Am I being ripped off?

[bobby]

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Hi,

We run a reasonably busy wedding website called weddingvenues.com and get around 2,000 unique visitors and 20,000 page view a day. Over the last year we have tried partnering with various companies with little or no success. To date I think we have made around £40 via affiliate marketing. We strongly suspect that some of the companies either don't track the sales or just lie about the conversion.

We have the traffic. We know people click on the banners. We just can't find companies who are honest enough to share the profits.

Can anyone suggest companies we can team up with that fit the site profile?

Also can you give any estimate of the sort of revenue we should be expecting from our site given the traffic?

Finally, any comments on the design or functionality of the site would be great as this may be our problem.

Many thanks

Bob

[MarkCo]

Join Confetti.co.uk on Affiliate Future.... I am sure you will do well on that program alone

[bobby]

Thanks MarkCo, We do know of them, kind of the competition in a way but I will check them out further.

Cheers

Bob

[MarkCo]

So your site is a wedding retail site? I was thinking your site was an information type site.

Tell us what type of companies / products you have promoted in the past?

[leec]

Not sure if this is any good for your site but has to be worth a look


http://www.weddingdelights.co.uk/ have just joined www.affiliatewindow.com


HTH

[bobby]

Not really a retail site. More a directory of venue, but Confetti.co.uk do have a similar section. Guess it won't hurt to try it out. Thanks again for the tip.

Will also try http://www.weddingdelights.co.uk/. Maybe a travel company or honeymoon one may also fit well.

Thanks again all

[MarkCo]

Why not feature products and deeplink (this means linking directly to the product, not the homepage) then users will most likely not find the similar confetti.co.uk feature, just thge products or services listed in your directory.

Also, if you make the affiliate link / site open in a new pop up window then the visitor also remains on your website.

[KirstyM]

Do you have a mailing list you could monetise at all?

Affiliate Future have a lot of holiday merchants, you could mail out some kind of honeymoon special, or wedding favours or table and venue decorations suggestions?

AF also have the Lovehearts affiliate programme. They do some rather neat wedding favours there too.

[Hero]

as is mentioned in another thread, complementary products is something to look at. Think of it as the "other things you might be interested in" or "other customers also bought" cross-selling marketing.
Your customers might be interested in bridal wear, bridal lingerie, shoes for the big day, groom's accessories, wedding invitation letters, bridal jewellery, bridal flowers & church decorations, divorce lawyers (ok, ok, just kidding!) - we have an interesting selection of merchants in these sectors, drop me an email/PM if you are interested in expanding your product suggestions and I'll give you some further information on the programs themselves.

Why rely on merchants to do the tracking? Join merchants with a network program! Furthermore, if the companies you have partnered with have seen your good traffic (and, as you say, have benefited from that), why not approach them to ask them to join a network to run their affiliate program through? It might be that they haven't considered it before. If they value you as a referring source, they will take your suggestion under consideration. Not to mention that, if you refer them to a network and they end up launching, you get a nice referring commission!

[rich7111]

Wedding insurance on omguk with Marks and Spencer, might add something different.

[DutchRomano]

I agree, complementary products is something to look at *but* do you make money from bookings too ?

[csn]

My idea would be to register with confectionary sites, such as Thorntons and Love Hearts. Then have a section all about Wedding Favours.

Also, why not become affiliates with Hilton and Ramada Jarvis.

Even holiday programmes (alpharooms, etc.) may be good for planning the honeymoon.

[rich7111]

£15 per wedding insurance policy booked. I Have always trusted omguk tracking.

[mibut]

use google adsense

[bobby]

Sorry been ill so delayed responce. Many thanks for all the suggestions. Yes I will try them and see what happens. We have done insurance direct with two firms in the past and got nothing back though suspect they ripped us off or were useless. Also had wedding website affiliate direct called weddingtracker.co.uk and now they don't even respond to mails about commission owed. Rather pathetic.

As for the hotels and honeymoon stuff - again it's on the go. We have partnered with a company and they assure us they will pay up once they get the tracking system working OK. But thats now 6 months into the original partnership and nothing paid as yet.

To anyone else thinking of a new venture into affiliate I'd suggest checking out the company first or going to a network. It's the way I will be heading in the future.

As a side note I'd suggest anyone with a bad payer to check out moneyclaim.gov.uk, it takes about 10 minutes to take a company to small claims court.

All the best.

Bob