Affiliate programs rock - or "parking can be a big waste of profit"

[mj]

If you have a commercially valuable domain that receives type-in traffic and you can find an affiliate program for it, then parking is very likely a big waste of easy profit. Especially since the click values from parking are going down.

All you need to do to earn more money than parking is to bang up a quick and dirty one-pager and apply to some affiliate programs. From my experience, the acceptance rate even for a one-pager is about 90%. Of course, if you can only find one affiliate program for your domain then you might want to make your page a little bit prettier so that you don't take the chance of being denied access to the program.

I am slowly moving all of these types of domains out of parking and into MFA (Made For Affiliate) pages. One example is a parked domain of mine that made about $30 a month with parking, and it makes about $90 a month on an affiliate program. Another example is a domain that made about $7 a month with parking, making about $40 a month on an affiliate program.

Once I get everything I can onto MFA and affiliate programs, then I will start going through them and improving the sites as well as doing link building so that so that I can improve rankings, attract search traffic, improve conversions, etc. That is phase 2, basically turning them into real "mini-sites".

I agree with Rick Latona, parking sucks. However, while I haven't been banned from Adsense, I still don't like it at all. IMO, the real money is with affiliate programs. The affiliate program providers I am making money from in the two examples above are Tradedoubler and Zanox.

Surfers will naturally shy away from affiliate links, just to keep you from making money (yes, people are nasty in that way), so you should hide your affiliate links with PHP as I described in an earlier post. After I started doing this, my conversion rates climbed sharply. I'm not kidding. Part of that can also be attributed to the tracking cookie for the affiliate program - even if the surfer closes the advertiser's site after clicking your link (hoping that you won't get paid), the tracking cookie often persists for 30 days or more in his browser. If he returns to the advertiser's site directly and makes a purchase within the cookie's lifetime, you still get paid (this is usually called an iSale). About 30% of my sales so far have been iSales.

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[michael]

Can you give some examples? Any russian afiliate programs? Can't understand

[mj]

Originally Posted by michael

Can you give some examples? Any russian afiliate programs? Can't understand

Let's say that if you own a Russian IDN

MoscowHotels.com (you figure out what it is in Russian)


Then you go to yandex or google or whatever, and search in russian language for "hotel affiliate programs". If you find some companies who are offering affiliate programs and then you join their site and apply for the programs.

If you don't find anything from searching, then go to the website of the major russian hotel chains and see if they provide any information. If they don't provide any information, then send them an email and ask them about it.

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[michael]

Now I get it)

Many thanks!

[michael]

One more...

What do you think about making some one-page-sites with AdSense blocks? They getting clicks as from my experience. And it is better than ND or Sedo.

[Lidador]

Originally Posted by mj

Let's say that if you own a Russian IDN

MoscowHotels.com (you figure out what it is in Russian)


Then you go to yandex or google or whatever, and search in russian language for "hotel affiliate programs". If you find some companies who are offering affiliate programs and then you join their site and apply for the programs.

If you don't find anything from searching, then go to the website of the major russian hotel chains and see if they provide any information. If they don't provide any information, then send them an email and ask them about it.

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From my experience, adsense was better for me than hotel affiliating.
Why? In adsense they click (for more info) and on affiliate pages they click (for more info also). But on the first one you get paid for providing more info and on the second case (after getting the info) they go check the hotel on the top sites or by the phone. (90% of the time cookies get lost)

Both don't get indexed nor get Google traffic. (Google knows all aff. pages doorways)

You need to:
a) Create addicional content for the aff. site ... too much work! AND
b) Spend some money on promoting AND branding the site ($$$$$$$)
- adding badges (security, certifications, any other) helps a lot

PM if you want some examples.

[yanni]

Find affiliates that provide white label solutions

[mj]

Originally Posted by Lidador

From my experience, adsense was better for me than hotel affiliating.
Why? In adsense they click (for more info) and on affiliate pages they click (for more info also). But on the first one you get paid for providing more info and on the second case (after getting the info) they go check the hotel on the top sites or by the phone. (90% of the time cookies get lost)

Both don't get indexed nor get Google traffic. (Google knows all aff. pages doorways)

You need to:
a) Create addicional content for the aff. site ... too much work! AND
b) Spend some money on promoting AND branding the site ($$$$$$$)
- adding badges (security, certifications, any other) helps a lot

PM if you want some examples.

Your mileage may vary, but I am having really good success with the techniques I described.

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[Stewart]

You may also want to check out the eBay partner network if you have IDNs which cover Belgium, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, France, Italy, Spain and Holland...

Unfortunately Russia isn't cover yet... that's the one I'm waiting for

[mj]

Originally Posted by Stewart

You may also want to check out the eBay partner network if you have IDNs which cover Belgium, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, France, Italy, Spain and Holland...

Unfortunately Russia isn't cover yet... that's the one I'm waiting for

Yes, I am a member of EPN, but I haven't used it for any sites yet.

But I just looked through (all 4 of) my Italian IDNs and found that they are all a very good match for EPN - lots of results when you search ebay.it for those keywords.

One more project for a rainy day...

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