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What's with the Affiliate Links?
The objective of the community color directories is to promote local web development. I believe strongly that the web is a valuable medium of communication within a community and I want to create a mechanism where all the people contributing to the local web can be heard.
I happen to live in a country with a market economy. That means that a program like this must have a source of income to survive. If I demanded payment for listing, I would limit the number of voices heard; So, I've chosen to support this site with advertisements. I realize that many people despise any form of advertising. I feel that by including quality well marked advertisers in the directory can improve the quality of the service.
Sites marked with the symbols ??? are affiliate programs. These programs pay a commission on sales generated by links from this site. I only get a commission when a link from this site results in a sale.
The following table shows total commissions earned by month. This table includes all web based income for all the sites I've created. Only about 70% of the money listed in the table below comes from the Community Color Sites NOTE: I usually only get paid about 90% of the money earned each month.
| Month | Page Views* | Clicks | Commission |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 2005 | 639,864 | 7535 | $623.47 |
| Jul 2005 | 619,696 | 7969 | $703.28 |
| Jun 2005 | 647,114 | 7453 | $694.87 |
| May 2005 | 598,524 | 7252 | $704.89 |
| Apr 2005 | 640,298 | 8442 | $876.12 |
| Mar 2005 | 638,155 | 8320 | $872.08 |
| Feb 2005 | 632,614 | 7021 | $792.66 |
| Jan 2005 | 634,853 | 7080 | $797.85 |
| Dec 2004 | 561,340 | 8596 | $797.85 |
| Nov 2004 | 532,168 | 8192 | $771.92 |
| Oct 2004 | 498,883 | 6983 | $504.13 |
| Sept 2004 | 650,402 | 6130 | $535.71 |
| Aug 2004 | 643,526 | 6399 | $682.14 |
| Jul 2004 | 384,989 | 5906 | $580.17 |
The Page View column shows the total number of web pages delivered by my collection of sites. The Stats page shows total directory impressions by site.
The column labeled "Clicks" is the number of users sent to advertisers. The Commission column shows what I've earned during the month. My direct costs run $300.00 a month. The ads barely cover costs. For this web site business to be solvent, this column needs to get into the $5,000 plus region. A half million page views result in about $600. At current rates, I would need 6 million page views per month to live modestly in the US. This is not a solvent business model.
What is an Affiliate?
On the internet an "affiliation" is a loose relation between web sites. In most cases, it is a relation between a web merchant and a content site needing advertising revenue. In the typical affiliate arrangement, the merchant pays their affiliate a small commission on sales generated from links to the merchant site. Directly connecting commissions to sales from advertisements is called performance marketing.
Most ecommerce sites prefer performance marketing to pay per click or pay for ad views because it is easy for web sites to fake clicks and ad views..
Why this Site is Lousy with Affiliates
My desire is to create quality community directories. To do such, I need a funding source. Rather than demanding payment for listing, I decided to take the low road. While building the directories, I check to see if a web site has an affiliate program in place. If they have one I join it.
NOTE: When a site has an affiliate program, but reject my site, I usually will not give a free listing to the site.
Marking a program as an affiliate does not mean I have ever actually been paid anything. Nor does it mean that the merchant is actively promoting my site or approves of my content. It just means I joined a program and will get paid for any web traffic that results in sales.
Since there is a possibility that I will make money off a listing, I feel obliged to mark the link as such. I used to mark affiliate links as "sponsor." Of course, these affiliate programs really aren't really actively sponsoring me. They are paying for traffic. I now label such sites as "???" and have a link to this page to explain what I am doing. Currently, fewer than 1 in 10 of the sites marked ??? have ever actually paid me anything.
NOTE: Many sites are marked "La Mall." These sites are part of a big affiliate mall program I am testing.
Why Don't Any of the Affiliate Links Work?
There are several ad filters and parasitic programs that block affiliate links. For example, if you are running AdSubtract or the Norton Ad Blocker, it is possible that the programs are blocking the domains for the ads. In some cases you can fix the problem by editing your hosts file. Depending on your OS, your hosts file will be in different places:
Windows XP - c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Windows NT/2000 - c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Windows 95/98/Me - c:\windows\hosts
You will want to remove the lines:
127.0.0.1 service.bfast.com
127.0.0.1 click.linksynergy.com
127.0.0.1 clickserve.cc-dt.com
127.0.0.1 www.qksrv.net
Conversely, adding those lines to your hosts file blocks the ability of sites like this to pay their rent.
Is it Overdone?
I always appreciate feedback. If you feel the affiliate thing is detracting from the site, or if you feel there is a good balance; please let me know in the forum.
What Compromises Does This Site Make?
Money tends to lead to compromises. I think it is best to let people know upfront any link that might generate funds. This is a list of "compromises" I've made for the the "paid" affiliate listings:
The most obvious compromise is that I generally list the affiliate programs toward the top of the directory. I did some brief investigations. The sites at the top of the directory get about twice the traffic as those sites midway through the directory. Marking a site as an affiliate or sponsor results in a 20% drop in clicks to the site. Listing the affiliates at the top of the page encourages people to scroll down. I think this is a good balanced practice.
The second compromise is that I often give affiliates more than one listing in the directory. I generally restrict other sites to one listing.
The biggest effect of the affiliate programs is that I've listed chain stores in the directory that I otherwise would have skipped. I would not have listed Walmart were it not for the affiliate program.
In many cases, I've added an introductory pages for paying merchants. For example, I wrote a short intro for Sears Home Center. These intro pages actually have a mixed effect for the merchant. In most cases, the purpose of the intro page is to re-inforce the relation of a chain store to a town (I list the store's physical address). I also attempt a "pre-sale." Remember, I only get paid for actual purchases from an affiliation.
The interim pages tend to reduce the actual number of people who get to the merchant web site while increase the sales per click.
Finally, I admit, I've pushed the community definition limit for affiliates. For example, Back Country Store is officially headquartered in Heber, but I list the store in Salt Lake, Park City and Provo. (I like this store and believe they are an extremely valuable member of the community. However, without the affiliate program, I would have just listed BCS in Heber.
Sometimes I put products from stores in the online store section at the top of the page, or put their links in the rotating ads shown in the forum.
Finally, I list affiliate merchants in web sites outside the Links Alive family. I put all of my favorite stores on the site: A Fountain of Bargains.
A Fountain of Bargains
This site is an experiment. AFOB is a mall containing my favorite affiliated merchants. It is a site that is nothing but ads. The idea is to provide a resource for people who are in a buying mood. The site lists sales and categorizes merchants by type.
I often link to AFOB as an additional resource. For example, Park City does not have a large number of auto links at this time. At the bottom of the Park City auto directory is an invitation to visit AFOB. The concept is that if you don't find what you want in town, you might consider checking out the national sites.
How Much Do you Make from Affiliate Links?
Although there are many sites marked as affiliates. Very few of these sites have actually paid me anything. There are many programs on the internet that divert sales. For example, a large percent of computers are infected by a strange thing called parasiteware and variates of adware or spyware. If you've ever downloaded a P2P music program, a rebates shopping program, a browser helper object, a password manager, or any number of trojans, there is a good chance your computer got infected infected with a parasite. Basically, parasites monitor your web usage. If you go to an ecommerce site, the web site pops up an ad with a coupon. Clicking on the coupon transfers any commissions from my site to the parasite. The parasites reinvest this money into more trojans and infects more computers.
To make a long story short, to date fewer than 1 in 10 of the "affiliates" have ever sent cash in my direction. Yet, since there is the possibility of making cash, I still mark the sites.
Should People Join Affiliate Programs to get Rebates?
A lot of people join affiliate programs hoping to get a kick back on their personal purchases. Personally, I think this is a misuse of the programs, and it rarely works. Most affiliate programs review the web site applying for affiliation. Joining for personal rebates wastes a reviewer's time. Often they reject personal sites applications.
Even worse, most programs have low commission rates. In the affiliate world, commission rates of 1% percent are common.
There are also minimum payout amounts and other obstacles to payment. The result is that most people who join affiliate programs to get "a rebate" on purchases never see the money, or they end up making unnecessary purchases to qualify for payment. The affiliate thing is really set up for web site to web site relations.
From my perspective, I see the affiliate thing as a way to pay for internet content. If you shop from sites that you value, then you support those sites. Conversely, I strongly encourage people to never purchase anything from spam, pop ups or sites that you do not like. If you do not like this site, then you can avoid paying me by avoiding links marked "???"!
I am a Merchant. How Does One Set Up an Affiliate Program?
Setting up an affiliate program is largely a matter of creating a way to track sales. If you are a programmer, you could jot out some code for assigning affiliate ids and dropping affiliate cookies. You would then tack the affiliate cookie onto the sale. Voila, you have an affiliate program. It is not a great deal of work. Many shopping carts include such programs.
If you aren't into writing code, there's a number of programs like FusionQuest and Share-A-Sale with out of the box affiliate programs. The really big advantage to such networks is that they do much of your affiliate recruiting and maintenance. NOTE, networks also help prevent affiliate fraud.
I Have a Web Site and Want to Add Ads to My Site, Suggestions?
Personally, I think you will find that the payments are too low to be worth your time. Ads help offset hosting costs, but are not sufficient to pay for the site. Typical stats are that you have display an ad 100 times to get a hit. Usually less than 1 in 50 hits results in a sale. The commission on a sale is generally less than $3.00. So, you would have to display 5000 ads to get $3.00. To make minimum wage as a business takes about $20,000 a year. So, to make minimum wage at this, you would need to display 3,333,333 ads to break minimum wage. My results are even more pathetic than that. If anything, I would expect ad rates to continue drop.
My conclusion is that most affiliate programs are not worth the compromises you end up making to your web site to carry ads. Even worse. You will find that many people will not link to your site when you have any ads. The idea is that if you are not indepedently wealthy, then you are not worth the time of day. The ads are a necessary evil for my sites because I need revenue to survive. For most people it is better to take the high road and maintain the integrity of your vision and can the commerce.
If you have a small web site and want to test your hand in the market, I would suggest starting with Share-A-Sale. They tend to have smaller merchants...but work actively against parasites and consolidate payments. Here is a list of other affiliate opportunities.
