The Mad Men of Mad Men
Update on Google Adsense:
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how Google kept rejecting my application for their program. At the time, I thought my second application was rejected because my site had not been established and assumed Google was simply looking for more credible sites. That might be true, but it seems that the real reason my site was rejected was simply because I typed the wrong URL in the application form.
OOPS.
I guess it pays to double check your work!
On to Ah-Ha moments….
I’ve been writing about my advertising Ah-Ha moments, including my realization that Google would not make me rich and that advertising networks are not enough. Today, I’ll be talking about affiliate programs.
Now, I do not profess to be an expert in affiiate programs. In fact, before I started this blog I knew very little about affiliate programs and until that point, I had only heard about Amazon’s affiliate program. For you experts in affiliate programs, you probably think that’s nuts. But really, in my day-to-day life of building sites for top-tier clients, it just never came up since they generally go after big advertising and other huge monetization schemes. But I’m writing this blog to chronicle my adventures as a sole proprietor of an online business, and filling you in on my learning curve is part of that.
Anyway, even though big companies might look elsewhere to monetize their sites, affiliates seem to be a great play for people like smaller businesses like mine. I’m not going to go into depth about affiliate programs (mostly because the info is widely available and like I said, I’m not an expert). From what I gather, here’s how affiliates can work:
1. You join some an affiliate network like AzoogleAds and ClickBank.
2. You check out offers and campaigns.
3. You create a site or page to drive people to the offer and campaign. Or you can use your existing blog or site.
4. You employ marketing programs, like Google Adwords, to drive people to your web site and entice them to follow through on the affiliate offer.
5. You get a commission depending on the terms of the affiliate program. Some of them give you a commission if a user clicks on the link. Others require the user to make a sale. Users don’t generally need to make a purchase that visit; there’s usually a period of time based calculated via the user’s cookie. Some programs also reward you for the lifetime value of the customer; that is, if the customer renews or makes another purchase, you get a commission again and again.
Read this post from Shoemoney’s 10,000 experiment with affiliate programs.
If you read his post, you’ll see his experiment makes a pretty compelling case for affiliate programs. $600 a day is nothing to sneeze at and it’s enough to make a person-between-jobs-like-me give it a try. I just need to remember that this is not my core business. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.
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