Affiliate Links vs. Adsense

Mark over at 45n5.com asks a very common question we hear; which is better, having Adsense on a page or utilizing affiliate links? My advice would be that it completely depends on the type of page you are designing. If it's a topic that people are gathering information, or doing some research, then Adsense would seem to fit.

One of Mark's commenter's noted that they had a luxury homes page up where affiliate links didn't do very well, however Adsense earned quite a bit of money. This would make sense, as I don't imagine many people would click on an affiliate link and make any purchase related to luxury homes just from a website.

Now, if you are designing a page targeting people who are in a buying mood, well this is where the affiliate links become very powerful. If you design your site as a funnel, directing people to make a purchase through affiliate links, this should be more effective than simply putting up Adsense ads. If you have a page with a bunch of informational content and articles, then try out Adsense. Give people something to click on in their search for more information.

In either case, if one isn't working out well for you, nothing other than a little effort prevents you from trying out the other.

Dominating a Niche in Affiliate Marketing

David Wilson made a post over at Social Media Optimization (a blog I frequently visit now that AMWSO has started offering social media consulting services), talking about the approach used by one SEO for reputation management, I felt that many of the same principles can be applied to affiliate marketing toward dominating the search results for a particular niche. Why be satisfied with simply achieving a high search engine placement for particular keywords. Why not aim for owning 5, or 10 slots, and target that consumer from many angles to definitely make a purchase through your affiliate links.

If you have a site or page targeted toward particular key words within a niche, do you have a Squidoo page to compliment your main landing page?  Have you set-up a blog on a different domain, or a blog hosting service? How about a Myspace page, or Hubpage, or Wetpaint Wiki or PBWiki?

Build up some support pages, interlink them, and dominate the search results in a particular niche.

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Word of Mouth Marketing and Affiliate Marketing

If you're involved in marketing, then you know the latest trend receiving much discussion involves conversation marketing and word of mouth marketing. Affiliate marketing never seems to get a lot of respect from other marketing designations, but I believe affiliate marketing can fit perfectly within the new conversation paradigm.

Conversation / word of mouth marketing is getting a lot of attention because it's effective. The world is interactive, and large corporations must adjust. It's almost as if we're taking a step back, to the neighborhood business, where you could  go right up to a store owner and manager, and discuss any issue. Now large corporations have to adopt back to this role on a global scale. The Internet is truly making us a global village. Additionally, word of mouth is not something new, but now the marketing world is waking up to the power of people that has been extended by the Internet.

I would put forth that any business with an army of happy and motivated affiliates is much better positioned to get into the conversation than a company without. All it takes is leveraging the relationship with the true value-adding affiliates by treating them as true partners.

Part of the bad rap that affiliate marketing earned for itself has come from the desire to drive hard revenue growth via the channel. The affiliate concept began as a way to bring new customers to a business. It evolved into a pure sales growth vehicle via rewards sites, trademark targeting search affiliates and even coupon sites. It has been argued that these type of sites really add no value to the brand and the marketing experience, thus the whole of affiliate marketing gets relegated to some sort of grey area in marketing circles.

Affiliate marketing has the potential to come out of the grey. Consider the idea of using an affiliate program as a means to approach your brand advocates and customer enthusiasts. Consider by bringing them into the affiliate program, it provides an additional means of feeling a part of the company/culture and environment. Now consider the potential impact on "the conversation" that all of these motivated brand enthusiasts can have.

A well run, balanced affiliate program will already have content based, value adding affiliates as well. These affiliates are already involved in the conversation. Build that relationship with them, harness the power of word of mouth, and get your message our onto more waves, for more people to experience.

Affiliate marketing is not a new concept, but it can be adopted to the marketing 2.0 world with incredible results. If you don't have an affiliate marketing program, consider starting one today. Not only will you receive cost-effective sales, but it' a a channel by which to jump into "The Conversation."

A First for Affiliate Applications on Facebook

I've seen a lot of chatter around about, how will merchants use systems like Facebook for affiliate marketing, or even how will affiliates use it, lots of chatter, little action, until Scott sent me an application he has developed to look at, bingo!

Scott (aka Mallicious) has created a really cool, coupon sharing, snipping and commenting application for Facebook, that allows any user to plug in the coupon system to my profile, share it, share individual coupons, snip coupons for later use and comment them

We are the first social shopping engine to combine coupons, deals and price comparison to help consumers discover deals through their social graph.

Users can quickly and easily create their own deal feed that is automatically combined as "Social Deals" for each of their friends. Consumers can now get gift ideas, discounts and coupons from their personal social circle.

The main coupon system page shows lots of data for the individual coupons too, snipped how many times and community comments. Might be I've overlooked, or not been invited to use other Facebook applications that open the way to merchants to get involved, but this is the first affiliate marketing application on Facebook that I have seen that adds value and looks like it can succeed in leveraging a social network.