There’s a young woman (I’m assuming she’s young) that’s been asking me a lot of questions lately about different affiliate programs. I’ve realized that other than the couple that have irritated me lately I haven’t really written about many of them in a long time. I figured that over the next few posts I would talk about some of the affiliate programs I’m a part of and how they do for me; I hear a voice saying “finally he’s talking about making money online”.
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I’m going to start by talking about the affiliate program that’s done the best for me, that being Google Adsense. It’s what they call a PPC (pay-per-click) program, which of course means if people click on the ad then you make money. And the more niched you are the more money you can possibly make if you pick the right niche.
My Adsense income has been steadily going up month after month, albeit slowly. If everything holds steady I will break $300 this month for the first time ever. Man, that’s been a long time coming, and I’m happy about it. The truth is that I make most of the money on one site, my medical billing information site, and since all the content is geared towards medical billing issues, it’s will niched because those folks pay well for clicks.
My second best paying affiliate program is Infolinks, and once again I make most of my cash from it on that same medical billing site. I’m averaging close to $40 a month from Infolinks, which is pretty amazing because the first couple of years I had it I didn’t make $40. Actually, both of these affiliate programs have proven that if you can get a site with even moderate consistent traffic you can do well, because that site doesn’t get the kind of traffic this site gets.
Another affiliate program I have that I’ve made almost no money from is Kontera. It’s like Infolinks, but for some reason when I had it on two of my other sites it generated nothing. At one point I did some split testing on my medical billing site with it and Infolinks, and Infolinks won hands down; wish I could tell you why.
Even though I’ve linked to my own articles on the last two affiliates, if you don’t go check those out I’ll tell you that these are those affiliate programs where you go to a page and you see these double lined words every once in a while, and if you hover over them you’ll see a pop-up window like conversation bubbles in comic strips.
There’s the start; stick around for the next round of affiliates.
You hit the nail square on the head when you said the niche matters when it comes to success/payout with affiliate programs, at least with Google AdSense. Sorry for going long but I want to share a related story with you.
Before I sold Extreme Ezine I added Adsense ads to it and it averaged about $30/month. I thought that was pretty good until I enrolled in a program that taught key words (I’m no longer a member). Then by pure luck, I was listening to an NPR program and they were disscussing a new appliance rebate program that President Obama was considering. I checked the domain and the exact keywords I wanted was available as a dot com. I grabbed it for ten bucks, tossed a few articles up and inserted the AdSense. A couple weeks later when the rebate program took off and the main media starting talking about it, well, lets just say I was a very happy camper. I had several months where that one site alone was generating several hundred a month. Not a lot of money for the big players but I was very excited. It was a short program but it really paid off giving that niche a try. I haven’t been able to replicate luck yet but I’m still trying.
That’s a great story, Brian, and proof of how it can work if one gets the right keywords going. Overall though, it’s not all that easy if you’re not first to those words.
Hi, Mitch: stopped by to check out your blog for inclusion in my upcoming ComLuv-enabled blogs. See you there!
Ana
Thanks Anna; always good being included somewhere. š
I hope that young lady comes by and reads your post Mitch. She’s going to be awfully upset if she learns you finally broke down and started spilling the beans and she missed out on the scoop.
I’ll be interested to hear all that you are involved in. Of course I’m very familiar with Adsense and had heard of Infolink but never tried it. I’ve also never had any luck with Kontera either so you are not alone with that my friend. It’s pretty obvious that some programs work while others just bomb. I’ve yet to figure that out too.
Enjoyed reading what you’ve got going. Look forward to future posts.
Adrienne
There definitely will be more coming Adrienne, but it’s good to see that it wasn’t just me that failed with Kontera. And I hope she sees these posts as well.
I only use Google Adsense. Noted the other though.
Anyways, I’m wondering how much time did took for you to get your first 100 dollars with Adsense? I have an account for almost a year and I still need $50 to get there.
Melinda, I don’t know much about that plugin, but if things can be planned such that it’s not overwhelming, all’s the better. Plugins should work well for us, not make us irritating to others. lol
Cristian, it took me probably 2 years before I made my first $100 in total, then things took off.
This has been an insightful read, as you might know I am trying to get into a position where I can live from my online income but it feels a long way off.
Adsense banned me for no reason a few years ago so I am left going after actual affiliate programs. I do okay off them but nothing major.
CAn I ask, do you pu all your focus into this 1 blog or do you have several (or like me tens of blogs!). I am trying to decide the best way to do things.
Danika, I have 5 blogs, but I only make money off one of them and that’s from ad sales. Adsense was banned for this blog only.
Adsense are too ban happy for my liking.
I have just come back to see if you replied to my comment and have seen you have not only replied but also put out 2 more posts on this, I need to get a coffee and settle down to read up on this.
I was hoping you’d come back Danika, and I’ll be writing about many others as well. Adsense can be “ban happy”, as they were with this blog, yet one can still generate a nice income on some sites.
I’ve never see your medical billing website, but for sure you can improve AdSense earning, changing the format of the ads, placement and color scheme. Kontera have never really worked for me, nor for any of my friends even on 10k visitorors a day earnings are minimal.
Carl, the medical billing website is working just fine, and I did merge the colors well there.
Actually you are right, yesterday when I checked didn’t pay attention on square ads, those are the most clicked probably. I think the only part that can increase clicks number is using “links ad” instead of normal one in the header. 7 Links formal will fit the best there.
Carl, you might not believe this, but it’s actually the 728×90 ads that are clicked more than anything else. That was a major test to learn, because when I’ve been able to put those same types of ads in other places they seem to draw better than the square ads. Not really sure why, but I don’t question success. š
The best lesson is practice of A-B testing, I am definitely surprised, but I am happy that this is working well for you! Probably I will try 728 on few of my blogs, just as a test.
going with Goggle adsense. earning first 100$s really very difficult. enjoy reading this post.
Did you say that you have Adsense on this blog also? Because I’m not seeing it…
No Sonny, I didn’t say I had Adsense on this blog. Google decided they didn’t want me to have it on this blog because of one post I wrote 18 months ago, even though they keep sending me traffic to it, and there’s nothing wrong with the post. And I refused to remove it, so that’s that. But over the course of the years I had it I think I didn’t even reach $2 with it here.
If I were ever to go for affiliate marketing I would use Amazon.com because there’s so much there that I like and could actually review and probably make some money on, but for me the major problem is where I live! People in the UK don’t spend as much as people in the USA and Amazon only let UK people join the european affiliates schemes. (I’m curious – have you ever used Amazon? If so, did it work for you at all?)
There, I bet that surprised you, knowing my thoughts (usual thoughts) on marketing!
I’m afraid that the double underline stuff does my head in and I use an adblocker for them all. Maybe one of the reasons you don’t get much from that sort of advertising is because others also use adblock?
Oh and something I must say, completely off topic, but important – I hope you and your family will be safe through the coming hurricane.
Val, I never went with Amazon because my book store of choice is Barnes & Noble. Not that I probably would have made much money off Amazon anyway but then they decided they didn’t want New York folks working with them anyway. And I’m not surprised you’d know; after all, you’ve been online for a long time now so you’d have to have absorbed at least some of it through osmosis anyway. š
And thanks for worrying about the hurricane. I’m far enough inland so I have no worries, although it’s supposed to be raining here all day tomorrow. However, it’s messing up family plans for people to get to the area, as my grandmother passed away Thursday and people in the south can’t fly up any earlier than Monday.
I’m so sorry about your grandmother. My condolences.
Thanks Val; I appreciate the words.
I’m a big fan of Google Adsense. The first check i ever got was from them, and it wasn’t too hard actually. I took a break from niche sites for a while, but just got started recently. I actually set up one up the other day, and I’m working hard at it. Once I get that one up on its feed, I’ll start up another one. Definitely agree with you that Adsense is great though. Congrats on breaking the $300 barrier! Is that just from the Medical Billing site?
Ben, most of it is from the medical billing site. I get some from my finance site and a hit here and there from my anti-smoking site, but probably 98% is from the one site.
Hi Mitch Mitchell,
This is really good and informative article. Google adsense has made life very easy for website managers. Well thanks for sharing.
Hi Mitch. I’ve read this. And actually, despite of it’s a really good article, why do you have to make it by parts? I’m curious, dude! LOL! Can’t wait for the next part though.
Andrew, it’s in parts because if I wrote about all the programs I’m a part of in one post it would be too long.
I joined Kontera first but it wasn’t what I had expected. Like you it wasn’t really performing that well. When I changed to inforlinks I expected much of the same but like you it performed a hell of a lot better. I can only assume that it’s because the links it offered were more target generated.
Sire, that was how I did it as well. You’re probably correct in how the ads are targeted, especially after people hover over the links to see what’s offered.
Silly me, I dabbled in all of these, instead of immersing myself and learning how they work.
Kontera was interesting because, outside of Google AdSense, it was the first time I had seen anyone else doing ad networks.
Brian Hawkins’ story is one of those that I love to read about. John Reese used to pound that keyword research into our heads. It works.
Cheers,
Mitch
Mitch, keywords obviously do work, and research is a big part of it, but I think it also depends on what you’re doing. I’m never going to invest a lot of time working on keywords for my blog posts; just have way too much to write to waste my time that way. But I will do it for a website here and there.
Our company has never looked into using adsense.. but we do use alot of google adwords to generate sales on a daily basis. Were not sure if adsense would work to well on our site as it would probably just have links directly to our own competitors… Might be worth testing perhaps on a 2nd site.
Truthfully Jon, if it’s for a business I wouldn’t use it. Adsense always takes people away from your site and they might not come back. You couldn’t generate enough money through Adsense to overcome that.