Is there still money in AM - And can you trust merchants

[Paullas]

just something niggling me Lately.

Is there still money to be made in developing domains into fully affiliate sites, and if so can you trust the merchants you are sending traffic to. Plus what is the best way to track your clicks against the networks stats/clicks.

 

[invincible]

thanks for the none helpful post as usual

Well I answered all of your questions. Try asking something more specific. Of course there's money to be made in affiliate marketing otherwise nobody would be doing it. Also it depends who the merchants are as to whether you can trust them. Did you have any in mind? Finally one would log clicks with some code and into a database. That's how I do it. Do you actually want someone to tell you how to write it?

 

[Paullas]

. Do you actually want someone to tell you how to write it?

yes please

 

[Paullas]

ok a question for you - When deciding what merchants to select for a site, what is the best criteria to look for? Conversion rate, EPC or Approval Rate.

 

[invincible]

yes please

What platform are you running on? Windows or *nix? I am assuming the latter. You'd need something like mysql installed, and a database set up perhaps with "merchant_name", "timestamp", "visitor_ip" fields and anything else you wanted to log relating to the click. Then probably some php script do any affiliate links on your site are logged into the database. Without knowing the data you're working with, I cannot really suggest a database schema. Are you getting anything sent to you from merchants via XML? Once upon a time I worked with an Espotting feed and we logged visitor_ip, timestamp, click_term, click_bid from memory. Some of this data we pulled from the users browser and some came from the Espotting feed. This is the last time I actually partially coded anything like this myself. I rememeber having a click.php script that passed all the data to the database and then seemlessly forwarded the user on through the link.

 

[Paullas]

What platform are you running on? Windows or *nix? I am assuming the latter. You'd need something like mysql installed, and a database set up perhaps with "merchant_name", "timestamp", "visitor_ip" fields and anything else you wanted to log relating to the click. Then probably some php script do any affiliate links on your site are logged into the database. Without knowing the data you're working with, I cannot really suggest a database schema. Are you getting anything sent to you from merchants via XML? Once upon a time I worked with an Espotting feed and we logged visitor_ip, timestamp, click_term, click_bid from memory. Some of this data we pulled from the users browser and some came from the Espotting feed. This is the last time I actually partially coded anything like this myself. I rememeber having a click.php script that passed all the data to the database and then seemlessly forwarded the user on through the link.

interesting thanks, gives me something to look into further i think.

 

[invincible]

ok a question for you - When deciding what merchants to select for a site, what is the best criteria to look for? Conversion rate, EPC or Approval Rate.

EPC - earnings per click (for clarity). I'd assume that tells you how viable a merchants is to your income.

I assume Approval rate is for something financial like a credit card application. Conversion rate is how many visitors convert into applications but, in the case of credit cards for example, is not the same as the number who the merchant ultimately approves? In that case, probably EPC as it's the only financial measure? Any thoughts from others?

 

[woopwoop]

Im a novice but EPC as earnings per click is more of an adsense type metric - you make money when people click a link.

Affiliates usually only make money when a user does more than click.
They have to click and then buy or apply.

Can't think if the acronym EPC still works or if generally CPA cost per acquisition or EPC as earnings per customer are more applicable to affiliate marketing.

The EPC/CPA being high/low doesn't really give the whole picture. High CPAs are usually high because the users are hard to acquire (so you might not get many of them). In some (not all cases) a lower CPA might mean you get more acquisitions/customers for the merchant which could result in better revenues for you.

My advice would be to start a site that you are interested in (content-wise) then look for merchants that are relevant. You may find a handful, then go with the highest EPC/CPA, or try a few out (some may do links, banners, content).

As for approval rate, I think this may also be a term used to indicate how selective the merchant is when approving websites to be their affiliates (some merchants are very selective and deny many websites from carrying affiliate links for their products - maybe a good/bad thing)

Good luck

Ps I have an student books amazon affiliate site: http://www.studentbooks.com and this draws in a feed of books and people searching books receive results from amazon on my site. I like their program and they offer roughly 8%

 

[wb]

Im a novice but EPC as earnings per click is more of an adsense type metric - you make money when people click a link.

Affiliates usually only make money when a user does more than click.
They have to click and then buy or apply.

EPC does work for affiliate marketing, although the figure is based on averages (total commission earned by affiliates divided by the total number of clicks).

Obviously the figure won't be the same for every affiliate, and will often be skewed further if publishers such as those offering cashback or voucher codes have not been separated (will normally have higher conversion rates).