Commission Junction – Paul's Tech Talk

Google Affiliate Network Summit 045 (Photo credit: Affiliate)

There’s More than one way to skin a cat!

When all said is done, you have a big selection of affiliate networks that you can choose from. You might even wonder which affiliate network is the best for your situation. In this blog post, we will talk about some of the things that you can do to choose which one might be the best for your situation. Not all Affiliate networks will be the same but this will at least let you understand which ones are right for you.

An affiliate network acts as an intermediary between publishers (affiliates) and merchant affiliate programs. It allows website publishers to more easily find and participate in affiliate programs which are suitable for their website (and thus generate income from those programs)

[Wikipedia]

Finding what works for you!

There are so many different networks you can use that you may have trouble knowing which one will work for you. I will say before we go on that I do not know every single affiliate network but I have tried all the major affiliate networks and I will give you my opinions on each of them.

Google Affiliate Network — I’ve been using this network from the get go, I will say that I’ve had some modest luck with this network. I’ve made some money with network because of Glasses USA (Affiliate link). I’ve always got paid for my commissions and they do actually care about your website and helping you get your commissions.

Commission Junction — I’ve tried this network and gotten some commissions from this network but it hasn’t really been a good relationship for me. I didn’t really feel like they had my own website in mind. I had to apply for all the merchants and never really had any luck with merchants wanting to have their advertising on my site.

Linkshare — Another good network that I didn’t have any luck with. I know they have a wide variety of things that might be good for you but I really didn’t find anything that fit well with my website. It always seemed to be more about page views then commissions. They would always be someone wanting to be on my site that was unrelated to my blog. I really didn’t feel that was a good fit for my website.

Linkconnector — I recently signed up to find out which programs they have on this site. I haven’t been on their long and have already been offered to be part of merchants that are unrelated to my blog again. These sites that were offered are nice for blogs or advertisers who is related in one way or another. I bet these guys don’t even check the website they are offering to.

Mal-Advertising!

Malware Advertising is something that I have come to understand just a little more and thus it is always going to be a problem for the affiliate networks because someone will come along and offer a service but are rarely understood because of the nature of advertising. I am not saying that every time you sign up for a new advertiser that you are going always going to have one when you sign up but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t at least do your research before you start using their ads. I’ve been happy with my selection of using Google Affiliate networks but I would love to hear which ones you use and why. Just leave a comment and tell me and others who you recommend.

Paul Sylvester

Report: malware pushed by affiliate networks remains the primary growth factor of the cybercrime ecosystem (zdnet.com)

Top Affiliate Marketing Company for January 2012 is Experience Advertising Affiliate Management OPM (prnewswire.com)

Affiliate Industry Preview: Google Affiliate Network’s Dan Greene (revenews.com)

Cashunclaimed.com Launches New Affiliate Program with Commission Junction (prweb.com)

CPA Affiliate Marketing Is A Great Way To Make Money Online (blogpronews.wordpress.com)

Image via Wikipedia

What is an Auto Blog?

Autoblog is a neologism and misnomer used to describe a particular type of website which uses software designed to automatically add content in a blog format.[1] The owner of an autoblog is generally referred to as an autoblogger. Engaging in this practice is called autoblogging.
Autoblogging does not require a site owner to create original web content. An autoblogger merely installs the necessary software, and configures its settings to collect the type of content desired. The automated software handles the rest.

[Via Wikipedia]

Autoblogs are basically just programs designed to publish other people’s stuff. Now I am not going to explain some stuff that you might not know. Plugins for WordPress like WordPress Magic, WP Robot, MultiPress Content, Commission Cheat, and other autoblogging software are sometimes considered Auto Content Stealing programs. I know more about this then people who are just starting off. I’m here today to talk about these programs in detail.

Make Money While You are Sleeping!

You’ve probably heard that one a lot or Hidden Secrets to commissions in advertising. Most of them do somewhat what they say. I was using one in particular for almost over a year and I didn’t see any noticeable amount of money coming in from having that run day in and day out.

I’ve even seen those advertisements on YouTube and other video places claiming that you could make Millions and not do anything more than install a plugin that takes just 10 minutes install. These programs however most of the time cost money and that is where the catch is. I have no problem paying for something that works but most of the time if you claim I can set it and forget about it, I just say no thanks.

Does these work?

I know most of you who are asking this question, and probably saw something on another website and you are quite curious as to if these work or not. I will give you the short answer “NO”, they aren’t really a scam because you make money but you really don’t make money like you’ve seen on the advertisements. You basically just make enough commissions to pay for the product in one year. I may have made more but you get the gist of that. You also have to remember that you have to have a really high Google PR to even get the traffic that is needed to make any kind of money.

Just creating a new domain, will not help you because it will have no Google Juice for quite some time and that is if you get any at all. Most of the time, Google looks down on this type of stuff and stops you before you even get going.

Is this Stealing content?

Most of the time you aren’t really taking anything that you shouldn’t but that doesn’t mean you could be doing that. Most Auto Blog plugins will allow to you pick what you want to use as content and it will publish what you tell it. The content that you will most like get are from like Amazon, Clickbank, Commission Junction, and other such Affiliate programs. They usually allow you to use their content for your website and thus you can use them on your site. The Kicker to this is, Google and other SEO, they will rank you lower just because of that. They consider scraper sites to be nothing more than spam and thus you might go down in ranking if your not careful.

How do I know?

I created a Website called “unlocked cell phones blog” trying to test this out. I created that last year about this time and set up using WP Robot, as my autoblog plugin. After that year was up, I checked my Amazon Account tracking ID and guess what. I only made “$56.45“. As you can tell I pretty much made what I put into it, I bought the software for $75 and I got half that back. I made a little more money on my other Domain Tech-linkblog.com but I couldn’t tell you for sure if it was all the plugin or if some of those was because of my old content.

Recommendations!

Here is what I recommend, if your really wanting to do this, do as much research as you can and know this. There are websites that are specifically designed to waste your time to prevent you from finding your answers. I know if you look on Google and others you will see that you find all these Glowing reviews and people who are just posting Videos of this type of stuff so they can make a little money. You really have to go 3 to 4 pages in to find some truth in these AutoBlogging software. You will find your answers if you ask the right questions and search for what makes sense. I will not say I am totally against Auto Blogs, but I am not going to waste my money on another one of those in the future. I now know that making money overnight isn’t always going to be possible without at least working for it.

It’s not how you do it but what you do that can make your blog a success. You never know if your going to write the best article in your life or the worst article but until you try. This I hope has told given you what you have been wondering or asking. I’d love to hear your comment
s and your experiences, I might be the only one who hasn’t done so good but I’m willing to bet there are others out there.