Co-branding a web site in exchange for advertising

Good or bad idea?

[valex123]

I have an idea I'd liked your thoughts on.

Lets say john as web site abc.com and he can make money selling his product but wants more traffic. So john approaches steve who owns xyz.com and proposes that:

1. steve runs ads for abc.com on his xyz.com web site. Also, steve uses an ad agency to show ads on his xyz.com web site.

2. when someone on xyz.com clicks on the abc.com ad, they arrive at abc.com where, through an agreement between john and steve, steves ad agency ads also appear on the abc.com web site. steve is sort of cobranding johns web site. By the way, steve did get permission from his ad agency to place ads on johns abc.com web site.

3. steve is happy (i think) because he earns the extra revenue from the additional ad displays.

4. john is happy because he gets the extra traffic and sells more product.

Here are some questions:

1. what is the best way for john to find steve? advertise on google, overture, or what other place or method?

2. should john offer to share a percentage of his product sales with steve?

3. am i missing something here? is this a good, bad or soso idea?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[monkeythumpa]

This is called an affiliate deal. There are lots of sites that bring the two together and do all the tracking and payment. But if you want to do this on your own, I would find some content partners in your industry, they already have the most targeted traffic already.

As a publisher, I always want a CPC deal, as an advertiser, I always want a CPA deal. I will give everybody a percentage of a sale if I don't have to market it. 85% of a sale is better than 100% of no sale. See what you can work out. If you go with a CPC deal, multiply that by 100 to estimate what your cost per conversion will be and see if that is acceptable.

Make sure both people can track it. That will make everybody happy.