An Introduction to Online Affiliate Marketing

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is a niche market in the world of e-commerce, a niche market worth a few million dollars. It became a predominant aspect of e-commerce after the success of Amazon’s Affiliate Marketing Program in 1994. The Amazon Affiliate Program brought to light the ease and efficacy of an affiliate program for a business’ advertising. Affiliate Marketing began with the simple idea of using a secondary site to advertise a primary one. This principle is not exclusive to e-commerce but it has proved significantly more successful within the online context than the print one.

The Form Affiliate Marketing Takes

Affiliate marketing is a highly recognizable form of Marketing for the online user nowadays, though it is not always known by that name. Affiliate Marketing most often takes the form of banners, pop-up pages, or external links. These forms are the most easily recognisable and popular. They are eye-catching and demand attention from the customer. There are various other formats of Affiliate Marketing which may be less intrusive such as blog posts, reviews of a service and email notifications. The major downside to Affiliate Marketing is the irritation factor. Many customers of the affiliate may get frustrated, angry or even refuse the use an affiliates services anymore if the marketing format is too aggressive or intrusive.

Who’s Who

Affiliate Marketing has four individuals that function in relation to one another. The first is the Merchant, a merchant is a company that seeks advertising through the means of an affiliate. This they are the party that is being advertised. The Affiliate is the party that will be doing the advertising. This party can be a secondary business or a competitor or often simply an individual with a publicly visited blog site or social network profile. The third party is the Affiliate Network Program. This network is the middle-man between the Affiliate and the Merchant. The Network is responsible for linking up Merchant’s with compatible Affiliates and ensuring that Affiliates are paid by Merchants. The final component is the customer, a self-explanatory participant.

How Affiliate Marketing Works?

The system imposed by most Networks is that an Affiliate is paid per the amount of clicks or purchases made by a customer on a Merchant’s site, which have been diverted from said Affiliate. This system is usually dictated on a per-click basis. Affiliate Marketing also employs the use of Cookies to tally the number of clicks each Affiliate receives. This system is both beneficial and at times erratic. The best part of Cookies is that they are unobtrusive for the customer, this ensures that while a customer’s movements are recorded they are not invasive. The negative sides of the Cookie system are dependent on how frequently customers check or clean out their Cookies, thus effectively zeroing their tally for a specific Affiliate.

Affiliate Networks

Affiliate Networks function to make the lives of the Merchant and Affiliate easier, they ensure that both receive their dues. The Network is also responsible for the monitoring of the advertising on the Affiliate’s page. This ensures that if the advertising is not appropriate for the Merchant it can be corrected. There are hundreds of different Networks online. Some of the best are: Rakuten Linkshare, Commission Junction, ShareASale, Amazon and Facebook. These are trusted affiliate marketing networks.

Read More

10 Ways to Increase Adsense CPC With Simple Tweaks

If you are a blogger and Adsense is your prime source of revenue, you can’t afford to ignore the importance of Adsense optimization. When we talk about Adsense optimization, there are many things but the main target is to get high eCPM and get more Cost per click. Else, despite of good Adsense CTR, you might not be making good money. This is something very common about non-English blog. If you fall in the category of those adsense publishers, who are getting huge traffic but Adsense earning is still low, it’s time to understand points which are mentioned below and this will surely helps to increase Adsense CPC and overall revenue.

What is Adsense CPC:

Lets start with answering basic question first and then we will move to some working tips to increase adsense CPC. CPC stands for Cost per click, in short money which you make/click is what CPC. Now, you might have noticed Adsense publisher talking more about CTR and less about CPC. If you are really serious about your Adsense revenue, you should work more on CPC than CTR. Getting thousands impression on your ad won’t be of much help but a blog with good CPC with decent CTR can create a huge difference. CPC has nothing to do directly with your traffic, if you would realize and noticed micro-niche blogs, you might have realized despite of less traffic such sites make more money from Adsense. Reason is simple and that is eCPM for such blogs are so high that you get paid really well for CPC and then there are other factors like Ad competition, Keywords and many more.

• Must read: Secret to earn $50/click from AdSense

Factors that Affect Adsense CPC :

Niche

First thing first, choosing a right niche for your blog or website is of utmost important. Cost Per Click or CPC of an ad directly depends upon the topic on which you’re writing your blog.Well! Let me clarify one thing here that you’re going to choose niche however there are niches that can pay you high CPC. Yes! Here is the list of niches that can give you high return, I have arranged them in decreasing order of CPC.

• Domains – Blogs on Internet Domains Like Yahoo, Go Daddy etc. It pays highest CPC.
• Gadgets – Tech Gadgets like Apple products
• Google – Google Products
• Microsoft – MS office
• Banking
• Automobile
• Health
• Real Estate
• Home Loans
• Jobs
• Dating & Romance – It pays lowest CPC.

Read:

• Points to consider while selecting niche for your blog
• Dominate Adsense by Micro niche sites

Content

Second thing is the content, you must write content that should answer readers query. So before writing blogs try to find what your readers are searching on the Internet and then try to present them with solutions.
Remember you should always directly engage with your readers. Your content must be tailored according to your niche so that more and more readers can read your blogs. Hence good content will certainly ensure higher Adsense CPC rates. More over, Good content is what search engine loves, hence more click and more revenue if your ad is highly targeted and your traffic is from the countries like U.S.A, U.K. When you do a Keyword research, make sure to use Approximate CPC column.
Read:

• Layers of content: Adding value to your blog
• How to write out stand out blog post

Ad Review Center

In Google Adsense you will find Ad Review Center. You can go there and see yourself how much each ad category is paying you. This will show you different ads category that are showing on your website. If you find that any ad category is not paying much then feel free to block that category.
Try to block those category which are completely irrelevant to the content or niche of your blog. Suppose blog is about Technology then block the ad categories for Dating, Politics, Religion etc. This will surely increase your CPC and Adsense revenue.

Competitive Ad Filter

Just like Ad Review Center there is Competitive Ad Filter in Google Adsense. You can go there and block the specific or general ads from appearing on your web pages. You can block the ads for entire domain or just a particular website in that domain name.The ads that you would block may belongs to your competitors. Therefore you can increase your CPC by not showing those particular ads.

Platform

Your blogs are read from different platforms like desktop, laptop, mobile etc. Although CPC is generally not much affected by the platforms on which ads are shown but you should try your best to target as many as readers. You will get most of the readers from desktop and laptop devices.
If you are able to reach to hand-held or mobile readers than CPC may increase as ads shown on cellphones are of higher quality. If you are blogging on WordPress platform, you can use plugins like Wp touch which will make your blog mobile friendly and you server adsense ads which is optimized for mobile screen size.

Country

One of the most important factor that can increase CPC is the country you are targeting. For example a click on an ad from USA can pay you up to $2 to $3 and click on same ad from India can end up paying only 20 to 30 cents.
Hence always tailor your blog and its content to audiences in English-speaking countries. It will also increase Page Rank of your website. So always keep in mind the country you are targeting.

• Why low CPC for Indian AdSense Publishers

Text & Image Format

Perhaps I should have explained this suggestion in the beginning of the blog. Anyhow, you must know to choose right format for your ad. If you can place three ads on a page then choose two 336 X 280 ads and one 468 X 60 ad.
Then ad format must be text because text ads have higher CTR (click through rate). You can even try ad format for both text & image simultaneously as it gives you more CPC. Image ads are usually less preferred for both reasons less CTR and lower CPC. Though at times, depending upon the niche and blog type, image ads perform better in terms of higher CTR but CPC won’t be as good as text ads. Anyways, as I mentioned above it differs from niche type and most important ad placement.

Placement

Never neglect the placement of your ads on the web page as it is directly proportional to your Adsense revenue. So where to place ads for maximum CPC? Answer is simple. Place 2 ads inside your blog post and 1 outside the post.As far as placing inside goes then place one 336 X 280 rectangle ad on the top of the blog just below the title and place second 468 X 60 ad in between the blog post. Remaining one ad you can place on your right side that is outside your post.

• Adsense placement guide and Heatmap

Though it should be your choice and depending upon your reason of blogging. For example, if you are a professional blogger and dependent on Adsense, you should not miss a chance to optimize ad and use maximum possible ad units on a single page. Though if you are a hobby blogger or blogging on personal blog, your first target should be giving quality content and less ads, as readers hate advertisement which distract them from reading.
Let me tell you the maximum clicks and higher CPC will come from 2 ads which are inside the blog post especially on the top.

Keep Experimenting

Always keep trying something new. Experimenting can really pay you high dividends. You can try out for different niches, choose different ad placements and finally take as many as advice from Google Adsense center. Never bogged down into one style always try something new.

Conclusion

In conclusion I would only say if you follow and implement these 10 tips then you can surely increase your Adsense revenue from 30% to 40%. It is completely legal and genuine way to increase your earning in short time. You can also search for highest CPC adsense Keywords and compile one-two posts around it.
Do let me know what’s one trick which worked for you to increase Adsense CPC? Do you believe niche and traffic from certain countries creates a huge difference in Adsense earning?

Read More