Web Earnings

One key aspect of an affiliate website is ensuring that every area is monetised as well as it possibly can be. This doesn’t mean stuffing as many adverts and banners as you can onto a page (as some people seem to think), but is more about selecting the right mix of banners and ads for the page.

When a person visits a webpage, they do so for a reason. It may be to view a product or to read an article. As an affiliate it is important that after they have finished with your page, you present them with an appropriate call to action so that they can take the next step in their journey (and you can earn your cash). Take a price comparison site for example. This site will list products by certain criteria, eg price, size, user rating etc and allow the user to click the product to see further details. From the product detail page, the user will then be able to click the product to visit the merchants site, but what if after visiting the information page they decide this isn’t the one they want after all, is it easy for them to navigate back? Are they presented with suitable alternatives? Or are they simply going to click off and look elswhere.
 
The common thing in affiliate marketing is to complement the page with adsense advertising but although this is probably the easiest thing to do, it certainly may not always be the best. If you have little content on the page, the ads returned may not be relevant and you may find that the cpc that you are receiving is less than from other solutions. Another problem for UK advertisers is that the payments are calculated in $ so exchange rate factors may see you losing out, and of course for small advertisers, the customisation options of adsense can be limited.
 
As an alternative, you could feature a large ‘call to action’ to return to the search page or view alternatives, or alternatively, use the space to capture email addresses for mailings of future updates or new products. There are also a number of other publisher solutions that may be able to offer better branded solutions than google. Miva offer branded publisher solution through affiliate future (sign up for an account and click on business services in the merchant directory to find the Miva program). They offer branded search boxes and targeted contextual advertising which can easily be integrates into your site. The advantage over Adsense is that earnings are calculated in £ which is much better for UK advertisers. Also, you will have access to an account manager via affiliate future so contact is much easier.
 
The complementary ads should be placed in such a way so as to not detract from the main content or divert the users attention, but simply to act as an alternative if the user is not interested in clicking on the main focus point of the page. Remember, if your page doesn’t offer that alternative, the visitor will look elsewhere

A common mistake people make when integrating adsense into their sites is poor positioning which can seriously reduce click through rate and earnings.

Different people have different reasons for adding contextual advertising to their sites. Some do it to complement the existing content on their pages, some do it to earn revenue to pay for hosting and general costs of maintaining the site, and some people build the sites with the sole intention of making money from the adsense.

Whatever your reason – you need to position your ads correctly on the page. Having your ad right at the bottom where it will never be seen or far away from your content will mean that people won’t click. You need to have your ads positioned above the fold (so it will display initially when the page loads up, without the user needing to scroll down). If you are looking for a high click through rate, you should place your ads in the body of the text, so that they blend in, such as at the top of directory listings, or directly underneath  the header so that the users eyes are drawn towards the ad when they first see the page.

A common practice on article driven sites is to position the content unit in the middle of the article with the content continued below, or to feature a skyscraper ad directly next to the article. Not only does this increase click through rates but also delivers ads to the user while they are reading about the topic and you don’t get much more contextual than that!

You do need to consider however that when the user clicks the ad they will be sirected to another site, so if you are trying to retain visitors then contextual advertising such as adsense is probably not the way to go!

Now more than ever before, web publishers have a vast array of tools at their disposal to help them make money from their site visitors. Online companies are willing to pay you for qualified visitors that you can deliver from your site. If you are looking to make money from your site, then you should take a look at the following options.

Google Adsense

By putting Adsense links on your site you can make money every time a visitor clicks on one of those links. When you set up an Adsense account you create a piece of code using a simple online interface that will automatically generate the code to add to your page. The links will then be created based on the content of the page so your visitors will only be directed to relevant products and services. We use Adsense to monetise this site. 

 Kelkoo

Kelkoo will pay you for referring visitors to their site.  Once the visitor is directed to their site, you can earn every time the visitor clicks on a merchant. As most visitors to comparison sites click on more than one merchant, promoting Kelkoo means that you can earn multiple times for each visitor. Kelkoo use TradeDoubler to manage their partner program. Sign up to the Kelkoo partner program on TradeDoubler here to start earning.

Miva

In the same way as the Google Adsense, you can publish targeted ads through Miva on your site. Using Miva differs slightly from Adsense in that it is a less automated process – you will be contacted by an account manager who will draw up a proposal based on how to best optimise the traffic from your site. Miva also offer more advanced options such as exit traffic optimisation and ad units completely customised to your site. You can sign up to the Miva program through OMG here

Shopping.com

Shopping.com is a price comparison site (similar to Kelkoo) – you can earn money by referring visitors to the shopping.com site through a wide range of baners and search boxes. You can customise your links to fit into the theme of your site and earn up to 25p for each click. Sign up the Shopping.com partner program through TradeDoubler here .

Affiliate Programs

Most online merchants offer affiliate programs which allow publishers to earn commission for every sale generated form a visitor referred by that publisher. By signing up to an Affiliate Network you can choose the specific merchants that you want to feature on your site that you think your visitors will be interested in. Commission rates vary but you can generally earn higher percentages when you refer more sales. Sign up to networks such as TradeDoubler , Affiliate Future and Affiliate Window today and choose the merchants you would like to feature.