Archive for Affiliate Articles
How to earn affiliate revenue with Product Data Feeds
Posted by: | CommentsAll of the programs I manage either have a product data feed or plan to launch one within 4 months of launch. The question is how do you tap into that product datafeed to generate affiliate revenue. (I am assuming in this post that you are new to product datafeeds.)
If you already have content in the form of a site or blog, consider how you can present products to your visitors. Maybe you will simply create a weekly post featuring a merchants product, or your are considering creating an online store as an addition to your current site or blog. Maybe you want to create an online store with a specific theme.
Product data feeds can help you do all these things and more. To show you what a product datafeed can do, I created an entire site from scratch in three days using the product data feed from a merchant that sells one thing. Pajamas.
First I selected a topic or niche that I thought would perform well in the next few months. I considered how I can promote it and what sort of budget I have to promote it. My promotions will focus on: PPC (google adwords), organic traffic via social media, organic traffic via optimized SEO.
I then determined a keyword friendly domain url and I obtained some affordable web hosting that supports WordPress. I installed wordpress and the plugins that optimize SEO and user experience.
Then I signed up for a third party Data feed service ( i.e. popshops or datafeedr). I decided on Datafeedr as I like their ability to create categories. Datafeedr was easy to use and has a WordPress Plugin. I then created the images, navigation and store.
A product datafeed, and a third party data feed service allowed me to create an entire product specific website/store without needing to worry about the overhead costs of running an actual eccomerce online store. By partnering with established merchants my ‘online store’ was up and running in just three days (a realistic time frame would be two weeks).
View the site at www.PajamaTree.com
So how can you utilize the product data feeds for your merchant programs?
Website traffic generation tips for affiliates
Posted by: | CommentsTo recap… it’s not just ‘TRAFFIC’. It is about getting the RIGHT traffic or visitors to your site.
Today’s tip is Article writing.
Write some quality, unique, articles on topics relative to your website or blog. Consider what type of visitor you are looking for and write content for that audience.
For example, if you blog about family, write a series of short articles related to parenting. Something as simple as ‘Funny things children do’ sharing stories of your child’s antics would be unique and well received. Read More→
What you need to know to make advertisers happy
Posted by: | CommentsEven if you don’t run affiliate or CPA or affiliate ads on your blog, if you want advertisers to PAY for the ad space on your blog there are some things you need to know, understand, and incorporate into your blog and advertising opportunities.
The first is – Internet advertising metrics are already established.
It doe snot matter how wonderful your content is, unless you are in the top 25 of bloggers within your niche (in which case they are paying for your representation and endorsement as a celebrity not ad space) your advertisers will be expecting a Return On Investment (ROI) for their ads. They WILL be tracking your ads performance and they will determine the VALUE of your ad space based on that performance.
Any blogger who is expecting to earn ad revenue is a website publisher – The blogger part is about your writing. The ad revenue part is being a website publisher.
The items your advertisers track are the SAME things you should be tracking when you run affiliate ads to optimize the revenue potential of each ad space and link. So paid ad spots OR CPA ads.
These are things you MUST do in order to wear the hat of a ‘professional website publisher’.
1) Your ad spots should be optimized to increase the Click thru rate. (Think design, layout, and limited outgoing links.)
2) Know your audience /readership and target your ads to their interests and your content. Don’t make your website or blog overly general. A ‘parenting blog’ isn’t specific enough to provide search engine traffic. If you go general – you need to categorize to allow for better ad optimization.
i.e. A parenting blog about ‘raising boys’ will provide better ad performance then a general parenting blog. Most merchants can target their ads to land on the boys clothing pages which will convert better for a unique audience of moms raising boys.
You should place ads on relevant audience pages. If your blog posts are parenting related don’t put up ads for high end ladies fashion.
3) Know the real value of your ad inventory and understand the terminology used in buying and selling online advertising.
Most blogs do not have enough unique visitors to qualify for advertising buys. This is why you will see (with the exception of those few blog celebrities mentioned above) most successful revenue generating blogs using an ad network.
That big advertiser isn’t going to cut 500 $10 cheques for a banner ad. They are going to cut ONE $5000 cheque to a network for 250 000 unique banner impressions by category, in the top fold, served to UK viewers only.
Unless you can provide a min 500 unique, geotargeted, with a time cap of 1 or 2 in 24, your ad space isn’t likely to perform enough to justify a large brand purchasing banner ad space.
If your goal is to earn advertising revenue as a blogger, it is time to put on the publisher hat and start learning the industry standards for buying , selling, and tracking ad inventory online.
A great way to do just that is to run affiliate program ads. When you can convert an affiliate program, you know you can also make your paid advertisers happy and you will have the performance stats to back up the claim.
My affiliate banners didn’t generate any revenue
Posted by: | Comments“I don’t tend to use affiliate advertising as, to be honest, it didn’t generate any revenue.”
You’re right. I hear that from bloggers a lot. Why don’t they convert? There are a few reasons but the top two are;
1) Your content is not a close enough match or to generic.
2) You have too many outgoing links
Allot of bloggers find that sidebar affiliate banner ads don’t convert. Affiliate ads can be tricky, the content has to match (i.e. seo’d posts). They work better as they create organic search engine sales down the road …
So if you have a generic parenting blog skip the sidebar banners this month but don’t just give up on affiliate ads. Instead look at your archived content.
That’s’ why we offer a 500 by 100 banner that fits on the bottom of posts. A lot of our affiliates simply place the banners on old archived posts that are relevant each month – keeping their new content clean while monetizing their older content.
Give it a try, you won’t see large volume or immediate results but you will build more consistent ongoing affiliate revenue down the road.
A lot of bloggers find that sidebar affiliate banner ads don’t convert.
Affiliate ads can be tricky, the content has to match (ie seo’d posts). They work better as they create organic search engine sales down the road …
