I continue to see places like ShareASale and ClickBank throughout the Net. I wanted to test the idea. I started advertising on my network, trying to sell their affiliates services such as PC Universe, Vanns, and a few lower ranked affiliates. I ran most ads that I put up for over 90 days on sites that have anywhere from 200 to 1,000 unique visits a day and saw absolutely NOTHING in return. The first thing that I start asking myself is “Did I target to the right audience”, and the answer is “Yes, I did.” The second thing I start asking myself is “Was my website live and accessible”, and the answer again is “Yes”. Where did I go wrong?
Part of the way these affiliate sales companies try and get you to put their services on your site is by telling you that you will have a cookie on whomever clicks on the ad, tracking them for a certain period of time (30 days, 90 days, 365 days). So, if I click on this ad, I’m being tracked? The answer for most ads is yes. But, how effective is that if I’m paranoid and delete my browser cache all the time? Not at all effective.
So even though I didn’t make jack for advertising these products and services, I start wondering if it helped my SEO or traffic on my site? To make this a fair controlled test, I didn’t advertise these products on any place other than my web site, I didn’t start any sort of obnoxious campaign on any social news sites, and I made sure that I was tracking with Google Analytics, Compete, and my hosting provider.
One site saw no increase in traffic, made no sales, had no ads clicked, and still is a loss leader.
Another site that had over 1,000 visitors a day, was paired with a similar selling product, had a dozen clicks on the ad still made no sales at all.
On both ends of the spectrum for loss leaders and high traffic sites, there was no difference. In the end, I think these are just marketing scams. The only way that I would consider doing this again, and would suggest doing this again for anyone, is if you have direct access to PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Ads that you could run. This ensures that you’re going to be making some sort of money. Otherwise, don’t waste your time.