Any money in being an affiliate . . . ?

[Mr Fudge]

I spent a considerable amount of time putting up a gift site linking to affiliates.
My partner became very interested when she saw the chocolate section!
Anyway she placed an order and sure enough my 30p commission showed up on the tracking system.
Trouble is I clear cookies on my PC - (surely I can't be alone in this) so her next order bought me nothing.
Furthermore the companies promotion was good - their web site / order - line telephone number etc splashed over a nice colour brochure which was mailed to both the order point and the receiver of the chocs.
A lot of work for 30p!
Furthermore I placed some highly relevant link banners (Amazon & Ancestory.com I think) on the home page of www.oldmap.co.uk - a busy site.
Think I sold 1 book (another 20p!) in around 30,000 unique visits - goodness knows how many visitors surfed off my site to the affiliate links and got lost for ever.
Would love to hear from anyone who makes a living out of this, but expect if they exist they keep pretty quiet!

[Cedric]

Are there people that make a living (and a good one) at affiliate marketing? Absolutely. I am one of them.

Beyond that, I'm not sure what questions you have. ;)

[Chris - WSO]

Hi

Most certiainly people can make a living doing affiliate marketing. Though the location a person lives in will dictate how successful they need to be in order to make "a living" versis "a good living".

Selecting your merchants carefully when you get started is probably the most important factor, I would recommend always starting with a product line that you know well yourself (even if the bottom line is small), something that will make it easy for you to create an informative site that will drive informed and targeted consumers to your target Merchants, once you have that one up and running along with frequent cheques coming in then turn to different areas and areas where the payouts are larger.

It takes time and a fair bit of dedication to get to a point where you can quit work and stay home. But once you make it then there really is no limit to how much money you can make.

Cheers

Chris

[Cedric]

It takes time and a fair bit of dedication to get to a point where you can quit work and stay home.

Although you might get it done faster if you quit your job first.

JUST KIDDING -- that's NOT a recommendation. I just happened to wander into affiliate marketing while I was on sabbatical from the Real World (but the household had another source of income at that time).

[Linda Buquet]

An affiliate for one of my 5 Star programs, DentalPlans, just made over $7,000 last month on that one program alone. I bet with all the affiliate programs is is promoting he is making at least 15K a month.

One of the best ways you can maximixe your earning potential and increase conversion rates is to learn to use datafeeds. See an article I just had published on WebProNews here:
http://www.webpronews.com/wpn-10-200...aDatafeed.html

To all of you who continue to try to increase your affiliate earnings....

~ Keep the faith ~ Find good honest merchants with high paying programs ~ Learn all you can here at WebProWorld
~ Commit to building at least one new page a day and you can eventually get there.

Best of luck to all of you and let me know if there is anything I can ever do to help your efforts!

[Revi]

Mr Fudge. We have an affiliate site CrazyCoolDealz. We arent even a year old and are already bringing in close to $2000 a month with the various affiliates! Our main problem is getting the word out about us to bring in the traffic. Sounds like youve got the traffic, so just be patient and be prepared to work! :) Good luck!

[Linda Buquet]

Revi,

I have seen you mention your site before, but have never checked it out.

I absolutely LOVE your Crazy Cool Dealz characters and your site design!!! You are truly giving people a unique reason to visit, bookmark the site, and spread the viral marketing a word. Excellent site and great job! I predict your site will gain popularity and earn you more very quickly.

Hey Revi - wanna make even more money??? You should add Irvs Luggage and zZounds ;-) email me if you want to know how you can earn more with these two.

[Cedric]

One of the best ways you can maximixe your earning potential and increase conversion rates is to learn to use datafeeds.

Not to disagree with Linda, but I didn't want anyone new to affiliate marketing to be scared off by the technical requirements of datafeeds... I don't use them, never have, and unless I do some learning, never will. ;)

It is ENTIRELY possible to earn a grand living without using datafeeds. Don't get me wrong -- I know a number of people who do well with them, they're just not a requirement for success.

[Linda Buquet]

Cedric,

You are very right and thanks for pointing that out. Im my gusto for datafeeds I really didn't frame that point very well. For ADVANCED affiliate marketers who are looking to move to the next level of income - I believe datafeeds are really something to explore.

I am just overly enthusiastic about them because I have seen Irvs Luggage sales QUADRUPLE in 3 months largely because our top affiliates are using datafeeds. I have just witnessed too many affiliate success stories from various programs - so I get a little excited when I talk about feeds.

But as Cedric said they aren't necessary and many affiliates like Cedric, make great money without them.
In fact. I know many top earners who believe a nice content-rich hand built site is the only way too go!

[Cedric]

For ADVANCED affiliate marketers who are looking to move to the next level of income - I believe datafeeds are really something to explore.

It's certainly one of the options. ;)

But I find it much more interesting (given my particular skillset and interests) to explore new product lines to move to the next level. My top category for this year was barely on my radar last year. Quite a bit of learning went into sussing out how to market the product, but it's learning that comes much easier to me than would be required by implementing a database.

Database building is on my to-do list right after I finish exploring all the other ideas I have... problem is, items keep getting added to the list ahead of databases. ;)

[Revi]

Thanks for the nice words about the site Linda! :) We had a wonderful designer that really listened when we told him what we were looking for!

We use datafeed occasionally but not always. A lot of our forum posts are by the members who have no clue what that is all about let alone how to do it! But when we do the individual merchant pages and homepage we just usually use whichever. I think datafeed is the way of the future tho. So I know I have to get used to it and learn to use it now to be ready to move ahead.

[Maureen]

I can attest to the fact that people do make money off affiliate programs. We just spent all morning paying out tens of thousands of dollars in monthly residual commissions to our web hosting resellers.

I have to agree with Chris – it doesn’t happen overnight. Quote: It takes time and a fair bit of dedication to get to a point where you can quit work and stay home. And Linda, (thank you for taking the time to moderate this forum) I found your post titled: Affiliate Sales Success – to be so accurate – it’s like you were in my head… One of the first links I check every morning: my commissions! It’s a wonderful way to start the day and watch the numbers grow.

Thanks again – I look forward to participating on this board
Maureen

I’ve been working from home since 1996 and I can honestly say: “I love my job”

[vinland]

I made a link site for affiliate content and usually earn 30$ (NOT 30p!!!) for every signup I generate! Usually I generate 1 sale per 200-300 visitors!

URL Snipped by Mod for Adult content and multiple cross posts. Catalyst

[Linda Buquet]

Maureen,

Thanks for your post and insight. It's great having people like you on this board who will share their true feelings as well as successes. Welcome to this great community and feel free to post your quetions or comments any time! We appreciate you!

[Mr Fudge]

Thanks for the response!
I'll have another try.
Nice that there are kind people around offering Affilliate Management Services. Expect some dumb, sceptical people wonder why they haven't made their e-fortunes from the schemes they promote! ;-)
Steve (Mr Fudge)
www.curioshop.co.uk
PS Used to be in confectionery should this nick name worry anyone!

[SportsFan]

I have been operating a website called Calendar Updates (www.calendar-updates.com) for about two years now. All of my revenue comes from affiliates. To date, I have made a total of about $200. Is this a normal beginning for a successful website?

I provide free holiday and sport team schedules that can be imported into MS Outlook. Each calendar event includes information about the event, as well as links to purchase products from my affiliates relating to the event (holiday gifts, sports fan gear, etc.)

I get thousands of downloads, and have had to upgrade my server twice to handle the increase in traffic. But I can't quit my day job and do this full-time unless I can make a little more money.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks...

www.calendar-updates.com

[Mr Fudge]

Sportsfan
Sorry to hear this but glad I'm not alone - thought I was the odd one out looking at the other postings here.
You have one nice professional site - the magic Google ranking - you get the hits - what are we missing here? :-(
Steve
www.curioshop.co.uk
PS Of course if say the companies you promote have another 999 affiliates seeing $300 payouts it's nice business for them! "You do the math" as they love to say.
Anyway I'm off to water the garden - we have a heat wave here in the UK - thank God for the real world!

[Gary Golden]

My Travel site has made money these last two years, am I rich, NO! It pays for the advertising, hosting and that is about it. I am happy though because I have learned alot about web marketing and continue to learn.
I put up my classified ad site last year, it is on all of the search engines but trying to build business is a bear. Alexa rank this site at 110,000 so I no their are visitors but getting them to post ads is something else.
I use Alexa to compare sites, Their ranking seem to be pretty good as my auction site is ranked over 1mm so I know it is not being visited and my travel site is ranked around 375,000 and I am making some money.
I guess really internet business is like brick and mortar businesses. Be patient!!!

[Cedric]

Cedric's #1 Rule to Successful Affiliate Marketing (YMMV)
"If you want make a living with online sales, you must first build a web site that sells stuff."

Don't get me wrong, I have pure content sites. They're great sites and I love having them -- I've nurtured and grown them since 1998. And you can't ignore the beneficial PR they pass on. ;)

But they don't sell squat and trust me, I've tried selling EVERYTHING on those sites (caveat: they're now earning a nice chunk of change with Google AdSense).

In 2001, I decided to look at what other affiliates were doing... I'll be darned, they were building sites with one thing in mind -- SALES. No freebies, no high- traffic getters, no content that wasn't aimed at sales (and there IS such a thing as "sales content").

So I built a site aimed at selling and nothing else. Guess what? It sold stuff.

You want to attract the people who are looking to BUY online -- not the ones that are looking for free downloads/content. The best way to attract people looking to buy? Sell stuff -- and not as a sideline.

[SportsFan]

Thanks for the feedback.

Credic's #1 rule makes a lot of sense. Still, I would like to find a way to provide these schedules free of charge and still make a living doing it. I will look into the Google AdSense that you mentioned.

I agree with ohioadman in that I am learning a lot by doing this. I don't know html very well, so my entire site is done with FrontPage. But I have learned a lot just doing this the past 2 years. I even taught myself some java to get a sunrise / sunset calculator to work on the site:

http://www.calendar-updates.com/Sun.asp

This page supports my Moon Phase schedule and is very popular with my visitors.

Thanks for the responses...