Three easy words: type of traffic
Are your visitors browsers or buyers? With Adsense and other programs that pay you per impression or per click, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to care what your visitor does after clicking the ad. Do they buy the product or not? It doesn’t matter– you’ll get paid either way.
With affiliate programs the obvious difference is that it matters what happens after the visitor clicks on the ad. It isn’t enough to have a high clickthrough rate (CTR) you must also have sales conversions after the clicks. Does the visitor purchase the product or not? Your income depends on that purchase. So what can you to do make sure the visitor does buy from the advertising merchant? Two things:
1) Pre-sell: since you are marketing a certain product or retailer with your affiliate links, you already know what products will appear in the ads. That is a huge advantage over Adsense and other “blind” ad servers that try and pick out what works best on your site. As an affiliate marketer, you choose the products to sell. With that advantage, you can pre-sell the visitor on the products. Make it natural! Nothing is worse for conversions than obvious over-the-top sales copy. You’ll have much better results with a mild, friendly sell pushed lightly on your visitors. Become their friend and tell them that you’ve had trouble with other products in the past, but this one is excellent…. [insert affiliate link here]
2) Change your type of traffic: target buyers and not browsers. With Adsense, and ole web surfer will do– the less savvy the better. However with affiliate marketing you need traffic that is ready to buy. They should have a credit card (this makes age important) and be one step from using it. How do you get buyers? Target buying keyphrases…
buy [productname]
discount [productname]
[productname] reviews
cheap [productname]
[productname] free shipping
Combinations like that indicate that the visitor is ready to buy. Perfect for an affiliate marketer.
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Well that has given me something to think about. I would never have said my visitors were browsers more than buyers, but it would explain a lot about my total failure with the larger affy networks.
Comment by Julie (e10) 05.12.06 @ 2:30 pmGreat post, now I have something to direct people to when they say “Commission Junction doesn’t work.” 
Also, thx for the keywords. I’ve been using the “Free Shipping” one in my title tags and descriptions with great success. The first pre-sell happens in the SERPS – with your title and description.
Travis
Comment by tstaut 05.20.06 @ 8:06 amThanks, tstaut!
One of my favorite tricks if your site is based around low price as a deciding factor is to put that low price in the page title. The dollar sign draws eyeballs and if your price really is among the lowest, it definitely draws buyers to click.
[title]Buy Magic Blue Widget from Pengiuncorp – $18.50[/title]
Comment by Alex 05.20.06 @ 8:11 amHey don’t give all our secrets away… geez man! I’ve gotta make my first million still!
Comment by Jonathan 06.19.06 @ 11:16 amA successful business needs to ensure that the profit achieved from a campaign significantly exceeds the expenditure via ROI tracking.
One needs to control the cart for this to work.
Comment by Mr. Mackin 06.24.06 @ 5:30 amIt took me 3 yrs of off and on experiments to figure this out. I was doing great with adsense but nothing with affiliates until I made a change and added a store section to my site. still plenty of bowsers who just look but if they click on a link that says “store” then many more of them will be expecting to see things to buy, and they do!
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