I like all five, but I’ll stick with Contextual for the time being.

You didn’t mention NeverBlueAds.com - best affiliate network ever. If you are doing CPA you need to check it out. I neither work for nb nor have I posted an affiliate link. Check it out guys, best support ever - ask for samantha she rocks!

Tob

Mistyped URL in Auctionads LLC

Could you discuss your reasoning behind saying affiliate marketing takes a high skill level? Most affiliate programs have copy-and-paste code (ie. Amazon). Does your comment have to do with dealing with the datafeeds and APIS’s? Maybe I’m just missing something.

Maybe I’m ignorant but what is APIS? Did you mean API’s?

nice post!
it can be easy but if you really wanna make money you need to deal with that kind of stuff. think all the comparison price websites for example, they just grab data from other site and use them to make money

So when you show sample landing pages etc (ie like this) is that just using one of the affiliate programs you mentioned or is that more of a “direct” affiliate type implementation?

I like affiliates and subscription because income can be recurring and you don’t really need a huge amount of traffic to make some decent money.

To REALLY make money on contextual ads, you need some pretty heavy traffic levels and awesome ad blending.

Great advice Jeremy.

Why not expirement? You could be earning a lot more and not know baout it

Nice list, even if it is a bit simplified. I still think that the best thing is to combine them in some way.

Also, you left out things like textlinkads, or is that included under ad sales?

“Skill Level To Implement - High skill required and a lot of imagination . Everyone one of the affiliate marketers I know doing over 1M/year in profit are great programmers and also very creative. To reach the top level of this monetization method you will need to learn how to deal with datafeeds and APIS’s”

Regarding your comments on being a successful Affiliate Marketeer, I have to disagree. I fall well above your 1M a year category and can’t program/code to save my life. I don’t even know what a datafeed is or what to do with it. All of my sites/landing pages can be built (and have been built) by people with design skills only. However I still make a very good living out of AM.

Yes you need to be creative and imaginative but technical skills? Yes they are undoubtedly useful but essential? No.

Contextual and affiliate earnings are still the way to go for smaller sites like me. I guess the rest are not that viable yet till one gets pretty bigger and more popular.

I guess TLA are somewhere along the lines of Direct Ad Sales.

I believe in the fact that you have to try out one or more alternative methods to see which works out fine or better for you. Who knows, perhaps a combination of two or more will generate much more income than what you are doing now.

You can find many good programmers for a decent price on freelance sites, great ideas are more important and most important is tons of targeted keyword traffic and that takes work.

great post here.But i still stay up with contextual ads right now.

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The negative to donations is that you have to actively “beg” for them. Unlike ads where if you stick them in the right place people click and you earn, donations needs to have a constant reminder. Thats been my experience with them at least. You also have to deal with someone like paypal, which of course, is always fun.

yeah good point about TLA, yeah I guess they are semi-direct ad sales

“”Popular Companies: AzoogleAds, Commission Junction, CPA Empire, Max Bounty, XY7, share a sale, performix , linkshare”"

I admire the courage and strength it must have taken to NOT say AuctionAds here

If anything he’d mean APIs.

The only reference to APIS I could find anywhere was:

Advanced Papyrological Information System and
Advance Passenger Information System

I can handle working with API’s

Contextual advertising is way overrated. Point 5 deserves more attention, especially if you are a blogger. It’s not exactly passive income, but again bloggers aren’t supposed to be passive to begin with.

Regards, George

yes, i agree traffic is the first factor, then earning from that is second. you can convert most with good placement.

PPC is the difficult area, as well as SEO as most SEO is really about age and links.

I think it would be helpful if you put like 1-10 rating scales on those so that the comparison is a little less qualitative for those who don’t have much experience in it. For example, I’d say affiliate has the potential to be 10 compared to contextual which has a potential to be like a 5.

It also depends on the site, if you’re doing gadget reviews I doubt a donation button would work. It requires loyal readership that care about you, not SERP traffic that is just popping in and out.

Trying new things is what it’s all about, you can do it without risking too much other than your time - that’s what makes this industry so incredible. It’s not like you have to drop thousands on inventory to see if it’ll work.

Hmmm I’ve never heard of them before, anyone else have experience with them? What are some of the reasons why they’re the best besides Samantha?

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I think that he meant that in order to do well in affiliate marketing, you need to be imaginative and hard working. Anyone can throw up an affiliate ad but you have to position it correctly in order to increase its profitability.

You can probably revise Shoe’s statement to be “are great programmers or can manage great programmers”, but great programmers are still in the equation either way.

50% of the pluses, 0% of the minuses, it’s nice not having to track people down for payment.

Well I don’t use or manage any programmers whatsoever so no, I don’t think they are “essential” to the equation.

I figured API’s. APIS is something totally different, not related to computers or the internet. I can handle API’s, just not APIS.

Very true. Just need some patience to work through the different options.

Are they a new group/company?

Jeremy, the disclosure up top was a smart addition. Otherwise I’d have expected to see lots of questions about that.

While i focus more on CPA. I personnally feel for diversification reason you should be experimenting with them all!

Jeremy its not “API’s” it is “APIs” as Icheb noted. You are trying (and failing) to go for a plural, not a possessive.

I thought of that line regarding contextual ads: people has to leave for you to get payed. true, true, true, I have thought about this thing often! That is why I personally think that it is difficult to make a name for a site is the main revenue stream is contextual ads. Normally you have to keep people on your site as much as possible, then you can make your site stand out of the crowd. While with contextual ads, you just pray for them to…leave your site (ok, through ad click, but it is the same, in a way). That is why here I think that unique visitors are very important, returning visitors learn how to avoid ads.

Excuse me. I didn’t know this forum was for fixing critiquing my English. I’m glad I now know, but was it really necessary to point out my ignorance on this matter for all the world to see?

And yes, I typed fixing and critiquing one after another on purpose. Not really.

You might be surprised at how well a mixture of contextual and affiliate ads performs

On your list above it’s Performics not Performix which goes to some software company.

Chitika is not contextual, I believe it started that way but changed models in order to be on the same pages as Adsense, YPN etc.

“Most people do not trust Affiliate companies to pay out.”

As far as that, I’ve never had a problem getting paid 99% of the time. As far as the trust factor, it seemed the majority of the participants in the survey did offer/lead type stuff for CPA networks, then I could understand the whole lack of trust issue. There can be fraud lots of places moreso when doing lead type stuff. Also sometimes when first starting out when you have little traffic and might get a sale here and there, that thought someone is skimming you somehow might creep in. If you progress and start getting lots of traffic and sales on the hour you’ll find most stuff tracks just fine and pays just fine. There’s always a few bad apples out there but I think most merchants want to track and pay because doing so grows their program, if you try to screw someone over, sooner or later someone will find out and that can kill your program.

I’m surprised Teddy hadn’t correct Shoe’s grammar (or spelling) in the past because, let’s be honest, it’s the delivery and not the message that’s important here. Please take note of the sarcasm.

Who built: “All of my sites/landing pages can be built (and have been built) by people with design skills only.”?

I prefer a combination of AdSense (or AdBrite), TLA and now AuctionAds. The three together, if you have enough enough traffic and basically clicks to distribute, can be a killer combination for making money.

Great post, btw!

You were the one asking about APIS or API’s so I think it was only fair that someone pointed it out to help explain what you asked…

Designers.

This may be old news, but has anyone else seen the new google logo on their adsense ads. This is the first time I have seen it.

Anyone can answer this:

What programing languages should we get good at for affiliate marketing? php and what else? Do you suggest we take a class at the local community college to get started with the basics? Or are there any really good free websites/tutorials online that can teach absolute beginners? Or even any good books for beginners? How did you learn?

I agree as well. A mixture of a few sources and playing around with them till you maximize the monetary earnings from them is the way to go.

Very true, that’s what I look for, the returning visitor ratio.

Never heard of them either, if they were so good I’d think the community would be buzzing about them.

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Great breakdown on methods to profit. Currently, contextual pays out the best. Since my article directory got a PR4 in the last update, I can look into selling ads directly.

They are very good for personal support / advice. I call my affiliate manager and get ideas for new campaigns, as well as sort out any issues easily. They have lots of available campaigns, and tons of potential for an affiliate marketer.

I’ve been using all of these except subcription, and hopefully I can start doing something with that soon. You are right, these are all methods that you really don’t have to be actively working on to still receive income. Good post shoe.

I didn’t understand your last comment Jim. All of my websites were built be web designers. None of who are programmers, none of who know what an API or datafeed is. And nor do I.

Contextual is a good way to monetize, but it doesn’t always pay the best.

I’d imagine people have different results with different methods, so I think it’s fair to say there is no “best” way to monetize a website.

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I think that PHP is sufficient, many people have talked at length about the power of the whole LAMP stack. I think imagination is more important but having a solid idea of what’s programmatically possible is important too.

On the contrary, I think contextual is horrible for small sites with little traffic. Subscriptions will work if you have valuable content but a slow growing reach.

TLA has an affiliate program though.. $25 for every new signup.

Just work your ass off and quit looking for someone to hold your hand.

Nevermind, you already don’t have the right attitude.

Right now, my daily volume is my biggest challenge. I receive hundreds of unique visitors, not thousands. Once my volume increases, I can look into other types of revenue.

Frankly speaking, I don’t trust affiliates either. I was surprised to see how many others don’t either. Paradoxically, I was also surprised to see that it has such a high monetization potential…

Oh I misunderstood, i thought you meant that you had software that built sites for you and so I was wondering who built the software (errr programmers). I just misunderstood your initial comment, that’s all. Cheers

I think it’s time for us to start pushing affiliates a little more. Hopefully I will be surprised.

Yeah, donations are funny. Unless the site is providing something, like a plugin or app, I don’t do the donates. I’d rather go through the ads and donate indirectly!

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Good blog post. I think the best option, once your blog gets to a certain size, is to try to attract specific advertising from people in your industry.

i was out for vacations and see this great post today …
It is verywell written.

Affiliates marketing is real tough you need alot of skills as per your saying. but what i think along with skills you should need the right visitors that convert. Entertainment sites (Offering Free servies) for my experience are the poor Converting medium.

Finding right customer at the right time is what i think the key to affiliates marketing. I am learning and hope to come up with some solution that help me to build some good income with affilaties.

Other source of incomes you mentioned are just a juice that many people will take if you have designed a good bar.

I agree. I use http://www.adpeeps.com to expirement wtih dif. offers to find out which convert the best.

It also works good for testing different ads.

Or just have an insane # of unique visits a day

Yeah, a lot of people I know make some GOOOD money through TLA.

Becareful some are just out there to take your ideas.

I don’t think were talking about monetizing blogs specifically more “websites” in general. But yeah, specific advertisers for a blog or ANY site normally pay better than anything.

3 of 5 for me. I’ve never done subscriptions, and never asked for a donation.

By the way, I’m not sure that these are all totally passive, as you still have to produce enough content, or run enough PPC campaigns to keep traffic levels up. But when the ‘work’ is fun, then you’re hardly working at all.

How about paid to review sites like payperpost, sponsoredreviews, etc? They are offering oppurtunites in the range of 10-1000$ for bloggers.

You also need a good product to promote to begin with

You summarized quite well the downside of contextual ads. I keep promising myself to ditch those AdSense ads, but somehow I can’t let go of the 10 cents I make daily

To skip the API part and actually answer your question, affiliate programs give you much more freedom to tinker with the look, and you can use them in just about any way imaginable. If you throw in stuff like link cloaking and the expertise required to find the products suited to your website you will soon see that this domain is quite complex

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Thanks geegel. I appreciate finally getting the response I was looking for.

Donations CAN bring in a decent amount of income. I have some busy forums that have a simple paypal button which has brought in a few thousand dollars. Not too bad for doing nothing.

Yeah. I have. They’ve been doing alot of different things lately. Sometimes they put a Google logo up. Sometimes they make the entire ads in italics. Some links have a shopping cart next to them (which I think means that site uses Google checkout?). I think they are just testing the waters to see what works best.

Great post — I think it’s a very accurate breakdown of different online marketing ventures. Specifically key here is the fact that affiliate marketing has a HIGH level of difficulty to successfully implement on a large scale. There is a lot of web rhetoric that seems to indicate that it is absurdly easy, which makes me laugh each and every time I hear it.

nice topic to discuss! very informative

I would have to think donations would have a downfall of not being to profitale.

WOW, this is great. I can’t believe I have not started sooner with making money on line with website advertising. I wonder what makes more money, advertising or having a site that sells a product and or service?

Do donations really pull in any profits? I guess if you have tons of traffic the numbers just work out, but it doesn’t seem like too many people would pay when they don’t absolutely have to, unless its for a good cause.

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All good information to know; thanks for putting it all in once place Jeremy. I will definitely be experimenting with these various methods on my site.