Large travel companies like WC Travel are making it easier for people to start their own travel business. I believe that if a person creates enough unique content on a website, visitors will find the site either by search engine or word of mouth. If the site owner offers visitors relevant advertising, the visitor is much more likely to click through. More (qualified) traffic and trust in the website lead to higher click through rates, and higher click through rates generally mean higher close/sales rates, generating more revenue for the site owner.
For a person that loves to travel and write about traveling, using an affiliate site like WC Travel to create a white label reservation engine is a great solution. Instead of having to seek out potential advertisers or rely on Google’s Adsense to display relevant advertising, affiliate travel sites can actually brand a travel search engine using the website’s logo and header. This can lead to much greater revenue opportunities than other alternatives.
For my Lowell.com project, I will be using a few affiliate sites in areas that would be difficult for me to maintain. If I give visitors the most efficient way to book travel, find tickets or a job, they will benefit, and they will surely return to my site in the future. Associated Cities is a great organization for city .com owners as they have relationships with many affiliate sites. In a few days, I will provide more details about where I plan to use affiliate relationships on Lowell.com and give reasons why I believe that’s the best option.
There are many different affiliate sites out there who are willing to build a white label product to help you generate revenue for your website. Although you may generate less revenue through an affiliate than if you were to sell your own products, it can be much easier to start an Internet based business using affiliate relationships. You don’t have to worry about customer service, fulfillment, credit card authorization, billing…etc. However, since your site will be associated with the affiliate companies, it is important to do your due diligence on the company to make sure their standards are as stringent as yours.
Affiliate Sites Help Build an Internet Based Business
They make it very easy. The one thing that you may run into though is that people can be afraid to make a reservation on a site they aren’t familiar with. If the site is good enough, and seems legit enough (ie, Lowell.com) you can hopefully overcome a lot of the issues with this. The other option is to go with the Orbitz or Expedia affiliate programs and let people make the reservations on their site.
Gordon, you’re exactly right. If anyone is looking for lodging in Lowell, Elliot’s Lowell.com will appear legit enough to warrant reservations in its own name (we see this with our Nashville.com). For other sites, unless they’re Top 5 in search engine rankings, they will have a problem garnering public trust and would be better off simply being a commissioned conduit for the better known brands.