Finding Affiliate Partners for Websites

Elliot Silver
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21

One of the primary reasons I chose to re-design Lowell.com was to change my approach to advertising sales. At the moment, the sales process is manual, and advertisers cannot sign up without contacting me. Big mistake. I am not a great sales person when it comes to advertising, and I don’t like making cold calls or sending emails. As a result, I only have a few advertisers on the site.

With the new site (which I hope to launch within 2 weeks), advertisers will be able to create and pay for directory listings manually in the Yellow Pages, although the more expensive banners will still be generated by me. I’ve had considerable interest in Yellow Pages listings, and I expect the revenue from listings to pay for the re-design within just a few months.

Although I have a few local advertisers (including the Courtyard by Marriott), I want to add some affiliate banners as well (including a new prominent 728×90 spot and 250×250 spot). Finding appropriate affiliate programs is a bit of a challenge because of the broad nature of Lowell.com, but I want to share a few things that I am doing, hopefully starting a bit of a discussion.

Here are a few things I am considering when selecting affiliates from Linkshare:

  • Does the affiliate compete with current local advertisers (like hotels or photography)?
  • What companies are running advertisements on competing websites?
  • What is the commission rate and length of time for cookies?
  • Is there local brand recognition?
  • Will the banners look good on the site?

I think the biggest thing for me will be testing. Since Lowell.com gets between 15,000 – 20,000 unique visitors a month now (despite not being updated in 2 months), there is enough traffic to test different banners. I plan to rotate affiliate banners, testing CTR/Revenue with different banner offers, as well as Adsense.

I know Adsense generates revenue as I have it in select spots on the current site, but I also know it leaves money on the table. I want to see if I can find compelling offers that will blow Adsense out of the water. I don’t know if it will be possible, but I am going to test it.

One thing I do know is that direct ad sales will be the most profitable banner advertising. I hope to be able to fully replace affiliate banners and Adsense banners within a few months. However, I am not counting on that since I don’t have a sales representative yet. In the meantime, I will be doing a lot of testing.

Have you run affiliate banners on a general interest website (like Lowell.com), and if so, what has your experience been?

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Please help me raise funds for the Ronald McDonald House

Have a Great Business Idea and Need to Raise Funding?

Elliot Silver
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30

One of the things I’ve noticed about domain investors is that they aren’t short on ideas for businesses on their domain names. People seem to buy domain names with a specific idea in mind for them, although many either lack the funding to build out the idea, the drive to build it, or they lack the experience to move forward with their project.

CNNMoney.com has a neat article about 6 startups (which I had never heard of), and the article discusses where the founders came up with the funding to bring their idea to fruition. There are some neat ideas on where to turn if your business concept needs some start-up capital. The CNNMoney.com article covers:

  • AirBnB
  • Makerbeam
  • Boutique Larrieux
  • Everlater
  • Measy.com
  • The Extraordinaries

If you happen to be someone with a great idea that just needs some capital to make it happen, hit me up. I am interested to learn about your idea and may be able to help with funding – or may be able to put you in touch with someone else who can help.

Advice to Boston Globe Regarding Boston.com Domain Registration

Elliot Silver
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1

I sent an email to several officials with the Boston Globe today, as I am considering the sale of a number of Massachusetts city .com domain names. One of the contacts I emailed is a Vice President at the company, and his email address is listed as the Whois contact. For some reason, this particular email address bounced, and the email was returned to me as undeliverable.

At the moment, Boston.com isn’t set to expire until June of 2012. I would imagine they have the name set to auto-renew with a credit card on file, but that isn’t always failproof. One problem they may have as the date gets closer is that as of 2004, the domain name was still to expire in 2012, meaning that they haven’t had to renew Boston.com for several years.

When June of 2012 comes around, the domain registrar will likely automatically email the Whois contact reminder notices to renew the domain name, and those could possibly bounce. In addition, if the credit card on file has since expired, they may not have a payment method on file to pay for the domain name – and they possibly wouldn’t even receive a notice until it’s too late.

Now, it’s unlikely this will happen, but it’s something the management at the Boston Globe (and maybe its New York Times parent company) should look into before it’s too late.

Oh… and if anyone from the Boston Globe happens to read this, I would consider selling Hingham.com, Harwich.com, Abington.com, Norwell.com, Mashpee.com, WestNewbury.com, and Topsfield.com.   I’d also love to chat about doing something with Lowell.com and Newburyport.com.

Double Check Your Spelling When Bidding on Domain Auctions

Elliot Silver
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3

This should go without saying, but it’s always important to double check your spelling on drop auctions. I am a bidder in the CognitiveBehavorialTherapy.com auction on Namejet, which ends this afternoon.There are 38 bidders in this auction that has 47 bids.

According to Wikipedia, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (commonly referred to as CBT) “is a psychotherapeutic approach that aims to solve problems concerning dysfunctional emotions, behaviors and cognitions through a goal-oriented, systematic procedure.” I am familiar with the term because my wife is studying this as she earns her Psy.D in Clinical Psychology (she’s in her 4th year of 5 years).

While thinking about the value of the domain name, I copied and pasted it into Google, and the first result was Google’s question, “Did you mean: “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy”‘? Of course, that’s what I meant, but it also means that the domain name is a typo. Sometimes typos can be good, but since this is such a long domain name as is, a typo like this is probably not worth a whole lot.

Had I not done the Google search and simply relied on the mentality of crowds (there are 38 bidders, so it must be good), I would have probably bid much more for it without consideration for the actual spelling. As I started this blog post, you should always check the spelling of a domain name before bidding to save on what could be an expensive mistake.

Register Domain Names in Your Name

Elliot Silver
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8

I’ve been doing quite a bit of emailing to business owners seeking advertisements on my websites or domain sales. I have noticed that many sites only have a phone number on the contact page, which prevents me from emailing the company directly. When I encounter a website without an email address, I generally do a Whois search to find a good contact email.

You wouldn’t believe how many domain names appear to have the contact information for web developers and designers instead of the actual business owner. I am sure this is either because the developer sold a package to the business and registered the business domain name in their own company name or they just wanted to have control of the domain name so they wouldn’t have to rely on the business owner to make DNS changes…etc.

This can and does lead to problems for business owners. On a personal level, I bought a domain name at auction that was complementary to one of my developed websites. A couple weeks later, I received emails from the company and its webmaster informing me about   all of the marketing and advertising they have done for this generic domain name and asking me to sell it back. According to them, one of the designer’s employees had control of the domain name and no longer works at the company, so the name expired.

Whether it’s accidental or malicious, this type of thing happens quite a bit. Most domain investors don’t face this issue, but most domain investors know small business owners who might be inclined to do this, and there are more reasons why they shouldn’t do it than should.

Writing Good Content is Time Consuming, But Here’s a Tip to Get It (Cheap)

Elliot Silver
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12

People always ask me how I find time to write articles on my blog as well as articles on my various websites to keep them up to date and driving traffic. For my blog, it’s pretty easy. When I was in an office with co-workers, if I saw or did something interesting, I would jump over to their office to discuss. Since I don’t have co-workers any longer, I use my blog as an outlet. Writing content for my blog is pretty easy.

However, writing good content for my other websites is not as easy. Although I enjoy some things related to the topics at hand, I am not familiar enough about all of them to write good content. On my geodomain names, I frequently publish press releases or articles that were submitted by readers. This is easy enough, but it doesn’t happen enough to keep the website updated with a variety of interesting information.

One thing I’ve been doing successfully on DogWalker.com would be easy enough for others to do and I want to share this (not unique, but good) idea. When people sign up for listings, I thank them and offer them the opportunity to do an interview or submit an article on any dog-related topic. This has been a big hit and is greatly appreciated. The articles are posted on the DogWalker.com Blog.

Surprisingly, many people have articles they’ve written but haven’t published online yet, and they are very happy to share them.   I have articles on a range of topics either published or scheduled to be published in the coming weeks. There are exercise articles, tips for training dogs, an article about how to help dogs who are afraid of fireworks…etc.

I have been posing the articles and linking to them on Digg and Facebook, which helps drive more traffic and awareness. In addition, a couple of submitters have posted links to the articles on their websites. It’s really a win win for all parties. Since I am using WordPress for my platform, publishing the articles takes under 5 minutes each, and the benefits are considerable.

If you operate a website where you have advertisers – especially small businesses, you should consider offering to feature your advertisers in a guest article or interview. It adds good content (for free) and can help build your relationship with the advertiser while bringing more traffic to your site.

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