Affiliate marketing programmes

adrianw

After spending some time looking into the various affiliate marketing programmes on offer, it appears that the majority of retailer (who have an online presence) are signed up to at least one affiliate programme.

Just wondering if anyone here who operates a blog / consumer interest / wedding registry / or other type website has ever signed up to any of the affiliate marketing schemes.

Similarly has anyone ever encountered a friend / family member who has created an online wishlist (other than a wedding registry for a specific store).

The reason I ask is - there are several wedding / December holiday themed sites which solely derive their income from affiliate marketing, and I was wondering if the sites exist because they were created by a web developer because they could or if they are actually viable business ventures.

(not sure if i am allowed mention specific sites - eg: wishlistr - no personal association, i think it was developed in Sweden)

All comments appreciated.

mneylon

A lot of people make a good living from affiliate marketing.

How much you make and how well it works will depend a lot on your niche / market and what kind of traffic (and volume of same) that you can get

A few years ago it was a lot easier, but these days Google has made it more difficult, though not impossible

There are several of the affiliate networks who are active in the Irish market, though you don't need to limit yourself to them.

kaloshma

Affiliate marketing is extremely saturated at the moment, but still you can still make alot of money from it if you know what you are doing.

And mind you do not buy any programm that want to teach you how to make money through affiliate marketing. The only money made is the one you are paying for the service most of the time.

adrianw

Thanks for the info. I agree, I would never pay for any of those type of training courses.

I was considering having a website designed based on a certain Christmas activity of picking names from a hat and buying gifts for friends, family, work colleagues.
The site would randomly assign who was to buy for who and notify by email.
Revenue would be generated by the commissions paid from affiliate partners on sales made via after clicking through the site via various 'suggested gifts' links.

I know its very seasonal but i think most retailers would see 70%-80% of their turnover coming from the Christmas period.
My main reservations would be as most items sold by affiliates would be a low monetary value, the volumes would need to be very high to make a respectable return.

manjosh

Okay the christmas gifting idea is a new thing, and during christmas everybody is usually happy and with the email notifications and stuffs, it is a brilliant idea.
Keep working on it.

Cianos

manjosh wrote: »

Okay the christmas gifting idea is a new thing, and during christmas everybody is usually happy and with the email notifications and stuffs, it is a brilliant idea.
Keep working on it.

Sorry but I disagree. The idea itself is good, but its profitability probably not. Unless it's a viral hit (which statistically is super unlikely) you'll have to drive traffic through some other means, and this means competing with a lot of other websites, so what you invest in marketing will unlikely be recouped in affiliate earnings.

There won't be much in the way of customer loyalty because it's a single use tool and once done the user will have no reason to return to your site. As it's a preparatory tool at which point they won't know what they're buying and for whom.

Also how do you suggest a gift? Does each user have to email in their wish list for the rest of the group and then others return to the site to view this wish list? This is getting pretty complex in terms of build and as such will increase development costs (unless you're going to build it yourself).

Hope the above isn't disheartening but it's best to have an idea challenged imo.