How much money can I make out of publishing affiliate links?
How long is a piece of string, my friend? The first thing that should be stressed, over and over, is that there are no guarantees with affiliate advertising. Rather than traditional advertising, where you lease space based upon readership, with this type of advertising you're sharing the cost, risk and profit with the advertiser, so it all depends upon how well you market your site, how well you position your ads, how much work you put in, and also plenty of luck.
There are plenty of stories about people who've given up their day job to sit back and watch the money roll in from their affiliate advertising commissions - but how realistic is that? Well, you need to do some simple mathematics - a recent press release from adtech published their findings on click through rates in the European market, which suggested that most popular ad formats got a less than 1% click through rate. You get paid, at best, on click throughs, with programmes like Google adsense, with most clicks bringing cents to your pocket rather than dollars. You need to either have lots and lots of visitors, or particularly well targeted advertising to earn enough to quit your day job, and in reality to get either of those two factors right is a job in itself!
Choosing your type of advertising carefully
Is it all doom and gloom then? No, but a hefty dose of realism will help you get better results. If you're going to advertise on your website, think first about the best type of advertising. What does your website primarily contain? Is it aimed at a specific industry, a specific sector - is it a specialised subject. If so, you might be best advised to sign up to an affiliate network (we always recommend TradeDoubler, for example), where you can get interesting and market specific ads - where you get paid generally on the actual sales generated rather than click through rates. 'But why?' you cry, given that conversion rates are so low. Well, if you're website is informative and geared to a target market, you're more likely to generate sales through carefully selected ads - and the commissions on sales are generally a lot higher than commissions on click throughs.
If your website is a specialist website, and you offer genuine insight, and choose ads that you as a consumer would be interested in, it stands to reason that there's a good chance of success (though, ask yourself the tough question - when was the last time you clicked on an internet ad...).
Getting the most out of adsense
Let's presume that you're website has no specific target market - and deals with various things, plus you don't have time to synch up ads to content for every page. You've decided to use Google's adsense program precisely because it's quick and easy, and automatic. But based on those darn conversion rates, it's hardly worth your while? Well, while we're sceptical that the average website can make a fortune advertising with google, any decent website with a healthy visitor rate should be able to make some money through the advertising program, and by following some simple tips you can maximise your potential.
Tip #1
Check out Google's own advise on where to place ads. They've studied the trends, and it's in their interest that your visitors click on their ads - as that's how they make money, at the end of the day. Read all their advice, accessed from your adsense account, and experiment.Tip #2
: Set up channels so that you can place various types of ads in various positions, and see which performs the best. You can find your adsense conversion rates doubling overnight just simply by finding the best suited place to put your ad, and the best format (this varies from site to site)Tip #3:
Try introducing the wide rectangle format, with text and images enabled. Google is experimenting with video formats, and the conversion rate for video is currently much higher than text or banner ads. There's no guarantee that your site will get video ads served from google, but if you don't have the right format you can guarantee that they won't be!
Content is key
We'd like to finish with some simple advice, that is always pertinent. Don't get to hung up on your advertising strategies, to the detriment of your site. Your key concern is getting people to visit and enjoy your site, and the best way to do that is to ensure your content is top-notch. Once your content is good, and people are visiting your site in droves, a little concentration on affiliate marketing will reap rewards, but keep things in perspective. If nobody's visiting your site, it doesn't matter how pertinent your ads are!