Our business began on a partnership road with LinkShare, an affiliate program, a few years back, and perhaps it might be a good time to review the performance within our context.
On our parent site, NeoHide.com, we tested out a few affiliates program (such as Fujitsu), including LinkShare’s very own affiliation. The link was published at the bottom-right sidebar throughout all pages, except those on News Archives directory. The experiment commenced on 28th April 2007 and lasted more than 3-and-a-half years, till today (31st December 2010).
The site hit millions of impressions, but somehow the CTR (click-through-rate) was extremely low. The first 2 years saw a result generating an average of 0.25. In 2009, it dropped to an average of 0.1, and the result worsen in 2010, closing at 0.04 (see table left).
As none of the click-through ended up into closed deal; hence, in 4 years, the total revenue earned is $0. The conclusion that can be drawn from here is, do not expect Affiliates Programs to work well, if you have small or medium-based sites. A large site with huge traffic is definitely the win-factor if you’re looking into driving revenue from Affiliates Programs. Secondly, look for products that have high selling price, as most of them pay commission by percentage. Thus, one high-end deal closed easily supersedes multiple small deals.
Having said that, it does not mean site owners should stay away from Affiliate Programs. They can still provide site owners and publishers with a source of income (provided you managed to close a deal). However, avoid clustering your sites with these links, i.e. one or two would be fine.
My experiment tells me what I should be doing next to my website. A quick revamp to optimise for better visibility and conversion. Or otherwise, change to another Affiliate Program for partnership.
