Affiliate Programs & Rates

Different affiliate programs pay different rates. Some of them have performance based fee structure. Some pay flat-rate for all the products while the others pay based on the category. Some offer higher rates during holiday seasons. Bottom line is, there are so many variations in affiliate pay structure.

So, I wanted to do some research on some of the top affiliate programs. Here is my findings.

Amazon affiliate program offers performance based fee structure that ranges from 4% to 8.5%. In addition, for MP3 downloads, currently they offer 20% but will set back to 10% starting from January. Electronics are paid only at 4% while computers are capped at $25.00.

Walmart Affiliate Program offers 3% for most categories and 1% (yes, that’s just 1%) for Electronics and a few other. This is probably one of the least paid affiliate programs! Wonder if it’s because of their low margins (due to every day low prices theme) or they think they can squeeze out the affiliates like they do the suppliers!

Target Affiliate Program offers a default rate of 7% which is more than what Amazon pays unless one happens to be on top-tier of Amazon.

Buy.com Affiliate Program offers anywhere between 3% to 5% depending on the category and 10% for music downloads.

Circuit City Affiliate Program pay 1% to 3%.

RadioShack Affiliate Program doesn’t indicate the rate explicitly. So, it’s unclear.

Of all the affiliates, Amazon.com is the only one who has in-house affiliate program. So, they can be lot more creative (such as their ECS).

SEO Through Fake Product Reviews

Next time you do online research about products and look at some reviews, be careful which site you are looking at! If you are concerned about buying at a website that is not well known due to concerns such as giving out credit card info, what harm could it be to learn about a product at such websites by looking at the product reviews?

Well, check out this posting on RentACoder.com by a user called marketingtheweb

(http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/misc/BidRequests/ShowBidRequest.asp?lngBidRequestId=796275)

“I have 21 products that require product reviews. These are NOT my products – they are products easily found on the web..

Here is the task. I want a first person review about each of these 21 products, as if the reviewer has USED the product. They should write 3 paragraphs separated into What is is about, Why I loved it, Facts you NEED to know.. there is flexibility to those headers.. like How it Changed my life, or others.. but that is the idea. Then you will search for reviews and details on the product on the web and collect the information to write a first person ORIGINAL product review!

Should be written in a REAL person style, but also with a sense of urgency so someone else is compelled to buy.

Must write a perfect English!

Each review will probably NOT exceed 300 words.

When you bid, please show me a sample of your writing style!

Thanks”

High Paying (PPC) Keywords

Today someone ended up on my blog by searching “words that equal $100″. Don’t know what the intent of the visitor is, but if I were to take a guess, perhaps someone trying to get a list of keywords that pay as high as $100 per click!

Many successful companies are built around making their customers succeed. They know that a satisfied customer would be ready to be a reference, ready to spend more in the future for new projects, and equally important, stay with them than move to their competitors.

Yet, in the world of content publishing and deriving advertisement revenue, many are looking for making quick bucks, without really bothering whether their customers, the advertisers who are paying money to the ad networks to get right visitors, are succeeding or not.

It’s not wrong to try to get a good PPC for ads related to the content that one is most passionate or most knowledgeable about. However, trying to build content for the sole purpose of getting the highest PPC is what is the problem.

Getting Free In-Links

In links are important to get better page rank. But it’s not easy to get them unless you want to shell out money to services like text-link-ads. Here is one way to get free links.

Pick a few keywords related to your area. Then do a search and figure out the websites, mostly blogs, that discuss your area. Once you identify a few such websites, contact the people who are writing about those topics and provide information about your website. Obviously, if your website is yet another of those sites that are doing the same thing, then the chances of those bloggers going to talk about you is very little. But if you have a bit of novelty, then they would be more than happy to talk about you. After all, the bloggers, even the popular ones, need something to talk about. And what’s better than talking about something that’s novel, that’s fresh and that’s being worked by a person who is open to discuss and reach out?

Trust me, it works, I did it and I got a few of them. One in the area of software and the other in comparison shopping.

Full Page Ads

I just noticed that AdBrite has renamed it’s “Interstitials” to “Full Page Ads”. Perhaps it’s a marketing spin.