RE: commission junction and others

From: Mark Brownlow <mark_at_brownlows.com>
Date: Wed 08 Aug 2001 12:52:25 -0500

ERIC J. AAFEDT <eric_at_investmenthouse.com> WROTE:

> Let's hear someone write in that is an affiliate
> publisher and tell us how happy they are with the
> revenue they receive each month.

Nothing like a challenge to brighten up another day
in the home office.

As is often the case with many aspects of Internet
business, it's not the concept of affiliate marketing
that's flawed, but the way that it's usually
implemented.

Most affiliates are not looking to make a full-time
income through affiliate programs. They just get a
kick out of getting the odd check from Amazon to
offset some of their hosting fees.

Many (perhaps most) of those few affiliates that do
approach affiliate programs on a more "commercial"
basis labor under the (false) impression that affiliate
programs are a replacement for banner advertising.

So I would agree with Eric in the sense that most
affiliates are getting little or no return for their
space. But I'd argue that it's simply because they're
not using the space effectively.

There are a very few affiliates (and a few merchants
too) who understand that affiliate marketing requires
its own techniques and approaches to generate an
acceptable level of revenue.

And these happy few are very happy indeed. They're
just hard to find, especially since affiliate-oriented
sites and discussions tend to be (understandably)
populated by those who are failing, rather than
succeeding.

But back to Eric's challenge...

I sold this site in April: http://www.sciencekomm.at/

In the six months prior to the sale, affiliate program
links were generating a net cpm across the site (so
including pages with no advertisements or links) of
around US$13. The actual cpm equivalents for
individual affiliate links ranged from US$8 to US$40,
all revenue generated through search boxes and text
links.

Leaving aside measurement questions, I was effectively
selling out all my inventory for half a year for a cpm
of US$13. The site was what most readers would
consider small, so total monthly affiliate revenues
were in the order of US$3,500. Total monthly expenses
were around US$160 (mostly ongoing GoTo campaigns). I
spent about an hour a month on site maintenance in
this period.

Was I happy? Yep.

I don't think it was a fluke, since success was based
on the application of affiliate marketing principles
learned from observation and research, plus a whole
heap of testing.

Of course, there were also months prior to this period
when the site and my time earnt nothing, as I climbed
the learning and testing curve.

But so convinced am I of the potential of affiliate
programs to provide publishers with a decent living,
that I recently gave up the day job to do just that
(among other things - another lesson I learned the
hard way is the one about having all your eggs in one
basket).

Mark Brownlow



Received on Wed Aug 08 2001 - 12:52:25 CDT