If the affiliate world was perfect IMO you could just link to websites… anywhere on there site… not have to worry about some crazy link structure or id or login and if you referred traffic that made a sale you would get credit…. I mean that would be pretty cool right? Its to bad nobody does that… and you can make great money from it… OR CAN YOU?!?
This is one of those things gems I have debated about posting about… I mean its great to share with the world how you make money and how easy it is and with the recent $10,000 contest best of the web is having I thought I would give this gem up.
Best Of The Web, the most respected web directory on the internet, has an INCREDIBLE affiliate program… and I have never heard anyone else talk about it. I have never even heard Best Of The Web people talk about it… except when I bring it up to them (in private).
I have been using this program for well over a year or so.. maybe longer.. not sure but its one of my favorites. For one thing its FOR LIFE of the user… so you refer someone you get paid every time they pay. Its really awesome and it has a pretty massive snowball effect. I am currently at just over $2,000 per month in income from there affiliate program… its not huge but what the hell… all I have done is put it in my forum signatures and linked to there site every once in a while over the last year. The best part is I dont have to ever remember some affiliate ID I just link to there website… thats it… So last week when they announced their $10,000 giveaway all I did was link to the information page.
Weds – On that day I received 18 signups.
Thursday – The next day was 14 signups
Friday – 16 signups
Saturday 11 signups
Sunday – 3 signups
Monday – 3 signups
Tuesday – 4 signups (so far)
I really started getting into it about this time last year with there contest to win a plasma HDTV. I clicked on the affiliate link in there site and signed up:
Then I added my site:
And here is there commissions table:
So as you can see you get 25% of revenue FOR THE LIFE OF THE CUSTOMER. Well I told Best Of The Web I wanted to do a post about it my good experiences with there program but I asked if there was anyway shoemoney readers could get a little extra bonus for something…
So here you go. If you use code shoemoney30 you will receive 30% commission which is 5% more then the base rate.
Also you might be wondering how I link from my forum signatures and get credit (since i use shoemoney.com domains). I just use a meta refresh from http://www.shoemoney.com/botw.html as you can see in my digitalpoint signature. Because its a meta refresh the headers load and it uses my domain for the referring url and all is well 
So go sign up for the Best Of The Web affiliate program here and use code shoemoney30 for a extra 5% commission.
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2412 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 80 comments… read them below or add one }
I actually have been doing really well with there affiliate program also
I wouldn’t mind an extra $2000 a month simply by doing nothing. Of course that doesn’t happen to everybody, not everyone has the same success rate. But if you’re quick enough you just might.
there is actually many programs we do well with… people are so lazy just to test things and thank god for that
I never had any good results with these affiliate programs but maybe it’s because you need at least 20K or so traffic per day…
So whats so unique about your redirect vs one that carries affiliate parameters ?
I WANT to send people to a targetted page.
Not sure I get it dude (though 30% is sweet)
tee hee!
I subscribe to your rss feed… so when I click on the link you’ve used in your article from my rss feed, google reader get’s the cred!
Hmmm… wonder if Google have a BOTW affiliate account ?
This is the kind of thing you should email me with in advance shoe!
Yo Shoe. What do you think about the saying “As soon as you spot a bandwaggon its already to late!” I am not saying this to be a stick in the mud more because its leading to another question. Question is “How do you research and find the best markets, affiliates, arbitration schemes, whatever it might be? Do you dedicate time to researching / creative thinking / finding niches, or do you just go with the notion, do what other poeple are doing, but do it better?”
Thanks and I am sure a lot of people here will be interested to hear your thoughts.
I mentioned it in a comment to paid links post at Rae’s blog (she has a little button with a link to BOTW). BOTW jumped in and acknowledged that she is not an affiliate. I knew that, but I (ab)used it to make a point
The referrer has to be a specified domain of yours in order to make it work. Referrer information are not transmitted if you place a link to them on a SSL secured page.
A link from an Email or PPC search engine does also not work, unless you go through some length to use a tricky redirect script on your domain in between, a normal redirect on the server side does not cut it, because it will keep the original referrer instead of using your redirect script as referrer.
It has its limitations and only makes sense, if you don’t want affiliates doing the above. Cookie duration is also an issue, because as far as I know are they not placing a permanent cookie for delayed referrals. Correct me if I am wrong here.
BOTW is not the only program doing it this way. I came across 2-3 other in-house programs that worked the same way. Who knows, with the paid links debate going on and all that, becomes this maybe a more and more interesting and alternative option for some merchants with an in-house program. One thing is certain, you can not determine if it is an affiliate link or not. You have to know, there is no other way.
You might have done them a disfavour with this posting though. Now they’re almost certain to be dobbed in by some dumbo for selling links. The the only reason they have this setup without an affiliate id is of course to get higher search engine rankings (although it could also be done with an affiliate id) …
Sounds like an interesting program though
Thanks for the tip Shoe. Signing up as soon as I get home from work.
Thanks Shoemoney, signing up now.
Crazy dude! Nice earnings and a few more earnings I bet!
This is a great tip! I’ve seriously been struggling to break into the affiliate market. $2K may not seem like much to you, but it would be a good enough chunk for me to cut some other work and dedicate more time to CPA…
Let’s all run over and signup with Shoemoney’s code now that he has plugged it. Nice for Shoe to be able to pull the strings so easily and get a burst of signups.
2k is a nice chunck of change… i would have the “Beach Bum makes $24,000 a year” site…
glad everyone missed the best tip in the whole article.
Nice man! Always got to look for the easy ways to make a buck not just the hard ways
signed up, thanks for sharing
Good point Michael. Shoe is going to have to remember to always link to http://www.shoemoney.com/botw.html and never http://www.botw.org directly to keep getting the credit when his content is
stolensyndicatedThx Shoe…it’s always worthwhile to read your blog..gonna check it out. After I make myself finish my next newsletter.
that is what i was thinking.
Great to know about not using any id affiliate
Nice job to BOTW
This is a great idea. Another good tip from you that will make my life easier.
Thanks Shoe for the tip
It seems a good affiliate program let’s see if it will work with some of your readers
I was able to add Google Reader’s URL to my account.. So really you could go around and find sites that link to the directory, and add that URL to your list and get commission.. I just wonder if the same URL can be added twice? Yes.. I was able to add THIS PAGE!
I just try everything… seriously..
well… you have to register the domains your sending traffic from. Since I do not own digitalpoint.com any traffic I sent from my signature I would not be credited for…. unless… I redirected it through shoemoney.com (which I do own).
Fortunately, we’ve got a staff to sniff such stuff out. You can try, but it’s a waste of time (yours and ours).
We also allow for the “traditional” way of sending affiliate traffic – with a UID. So if you are using an email and want to send users and track them properly, you’d use a string such as botw.org?uid=00420
gem. i was assuming that you would not let me add google or gmail, etc…
Again with the difficulties when using ‘there’ and ‘their’. C’mon Jeremy! lol :p
I signed up!
Thanks Shoe – I will join. Those commission rates are excellent.
Thanks for the tip Shoe! Hopefully I’ll have a site one day that I can apply these type of programs.
Sweet. Definitely will start promoting it.
Man, I need to go ahead and do this dang thang already
I’ve heard so many good things about BOTW over the years
I predict about a 500% increase in the amount of people promoting BOTW on digitalpoint now…
No offence, but it seems from the post you just had a bit of good luck stumbling upon it when you signed up to BOTW…
Still good work for putting it in the DP signature. Clever move.
Yea lol, i’m guessing we’ll see a “The $(Insert several thousand here) BOTW post” followup post pretty soon. Props though, it’s still a great deal.
Uh, yeah that and it’s just a hell of a lot easier for their affiliates to use thus generating more traffic and more signups…
Haha – good thinking!
Awesome tip Shoe.. and thanks for getting the higher percentage for us!!!!
Here comes 2,000 new signatures… lol
“only $2000… …its not huge, but what the hell”
For how much little work you are doing, it sure is nice.
“Best Of The Web” not something that I’ve heard about until now thanks for the tip.
Another great tip..
Thanks Shoe…
Looks pretty good, especially the part about not using any referal id.
Well that’s kind of cool, I guess, to be honest I don’t see how making a META refresh page is less effort than a long-winded affiliate link?
I can’t remember looking into this in the past, but under normal circumstances does BOTW give second level credits for referring other affiliates?
i’m signing up as of now. thanks for the tip!
Thanks. I am going to see if they will accept me since I am on a blogger. It wont hurt to try.
BOTW sure is a great company, I also agree they do have a nice affiliate program as well, if only everyone would run there company like these guys
nice tip, monetize, monetize, monetize
I have had the BOTW banner on my site for one year but no revenue yet. I guess I need more traffic.
I wish we could add foreign language sites though…
Yeah, I got that – it’s just that if you’re handling the redirect, why does it matter if.. [ ..not have to worry about some crazy link structure or id or login and if you referred traffic that made a sale you would get credit….] – You just link to your redirect anyway.. (maybe I’m missing something here but it sounds like standard practice (if only for tracking ct’s)) ??
Maybe I should say ‘whats specific to All the web’ with this.. (or maybe i should just go register using myspace ?)
Oops, I meant BOTW.
That sounds good. Joining best of the web from with the shoemoney code is a limited time offer?
What about sites that don’t get near the traffic of your sites? How will they do?
You can also use a affiliate code in the link to get referrals, such as: http://botw.org?uid=25973
That’s exactly what I was thinking.
Best of the Web requires you to pay just to get listed?
If you’re site is any good you should be able to get plenty of people to link to you, or to trade links with you without having to fork out dosh for the privelage.
Shoe – any update on how these posts have performed in terms of generating referrals for you? I’d imagine the numbers took another huge jump with the 30% offer you managed to score.
I am going to prove it immediately
thx
nice one thanks
It depends… if you do a general interest site, you need a lot of traffic. but there are still a lot of specialized business models with a high turnaround.
It’s a thin line between linklove and “syndication”
and once a again a service only available for english-sites…
Probably not as well!
Shoe only uses the meta refresh for links off his site (ie DP forum). In that setting, if hovering over a link reveals an obvious affiliate link, people might just truncate the URL and type it in. If the see shoemoney.com/botw they are more likely to click it. He doesn’t need the meta refresh on links from his site because of the way their affiliate program works.
Good point about the benefit for SERPs – it’s a wonder other affiliates don’t utilize this same approach, as it shouldn’t be very difficult to implement and clearly has some major side benefits. Great PR links for no cost.
It’s good to be king. Seriously, being on top clearly has its perks for a guy like shoe. A small-timer who posts this same thing might get a few thank yous but little in the way of coin. This will undoubtedly make some pretty serious extra cash for Shoe long term, given the 2-tier payouts from BOTW. Residual income with no continuing effort – the best kind.
Looks good, let me try once.now 5% extra for us.
will give it a try. thanks for giving us +5%
Signed up!
Will put some research into this and check out the results.
Wow, I might try that out later. Seems quite interesting.
interesting! I’ll look into it.
Interesting i will check it out later
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