You Just Lost Affiliate Revenue!
After spending the past few years working on various ways of monetizing product domain names through either Smartname.com ecomm sites, Adsense, or affiliate programs I decided it was time to try some larger dollar affiliate programs.
The one issue with product domains is that it takes quite a bit of product being sold to add up to real money, do not get me wrong, it is nice to have sites making a nice stream of revenue from PPC and affiliate revenue but in reality there are times I would prefer to have higher dollar, bigger hit, affiliate sales coming through.
My good buddy Morgan Linton has been working on this and has found a nice partner in his niche paying $150.00 per lead. Now you are starting to talk some real dollars for one click and conversion. That is something you do not get from product domains.
In no way is this post a knock on product domains, I LOVE THEM, but sometimes it is worth it to go for the less is more strategy, one solid lead to a high revenue service provider will pay you more than PPC on your product domain does for a year at times.
Now, with all that said, after some research I decided the niche I wanted to focus on and after some initial testing with SEO determined that with a quality domain name plus proper SEO gathering targeted traffic in the niche would be a challenge but one that can be won in a reasonable amount of time.
But (sorry Morgan) the great thing is that it is completely reasonable to expect $250 to $500 commissions in this industry. To be clear I have not launched yet, but we are talking reputable companies that have real customers with real money. That is the type of pay back I am looking for on a per lead basis rather than .22 cents per click.
After researching the affiliate programs one thing became very clear and has the potential to make or break a site trying to make money off this niche, and in reality it became clear that it can make or break many big dollar sales that people research online but purchase offline.
The PHONE call could be my biggest enemy.
As much as the niche I am targeting will get a portion of bookings online the pricing is high enough that I would expect a) many of the buyers to be savvy enough to look online but b) not trust big dollars for their purchase online. In other words they will do every bit of research and decide to buy but then pick up the phone and dial the 800 number on the website to actually purchase.
I know this is nothing new to people, no big epiphany here, but as we domain owners with quality properties that drive customers to other people through partnerships and affiliate programs move to finding ways to eke out every dollar from our development we need to watch for revenue leakage every step of the way.
Although there are people starting to work towards pay per call affiliate models the majority of affiliate programs do not offer this. And when a site first launches and targets a niche it is unlikely special consideration will be given to the person applying for acceptance until revenue is proven.
One special thing to request would be a special 800 number for your clients, but that only works if they do NOT click through to the partner site and stay on OUR domain, once they get to the partner site the main corporate 800 number would be on the site.
There is no perfect answer for this at this time, but it is something to watch out for. It is very likely if you are working in high dollar lead areas that you may be leaking revenue through that old school technology called the phone.
That said, I am moving forward, I hope to have something launched and discuss what niche I am working on in the near future and maybe some other fun things that have been going on in the background as well on some partnerships.
Quick Notes From The Affiliate Convention Day One
Not a lot of time before the next session but thought I would throw out a few notes and thoughts after the first two sessions, Morgan Linton and I have had a great morning and some very interesting conversations with several companies but Clickbank.com and InsuranceLeads.com really stick out at this point.
One of the first things that should be pointed out and Morgan and I both thought immediately is why are there no domainers here? Once again it comes down to the fact we like to educate each other about our products and talk to each other about how to monetize but if we continue to talk about CPA, Affiliates, etc as the new way to monetize doesn't it make sense that domainers should attend such conferences.
Also, as we all know targeted traffic converts best, seems a booth here to promote our targeted type in traffic would be value.
OK, enough about that.
One of the great things we heard in the first few minutes was that the convention thought that the people promoting affiliate products should get in for free, in otherwords the conference is free to the people actually promoting the industry and working in the industry. The money to run the conference comes from the sponsors. This means the people that are out there making money with the products learn from free and in turn promote the industry. Interesting concept compared to other conferences that cost thousands to get in too. Great turn out seems to ensue.
They consider the free access to info a "Stimulus package" to those in the industry. Very inclusive rather exclusive.
Although the first presentation today that was around driving traffic from alternate sources (Twitter, etc) was somewhat repetitive compared to what many of us already know there were a few points that stuck out:
Youtube.com is technically the second largest search engine, losing out only to its parent Google. I should point out that I have not confirmed this but it does seem to make sense with the large numbers of videos that are viewed daily.
In 6 months Youtube had more content uploaded than the big 3 networks did in 60 years. Although some of it may not be good I would say neither is much of the TV networks.
Real time search is something that is popping up everywhere, although we are all aware of the growth of realtime search it is becoming an SEO specialty all of its own. Good thing I own SEORealtime.com
One presenter is calling Adwords old school, social media new school.
And I have to love the comments from one of the presenters about traffic becoming local. Local Local Local. I may be biased there but I could not agree more:)
The fastest growing Facebook demographic is 50 to 64 year old women. That is important because those are people with disposable income. They are referring products and sites to their friends.
There are many more things that actually are likely more interesting but we have to head to the next session. Morgan is likely typing many of the same things (he is across the table here). Look for more later, we will be headed to the Affiliate Bash at the Aqualounge in Beverly Hills tonight, I really need to make sure I stay sober for my speech tomorrow AM...