Forum Moderators: phranque
ANYWAYS...this happens at random times, perhaps they are tracking the sales to each code and redirect the site in their favor when a site reaches a certain amount of sales, it is not the first time , to tell you i have been monitoring their site for the last month or so and it does add up.. i am being ripped off in a very efficient maner...
now tomorow i am dropping the bomb over there, but in the mean time i would like to hear from fellow affiliates who monitor their sites and please dont be bashfull to take a full run of your booking engine to see if you run into the same problem as me...remember [*bleep*] gets 15% commission on all salea and pay you only5% and keep the other 10%now with redirects they are getting 15% of of your sweat... i am very pissed because countless hours of study and work and engine placement and all that good stuff and i loose to a REDIRECT...PLEASE HELP
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Edited by: rcjordan
If you have a site generating good traffic, 90% of the work is done. Join a second affiliate program. You can use it as a back up when your primary is having problems, as an indicator of theft, or simply send some traffic to each program as a hedge for your income.
Moderators begin to get nervous when you post things that could be construed as slanderous. Other forums have been sued and/or shut down over these types of posts, so we STRONGLY encourage you to avoid specifics. OK?
Your general point about redirecting affiliate click-throughs is a matter of concern to many webmasters here, however.
One thing that might help me, and therefore others, is a handle on ratio expectations for income. What I mean by this is basically how many visitors are expected per purchase of a flight or other item?
Obviously there are a lot of factors in play here, such as the site design, what is being sold, etc. However, any ballpark figures would help.
My experience is that I have 500 visitors per day to my travel portals. I have had affiliate links in place for about a month now, but have not sold a single bean since the first week (3 short flights). We must be looking at 20,000 visitors since the last sale.
Is this normal? What is the standard expectation per sale.... 500 or 5,000 or 50,000 visitors?
It's probably worth adding that all my visitors find the sites through search engines... again this probably has a bearing on the ratio.
Any views?
Another major factor is where visitors come from. I saw some numbers somewhere, years ago, as to which referrers (SEs and directories) offered the best conversion rates. Can't find them now, sorry. AOL and Yahoo referrers headed the list of big spenders with SE referrals way behind, likely due to the "web savvy" of the users. One of the more interesting numbers was, most buyers visit a site 5 times or more before making a purchase. Keep an eye on repeat visits, if you get few, this is an area that needs work, it's costing you sales. Adding useful free content is the best solution I've found.
If you are selling a product or service related to your content, weaving text links into the page subtly will usually provide an surprising increase to off site sales (affiliate programs), and opening a new window often helps too, target="_blank". Users can jump back and forth instead of reloading pages.
This is all pretty basic stuff, sorry, I haven't found any simple answers. Trial and error.
If my rates were anywhere near 4-5% I would be laughing... another 1000+ visitors at the weekend and no sales at all.
To be fair I am still experimenting to a degree. These numbers are across several sites with slightly varying content (some of which is half decent).
I am also experimenting with affiliates. The one I prefer for flights presents an annoying login screen half way through the booking - guaranteed to frighten off a good percentage of customers.
This is a shame, because of the others I link to, I get nothing at all (eg: TNOW)... and I mean absolutely nothing. Frustrating really (visitor rates still going up, sales static at 0).
Good point on the source of visitors by the way... and as my visitors hail from the basic SEs this may be a large part of the problem.
