Affiliate Programs: How To Get The Most Out Of Pay Per Action Ads
Affiliate programs pay-per-lead or pay-per-sell kind pay when the click is converted into a register/action/sale and, generally, they’re snubbed by most bloggers who tend to use only Adsense contextual branding.
They could, however, constitute a valuable alternative and create a second leg to stand on in order to avoid depending on one source only.
But, let’s speak clearly: banners and graphic ads can’t compete with contextual ads on blogs, unless…
… you find a system to hyperlinks relevant keywords in every post, instantaneously and on-the-fly.
Image Credit: cre8tiv88
Now things would become interesting because, with only one action, you can add a remarkable amount of links. Check out how to proceed in each one of the cases:
Generating links on-the-fly with WordPress: the Cross-linker plugin
Cross Linker is a great plugin for WordPress that generates links to determined keywords when the post is visualized without changing the source code (download version 1.3.2 here). Besides specifying the keywords with relative URLs for the link, it allows you to:
- ignore keywords included in determined tags
- insert the nofollow option in the anchor text
- search for the keywords to be linked also on comments
and much more.
Geek Auto linker Lite 4.5.0 for vBullettin
It’s the analogous plugin for that popular forum platform. It’s much more simple than Cross-linker for WordPress, but is executes its job perfectly. To download it, you need to register in the forum.
Generating links dynamically in a generic CMS developed in PHP
If you don’t have WordPress or vBullettin, but you do have a CMS in PHP, there’s a source you can use as a base to be perfected and adapted to your demands:
$anchor_keys["anchor1"] = “http://www.site.com/path/to/affiliation1″;
$anchor_keys["anchor2"] = “http://www.site.com/path/to/affiliation2″;
$anchor_keys["anchor3"] = “http://www.site.com/path/to/affiliation3″;
while (list($anchor,$link) = each($anchor_keys)) {
$key_linked=”<a href=”$link” rel=”nofollow” style=” … “>”.$anchor.”</a>”;
$post = preg_replace(’{b’.$key.’b}’, $key_linked, $post,3);
$post = preg_replace(’{(<A[^<]*)’.$key_linked.’([^<]*>)}i’, ‘$1′.$key.’$2′, $post);
$post = preg_replace(’{(<A[^<]*)’.$key_linked.’([^<]*</A>)}i’, ‘$1′.$key.’$2′, $post);
}
This code performs the following task:
- Before viewing the post, search in the text the words to be used as anchor texts indicated in the array $anchor_keys
- Once you find them, link them to the corresponing URL
- Check if they’re not a part of a link (as an anchor text or URL), if so, it removes the link that’s just been created
- Preview the post
Cautions
You’d better not exaggerate on this possibility and avoid forcing links not relevant that send the user to unexpected places. If, for example, you spontaneously link Skype to your posts, you could, in some cases, do it through an affiliate program that recognizes a commission. The user will get to Skype.com anyway regardless it’s a direct link or not.
Furthermore, it’s advisable to use the nofollow option for affiliate links since, even they forward the user to a relevant content, they do so through an intermediate path that is not relevant, and they could play not very pleasant games from an SEO point of view.
In relation to the most popular affiliate programs, I suggest two among all:
- Commission Junction
I’d dare to say it’s the number one affiliate program in the world - Tradedoubler
It has all kinds of advertisers
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by Dan Di Gregorio | 09 July 2009 | Featured, Problogging
Tags | affiliation, blog, conversions, earning, hacks, marketing online
