When affiliate marketing is discussed as a web monetization strategy, it is typically considered as the primary means of generating revenue from traffic. There are thousands of sites out there that have been set up with the single goal of sending referrals to third-party vendors and generating revenue through affiliate relationships and some with a specific Affiliate Marketing Network.
When it comes to monetizing websites, webmasters tend to struggle in finding innovative ways to earn from their websites. However, one of the easiest and arguably most effective way is to participate in affiliate programs. It is a known fact that the web hosting niche is overcrowded, which makes it quite competitive. However, whenever there is high competitiveness, – there are usually higher commissions involved as well.
Affiliate marketing can, however, also be used effectively as a supplemental or non-primary revenue stream. In other words, there may be opportunities to use affiliate marketing as a way to squeeze a bit of incremental revenue from a site whose revenue comes from another source such as display advertising or paid memberships.
Below are a few examples of this “incremental affiliate marketing” in action.
Creative Affiliate Implementations
1. Movies on IMDb
Movie database site IMDb.com has information on thousands of films, actors, and producers. So there is a logical opportunity to link out to merchants who can sell the items that are being researched on the site–specifically DVDs or streaming video.
On each movie page within the site, the right rail includes a link out to Amazon. This is done in an automated way; the link takes referrals to a search page within Amazon displaying results for the movie title:
2. Books on Huffington Post
Many bloggers also happen to have published more traditional collections of their writings, which allows for some affiliate marketing opportunities within any of their online pieces. Specifically, affiliate links to booksellers can be included as part of an author’s articles or blog posts. Below is an example of this in action on HuffingtonPost.com, including links to the specific page where the author’s books can be purchased:
3. Newspaper Subscriptions On Market Folly
The two examples above involve either relatively targeted sites (i.e., movie-focused) or pages written by published authors. Many sites out there may not have these types of opportunities to add affiliate marketing tie-ins. So we’ll include an example below of a fairly generic, simple affiliate marketing strategy: text links in the right rail of a page template.
There’s absolutely nothing fancy here or particularly unique about this site. It covers a relatively broad topic (investing) and
4. Affiliate Marketing on a DATING website – Flirt.com
Talk about unique, who would ever have thought that one of the country’s best online dating site. Like come on, this has got to be one of the most creative affiliate marketing implementations ever. Why? First of all, flirt.com has about approximately 25.45M visits per month and it is ranked as Poland’s 676th most popular website. Imagine getting 25.45M visitors the impressions of seeing the blatant affiliate marketing placement. If you could get even 1% of your traffic to join your affiliate network and make money for you then you are going to be making tons of revenue.
The link to the affiliate marketing can be found in multiple places but one of them is on the bottom tab of the sign-up page when you have not yet registered. So, if you were a middle-aged man looking for someone to date who has some sort of background with affiliate marketing and wanted to make money then this link would definitely catch your eye.
When you click the link you get to TopOffers online affiliate marketing. From the research that I have done, their affiliate network is doing great with at least 62.15k estimated visitors. Which proves to show that their unique and creative method of adding the link on a dating website has worked well.
I was really curious about their implementation, so I went and dug a little bit deeper regarding TopOffers. So basically, they are an Affiliate Marketing Network serving over 45 countries. They actually have a very good system running with fraudulent activity elimination, multi-platform traffic, and a promising advanced smart link technology. Yes, turns out, they do specialize in affiliate marketing for online dating.
Affiliate Marketing Network
Affiliate networks have become one of the easiest ways to get you in touch with the best deals possible from advertisers. Most affiliate networks currently have a not so strict requirement, which makes it even better.By joining an Affiliate marketing network you will get your very own account manager who will help you get your referrals up and running. Those account managers usually provide support by providing you with suggestive affiliate ads you can run which fit your niche the most.
It has become a trend for publishers to join an affiliate network and streamline the entire process rather than doing it old school by joining an affiliation for an advertiser with their own set of rules, and dashboards.
Bottom Line
Many publishers shy away from affiliate marketing as a monetization strategy, preferring instead to focus on easier and more common techniques such as display ads. However, as the examples above illustrate, these two are not mutually exclusive. For sites that generate the majority of their revenue from display ads, there may be incremental opportunities in affiliate marketing.
Although, truth be told that in order to make money from affiliate marketing you will need to actually have sales rather than the display ads where all you need is to get traffic and you will basically be earning money as long as the ad gets impressions. BUT, affiliate networks usually give great payouts with some reaching to 90% revenue shares, and a lot of the newer ad networks have very minimal publisher requirments without any quotas to catch up with.
All in all, if you would love to explore and venture more alternative ways to maxemize all the monetization possibilities on your website than it would be very ideal to go and try joining an Ad network and running some campaigns. You will be surprised how much you can make once you get succesful referrals come through.