Forum Moderators: martinibuster
On one site of mine, whether search engines *like* affiliate sites or not, there's been over $1,500 worth of sales in just a few weeks, with large purchases (plus a couple small ones), for one merchant alone - off only TWO pages, well written with original text about why to buy those products. Pages like that shouldn't run Adsense alongside the products - that's common sense.
That will NOT happen for some pages or for some products or some sites, because there are short return days on the cookies for those merchants and they're products that may take a longer time to convert. So folks buy - but after the cookie duration has expired, so there's no commission paid.
Those second type of pages are GREAT for Adsense, because the publisher gets paid for those *highly targeted* clicks anyway and the advertiser acquires a customer who may not buy the same day, but will come back and not only make their purchase, but could be a lifetime or repeat customer.
Moral of the story:
A nickel a click is better than non-commissionable sales.
OK, I'll explain then.
There are affiliate sites that market products geared toward a certain target market and some of them convert well. Not all, but some do. Or some of the pages on the site do. Users like some of the sites or some pages, they bookmark pages and they buy from the merchants that are linked to. So the sites convert well - or at least some of the pages convert well for some merchants.
Some of those sites also run Adsense on their pages. That's how affiliate marketing enters into it. It can be a very good combination IF it's done with the user experience in mind and by using common sense.
Let's say a site carries different products - one page may be offering products that retail for $200+ each at 10% commission (with 120 return days). Another page offers products that sell for $10.95 each. Maybe that's 53 cents commission from a retailer - IF the sale doesn't happen after their half a return day or session only cookie expires.
Whoopie! 53 cents commission (maybe)! A page like that makes pennies in commission for an affiliate, hardly worth even putting up for commission, BUT still useful to visitors. However if that page is running Adsense, those ads can send visitors to the Adwords Advertiser's site that will get them a steady, repeat customer that will give them a lot of business over time.
--The Advertiser wins because they're getting targeted visitors who may be long term customers.
--The visitor wins because they find a good merchant and the products they're looking for.
--The publisher wins because even though they get only pennies for either commission or Adsense income on the page, they've provided value to the user and that user may just navigate to the page with $200 products that pay $20 commission a pop. And they get bookmarks, meaning return visitors.
If you drink enough Google Kool-Aid, after a while "user experience" starts to make sense. ;)
Added:
So a site that's good for Adsense needs to be able to invite advertisers - but not land on a Google page that indicates the publisher account is in a completely different vertical, or for a number of very good reasons, doesn't reveal their other sites or niches indiscriminately.
And also NOT invite advertisers to their other sites that are lousy for Adsense, get poor clickthroughs and aren't potential revenue sources for advertisers.
[edited by: Marcia at 4:54 am (utc) on June 15, 2007]
I think what needs to happen is Google should let us define groups of channels as "sites" (or simply filter by URL) and allow for customization of advertiser welcome messages PER SITE.
