David Fiske A subtle blend of affiliate marketing and web development

Time to help sort out another dichotomy in the world of affiliate marketing - is it better to chase the big bucks or is it better to chase the smaller bucks?
 
The Big Bucks

By big bucks, I'm generally talking about CPA deals where you are paid upwards of £50 for making a service based sale. These types of deals are usually found in the finance sector for services like insurance, banking, loans, contract mobile phones and mortgages.

The main reason why people promote these is because of the high payout. If you're looking at making £100 a day (£35,600 a year), 2 sales of £50 each satisfies that. If you are part of the Affiliate Marketing School, they have payouts at the moment of up to £125 per lead.

But there is a reason why there is such a high payout. It is notoriously difficult to get takers. When you are searching for car insurance, what's the first thing you do? I personally use a price comparison website to get a rough idea of who's the cheapest. I then go off to each of the cheapest 5 and rerun the quotes (I have never paid the price that price comparisons state - they always seem to be cheaper than the actual price to be paid). If they're lucky, the price comparison sites would have dropped cookies to claim a sale.

But in my case, I wouldn't search for "cheap car insurance" then go to a site that offers reviews (more than likely an affiliate site). I don't need a review - I need car insurance!

The Small Bucks

By a massive contrast, these are usually commissions paid as a percentage of the sale. Some merchants are generous and offer a nice long cookie period and a chunky percentage but the majority offer a 30 day cookie and a percentage lower than 10.

It's easier to make these sales so that's why the reward is lower. This means to get your £100 a day target, you need to push £1,000 worth of trade to your merchants on a 10% commission.

So Which Is Better?

There is one and only one way to determine this. Put yourself in the shoes of your visitors.

Let's use a couple of practical demos.

EXAMPLE ONE

I'll use Debt Management Expert Help as an example (the domain's for sale by the way - apparently PageRank 3!).

The types of phrases people would have searched to get to the site would have been things like debt management or debt consolidation. So we can guess that they are looking for ways to free themselves from debt.

So what would be of value to this kind of visitor? CDs? DVDs? Probably not. They are strapped for cash so spending any money is not what's on the forefront of their minds. You could try your luck advertising debt books and you may get a few sales. But what these visitors are really interested in is practical advice and free advice. Your answer would be to advertise the services of debt experts that payout per lead.

You could add some content about debt containing practical hints and tips. Add a mailing list offering the "top 5 ways to shrink your bets". Then sent out a monthly newsletter advertising the best rates for loans, credit cards, etc.

The chances are that this kind of site would have a small visitor pool but if you have one visitor that requests help (a debt consolidation lead) that subscribes to your mailing list and takes out a new credit card (credit card lead) and a loan (loan lead), you could earn around £200 for that one person. Not bad for a day's work!

EXAMPLE TWO

To prove a point, I'll use another domain name for sale - Pay 2 Display. Imagine if you will that the visitors to this site have typed in airport parking to get there.

Let's get into the frame of mind of our visitors. They are searching for airport parking. They therefore are going on (or considering) a holiday. They may have already bought the holiday and now need to find parking or they are looking for cheap parking deals to determine which airport to use.

The most obvious thing to advertise here is airport parking merchants. A quick search revealed 4 suitable merchants with an average of 7% commission. So how should we advertise?

Well, what would someone buying airport parking be looking for. Firstly, deals. They would be interested in special offers, especially if they haven't booked a holiday. Secondly, they would be seeking information. Why should they trust merchant A? Do they offer a secure parking facility or do they park on back streets?

Unlike the car insurance scenario above, reviews and as much information as possible would be great here. You need to hold your visitors hand an reassure them of all the benefits of using your merchants. By all means give some negative points - your visitors may trust you more if you give the pros and cons of each merchant (merchants may not be too best pleased but if it converts for you, I can't see it being too much of a problem).

Here's the clever bit though. You can promote at least 3 different services when you run a site like this. Airport parking is the key aspect but the two peripheral promotions are travel insurance and holiday packages. Remember, not everyone searching for airport parking will have booked their holiday so they are pre-qualified leads for sending over to a dedicated holidays site you run. Furthermore, not everyone who has booked a holiday will have taken out travel insurance. Some people don't know they need it and some people may have just forgotten to buy it - luckily you're there to remind them!

Conclusion

At the end of the day, it's your job to try and maximise the amount of revenue you earn from all of your websites. Put yourself in the shoes of your visitors and take a look at your sites. If you are running a site and advertising something just because it offers a £100 payout, look and see if it converts. If it doesn't, what could you replace it with?

Good marketing is all about reading your visitors correctly and making sure you offer everything they want or need.