Comments on: Affiliate Program Tips for Bloggers

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 08:26:35 +0000

Google does a horrible job of handling Ads on pages with more than one topic

This seems true, David, though most of my search engine traffic comes to specific pages which contain only one article. This is where it works better (IMO)

By: Shai Coggins

Shai Coggins — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 04:22:16 +0000

Thanks for the recognition and recommendation, Darren.

Your additional tip is actually Tip #3 – Choose your affiliates carefully! It’s always best to have targeted affiliates. For example, if you run a site/newsletter/weblog on “Spas” — then try to promote spas and spa-related affiliates only. :-)

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 21:41:46 +0000

What I have, which is a kind of ‘halfway house’ when I don’t want totally generic links but can’t or don’t want to deeplink to a specific program, is to take advantage of my blog software (Wordpress) “custom field”. Basically on any post I can either drop in some affiliate ‘code’ which is then displayed at the end of the post, or I can set a keyword called ‘amazon’ and type in a search term, which then is displayed as a text link to the relevant category on Amazon. It works, so long as I remember to add the keywords! Otherwise, it just displays a generic link. Maybe that’s a semi-automated way of doing it if you use the same affiliate program, and then just add specific links (maybe in or at the end of your article) if you want to recommend or promote an individual product.

By: David

David — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 19:18:45 +0000

I totally agree with you Jim, and I know I personally have lots to learn before I could ever get close to where I want to be with my blogging (money wise, I’d like to be able to write about technology, my life, the city I live in and whatnot and have that writing pay for the hosting and the domain atleast).

I think that there are lots of ways to make money from Affilite programs, but I don’t have the knowledge, probably the readership as of yet, nor the time to do the research and marketing that it takes to really get things rolling.

I have seen some sites have some really great sponsorships that go perfectly with their blog, and I have seen other sites have odd sponsorships that just don’t seem to fit. How do you find a good company, willing to pay good money for niche blogs?

And do you think Adsense and Amazon are NOT the right kind of Advertising to be done on personal blogs that range in topics?

If I could find a company like ATI (video card maker) or NCIX (computer store that I always buy from) to sponsor my blog, and give me press releases on new products and whatnot, I’d write about them, I’d make sure their ads were prevalent on my site, but again, readership numbers are what are important, and most personal blogs don’t have the readership required to get more topic-specific affiliate programs.

By: Jim Kukral

Jim Kukral — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 18:55:36 +0000

Affiliate marketing isn’t contextual David. It’s up to the merchant to provide unique creatives that can help your specific blog convert. And it’s up to the affiliate to do their very best to promote those creatives.

Otherwise, it’s not going to work. Bloggers have a lot to learn about this game, but nobody is blaming them. They got into this to write, not make money. Well, 98% of them anyway.

By: David

David — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 18:19:52 +0000

These thoughts are nice, but especially for contextual things on personal sites it becomes difficult. I think the best thing for a site like mine would be to maybe have advertisements pertaining to what I like, ie Amazon links to products I like, and then blog about why I like them to get others interested.

Google does a horrible job of handling Ads on pages with more than one topic, (again ie, my blog) so the Clickthrough is really low. (less than a percent)