Can You Really Make Money As An Affiliate Or Merchant?

[pppt41]

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Hey!

Making money as an affiliate seems to be very difficult & im sure there are thousands of other people who feel the same way.

I have found it difficult to make money, to promote products and actually getting results. I always seem to find people who claim to make lots of money as an affiliate blah blah blah.

As I found it difficult to make money as an affiliate I have launched a new product on clickbank called: peak performance phone trading, http://www.peakperformancephonetrading.com

I have made very little as an affiliate on clickbank so i signed up with affiliatewindow and started promoting cell phones as an affiliate which i made some money on, but not much. Am i right in thinking that you need lots of money to market to make money as an affiliate because every niche is saturated with big players already, that have a lot of money

I would appreciate any help/advice maybe some of you affiliate experts can promote my product!

Thanks!

[Quaytickets]

As a merchant affiliate schemes work and make money. We launched our scheme 15wks ago with 1 affiliate we now have a fair few more and they are accounting for 20% of our sales and we hope to grow this to around 30% by the end of the year. Our affiliates are earning anywhere from £25-£500 a month depending on the traffic they get and the number of events of ours they list.
The ones that are doing the best have clear easy to use sites with lots of traffic. How you get that traffic someone on here I am sure will be able to advise on.

[pppt41]

So what products do you actually sell and what affiliate network are you using? do you have a website that i could view....

Do you think it is harder to promote digital online products than normal products that people buy such as consumer electronics etc.?

[Quaytickets]

Hi

We are not on a network we run our own program because we are crazy or very brave :tup
We sell tickets via Quaytickets
As for products I think if you are selling something people want they will buy it. We sell something that is cheap compaired to most products but the money is made from volume. As the economy is in downturn and less people go on holiday they look for other things to keep the family entertained which has helped us have a very busy August so far when usually most people are away or all there spare money is going towards holidays.

[theitgirl]

One of the things that always facinates me in this industry is that it is so hard to measure your own success in comparison to others. Because the large majority of affiliates are quite discreet about their earnings I never know whether I'm doing well for my sector (fashion) or not. It's a dilema!

[channel5]

One of the things that always facinates me in this industry is that it is so hard to measure your own success in comparison to others. Because the large majority of affiliates are quite discreet about their earnings I never know whether I'm doing well for my sector (fashion) or not. It's a dilema!

In any sector it's generally easy to find out how the top sites are doing as many are operated as Limited companies.. simply go to companieshouse.gov.uk and buy their last set of accounts for a £1.

As for the original question then there are many examples of people and companies on here where real money is being made, from those who use affiliate marketing to top up their income to those that run many sites and employ many people, at the real top end then you have the moneysupermarket's of the affiliate world and that is only in the UK.

Affiliate marketing is like any other business in that it takes real work to turn into a business and is not a get rich quick scheme.

[deadgoodundies]

From a merchants point of view I can say for us that affiliate marketing certainly works and works well. If fact I largely attribute us going from a 1 small office operation into the UK's 2nd largest independant online retailer of mens underwear in the space of a few years to affiliate marketing.

[Norras]

One of the things that always facinates me in this industry is that it is so hard to measure your own success in comparison to others. Because the large majority of affiliates are quite discreet about their earnings I never know whether I'm doing well for my sector (fashion) or not. It's a dilema!

Why measure your success against other when you have no idea of their business set up and operating costs.

I prefer to set myself goals. When I started as an affiliate I had a target of being able to pay for a family ski holiday each year from my profits, now I can pay for one a month. When I hit one a week I'll know I've made it

Cheers

Nick

[John Jupp]

A little advice generalised I pass to merchants:

There are many types of affiliate:

Email Marketing:

A highly lucrative form of marketing which can be subject to abuse but if effectively managed this marketing can be highly productive. Providing suitable marketing creative is made available affiliates can then advise their subscribers of any forthcoming release and promote the products to be advertised.

A set format can be produced which then can be populated with content by either the merchant or affiliate and distributed to subscribers.

Loyalty/Reward:

Some merchants catering to affiliates in this sector are being promoted but they are hampered despite the discount codes available if the base price is not competitive with rival merchants. A discount code is not enough if the product price is set too high so merchants should always look at pricing plus any discount and compare against competitors offering similar deals. This is time consuming for a merchant and it is the sector which can see the most growth but also the most fluid changes.

PPC:

Pay Per Click affiliates need short term promotions and specific products which shall convert because a) customers want that product and b) because the product is competitively priced. PPC affiliates can deliver significant volume but the product MUST be right both in terms of what it is and how much it is.

Price Comparison:

Price Comparison affiliates list millions of products and customers search by brand and product type. In order to deliver significant sales the issue is price and price alone. They do PPC but usually only to advertise their site and the product types listed and rely on customer choice. So if your link is featured next to half a dozen others then you need to beat the other prices or ensure that if you are priced higher, that the affiliate can specify a discount code is available on top of the listed price. You then need to check against the other merchants advertised to see if they offer discount codes too, thereby undermining any advantage you had from the discount.

It’s a difficult sector but it is a popular consumer sector. It requires constant monitoring of competitors pricing which is time consuming for a merchant to gain significant sales. Margins for Price Comparison for a merchant are always volume based and not unit based.

Social Network affiliates:

Great for short term promotions using blogs, original content, press releases and widgets. This sector can generate improving returns but the sector is not wholly popular with the consumer, however consumers do use these affiliate sites to get information on individual products.

True Content:

The bricks and mortar affiliate sector. Content affiliates rely on organic sales and are the long tail of affiliate marketing, generating less sales but enhancing brand awareness. They use datafeeds and widgets but also creative. What is needed (not even necessarily priced) from merchants is product specific creative based on seasonal promotions using all the standard affiliate sizes.

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Now I can definitely say that merchants which follow this longer tail approach combined with short tail activity do VERY well if their program is ramped. This means affiliates can effectively promote and looking at some stats from merchants under our umbrella, they are doing VERY well thanks to their hard efforts to improve product pricing and availability and creative for affiliates and affiliates are doing well promoting them because the programs are starting to convert better.

[pppt41]

So Nick, what products do you promote exactly? do you promote products off affiliate networks?

Could you give me an idea of how much you spend on marketing & what kind of methods you use? (email/ppc etc.)

Thanks 4 Your Comments BTW

[kcheung]

YOu got to find a good niche, affiliate side, its all about the research and getting a sweet niche that no one thought of, I know affiliates who focus on generic broad terms whilst others focus right down to a product level.

you could draw a graph where the more niched the sector the easier you'll get ranking, but the less traffic there is. the inverse is also true.

as a result if you go for generics you need big bucks to rank against the big boys, but with niche you need loads of small sites covering each niche that add up to a nice bit of income, you'll find that in that regards for niche you need to spend time getting content.

re: PPC again its all about the preparation and organization, that will because of quality score, help to lower your costs,and there is a simple equation you can use based on EPC (earnings per click) to determine if a program is worth marketing using PPC or not.

Re: email - again you can use EPC to determine open and conversion rates.

regardless if you are a site, ppc or email affiliate, each is an art in itself.

re: NICK - "I prefer to set myself goals. When I started as an affiliate I had a target of being able to pay for a family ski holiday each year from my profits, now I can pay for one a month. When I hit one a week I'll know I've made it"

does this mean you're going to treat me to a slap-up lunch sometime soon?

[Hayley-VisionAds]

The only way an affilaite can really make any great profits is by having some sort of traffic which can then be redirected.

Its fine for people to say right im going to set up a site, advertise and now im an affiliate. It isn't quite as simple as that. Its the same as any business, you have to find a gap in the market and find the traffic. If you simply add banners to a website which gets next to no hits each week you are never going to make any money.

The best thing for affiliates to do when starting up, is finding an area online that is going to prove to be popular with the online world. Or in the case of e-marketing, generating a nice sufficient amount of data. The more traffic you are recieving the more you can redirect, and the more profits you can make.

[pppt41]

Ahh ok, nice info

I have started a PPC adwords campaign & i have used really specific keywords to promote laptops....I have got good CTR and my ad positions are pretty decent, they are on the 1st page for those keywords

i get regular clicks but still not converting? any ideas? or do i just have to give it time?

or maybe the price of the laptop is just too high on that merchants website?

[John Jupp]

Ahh ok, nice info

I have started a PPC adwords campaign & i have used really specific keywords to promote laptops....I have got good CTR and my ad positions are pretty decent, they are on the 1st page for those keywords

i get regular clicks but still not converting? any ideas? or do i just have to give it time?

or maybe the price of the laptop is just too high on that merchants website?

See my post on merchant pricing for PPC campaigns.

[dougs]

Never made a penny online...I just do it for the fun.

Doug