New Guy says HI!

Hello all, I've recently taken a full time job after 5 years as a freelance flash/php developer. I'm now doing web based affiliate marketing for a travel company. The program I developed allows webmasters to post our banners on their sites to get paid via PayPal for every sale/lead. Take a look at the system I created and let me know if you can provide any input, tips, feedback etc. Thanks in advance guys!

Welcome to the forum. I bet you could have attracted better quality attention if you had not started 9 threads about your affiliate program. To me you now look like a spammer. There is a fine line.

So what's up with that?

hi and welcome to VBW

Ya you're correct. There is definitly some shameless self promotion going on, but I mean well and I'm a real person and there is also a lot of good info in my posts and I'm not just spamming. I am real, my offer is real, my plans to develop a great affiliate program are real, and I really would like input from other developers and web masters.... especially from people so close by like yourself...

Sorry if I upset you, I will behave now

Noppid going for the throat......I love it!! ;)

First, welcome to VBW.

Second, your program looks a little like a timeshare scam type thing to me. Of course, I didn't really give it a good look, but to be honest, I have no intentions on doing so.

Third, enjoy your stay.

lol.. can't get much clearer and to the point than that!

Ya you're correct. There is definitly some shameless self promotion going on, but I mean well and I'm a real person and there is also a lot of good info in my posts and I'm not just spamming. I am real, my offer is real, my plans to develop a great affiliate program are real, and I really would like input from other developers and web masters.... especially from people so close by like yourself...

Sorry if I upset you, I will behave now

Yeah, I'm never the first one to offer up a hug when a new person comes through the door. The fact you have returned to talk about it puts you way above the rest already. I don't usually get the person back to reply to such posts. (ie. spammer moved on)

However, you are back, so that's a start. I dunno a thing about selling in the travel industry, not my forte'. But, I do know a bit about coding and how affiliates should work, so we'll likely talk about that at some time.

I breezed through your other posts and you didn't promote in all of them, so I probably should cut ya some slack.

So, for referrals, what is your cookie timeout? Is that how you track? What is your payout threshold and frequency? How will you payout?

And the 64,000 dollar question, who backs you paying? I'm not trying to tick ya off, but alliliate programs come and go but usually go.

Hawk your wares, everyone is looking for an edge on revenue and travel folks do come around here.

No, I want you guys to give me tough questions, I'd rather hear it now then to stumbled when someone really really important asks me and I don't have the answers. This is exactly what I'm looking for. I need to learn the lingo, what is important to affiliates, and anything else I can about this stuff. I plan to be in the game for a long time. And I'm doing everything I can to force my way in the door. I'm actually going to be changing my landing pages to include a lot of these questions people have been asking me on the forums. For that matter I even "spammed" my messages on 83 different web master forums and I'm activly responding to everything I posted. So yes, I'm serious about this stuff. =)

We have the cookie set to 50 years which is the max iDevAffiliate allows. Payout threshold is $10 and we pay on the first of the month. Payment is backed by my employeers here in Orlando, Florida. Before hiring me they've been paying 10 different 3rd party lead providers a rate of $1.10-$1.50 per lead... for a total of 3.5 million a year just in lead costs. So we've got the $ for sure. Everyone wins as long as we keep our lead costs under 1.10 a pop. Right now we're pushing .75 cents each but we will have higher payouts for affiliates who can generate amazing numbers. Our software allows us to pay different rates on an affiliate to affiliate basis.

One other thing you forgot to ask me that I've been getting a lot of questions about on other boards is our conversion rate. Which is really an interesting number to me. I would actually like to hear about how other offers convert so I can have something to compair this to. Even if the other numbers aren't even in the same industry... just trying to get a feel for what I've got. Keep in mind our system is very new and we haven't had enough traffic for this to really mean much but.......

All 25 affiliates + 85 affiliates via 3rd party providers = 2680 visits / 158 leads = 1 of 17 converts

All 25 affiliates w/ out the 3rd party traffic = 895 visits / 63 leads = 1 of 14 converts

Again, I'm not really 100% sure these numbers are all that great, but based on the fact that some of our affiliates are profitable using nothing but google ppc, I have to believe we convert well. I need to look into other offers to compair this stuff more. I have also been working on making changes to our landing pages to help these numbers. For one thing I got rid of a lot of the optional form fileds. I have the whole landing page at under 100k in size. But really I think the most important factor in our conversion rate is that we're not actually selling anything in our lead offer. We're giving away 2 universal studios tickets for a completed form. So that should make a huge difference compaired to most lead based programs.

Got anymore tough questions for me? This helps.

Well, I don't have any niche affiliates. Ok, one. But it has paid it's keep. But it won't get me rich ever, it's too niche.

With amazon, I have alot of sites on alot of different topics. They had a 30 cookie I think and it's now 1 day. Not cool, lots of complaints about that. Anyway, I had a 14.95% conversion rate last time I checked. The payment structure is public amazon info.

See, I don't think travel is niche though. I think that something like travel can be applied towards any industry. We need 23+ age and Canada and US traffic only. We're working with sites all over the place that aren't related to travel at all and leads are performing well for us. Some of the highest conversion rates are coming from sites with windows background wallpapers and flash games. Then again the stats on our banners coming from ebay ads are converting at 1 of 7 unique visits... and those are being picked up through people browsing specificly for vacations. I love stats though.... good stuff


About the cookie time, I can see why a big company like amazon the largest affiliate driven out there would set a low cookie.... with our company the chances of different affiliates sending the same visitor to our site is low and if it were to happen we credit the most recent referal id. I don't see why amazon couldn't just do it that way. I guess they're trying to sneak out of paying anyone at all. We plan to pay someone for every lead. There isn't any marketing at all yet that we've done to drive traffic from normal web stuff like seo or free search results related to travel. Everything we're doing is going into pushing the affiliate offers instead of the end products.... at least for now.

Well I attract alot of attention from folks coming to central Florida in general. We cover, list and review several motorcycle rallies. Most of the new riders that travel have disposable income. Perhaps there is an avenue for me here.

I have not looked at your product yet though.

HA! You're almost sold.... I've got you in my web now.... click the link... do it! If you sign up as an active affiliate I will be really proud of my program. I imagine it would take a lot to win someone such as yourself over especially after my semi-spamming introduction. All jokes aside though, I am serious about what I'm doing and I firmly believe everyone can win and plan to play the game fair and honest. We are signed up with share-a-sale, clickexchange, and clicksgalore as well.... have 2 more coming soon. I can link you to the 3rd party guys if you have any trust issues about it.

hello! welcome to the forum :)

Hi there,

Welcome to the forum :)

thank you and thank you

:wave: