Amazon Associates vs Borders vs Fishpond - Website Affiliate Programs and Commission Comparison

A few years back I began an experiment with commission based affiliate programs and began with Amazon.

I started with Amazon Associates and went to great lengths to target specific pages with specific products.  But eventually gave up having made just $3 in commissions for a product that I hadn't even advertised and never qualifying for a cheque.  The problem it seemed was that my websites had a primarily Australian focus and Australian buyers it seemed had bad experiences with Amazon's delivery prices and timeframes.  My Adsense ads were earning far more each day than Amazon Affiliates was worth for a whole six months.

I continued to experiment with other website affiliate programs including Payloadz and Commission Monster, but digital products just don't have the same effect as books and DVDs. 

Anyhow, in the last two months I have joined the affiliate program of Fishpond.com.au.  While I was a little skeptical given that I found the interface for creating ads to, it was not long before I made my first sale.  Within three weeks I qualified for my first payment.  I think they have done a lot in their marketing to make Australian consumers feel comfortable buying them and as a result my websites were a very good fit.  It is great to now see some quality affiliate programs emerging for content publishers.

I have been tempted to give Borders more of a go given its strong brand in Australia, however its commissions are relatively low and Fishpond has the advantage of being 100% Australia.  I also wish that Readings, one of my favourite booksellers would start an affiliate program.

You'll find below a brief commission comparison of the various website affiliate programs for online DVD and booksellers.

Commission Comparison

• Amazon - 4% to 15% (typically 10% for books)
  
• Borders - 5% to 8% (typically 5% for books)
• Fishpond - 10% 
  

Facebook Advertising Ineffective

I've been meaning to post this for a while.

I have become somewhat skeptical of Facebook and social media advertising.

Initially I found it was cheaper than Google Adwords and provided more profiling power. At least initially it appeared effective.

However despite dozens of clicks delivered in a very short space of time, after tracking conversions I have found that it has been about 1/10 as effective in conversion than standard banner ads and Google Adwords.

So the overall value of Facebook advertising, at least that I've found, is minimal.

This is a shame as it seemed like the platform had plenty of promise. Perhaps this is due to the type of advertising and the frame of mind of consumers using social media.

I have, however had success with Facebook Business Pages where your customers can become fans of your business. This has worked well. Perhaps the two could work better in conjunction than a standard Facebook ad. All the same though, I've been slightly burnt by my Facebook advertising experience.

Google Ads with sound ! Offensive and inappropriate but difficult to disable

Google should be ashamed of creeping in Flash Video ads with sound on its Adsense Network.

I was alerted to by members of my thriving online community that everytime they visited my site, a loud spinning wheel sound would start. It was driving users away in their dozens. Noone could work out why my site became offensive all of a sudden.

The culprit - a Google image ad in the footer of my website was displaying online gambling content. Appalled, I went into my Adsense settings to disable the audio, but couldn't find a setting for it and in any case, I would have to recreate the Adsense code, reupload and change the page code on my site.

I searched the Internet to find out what I could do about it, but came up with nothing.

However I decided to contact Google directly to report the offensive ad, after searching extensively I found this link for "Feedback on a Google ad in the content network":
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/request.py?contact=adfeedback

I am yet to receive any response from Google over this.

Apparently offensive ads sometimes slip through the cracks. But when it does, as a publisher, it can do some really bad damage to your sites reputation. To date I was impressed with the performance and relevance of image ads. However as a result of this experience, if Google don't change their policy on Flash ads, I'm considering moving back to text ads or moving away from Adsense altogether to a more discrete context advertising providers (as there are now plenty of Adsense alternatives out there).