editors will kick this one out, though!
2 ... Just set up a page on your site describing the product you are selling. Then put your affiliate link at the bottom of the page on a buy button (or whatever)
Looks kind of wierd in the serps, but it still worked.
May depend on how new the editor is though.
