Realistically, Do people actually earn anything from affiliate schemes

[liam1412]

As some people are aware I have been on a mission since befroe christmas to learn PHP and build me a website. I am finally happy that it is a half decent looking site and am ready to launch it this weekend. I have signed up to a couple of affiliate schemes and have a couple more lined up for when its online.

 

I know what you earn from these will vary greatly on your choice of products and your member base. But realistically how hard is it to earn even just enough to cover running costs. I've been given all the percentages and have selected individual products from sites rather than just use banner and all my ads are in a products table and if they are a bmw driver the products will be BMW etc, but how often do sales materialise etc. Any webmasters out. There. Obviously don't want detailed figures but is it plausable to earn a decent living just from a smallish site.

[expitlad]

...Don't forget to let us see the site when it's complete.

 

There are a lot of people making money from affiliate marketing. Mostly those who sell info on the concept.

I have in the past sent a lot of traffic to sites set up for affilate income. The affiliate links get clicked on, but the purchasing of the goods or services was rare.

You have to keep experimenting, you will find the one which can make a decent earning.

 

Good Luck.

 

(none of the sites in my signature contain affiliate links)

 

 

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[liam1412]

Don't worry. SF'ers will be the first. Even if people don't have an interest in the subject im hoping for as many comments as possible. People who completely aren't interested may even be better to judge on layout and format as they aren'y basing the site on its merits as a german car club. Im not expecting big things from it just a few wuid a week will do me at the min.

[Moon Maiden]

I haven't personally done it...but aparently with a bit of work you can get a decent amount from these to at least cover your running costs.

A friend of mine has run a site for the last two years and said they were a good thing if you can take the time to tweak the google ads etc

[expitlad]

I haven't personally done it...but aparently with a bit of work you can get a decent amount from these to at least cover your running costs.

A friend of mine has run a site for the last two years and said they were a good thing if you can take the time to tweak the google ads etc

 

There is a big difference between Google Adsense and Affiliate Marketing. They are not the same thing, although both will earn an income the potential is greater with the correct choice of Affiliate. My Adsense per year pays about enough to suppliment the cost of broadband. Be careful of the terms the affilites pay out on, and join the established sites such as Commission Junction or AffiliateFuture.

 

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[Draggletail]

I had a row of banner ads running down one side of my site (DGM Affiliates) - never got anything though. Currently earnt about a few dollars with adsense, about a tenner with Amazon (stuff I bought myself, and Mrs draggletail)

 

I just put a 'Coffee Cup' free software link on, good commision on that one.

 

So, to answer your question, very little really.

 

Ultimately, a lot of it must come down to your SEO, if you aren't getting the hits you aren't getting the clicks.

 

I've spent bloody ages finding/asking people to link to me, got my site on Stumble Upon, still waiting for a DMOZ listing, finally acheived a page rank of one and I'm still only getting about ***twenty hits per day.

 

Far as I can see, you have to keep playing with the site, updating content, getting new people to link to you.

 

I'm pleased with my site but I made it hard to maintain. Every time I add new content I have to:

1/ Add to the meta tags (my search engine relies on this)

2/ Spider the site (again, for the search engine)

3/ Add the content title to the drop down boxes on all six pages

4/ Upload all six pages

5/ Send out rss feeds with the new content

 

I created a monster

 

* Would be interested to see your site when it's 'up'

***Edit 01/04 cracked it on Stumble. Got 1943 hits today in eight hours

[liam1412]

***Edit 01/04 cracked it on Stumble. Got 1943 hits today in eight hours

 

Nice one draggle. Thats a good number of hits. Maybe you might start to earn a little coin now. The site should be up tomorrow. I'll let you know the link when It goes up. It is my first PHP site so Im expecting many teething problems. I have tested it fairly thoroughly but im sure things will crop up for a while at least.

[liam1412]

There is a big difference between Google Adsense and Affiliate Marketing. They are not the same thing, although both will earn an income the potential is greater with the correct choice of Affiliate. My Adsense per year pays about enough to suppliment the cost of broadband. Be careful of the terms the affilites pay out on, and join the established sites such as Commission Junction or AffiliateFuture.

 

 

I hope to have made correct choices although I have signed up with companies individually rather than an affiliate network. I have also got quite a detailed table for the adds. Rather than relying on banner adds alone I have (with permission) copied pics and prices from the online catalogues and input a large number of these into the database. Using the session_variable for there car details I have 5 recomended products down the right hand side which are pulled from the database using a LIKE query. This way I can target BMW drivers with BMW ads and so on.

[Grissom]

Well... I signed up for AdSense today and have put links on my revamped website selling Royalty-Free Stock Photos of the UK .

 

Seems like the most money is by getting others to join up to AdSense - so have put couple of those ads on there, and firefox on others pages [get up to a dollar per download by each Microsoft user apparently]. Also have bigger ads which are image-only ones and have asked they be related to my website - so hopefully there will be photography-related ones [fingers crossed] and the visitors will click those.

 

God knows if I'll ever make anything or get near the sum you need for a payout

[MartynB]

I've recently researched on how to make money on the internet. It's just something that intrigues me when you see lots of Ebay sellers claiming they've made millions but will sell their methods for a fiver....... as if!

 

Affiliate schemes were mentioned along with all the fiddles to boost your affiliate "clicks". Even if you listed on Google Adwords and spent £500 per month doing so, you are unlikely to make more than about £20 per month profit from affiliate schemes. If you want to make money from the internet then you need to come up with a workable idea that someone else hasn't already thought of, succeed at it and then sell it.