Getting advertisers

[DarrenC]

I want to sign up 3 advertisers for Worldwide Holiday Homes - ideally, one travel insurance, flight booking, and car rental company who will feature on the website, and in the online magazine I run.

The site gets excellent traffic (in January 2005 it was in excess of 80,000 uniques) from search engine and offline advertising. I would like to have high profile companies on the site, but can only seem to do this through affiliate.

Is it still possible to get high profile companies advertising online, or if affiliate banners the only way to go? I'd prefer to work with companies, rather than just be "another affiliate" as the site has so much potential.

A high percentage of income generated would go straight back into promoting the business.

Are they are PR companies who could generate interest and would work on taking a cut of the advertising rate? Or is affiliate advertising the best route to go?

Darren

[DarrenC]

Anyone knowledgable about affiliate advertising - or gaining advertising through PR?

[bwglaw]

I used to have an online magazine website and could feature high profile companies i.e. Hertz etc. You need to set up an account with Tradedoubler (http://www.tradedoubler.co.uk) or Commission Junction (http://www.cj.com)

They both offer pay-per-click. You need to open an account, once opened, choose your advertisers (they will either reject or accept your site) once accepted you can access the codes in your account.

If you are looking for Hertz for example, they may only use Tradedoubler, and not Commission Junction so you will need to have a look around or open account with both, free of charge.

[DarrenC]

Jonathan, thanks for the reply - I have used both affiliate companies in the past. It's the quickest way of getting advertising on the site, but I would prefer to work with a company rather than just slapping up a link to an affiliate link.

What are your thoughts on affiliate links? Unprofessional, or am I just been too fussy?

Darren

[bwglaw]

I can see where you are coming from but large corporations are using CJ or Tradedoubler. Large companies won't pay a fixed amount per month because they want an expert to evaluate performance and CJ and Tradedoubler will provide their clients with performance reports at a breeze. It only costs the advertiser about £900 to commission CJ or Tradedoubler to open an account and get advertisers.

You can shop around for a higher PPC. I am not sure if Easycar use any of these - worth checking it out, if not, contact them direct but they may well ask for web stats etc, whereas in CJ/TD they don't.

[clairemackaness]

I may be interested in an ad, once my article has been seen. If I get business from it then I'll have an ongoing little box in future editions

[DarrenC]

Claire, sure I can make that a regular column in the magazine - I was looking towards the main worldwide holiday website advertising.

Jonathan, I know where your coming from - obviously I can prove stats, through the software I use / and server company use. I suppose affiliate is the way to go - just would be nice to work one-on-one with a company to build a professional relationship.

Darren

[crus]

Darren,


from experience, its very hard to get advertisers on board in the first case.

a stratergy I have used before, set your targets, eg Holiday Extras, run the ads through the affiliate program, then after say 3-6 months (read the affiliate agreement) with demonstartable traffic/conversion. Contact the affiliate manager, thank them for using your site and say that you are moving to a direct agreement for that banner, section or sponsorship and close from there.

Loans companies bite your hand off once they know you can make them money.

D

[DarrenC]

Good point Crus - I never thought of it like that.

I'll have a look at tradedoubler.com tonight

[www.t6c.co.uk]

Another point to note is that alough the traffic seems a lot, it isnt to a company like enterprise or similar.

So going through an affiliate scheme may be your best bet vs selling the space directly.

I like google adsense, it just works.

Have you thought about selling something related, like a specific product. That is one area I could help with.

[SillyJokes]

Companies like affiliate programs because it is a paid on results model. I would not pay for advertising, preferring to get a site to use affiliate links because in my experience it is NEVER worth paying for advertising.

On the side of affiliates there are many that make very real amounts of money and with a traffic like that you should be able to make decent cash, particularly if you take the trouble to presell rather than just slapping up a few banners (which people ignore).

And like Crus says, show good sales through your affiliate link and you will be in a stronger bargaining position, however the companies invest a lot of time and money in their affiliate programs and will probably prefer you stay with it.