David Fiske Affiliate marketing & web development musings from Fiske Towers

Let's assume you have signed up to some affiliate networks. I am currently using:

• Affiliate Future
• Commission Junction
• Deal Group Media (DGM) - used to be known as UK Affiliates
• Tradedoubler

Let's also assume you have some content of some sort.

How do you go about maximising the amount of revenue these ads earn you?
 
Relevancy.

I was looking through the advertiser base on Tradedoubler earlier and liked the sound of several advertisers. Take BT for instance.

They offer a significant amount of cash (greater than £20 but less than £40) per valid signup to their broadband. This sounds great. A thousand signups per year and I'm sorted for the rest of my life!

The problem is that if I advertise this out of context, I will get very little clicks. The only advertisers I can use on Compare Sat Nav are retailers of sat nav systems and Which?, the reviews site.

The next problem is too many ads. If there are too many ads on a page and all of them are animated gifs or flash ads, people will ignore them.

The best way to implement ads is as follows.

Place one banner ad at the top of the page. Place one at the bottom if (and only if) it looks good there. If it looks cluttered, don't use it. Finally embed a square ad in the content.

Articles about broadband warrant ads from ISP's. Ads from online gambling companies may get clicked but ads from loan providers will undoubtedly be ignored.

Let's take another example. Say your niche is Christmas Gift ideas. Topical for this time of year and congratulations on choosing this field. Christmas is a great time for all advertisers and affiliates as we Brits go crazy! Ads from places like Argos, Woolworths and Tesco are all relevant if they are advertising gift ideas or online shopping. If Tesco advertises it's home delivery service, this may be clicked on by people who have run out of time to go shopping for food.

If you start advertising loan providers a couple of weeks prior to Christmas, you may notice a high click through rate. However, put ads on there for 2008 Holiday Breaks and you will probably see zero click throughs. The reason? No one is thinking about 2008 yet!

This last point highlights another. Ads need not be static. You need to monitor their performance and 'change and test' regularly. Put loan provider ads there before Christmas and see how they do. If they work, see if you can improve them. If they do not, try something else.

This advice is for traditional banner ads. Google AdSense is a whole different kettle of fish which I will cover at a later date!