Re: Affiliate network, which one ?

From: Christopher Ulrich <culrich_at_mail.cydian.com>
Date: Mon 03 Jun 2002 20:59:39 -0600

We had horrible results with CJ and cancelled our
program. They were making so little money on their
affiliates that they started jacking up fees,
adding minimum fees, etc. because as a network
they couldn't deliver the sales the promised.

They may have 400,000 members, but I'd bet 10,000
of them are "active" or "useful".

Over many months we probably hit 2,000 affiliates.
Of those, probably 20-50 sent any traffic. The rest
sign up, never put up links and get no traffic.

Of those few sales we got, I believe 80% or so were
fraudulent and charged back....

Yes, you can set CJ to not "auto accept" members -
they would require your approval. But then you have
to examine the 1000-2000 crappy websites that ask to
join.

Go through CJ. Sign up as an affiliate. Browser
through the list of 1000+ vendors. Click on their
links. They will tell you not only how much (little)
the affiliates are making, but also what the fraud
(chargeback) rate is that those merchants are
suffering.

ALSO - we have a landing page that gets about 300,000
hits per month. Put up a rotating banner from CJ to
see what happens. In one week - 75,000 visitors - we
had 6 clicks, no sales.

Just shows how effective these banner programs are
these days...

If we were to do it again? I'd set up my own program,
with our own software, and spend the time hunting down
good affiliates. Visit good sites, make them an offer
and sign them up. I'd rather have 50 affiliates with
1 million impressions each per month, than 50,000
affiliates with 100 impressions each per month. Don't
forget - any yahoo (no reference to the engine) can
sign up to be an affiliate of these networks, even if
he just put up a website consisting of one picture of
his cat.

And not a very good looking cat, at that.

FWIW, hope this helps!
 
                   




Received on Mon Jun 03 2002 - 21:59:39 CDT