Affiliate marketing was once a very useful way to drive traffic to a website and to make sales: not so much now.
This is a personal opinion based on around fifteen years of experience with affiliate marketing both as a publisher using affiliates and as an affiliate of advertisers.
Some people believe in affiliate marketing as an effective way of boosting sales for a business. The idea sounds fine. You use existing websites owned by third parties to display banners or text links that when clicked, point to a sales page of your eCommerce website or service business page.
In exchange for the referral or click through, the business that uses an affiliate pays a modest commission if the person who clicks through to the site actually makes a purchase.
What happens in real life is that there is a lot of administration that goes into setting up and running the affiliate network. There are businesses like Commission Junction and Commission Factory that act as intermediaries between advertisers and publishers but there is still a lot of time and effort required by the advertiser to set up banners and payment methods.
My experience is that clicks do not equal sales often enough. As a publisher it is a waste of valuable web space to run banners for little or no return. It would be better to run banners of your own on your website highlighting your own products or services.
As an advertiser, it is frustrating setting up an affiliate network only to the disappointed with the performance ( sales made ) by the affiliates. The question then becomes, "is running an affiliate program worth the effort ?"
There are fees to be paid even if sales are not made. The affiliate marketing intermediary gets paid regardless of whether or not sales are made by the affiliates.
Another question would be, "Should I use Google ads to get sales rather than work with affiliates?"
Finding good affiliates is hard work that takes a lot of time. Many will apply to a good ( profit making ) program but only a few should be chosen.
If you run a helicopter charter business, do you want your flights included in a discount price click farm? Probably not because people would rather pay more to fly with a high price airline than die in a cheap offering by an amateur or part time charter business. So, sales will not likely be made and the brand of the helicopter business will be damaged by being seen in all the wrong places.
If you are considering using an affiliate network consider getting some advice from Web Busters.
There are good points and not so good aspects to affiliate marketing.
This is a personal opinion based on around fifteen years of experience with affiliate marketing both as a publisher using affiliates and as an affiliate of advertisers.
Some people believe in affiliate marketing as an effective way of boosting sales for a business. The idea sounds fine. You use existing websites owned by third parties to display banners or text links that when clicked, point to a sales page of your eCommerce website or service business page.
In exchange for the referral or click through, the business that uses an affiliate pays a modest commission if the person who clicks through to the site actually makes a purchase.
What happens in real life is that there is a lot of administration that goes into setting up and running the affiliate network. There are businesses like Commission Junction and Commission Factory that act as intermediaries between advertisers and publishers but there is still a lot of time and effort required by the advertiser to set up banners and payment methods.
My experience is that clicks do not equal sales often enough. As a publisher it is a waste of valuable web space to run banners for little or no return. It would be better to run banners of your own on your website highlighting your own products or services.
As an advertiser, it is frustrating setting up an affiliate network only to the disappointed with the performance ( sales made ) by the affiliates. The question then becomes, "is running an affiliate program worth the effort ?"
There are fees to be paid even if sales are not made. The affiliate marketing intermediary gets paid regardless of whether or not sales are made by the affiliates.
Another question would be, "Should I use Google ads to get sales rather than work with affiliates?"
Finding good affiliates is hard work that takes a lot of time. Many will apply to a good ( profit making ) program but only a few should be chosen.
If you run a helicopter charter business, do you want your flights included in a discount price click farm? Probably not because people would rather pay more to fly with a high price airline than die in a cheap offering by an amateur or part time charter business. So, sales will not likely be made and the brand of the helicopter business will be damaged by being seen in all the wrong places.
If you are considering using an affiliate network consider getting some advice from Web Busters.
There are good points and not so good aspects to affiliate marketing.
