Do you really want to add
affiliate links on your
website? Actually, I guess
I should first ask you if
you are familiar with the
meaning of an affiliate
program. Well, for those of
you that are not already
familiar with the terms
"affiliate program",
"affiliate links",
"affiliate revenue" etc., an
affiliate program is
essentially a revenue
sharing program between two
or more websites. A
merchant pays a commission
to an affiliate for
generating clicks, leads, or
sales from a graphic or text
link located on the
affiliate's site. Owners of
one website (for instance, a
website about the
apparel industry)
sends users to another
website (such as a
clothing store)
to purchase related items.
The owner of the target site
shares its profits from the
sales with the owner of the
referring site. Do you get
it? Essentially, it is
method for websites to earn
revenue selling the product
or services of others. In
regard to clothing, we can
all sell shirts, but not
actually own any shirts to
sell... We can simply link
to another company that
does infact own and sell
shirts. All of this is
tracked online thanks to
modern advancements in
technology...
Now that we have a general
idea of the concept of
affiliate programs, we want
to now attempt to figure out
if it makes sense to use an
affiliate program on your
fashion website.
Unfortunately, this is not a
very easy answer. In all
honesty, the
Apparel Search Company,
has been using affiliate
programs for several years.
We have had both good and
bad experiences. The good
news, is that you can
actually make money... The
bad news is that if the
links do not generate money,
the managers of the
affiliate program may
de-activate your links.
Another negative that I have
found is that on occasion,
companies move from one
affiliate program to
another. If this happens,
the links that you have
created become broken
links.. If you develop
websites, you know that
having broken links is NOT a
good thing. Here is a
completely invented example
just to illustrate the
point. Lets say you have
signed up with
LinkShare
affiliate network and via
their system you have
created affiliate links on
your fashion site in an
attempt to sell DKNY
products so that you can
earn commission. Now, all
of a sudden,
Donna Karan
decides she wants to move
her companies program from
Link Share to another
affiliate network called
Commission Junction.
What happens to the links
you have already created
from the Link Share
system?? Well, the answer
is that they turn to
garbage. This will
obviously cause nothing but
an annoyance for you and for
any reader that happens to
come across the broken link
on your website before you
have a chance to fix it.
Personally, I find this to
be a huge problem.
If you
have a
fashion blog
and you write a fashion
article almost every day
with an affiliate link in
the post, you will have
approx. 365 articles with
affiliate links at the end
of the year. As another
year passes, you will have
over 700 affiliate links
spread across your blog.
Now, what happens if a few
of your links go bad for one
reason or another. Are you
going to remember which blog
entry contains a particular
affiliate link? In my
opinion it is a real pain.
The affiliate programs have
methods to track links that
are not working, but even
using their tools, the clean
up process does become a
chore.
Although I have had MANY
headaches using the
affiliate programs, I have
also had success. This is
why I plan to continue using
them on my websites. In all
honesty, I probably do not
use them well enough. I
have a great deal to learn
about affiliate programs. I
suggest you do you own
research. I am clearly not
an expert on revenue sharing
programs, but I hope that my
comments above will help you
in some way.
Did you know that you can use tiny url's to shorter the length or hide affiliate web page addresses.
Good luck
with your fashion site.
Written by ML at Apparel Search July 10th, 2007
