Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with affiliate

Help me now fail my new job as an Affiliate Manager.

IndigoSkye — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:29:13 -0800

Help me not fail my new job as an Affiliate Manager Starting a new job on Monday. Yea! It uses a lot of the skills I've used in my career, but puts them toward a new objective - getting other people to sell your product for you. Since my bonus is based off revenues from affiliate links, I need some strategies to help me maximize that.

Do you make money using affiliate marketing? What is your idea of an ideal Affiliate program and what can the Affiliate Manager do to help you? How do you decide which affiliate programs to join and where do you find them?

Are you an Affiliate Manager? Where did you learn your skills? Who do you read today to keep up with the industry? What is the first thing I should do on Monday at my new job?

Thanks!

help me find a non-scammy ringtone site with an affiliate program

helios — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:01:21 -0800

Are there any reputable ringtone sites? I'm looking for sellers that use a standard shopping cart, don't use misleading sales pitches, and don't try to con people into a subscription. The reason that I'm asking is that I want to join a ringtone affiliate program, but only if the seller is high-quality and reputable (therefore free sites and iTunes are not applicable).

What should I sell online?

Elminster24 — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:02:05 -0800

Help me find something to sell online. My current site was de-indexed and while I'm working on getting that back in the rankings I'm looking for something else to sell and would like to experiment with sourcing a product myself versus going the affiliate route. I've dabbled in affiliate marketing and had a halfway successful eBay Partner Network based site that was bringing in about $400-$600/mo on average and growing. Unfortunately Google de-indexed it for reasons I'm still uncertain of. I'm working on relaunching the site with new content and hopefully that will help but this has made me realize I can't put all my eggs in one basket.

This is where you guys come in. I'm trying to think of unique product ideas to sell online. I know how to get a site designed and rather than a site that sells MANY products, I'm looking for a site that can sell just one or two specific ones. I'd love to be able to source my own products to make them unique but I really have no clue where to even begin with that. Aside from shady dropshipping scammers, can you guys recommend some good resources for determining how to source a product (preferably within the US), find suppliers, etc.?

Also, any suggestions on where I can get inspiration for a product to sell in my store would be appreciated.

I'm not looking for THE idea...just some resources to gain inspiration. Are there any matchmaking sites for people who want to sell their products online and are looking for partners (NOT affiliates)?

I have an idea for a unique information product but it is based on World of Warcraft and I don't have much hardcore knowledge of the details of that game so I don't know how to go about finding a writer for that sort of thing...

PHP Affiliate script with Superaffiliate option...

wibbler — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 01:56:07 -0800

I'm looking for a php affiliate script that integrates with Paypal with a special "superaffiliate" function. However, while it should allow normal affiliates to sign up and get 5% commission on their sales, it should also allow 1 "superaffiliate", who would take 5% of ALL sales on the site, regardless of whether it was generated by them or not. Does anyone know of a script to do this?

In need of online affiliate services for my store

clango — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 11:28:36 -0800

I sell stuff on the internet and use a hosted shopping cart service. (Shopify) It's great except that it doesn't have options for affiliates. I have fans/friends who would like to link to my items for a cut. Is there an online service I can add to my store and use to track such things?

Is there a blog host that won't bogart my Amazon links?

RogerB — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:21:24 -0800

Book-blog hosting: Is there a free and easy blog host that allows me to use my own Amazon affiliate links? I am thinking of starting a personal book and movie blog. It should make it easy to add books (ideally with a cover image and an Amazon link) to my posts – I'm quite enamored of Vox's super-easy interface for this, but they use their own Amazon affiliate links and forbid you to substitute your own. It seems like all the big free blog hosts do this, in fact (or at least Blogger, Wordpress, and Vox), unless I'm missing something.

I would really rather not have to host my own blog, or use a paid blog host like Typepad, just to avoid giving away the three to five bucks a year my blog will probably make off Amazon referrals. Is there a free blog host or social networking site, or whatever else, out there that will do this?

Is there any referral program for an accessory portal?

brinks — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:03:57 -0800

I want to create a website that has collection of accessories for a particular gadget. Lets say a Zune. Users can go to my website and see all available accessories and perhaps reviews. I want to add some affiliate widget or something so that it will show places where you can buy this accessory. Does anyone know who offers this service? Maybe if the user clicks through my website and buys an item from that estore, I get a small kick back?

What are my obligations to the company with which I share a domain name?

desjardins — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 09:34:30 -0800

I own a .us domain that's been pretty dormant. I'd like to develop the site. The .com and .net versions of my domain are owned by a large company and redirect to the company's main site. Do I have to say somewhere on my site that I'm not affiliated with said company? The content is directly related to the stuff company X sells, but won't mention company X or its products in any way. For example, if my site is about "how to customize your car," company X's site is Ford Motors. A reasonable person would know that my site has nothing to do with Ford's site, but I don't want to imply that I have their endorsement.

Note: I am not planning to sell anything. It's possible the site could be monetized down the road, but I have no idea what kind of traffic I'm going to get, and money is not the point of developing the site. However, company X's site does have an affiliate program, so given the similar subject matter, does it make sense to go that route rather than completely dissociating myself from company X?

If I try this project, am I going to lose my shirt to scammers?

woodblock100 — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:54:18 -0800

I am implementing a home-grown 'affiliate' program on my website - with payments to affiliates based on commissions, rather than clicks - but I am a bit concerned that it may be possible for people to think of ways to abuse it that I haven't thought of. I make a living selling items that I have made. At present, orders for my products are placed on the website through a simple shopping cart system that I created myself (in php / html), with the payments coming in through Paypal. It's all working very well.

Because I am such a 'low budget' operation, I can't afford advertising. So to help increase the number of visitors to the site during the end-of-year gift season, I am going to try running an affiliate system, to encourage other people to advertise on my behalf. I have created some sample ads in a selection of sizes/shapes, and make them available for people to use on their own sites/blogs. Anybody who wants to join the project gets an affiliate code that they use in the URL attached to the ad images.

In my shopping cart, I keep track of the customers who came to the site via one of these ads, and keep a record of sales referenced by codes. The particular product I wish to promote is priced at $30, and I offer the affiliates 10% of each sale, so they would get $3 for each one sold. All in all nothing complex, just a very simple system of the same sort that Amazon uses in vastly more sophisticated form.

But I have to think about how this might be abused. At present, I don't really see how 'anything could go wrong', but I've got plenty of experience with 'systems' to know that things don't always go the way you expect, and I certainly don't have any experience with people trying to 'game' a system. Can the devious minds of the MeFi hive offer any advice/warnings/recommendations about this idea?

Any (ad)Words to make (ad)Sense of Adwords and Adsense?

prophetsearcher — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 11:43:11 -0800

Is there any 3rd-party software that is any good for managing AdWords campaigns? Every review I've read online seems to be driven by referral links, and I've been finding a somewhat-seedy underworld of affiliate back-rubbing pervading the industry. I can't trust any of the links I find online (they generally reveal their affiliate ID when you examine the HTML), nor do I trust the recommendations of such 'gurus' as Perry Marshall, Joel Comm, etc., whose books I've been reading and who send me countless emails everyday to my junk account.

I'm looking for the sort of program that will do (m)any of the following: generate keywords, examine current bid prices, estimate positioning, reconfigure match-types, adsense arbitrage analyses, etc. I'm willing to pay a reasonable price - and if it works on my Mac, that's a great bonus. [Note: None of these links are affiliate links...]

The tool I'm most tempted by is Keyword Analyzer , but there are a ton of them: Adwords Dominator , Keyword Elite , Adword Analyzer , Adword Accelerator (which Perry Marshall seems to shill for), and, of course, Word Tracker - which I still don't get what all the fuss is about (and I've tried the free trials).

I use the Adword Editor, but I'm looking for a tool that will help me really crush this Adwords thing. I've been playing with them for several websites for about 2 months now, and either I just don't get it, or the system doesn't quite work. For example, they want me to bid $5.00 on a keyword that only has one posted ad, and which is fully optimized on my site and ad text.

Does anyone have any real, unbiased experience that can help me find the tools I need? I know Google provides a lot of them itself, but I'm hoping for some extra 'edge' and ease of use.

Software recommendations for creating an affiliate program?

jxpx777 — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 12:55:38 -0800

Greetings, hive mind. I want to start an affiliate program for my web design and hosting business for folks to refer others for hosting. What software is good for tracking referrals? For clarification, this is not a request for what affiliate program is best (Commission Junction, LinkShare, whatever) but a question about what software to use to set up an affiliate program like they have.

The ethics of affiliate linking

davar — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 08:04:57 -0800

I want to put affiliate links on my weblog. Do I identify them as such? I feel sneaky if I don't, but I don't see anyone else doing it, so maybe I'm overreacting? I am interested in the opinions of both bloggers and blog readers. Do you feel there is a difference between affiliate links in product reviews, and "general" affiliate links, that are just there to illustrate a point? (for example: in an article about weight loss I link to a kitchen scale on Amazon). Any other considerations?

I want to be up front and honest, but I feel my articles become very cluttered and too commercial if I mention (affiliate link) after every product or site I mention. I am afraid a large portion of my readers will have no idea what that means, and will only be distracted. The topic of my blog (if that matters) will be health/weight loss. It is important to me that my readers trust me and enjoy my content.