Waste of my time in affiliate programs

[Patty John]

It has just been my own experience -

Affiliate programs have just been a waste of my valuable time. I was getting like 30 bucks a months a month from CJ a month and they have me rated with three of those dollar bills. That seems to be a high rating. I guess.

I made me laugh.

That 30 dollars was from about 40,000 impressions a month at least or more and it just isn't worth it and I was constantly changing ads cause merchants come and go.

Every affiliate site I've had has sunk.

However I am fantastic at getting traffic and getting sites in the top ten position in the search positions as I have studied for years. I can do that even for new sites but I don't want to do that to make money.

I would like to find an interest to make money.

I have lots of mental health sites I enjoy but they are up and are not to make money but to help people. I ask for donations and I get pennies it seems.

Am thinking of selling t-shirts. Probably not a good idea.

[RKuhle]

Back up a second, can you give us some more information about your website that made $30? Which affiliate programs did you use? How did you advertise those affiliate programs?

If you only used banners to advertise the affiliate programs, then you made out pretty decent at $0.75 CPM, which is better then many banner networks right now.

One more thing: if your website is up to help people (not make money), then why are you so concerned about making money from affiliate programs?

[mjames]

$30 bucks from 40,000 impressions is rather good. I get 60,000 and don't make that from CJ. And I see what you're saying, far too many of my merchants are in "deactivated" mode, and I just haven't had time to pick new ones.

[webman1000]

Affiliate programs are all about placement and product selection. You need to find programs that apply to your sites topic and also place those products in a prominent location.

The other thing to consider is the specific affiliate company. CJ seems to be getting a bad reputation, so I would try other programs. Mix and match until you find one that shows results.

I think there is great potential in affiliate programs. Read some of the posts on the forum and see what companies people are having good luck with.

Russ

[mtgm]

I was getting like 30 bucks a months a month from CJ a month and they have me rated with three of those dollar bills.

What I don't understand is why CJ thinks you are cheating. I mean if most of your advertisers are operating under a per-sale basis it is impossible to cheat. I know if CJ did this to us we would definitely take legal action, as our advertisers receive sales and thus what would be their reason to think fraudulent activity is involved.

[webman1000]

I am also very amazed that they considered it cheating. I can't imagine any way of cheating a per-sale campaign.


Russ

[jaiem]

You can't just put up a few banners or buttons and expect the cash to roll in. Not only placement but some kind of salesmanship about the affiliate product/service helps a lot.

Also, choose affiliates that add value to your site and go with the theme of your site. If you're running a hosting site don't have golf affiliates. If you're running a sports site don't have wince&cheese affiliates. And don't be start truck by the payout percentages. Besides being questionable about every receiving payment, I'd rather have a bunch of low paying affiliates that do get hit than a high paying one that never gets hit.

[Patty John]

CJ didn't think I was cheating I'm sure. You know how they display now how the merchants are rating? They also display how we rate. They gave me 3 out of 4 "dollar bills" which I figured was good - just guessing. Unless you all know otherwise.

No, I don't have time to cheat and certainly not for $30. I don't even use CJ anymore since they changed and most the good merchants I was using left and since Aug 1st, they don't pay per click anymore. That was most of my money there.

I know about targeting marketing. In mental health, it's really hard to find a targeted merchant. Mental health sites just don't make money. I have read that sites like Dr. Koop and Web MD should have been out of business a long time ago. They are disaster sites. Someone donated money to keep Web MD up but you won't see either site up long.

We make money in Amazon books. That is the only thing that sells. We do it not for the money but it would sure be nice to pay the bills for the sites at least.

I opened a site for my daughter to try to help her with her college and saw that love poetry sites get a lot of traffic and they don't have many bookstores. Lots of love poetry sites with traffic but not many try to make money so I made her a site and put a bookstore there. We are building traffic pretty well early but bookstore not doing well at all. Need to add more types of books maybe?? I dunno.

It's hard to make money on the net. At least for me.

Thanks for all the feedback.