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Affiliate Marketing For Beginners

Everyone told me I should be able to make money from affiliate marketing programs because my web sites are getting heaps of traffic. With four large sites attracting a significant number of visitors every day or the week, it sounded like the answer to my entrepreneurial dreams...

And... if you believe some of the pundits, even a novice can make $1,000 a month or more from participating in affiliate programs.

So what's my story...

The first step was to identify which site to put the affiliate program on. My sites included:
  • this one - its main focus being small business operators
  • Careers OnLine & Jobs PLUS - which target job applicants and employers, and
  • ComeOnAussieDotCom - a directory of Australian web sites.
Now there are two ways you can go about it...
  1. target a specific topic or area, or
  2. try to do everything
Now... at the time, there weren't really many useful programs around in the "employment" area, and I'd dabbled a little in the past with a couple, and got (literally) nothing!

Focussing solely on the business topic wasn't that easy either, but for a different reason! With a plethora of related products and services available, it was too hard to decide what to include.

Since ComeOnAussieDotCom covers a wide range of topics, I should be able to get some sort of result... or at least quickly determine which areas might be more profitable to pursue.

So I started there, and

  1. signed up with Commission Junction, Clix Galore, and an Australian based organisation called Cyber Affiliates (now defunct)
  2. targetted advertisers who were in Australia (after all... that's the focus of the site)
  3. looked for advertisers to suit the different content areas available - from books to travel
  4. included a whole heap of banners, buttons and text links
  5. and then sat back to watch the money roll in :)

My Reward...

In short... what happened over the next few months was pretty disappointing, considering the research and effort that went into it!

Grand total of all commissions earned over the next two months - around $0.08 cents (in AUD)... which I'm STILL waiting for and never likely to get as the organisation went bust!

Now... it wasn't because the site wasn't getting any visitors - it was.

It wasn't because the buttons and banners weren't generating much interest - they were - the tracking programs showed heaps of impressions, and a reasonable click through rate...

To be honest... I had no idea (especially at this early stage of may affiliate marketing careers) of why I had earned next to nothing!

Where would you go now?

After that dismal experience... many would cut their losses and do no more... probably even bail out! And that is what you WILL notice about lots of affiliate pubishers - apparently over 90% of the people involved in such programs do just that - nothing.

But I couldn't just do "nothing". As mentioned above, Cyber Affiliates folded (the main program provider), and I had heaps of their merchants which had to be removed.

That in itself was a pretty big job... so when some new providers emerged, I went to their schemes to replace my merchants...

And so my experiment in affiliate marketing kept on going.

* NEXT - Choosing Affiliate Programs to Connect With

What should you look for when selecting merchants? More...
 * PREVIOUS - Affiliate Programs Introduced How Affiliate Marketing works... the relationship between advertisers and publishers. More...
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