I’ve been building quite a few blogs lately. On many of these blogs I add a banner or affiliate offer front and center. Sometimes I only want Adsense clicks, but other times I want commissions. I’ve joined some programs at Linkshare, Shareasale and CJ. I use them all and do OK with sales.
Recently I’ve been joining a few programs at Google’s Connect Commerce. Some of the programs really crack me up. I’ve been declined as many times as I’ve been accepted. You would think that in these tough economic times the affiliate managers would want to get their products and brands out to the web. But no, some are very picky about who they want to work with I guess. Whatever. Makes no difference to me. There are plenty of programs to use and those that I’ve posted on my blogs I’m sure are happy to collect the traffic that I send them. For instance, I have a bass fishing site and wanted to use Gander Mountain products. They declined me. P&S Fishing Tackle auto-approved me. I was pleased to send them 23 visitors over the weekend from the banner I posted.
I find it interesting that these programs would want to be so picky. I can only imagine what they are thinking. Maybe they only want to be promoted on PR5 and better sites. Maybe they do not want to be on blogs. I dunno, but I would think that barring porn, hate, religious and the like, who cares where their banners are dropped? Traffic is traffic. Is a sale made from a crappy spam site any less valid than one from a million dollar PR7 blog?
I guess they fear for their brand. It’s understandable I guess, but do surfers really look at banners and think “wow, why is Guess on this crappy PR0 niche blog?” Doubtful. But they may be thinking, “cool, this Guess banner with this hot model wearing these jeans I dig is interesting”…click.
They can be picky all they want. Some folks say to contact the affiliate manager for personalized attention and to explain what you are doing. Screw that. I won’t chase them. These affiliate programs need me and my ilk far more than I need them. If nothing else I’ll use Ebay which generates far more sales than any of the affiliate programs I’ve used anyway.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree affiliate managers are making a mistake the ones that approve manuially are making a mistake also by the time thay send the approval message I’ve moved on to another advertiser
Hi Splork,
Me and the other 6 were wondering where you had got to and just wanted to check you were OK.
Be well friend
Wow, it has been a while since I last posted. Thanks for checking.
I’ve been building damn blogs for that contest at AMA. I wish I never started it. Now I’m in the thick of it and have to see it through. I’m taking a break this weekend then will be getting back with what matters which is getting backlinks and finding stuff to rile up the internet marketing faithful.
It’s annoying how they all want to call you up, of course during business hours. I’m at work then and unless I’m having an increasingly rare moment of idle time, I don’t want to talk about my Internet Marketing efforts, especially where my cubicle neighbors can hear.
I hear you on getting involved with other things and not being able to get to your flagship blog. I’ve done the same on OpTempo as I’ve launched Blog Content Wizard and try to do something with the 85 or so domains I’ve bought recently.
85? Quite a hosting load.
re: BCW – I can’t wait to reclaim some time and use it to help build some Ebay/Blogger blogs.