General ClickBank Guide

I’ll hold my hands up now, I’m not a big user of ClickBank. I still remember signing up years ago and seeing the awful layout and design which put me off. I remembered looking through the spammy listings and thought no way would my users be interested in these types of offers (created by marketers and ebook writers).

Since then, the site has been redesigned. Listings have been made simplier through re-ordering by popularity and Total $ and I’ve been pleasantly surprised.

I’ve seen guys like Shoemoney who recently launched his ShoemoneyX course via ClickBank rather than manage it directly…but why?

It’s because ClickBank are great at managing orders, refunds/rebills and also by advertising on the site’s Marketplace your product is open to more people and a greater number of affiliates…it makes sense.

Example of Earnings

Signing Up

Signing up to ClickBank is easy, although I found the login/password section a bit difficult. If you manage to forget your id and email address, then you need to register again!

Also what was a bit confusing when signing up for offers is that you didn’t need to be logged in to join! You can join any offer on Clickbank, just input your username (which is also your nickname) and an optional tracker id.

Clicking on “Marketplace” is the location to find actual offers.

• Sign up for Clickbank here

Affiliate Program

ClickBank offer an affiliate program which is available to anyone:

The setup is “http://AFFILIATE.reseller.hop.clickbank.net” where “affiliate” would be your username that you use to login.

Commission can range from 1% to 75%, which is determined by the product vendor.

Using ClickBank as an Advertiser

An eBook is the simpliest thing to sale, since it can be delivered straight away. They may be time consuming to construct but can result in constant sales from your site. The benefit of using CB is that they deal with sales. I was thinking an automated email from Paypal sales would work but then I also heard that Paypal likes to shut down accounts with a lot of refunds, so makes sense that CB handles it.

At this point, it’s worthwhile to note that a great landing page should be constructed to draw attention. All the landing pages I saw on CB looked the same, they dragged down the page and looked very poorly made.

There is huge potential for affiliates in this area and is something I’ll be looking to do for my Meals Chinese site.

The setup is:

• For a one-time setup fee of US$49.95 after your first product is approved and accepted by Clickbank for being listed in their website. There is no monthly charge, but for every check that ClickBank issues to you, do take note of the US$2.50 processing fee.
• You can also sell subscriptions, memberships and digital info on recurring billing such as monthly fee, and not just the typical one off selling price.

Asian Offers

Continuing with the theme of this site, I looked at specific offers for affiliates in Asia available in the Marketplace. There is no option to search by country/region so I made searches for keyword terms like Asia, China, Malaysia, Japan, Chinese etc., and pulled the list of results below.

I found these useful to affiliates based in Asia due to potential revenue and relevance:

Date Women From Asia (Sales Page)
Information Product For Men On How To Meet And Date Korean Women. First And Only Information Product Of Its Kind With A Specific Niche That Has Been Making Me Money. Information Book Is Priced At $37 And Affiliates Get $26 Per Sale.

Rocket Chinese! Brand New Product. (Sales Page)
Earn A Minimum Of 70% Per Sale Of Our Rocket Chinese Language Product!

Registry Winner – Multi-language Registry Cleaner. (Sales Page)
The First Multi-language Support Registry Cleaner On The Market! Google/Yahoo/MSN And CB Conversion Track.

Speak Japanese Fast. (Sales Page)
75% Commissions! Selling Like Hot Cakes! Get On This One Now! Help Customers Learn Japanese. Affiliate Resources Include Pre Written Content, Rebrandable Pdfs, The Works!!!

Sort Results by

This is one of the most important sections of the site since it’s the only way to sort out the listings before/after making a keyword search. A useful site like Cbgraph shows the Movers and Shakers on CB and is an excellent resource.

For me the most important are:

Popularity
This should mean a measure of sales. I check the top 10 products in the category, sort them by referred sales (60%+ is best/$30+ earnt per sale)

Gravity
What does ClickBank Gravity mean? The meaning does not tell you how much money the product has made or what percentage it converts at. Gravity only counts the first sale each affiliate makes. However, if it has a high gravity it’s probably because people are having good success with it.

Conclusion

The complexities of the huge size of CB means there’s a lot of junk/worthless material on the site. Time taken to sift products to promote, wastes time when a better interface could be designed.

It’s often said that CB benefits sellers more than promoters, since theres more money to be made. It’s worthwhile joining and checking out and I’ll be exploring the site in more detail later.

Best Blogs Asia.

Korean Casino Market

There are 17 casino’s in Korea, all open to foreign nationals except Kangwon Casino, which is for local citzens only and is the only place to play blackjack, baccarat, sicbo or roulette. As for gambling online, it’s illegal in Korea but very popular. The lack of protection by Government and online addicts who spent alot of time glued infront of their computers – see this report on Korean Gambling Habits.

According to Korea Leisure Industry Consulting, the total betting amount of Gangwon Land, the nation’s only casino for Koreans is estimated to reach the equivalent of US$2.3 billion and in general the gambling industry is expected to rise to a value of US$8.8 billion.

Gambling Software

Innoco seems to be the only software available to Koreans. Popular software like Livedealer isn’t “really allowed” , as the act of gambling in a ‘common betting house’ is illegal, which means that online gambling should also be illegal. Legislation in Asia has generally not been amended to include internet websites within the definition of what constitutes a common betting house…

Very few online casinos support software in the Korean language, however, this is starting to change with more software providers translating their casino user interfaces into Korean.

Popular Korean Online Casinos

Recommended sites by Livedealer are Bodog and Bet365 since they do not have restrictions on Asian signups and support popular gambling like including blackjack, baccarat, sicbo, roulette and Asian roulette.

Other popular casinos that are online and supports Korean languages are:

Royal Vegas Casino
Offers a $1200 welcome bonus. Supports $/CAD/UK Pounds/Euros. New promo – 300 free spins.

River Belle Casino
Owned by the Belle Rockgroup, 100% up to USA$/CAD/Pound/Euro 100 free.

Winner Casino
Offers online gambling players a 100% first deposit match bonus up to $300 free and a further bonus worth up to $2000.

Wild Jack Casino
One of the top Microgaming powered gambling sites in our guide, and offers a 100% up to $100 bonus and great competitions.

888.com Online Casino
Probably the most well know international online casino brand, new players qualify for a bonus of 100% up to $200 (or Pounds / Euros) when they join.

Casino Las Vegas
Offers a 100% up to $100 bonus on your first four deposits.

Best Blogs Asia.

Marketing Industry

I’ve been involved in online marketing for over 10 years now, from being involved in the Amazon affiliate program, befree (now defunct) to the latest regional Affiliate Networks.

As a marketer, things have gotten more complex with more Networks springing up, more affiliates promoting products and less revenue to be made. As the years have gone by, there’s been more transparency and accountability. Long gone are the days waiting for a cheque to show up, when now we can use Paypal/direct transfer.

I would say something though, that it’s complex to get all your offers in one place and joining alot of networks seems like the only solution if you’re involved in affiliate marketing full time. It can be difficult to keep track of offers, declined applications/closed down offers, CPC/CPA’s etc.,…but this is where a decent Affiliate Manager would come in to help you.

Affiliate Manager Topics

I’ve had my fair share of AM’s, most of the time I never requested their help and only received their initial contact through emails like this. Whenever I have contacted my manager, quite often I didn’t receive any reply or the reply was delayed. I’d recommend affiliate manager’s have the following setup:

• Working mobile number
• MSN, Yahoo Messenger and Skype
• Searchable information online as to what they do – LinkedIn, own website etc.,
• Recommend campaigns with high epcs doing well on the network.
• Send personalised emails and let affiliates know when offers are ending

My Recommendations

• Big payouts aren’t often the best, make sure an offer converts.
• Be active in affiliate forums – Digitalpoint, 5Star…
• Be inspired by current affiliate marketers
• Find a supportive Affiliate Manager.
• Create connections and do your research in your ield
• Plan for the long term
• Treat the AM as a friend, get to know their offers and offers you are running on other networks

Popular Affiliate Managers

You may be away there are yearly contests in the affiliate fields around the world, here are the most popular Affiliate Managers. I’ll add more to this list later.:

Chris Clarkson from Sunshine.co.uk, Naomi Brown from Firebox, Ryan Sessler from Azoogleads…

Questions for Affiliate Managers

From what I’ve read online, people are asking questions like:

• To cloak affiliate links or not to cloak?
• Can you guarantee advertisers won’t take down programs after a short time?
• Rules and regulations, what can and can’t I do?
• As a newcomer – Can you help me how to build, launch, promote and monetise an affiliate site?
• What are the monetisation methods outside of Google?
• How to drive traffic to my site? (cheaply)
• Can you help with landing pages, graphics, seo…

Conclusion

I think it can be a tough role, as successful affiliates are your ways of making more money. The more successful they are, the more you can make and depends on the relationship you have with affiliates. For example, an affiliate needs help with their site. Do you A) Spend more time with them to help them convert, but spend less time with other affiliates or B) Distribute your time effectively between the affiliates you manage…it’s a tricky question. I’ve never been an affiliate manager, but I have helped out other affiliates as well as my own experience.

I’ve taken time out and helped people who needed it from designing an effective squeeze/landing page to help on other topics. Sometimes they’ve appreciated my work and other times I haven’t heard back from them…not even a thanks.

There’s also the problem of having decent affiliate programs to promote to your affiliates. Affiliates aren’t silly and the majority are out to making decent money, so the programs need to be great…An AM’s job is to manage these 2 fronts (programs and affiliates).

Best Blogs Asia.

Azoogle Service

I made a review of Azoogleads last year, I didn’t recommend them but that was only because their offers didn’t suit users in Asia.

I checked again recently and made a screenshot of the “relevant Asia only” offers they are running and as you can see, they aren’t aimed at Asia at all. I think Azoogle is for the US market only really, that’s not to say people in Asia can’t make American sites and promote them, but it does annoy me when they are promoting Asian offers and they aren’t at all.

This is the email they sent

Greetings from Epic Media Group (aka AzoogleAds)!

I hope this email finds you well!

In a recent initiative to reach out to our publishers, I noticed that you have not logged in to our interface since !

I’d really like to help you get started with some campaigns since it has been a while since we’ve been in touch. What are you currently working on? Would you mind sending some insights into your business model so I can better assist you in launching some projects?

We have a large inventory of campaigns, a significant number of which are exclusive and private. In order to maximize your profits with us, we need to be in close communication so I can help you find offers most suitable to your target audience!

Furthermore, I urge you to check out our network-wide contests happening this summer by visiting azoogleadscontests.com. With a chance to win a trip to the Playboy Mansion on the table, how could you walk away?

Since it has been so long since you last logged into your account, we ask that you login now to indicate your continued interest in working with us! If we do not see at least one login within 30 days, we are going to assume that you no longer wish to conduct business with us and your account will expire.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns! I’m looking forward to working with you now that we’re in touch!

Conclusion

Not sure why I need to log in though every 30 days, can’t work that out. With new features, surely any sales I make will be automatically emailed to me hence the need not to log in. Also, any new offers should be sent by email rather than require me to check in one location…

Something to note on topic. After being an Amazon affiliate for over 6 years, I received an email telling me my account would be shut down if I didn’t make a sale in a few months time. It’s true I didn’t make a sale since I’ve been prefering to redirect users to BANS sites (which ended up as a failure, but more on that another time) . However, Amazon have the cheek to ask me to pay if I cannot make a sale until then…hmm.

I’m wondering if this is the future of Affiliate Marketing now?

Best Blogs Asia.

Their Situation and Asia Affiliates

I reviewed DGM Asia a while back, I mentioned the attraction of Apple and also they need more stronger advertisers. I see that they have clients like Acuvue, Apple, Avis, Avon, Chrysler, Citibank, Clinique, Dell, Dulux, FT, Good Year, HSBC, ING, iTunes, LG, M.A.C, McDonalds, McAfee, PayPal, Pioneer, Qantas, Shangri-La, Sony, Time, Visa and Vodafone…but this doesn’t apply to the Asia regions.

Affiliate Marketing in Asia is still slow to take off, I thought things would of changed by now. DGM are one of the biggest networks within the Asia region, so it will effect their business but why are Apple pulling out of Asia too?

Just looking at the famous people in Asia who’ve made millions out of affiliate programs, they should show the rest of us how it’s done. On a personal level, I’ve never made any money from DGM Asia which is strange since I’m ranked #1 for most of their search terms as well as having a popular site with many signups. I’m not sure if it’s bad luck on my part or that their accounting system isn’t working well.

Conclusion

I see this post actually turned into a rant about the company, which wasn’t my intention or meaning. However, I’d like to ask…is anyone currently making ANY money from DGM Asia at all?

In mean time, things have been made harder for affiliate marketers in Asia, but cheer up there are many other programs to use.

Best Blogs Asia.

State of Affiliate Marketing in China

The main option would be using Google Adsense, but offers small numbers of click values. There are many networks available, but I’ve listed the best from well-known affiliate programmes and owners.

I’ve never really rated u2mee or clickvalue.cn (which seems to be the biggest listed companies in China) and well known sites like Lucky Pacific or AzoogleAds aren’t so centred on China.

• adforbest.com looks good, but when signing up it asks you for your full bank details – who would send that information out?!
• AsiaClickz.com, why can’t I find the details to log into my account?
• 8affiliate.com hasn’t been updated in a while (no affiliate details) and their contact form doesn’t work.
• Clickvalue.cn is also available, but been unable to signup with them.
• Adbank.sg is aimed at publishers in Asia, but the login details haven’t been available to users for a long time.
• DGM Asia is a Network I recommended for a while, but having recently logged in and found out my account was deleted I cannot recommend them!

Having some knowledge on Internet Marketing in China, I’d like to recommend the following networks.

ChineseAN

I previously reviewed the Global Chinese Network, giving it some positive response due to the high profile Asia based advertisers on the site like Sasa, Hong Kong Tourism Board and Newsweek. They also claim they are the “only affiliate network that can truly offer comprehensive coverage over the entire Greater China region”. Signup to Chinese AN here.

Baidu Union (Chinese only)

Probably the biggest available in China, in Chinese language only. There are frou groups of Baidu advertising: Union Promotional, Union Searching, Zhidao Advertising and Union New Type Advertising. They only accept 1000+ daily unique visitors and you’re not allowed to join until you’ve gotten a ICP licence issued by the Chinese Government! Signup to Baidu Union.

Alimama (Chinese only)

Alimama is a prestigious advertising network run by Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group. Alimama offers Pay Per Click advertising, Pay Per View advertising, Pay Per Action advertising and etc. The payment processor is Alipay. Signup to Alimama.

Amazon.cn /JoYo (Chinese only)

JoYo was bought by Amazon and transformed into a Chinese version of their Western site (Although DangDang.com is still a bigger site in China than Amazon). Signup to JoYo.

Best Blogs Asia.

Reasons for being a terrible Network

I’ve written about the “worst affiliate programmes” before and I’m sure alot of the networks on this list are great for particular groups of users, but I’m basing myself as an affiliate marketer in Asia with specific niche sites and for one reason or another I faced problems with the following networks. I’m afraid I can’t recommend the following.

Neverblue

Neverblue is labelled as “Neverblue is a premier global performance-based affiliate network that brings together choice affiliates and quality online advertisers as partners through carefully monitored, custom advertising”.

With the reference to “global” and hearing positive messages about the company, I’ve tried to sign up on many occassions only to fail. I’m not sure why I’m failing after filling in a long and boring signup form (which also has an annoying requirement of “where I found out about Neverblue”), I get a generic email back detailing that I haven’t been accepted, example:

The possible denial reasons for your application include, but are not limited to:

* We are not accepting applications from the country in which you applied
* Business practices and promotional methods are inconsistent with our Terms and Conditions
* Incomplete or missing application information
* Inconsistencies and conflicting application information you provided
* Failure to meet our minimum website requirements
* Your site or marketing methods do not compliment our offers
* History of improper affiliate practices
* Inability to reach you by phone or email
* Failure to reply to our phone or email correspondence within a 2 week period

I’ve filled out the form correctly, my submitted sites get lots of hits as well as following the terms of conditions. I believe it’s because I’m in Asia and my .asia domains, which goes against them being a “global network”.

u2mee

u2mee looks impressive, it’s based in China and has content in English and Chinese. So why is it rubbish? It’s because their signup process is terrible. First it’s extremely hard to find the link to signup (why??) and after signing up you get no confirmation that you’ve been accepted or not?

Their offers look good like Amazon joyo (although you can signup directly via Amazon) as well Dell and Global Sources. It’s a shame since I really wanted to try them out. Perhaps they need to handle their emails better!

Commission Junction

I sort of have a love/hate relationship with CJ. Sure, they’re probably the biggest network in the world but applying for specific programs, having extra windows open up and closing, as well as implementing old school Javascript links make them difficult to use. I’ve used them in the past when they were in control of the eBay affiliate program, but since then they’ve gone downhill.

I want a network which lets me join programs automatically (if my site was initially approved, why can’t I join any programs on their network), then I want text link codes available to me on the page, banner graphics optional and other creatives if available. What I don’t want to do, is use a site like Commission Junction for hours to find a single link!

Lucky Pacific

I previously recommended this company to my users, but having recently logged in and checked their offers I found them to be pretty poor. Mainly aimed at publishers outside Asia, I can’t promote them to my users. Also the fact they removed my campaigns without telling me is a bit no no.

Conclusion

I’ll keep this updated, but I do find it annoying that spending alot of time researching offers, filling out forms and then finding that my site isn’t accepted or that the offers aren’t displayed is a pain.

Best Blogs Asia.

Internet Marketing in Taiwan

From what I can see, ChineseAN.com is the main site that promotes affiliate networking in Taiwan (as well as Mainland China and Hong Kong).

AzoogleAds also have some small offers at Taiwanese marketers, but these are mainly Fun type Ringtones.

Internet Statistics

• 14,500,000 Internet users as of Dec 2006, 63.0% of the population.
• GNI per capita is US$ 13,320 (’04) according to World Bank.
• Taiwan’s Internet accounts increased by at least 400,000 every quarter since the second quarter of 2003.
• Mobile Internet subscribers for the first outnumbered dial-up subscribers in the second quarter of 2004, becoming the most popular method of Internet connection in Taiwan.
• Dial-up, broadband and mobile Internet are the main methods for Internet connection
• More men (56%) than women (52%) used the Internet.
• Age groups, 95% of people between 15 and 24 years old were Internet users
• Only less than 10% of people over 60 used the Internet.

Using ChineseAn for Taiwan

For examples of the kind of offers available to affiliate marketers, my recommendation (in terms of being well known) would be to sign up with:

• Fun Mobile
• Tradekey
• Forex
• Newsweek
• JShoppers
• Oregon
• be2 Dating

Join ChineseAn

Taiwan – Join ChineseAn

Conclusion

There wasn’t much to write about, however if you know of any other TW networks or TW Internet Marketers who are making money online, let me know!

Best Blogs Asia.

Using Adtoll

I want to use their advertising on some of my pages/sites, measuring the results with Google Analytics and Statpress and also showcase the revenues earnt. I’ll be promoting:

• Cars Under 1000 Dollars
• Godaddy Asia Domains

Here’s a graph showing the impact of implementing AdToll on my Best Blogs Site, the red mark shows when I first started using them.

However, I think I should first explain the usage of AdToll for both publishers and advertisers.

For Publishers

Bloggers can use AdToll to make money by publishing 2 types of Ads, earning rates are a 75% share :

• Sponsored ads – Set a price you define
• Run of Network ads – Set cost

For Advertisers

From what I gather publishers get free advertising on the AdToll homepage depending on the advertising site’s sales and pricing, clicks can be found for $0.01 CPC! Below is a screenshot of the Buy a Sponsored advert directory, where you can sort by Alexa Rank, Ad Costs, Average Views/Clicks, Average CPC and Rebooking rates.

Site Directory

In general the most popular publishers are in the Entertainment & Games section, which could really mean anything! Internet and Technology and Adult are other popular sections in the directory. I chose these options: Non Adult, Language: English. Then I experimented with America and Asia locations. I find these options very useful and by clicking on each publisher I could see the useful information about their demographic users, average clicks and duration.

Making Money

I limited myself to a small budget and I first had to find the right publisher who offered a good CPC.

I was looking for a short duration time as I wanted instant results, of course this could effect the number of clicks and not give a fair representation of the service but this review is only an example…Signing up as an advertiser was quick and I was also pleasantly surprised to see the stats updating in real-time too.

Run of Network Advert Test

For the carsunder1000dollars. site, I couldn’t find a relevant high number of clicks ” Sponsored Ad” publisher in the directory so I bought a “Run of Network” general ad, limiting my location to North America:

242clicks @ 8.25cents/click / $20 ad placed
Target Region: North America
Target Categories: Automotive, Culture & Lifestyle, Shopping & Travel

I chose a PicText Ad (without an image), as I wanted to place a text only advert and “stripe ad” would be one long strip of text.

The headline and body text was:
Cheap Cars under $1000
Search Here For Resources On cheap cars under $1000

I could of chose to advertise in all categories, if I had a bigger budget I would of done so. But the categories I chose were Culture & Lifestyle and Shopping & Travel and Automotive. Although I felt I wouldn’t get many clicks from Automotive which the relevant sites in the Directory didn’t get many clicks.

I was then told my request would be personally checked by my ad manager and would approve my Run of Network ad within 24 hours, which it then was within this time frame. I was getting page impressions, but no clucks which could be due to the restrictions on Target Region and my ad copy.

Adtoll kindly refunded my $20 advert, no money earnt.

PicText Advert Test

Learning from the Cars advert, I wanted to continue with a text advert having had experience of these types of ads via Adbrite. For this link, I wanted to aim it at the Asian market since I’m writing about .asia domain names. I found that the directory does have a restriction and can show Asia based publishers, but doesn’t have a feature for Asia based clicks unless I check each publisher individually.

The headline and body text was:
$14.99 .Asia Domains
Register domains cheap. Find Your Technology Needs Here.

865.00 clicks @ 2.31 cents/click / $20 ad placed
Target Region: All Locations
Target Categories: Internet

I know Adtoll is more than just Text Ads, so I will next take advantage of graphic ads.

Earnt $40.

Graphic Banner Advert Test

I then made a 468×60 banner for the same destination above, I wanted more clicks so I sexed it up by adding bright colours and a busty asian babe, although the ad was tasteful. I bought the ad on an individual publisher site this time.

174.83 clicks per day / $19.60 ad placed

Earnt $45 (but total not defined yet).

Sign up with Adtoll

You can join AdToll here. (Referral Program)

Conclusion

One thing I noticed is that it’s great to find groupings of ad publishers, but the actual sites need to be double checked as for example I found Photography websites in the Automotive section of the site. Also when I checked out a publisher’s site, I saw that the Adtoll advert wasn’t in the location specified or even on the promoting site itself. This is a problem and can be hard to enforce on the Network’s side, so to note if you’re buying an advert on a site check out the site’s source code and make sure it excepts ads from that particular network.

I budgetted myself $100 dollars, but ended up spending only $40 having some funds refunded due to lack of clicks.

Note that I was restricted to a low budget and also a short time scale, I would of liked to continue this further. I found it better than Adbrite as Adtoll have advanced targetting groups. Of course buying ads is about being in the right place at the right time, also depends on budget, time of the year and even the economic situation. I found the Adtoll experience to be positive and will be using them again soon.

Best Blogs Asia.

About Lucky Pacific

I tried to register with Lucky Pacific a while back and heard nothing. Now with a recent site redesign, I found I could sign up easily as an affiliate and was accepted after a few days.

They promote themselves as “Our network spans some 15 Asia Pacific countries with a reach of over 300 million unique users.”

I noticed they use the Direct Track affiliate software, which powers other popular affiliate networks too…something to keep in mind if you’re starting a network.

Followup of Lucky Pacific Network

I previously had links to their programs, but seems like they changed them over time without informing me. This is pretty much a no no in the world of affiliate marketing.

Also, as a followup I checked out their recent offers. They all seem centred around surveys, particularly at “non Asian” publishers.

Conclusion

Sorry guys, I can’t recommend you. I was disappointed you removed my links without letting me know and latest offers are quite poor.

Best Blogs Asia.

網路賺錢

When I go to Google, I find these people who are vying to be highly ranked:

網路賺錢資源站
http://www.4779.info/ -介紹免費網路賺錢的資料，讓你在上網之餘也能賺到零用錢喔。

網路賺錢部落格-Adsense繁體中文觀測站
http://adsense-tw.com/ – Made by Simon Chen who helped write the Chinese AN article for me.

CashFab網路賺錢介紹
http://cashfab.com/ -沒有不景氣~只有爭氣喔~一起在2009年扭轉”錢”坤大家共勉之!! 金錢工廠

Tuixy博客
http://www.tuixy.com/ -网络赚钱经验分享，网站赚钱，博客赚钱，网络资源，网站建设，美国空间

Recommended Programs

If you’re a Chinese publisher, I’d recommend signing up with the following:

• Asia Clickz
• DGM Asia
• Chinese AN

Conclusion

With the focus on Westerner internet marketers, it’s easy to forget that people are making a lot of money in other countries. These Chinese affiliate marketers rank highly on the major search engines. With the huge numbers of Chinese people online and a growing market, these guys could be richer than their Western counterparts in a few years!

What I noticed about the sites in general was that most of them look poorly designed, like sites used to look a few years ago. They are setup mainly for people to click on links, no real content is added or even the site is designed to look like a forum. I did notice a lot of the above used BloggerAds on their site, I never came across this network before.

Best Blogs Asia.

加入ChineseAN中岸廣告聯盟的條件

只要你的網站是非色情、暴力或鼓吹社會不安的網站，不管流量和網站規模都可以加入中岸廣告聯盟，另外中岸廣告聯盟ChineseAN的廣告碼使用HTML或JAVA，所以有沒有特別的網站程式要求，大部份的免費部落格也都可以加入。

如何申請ChineseAN中岸廣告聯盟

因為ChineseAN中岸廣告聯盟是一個國際化的網站，接觸的不只是大中華地區，所以網站語言有簡中、繁中和英文，申請加入ChineseAN中岸廣告聯盟的方式很簡單，只要依說明填寫就可以完成ChineseAN中岸廣告聯盟的註冊程序，沒有煩瑣的申請手續。

ChineseAN中岸廣告聯盟的收益與支付

ChineseAN中岸廣告聯盟的佣金計算有幾種：

• 銷售額的某一百份比(CPS)
• 每個定單付一個固定的數額(CPL)
• 每個新登錄的會員或客戶付一個固定的數額(CPA)
• 如果廣告主只求流量，我們也會安排按點擊計費(CPC)。這和現在流行的搜尋引擎的計費方法有點類似。

ChineseAN中岸廣告聯盟對不同地區使用不同的的貨幣支付收益，而最低支付金額也因貨幣的不同也所不同。中國是以銀行匯款支付、最低付款金額10元人民幣。香港是以Paypal或支票支付、最低付款金額50港元。台灣是以Paypal或支票支付、最低付款金額10美金。而且是每星期發放，最低付款金額就可以申請付款。

如果你有多個網站或部落格，你也只要申請一個ChineseAN中岸廣告聯盟帳號就可以放置廣告在多個網站上。雖然一個帳號就可以放置多個廣告在不同網站，但每個網站都要各自申請加入廣告活動和被廣告主核準後以才可以獲得廣告碼開始賺佣金。

如格加入ChineseAN中岸廣告聯盟的廣告活動

在中岸廣告聯盟ChineseAN後台中的”廣告活動”中找到適合你的網站的廣告活動，只要按下”立即加入”就會送出申請加入信給廣告主，如果廣告主設置自動審核那麼只需幾分鐘你就可以開始獲得廣告碼和放置廣告到你的網站上，如果廣告主設置手動審核那就要等待廣告主的審核通常是二、三天或一個星期。

只要你加入的廣告活動被許可後，你就可以在廣告列表最右側看到”廣告創作”和”生成鏈結”。
廣告創作可以讓你選擇廣告主已設計好的廣告圖示，只要將中岸廣告聯盟ChineseAN提供的廣告HTML完整的複製和貼到你的網頁適當的位置中就完成。

如果你不喜歡廣告主提供的廣告圖示或廣告圖示的大小不適合你的網站、或你只想使用文字連結，你也可以點擊”生成鏈結”來設計自行定義的連結，可以是圖像也可以是文字。

更多網路賺錢

網路賺錢的方式有很多，你參觀Simon的 AdWitness 廣告目擊者：網賺部落格，也可以到這裡看看Simon為撰寫整理的免費網路賺總覽

Best Blogs Asia.

Based in Hong Kong and developed by Ignite Vision, they are the first HK based affiliate network I’ve come across. I like the way they are focusing their efforts on the China market (Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan…) which can only be good news for Chinese affiliates.

Using Chinese AN

The site setup is one of the better layouts I’ve seen. You can search for programs to join, then click “Join Now” to (instantly?) join the campaign. Prices are in USD and HKD, with a short description of what each campaign does which is useful.

Types of Programs

There is a quite a big list of programs available, one that caught my eye is a charity affiliate program in which you promote a charity and get paid nothing. This is something unusual in affiliate marketing, but goes towards a good cause!

Affiliate programs available range from:

• Greenpeace Hong Kong
• Facekoo (The Chinese Facebook)
• be2 (Chinese Dating)
• Citibank Hong Kong
• Joyo (Amazon CN)
• Sasa (Cosmetics and Beauty)

Supported Models

ChineseAN supports all the performance-based advertising models which tie commissions to actual results:

• Percentage of sale (CPS)
• Fixed amount per order or lead (CPL)
• Fixed amount per each desired action, which is typically a free membership sign-up (CPA)
• Some Advertisers care about traffic. We can also arrange a pay-per-click (CPC) model

Signup

Signup by going to ChineseAN and join.

Conclusion

I’m actually impressed by the layout and the number of great offers, it inspires me to create relevant local websites using these programs. The payouts are only 1 or 2 USD per sale which is pretty low, but I’m sure will increase over time. I also noticed there’s a lot of survey programs which put me off a bit, but there are real quality programs available from well known companies, so is worthwhile to check it out!

Best Blogs Asia.

Affiliate Marketing Activity

According to the latest CICC statistics around 2,661 advertisers are using Internet marketing and the total number of online campaigns in China is over 19,000 at any one time.

FMCG, IT/Electronics, Finance and Automobile industries account for more than 60% of total Internet advertising value in China. The growth of keyword advertising or search engine advertising may be one of the reasons for the surge in the Chinese Internet market. Search engine advertising in China is growing at a rate of 108.6% annually.

Online Spend

China Internet advertising – 2008 (Expected) – 17.2 billion Yuan
Online Travel Service Market – 2007 – 2.8 billion Yuan
Online Shopping Market- 2007 – 29.6 billion Yuan

Chinese Affiliate Networks

A previous post on Affiliate Programmes and general Asia based networks led me to explore the actual China networks below.

• Asia Clickz – Although based in Singapore, they have a China offers.
• DGM Asia – Chinese offers such as British Airways makes them interesting to join.
• Chinese AN – Hong Kong-based affiliate network.

Conclusion

At the moment I think it’s a case that the agencies must learn to integrate appropriate affiliate marketing, marketers have to set realistic commissions and publishers must be ready to embrace pay for performance.

Structural changes to Asian markets will help. For example, as credit cards become more common in China, networks will have a bigger audience. I’m happy to report some the above networks pay using Paypal and Wire Transfers, similar to their Western counterparts.

Best Blogs Asia.

Online Casinos

Online casinos enable gamblers to play and wager on casino games through the Internet and countries like Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau allow online gambling. Types are split up into:

• Web-based online casinos
• Download-based online casinos
• Live-based casinos

Revenue Facts and Figures

In 2006 players wagered over Twelve Billion Dollars at online casinos and that figure is expected to double in 10 years! (CAP Statistic)

Each program is different, but you generally earn 20 – 50% of the profits off that player for life.

The average profit on a single player is $64.00 per month.

So the potential revenue Casino Affiliate Programs generate can be huge!

Online Gambling Ban

I couldn’t see anything about gambling online being banned in specific countries in Asia. The most popular gambling site 888.com is blocked in China whilst India declares it does not prohibit online gambling, but in the state of Maharashtra it is a banned offense under the “Bombay Wager Act”.

Asia specific Casino Affiliate Networks

There are many programs available, based in the UK or US but as affiliates we need to think of “target traffic directed at target offers”. So here’s a list of Asia friendly programs from
Casino Blasters that I found that are based or aimed at the Asian gambling market:

• Golden Palace Japan
• Grand Online
• Flamingo Club

Conclusion

I checked out the most popular Asian based Casinos such as Casino Lisboa, Venetian Macau, Wynn Casino Macau and the Sands Casino – None have online affiliate programs. It’s a shame whilst Casino owners recognise there’s a huge market for online gambling, they don’t actively push ahead and make their site a gambler’s paradise!

If you are interested in many huge profits from gambling, I think joining the recommended Affiliate networks above would be worth your while.

Best Blogs Asia.

AzoogleAds Features

I found signing up was very easy (although you need to fax a W8 tax form), I can see why AzoogleAds are so popular! You can then apply and be instantly approved to any campaign. This says a lot compared to other networks, where based on your country of origin you can be automatically rejected or there’s a time delay in getting approved.

There are a wide number of niches to choose from, similar to Commission Junction and you have the ability to sort by payout, region or currency.

Points to Note

• Guaranteed Highest CPA Payouts.
• 75%+ CPM payouts (highest in industry).
• Variety of CPM, CPC, and CPA choices Fortune 500, and 1000 Advertisers.
• Proven net 15 ON-TIME payouts.
• Fanatical Customer Support.
• Exclusive Rewards Program.

Aimed at Asia

I can search by Asian countries, but the results aren’t targeted to the country. The actual results from countries like Singapore, India, China are very poor.

The available adverts available to Asia are:

• FunMobile Ringtones Taiwan
• Learn Chinese Online – With Beijing’s Best Teachers
• Sokiwi – Mobile – Hong Kong
• Cho-Yung Tea: Social Media/Incent
• Wixawin Taiwan

I guess you don’t have to have target ads, so the highest payout are:

• William Hill Casino – $80.00
• Kandy Halloween party at the PlayBoy Mansion- $50.00
• Miracet Stop Smoking | Free Trial – $33.00
• HerbalBiz Online Business Free Trial – $33.00

Not Recommended

I’m sorry AzoogleAds, you seem great for Western publishers with high payouts for certain themes, but in relation to Asia or Asian themes – the site is lacking. It seems like Ringtones would be the best option for people based in Asia, but it’s a huge competing market which is very hard to now profit from.

Also, I found the process of clicking on a advertiser, finding the banners to use, then clicking on the code/view page very complex. In most cases the preview image didn’t display which relates to their server…very poor management.

I still think it’s worthwhile to sign up with AzoogleAds, keep them in mind and check back with them now and again to see if the right offer appears.

Best Blogs Asia.

About Adtoll

Similar to Adbrite where publishers can set their own prices and advertisers can purchase ads on specific sites.

Once joined, there is a useful referral program to make money and adding your site as a publisher is very easy! I like the way you can specify what types of adverts are allowed – such as Child Friendly to Restricted Industries (I just selected the Computer Industry and News & Blogs only) as well as what regional countries to show adverts. I’ve never seen an affiliate program which offers so much customisation – so this is a great benefit.

Payment terms are cheque, paypal, epassport, Adtoll account and wire transfer. The setup is exactly the same as Adbrite, except you can also use “Peel away” adverts on your site too.

Signup with Adtoll

You can join AdToll here.

On the signup I’m being asked my details, then my postcode is deemed “wrong” even though it’s outside of the US and isn’t wrong, then I see that I need to complete:

” For International customers, you will need to complete the W8 form” – who uses Fax anymore? I then received a followup email, all in jumbled HTML..not a good start guys!

Potential Revenues

• 20% commission on profit made from Advertisers (90 day period).
• 10% commission on profit made from Publishers (365 day period).

Conclusion

I tried Adtoll for a while but didn’t get much profit. As it seems, the more popular site you have…the more money you can make. I would use this as an alternative to Adbrite or even compare how much revenue you can make per day with each. I would think by placing restrictions on your published ads it will effect revenues more, but this is something you’d need to check out.

Best Blogs Asia.

Where to Start

I did a post on Asian Affiliate Networks a while back, but programmes provided by these Networks are completely different in that they can change over time and the terms and conditions fluctuate…is something to keep an eye out for.

It’s well known the Asian Blogging and Marketing programmes are just starting up, but I’d recommend the following:

DGM Asia
DGM Asia offers programmes like Apple and British airways flights aimed at the China market.

Other Options:

Asian Dating
Asian Dating is popular for Westerners and could be used to capitalise on Foreigners accessing your site.

eBay Adverts
Whilst Singapore is only supported, there is no other specific Asian eBay affiliate programme, but it could still be worthwhile monetising on your non-asian traffic.

Google Adsense
Arrr, you don’t really want to be going down the Google Adsense route as it’s not a guaranteed form of reliable income, but felt I had to include it again for non-asian traffic.

Commission Junction in China

Commission Junction is a place I first explored when starting out in Affiliate Marketing, it’s tried and tested but the lack of Asia based programmes is small. You could apply for offers with:

• DHGate (China based Marketplace)
• Learn Chinese with ChinesePod
• Yahoo South East Asia
• Good Orient

Biggest Web Companies Programs

A made a post a while back on the most valuable web companies in China and found it strange that only the company below had anything close to an affiliate program!:

• CTrip Affiliate Program

Best Blogs Asia.

Impact of Adbrite

For a starting bid of a penny per visitor, you can put direct traffic onto your landing page. This type of format is more successful with both branding and direct response advertisers. You can also see the Official AdBrite Advertiser Questions here.

Tips as a Seller

• Never start your pricing too high. I learnt this the hard way, better to gradually increase prices over a 6 month period when you have back orders.
• Make sure your placement is worth buying, remember the marketplace tagging, titles and site description.
• AdBrite is more successful if you sell a few premium placements as opposed to just backfill placements.
• Change the “your ad here” Adbrite code to something like “This site gets 50k uniques per day, advertise here”
• Offer discounts to recurring publishers, or price reductions on 2 or 3 monthly adverts
• Don’t use AdBrite’s auto pricing, it can be a source of cheap clicks but has no benefit to you.

Sign up with Adbrite

You can sign up here to be an Adbrite Advertiser, funds are securely deducted from your bank account after you purchase a Publisher’s advert.

Conclusion

I was lucky to have a huge backlog of advert buyers and was retailing about $1500 USD per month for one site. I contact Adbrite and they helped even further by displaying my site on their homepage, which increased sales further. My downfall was that I increased the price so much that it put advertisers off and even when I lowered the prices, the same advertisers (who were constantly rebilled) never came back…so be careful.

Best Blogs Asia.

About Affiliate Program

Seems eBay have rubbed people up the wrong way with the launch of the own Partner Network. CJ was more easy to apply to, make commission from a % of sales and wait for the cheques. With their eBay’s own site, things are more strict with the inclusion of campaign ids, confirmation of urls and restricted countries. Also combined with a lot of publishers getting dismissed for no reason at all (although could be related to poor number of sales, mis-use of code or long delays in logging in).

Effects of Quality Click Pricing

I heard about it in an email, I still didn’t understand it. Seems that the current system of making a % of sale is long gone. It’s quoted that:
“Starting September 1st 2009 for all new publishers and October 1st 2009 for all existing publishers, eBay Partner Network will start paying for clicks sent to eBay sites. The price paid will depend on the traffic’s quality — the more incremental revenue the traffic generates for eBay, the higher the amount paid per click”.

So it’s all about quality? How is quality determined? What does quality mean – I’m not sure! Perhaps it means if you have a relevant site, with lots relevant traffic then it’s of a high quality. At the end of the day, it’s all about making sales. If someone came to your site looking for a particular item, instead bought something else it still counts as a sale and shouldn’t effect the amount the publisher should get.

They explain that “High quality publishers will earn more” and “Lower quality publishers will earn less”, which basically means if make a couple of dollars a week/month from eBay, you’ll be earning even less. As for the real amount of “high quality” (whatever) that means, then earnings could be higher.

Making Money using eBay Network

A lot of affiliates use the Partner Network on BANS or Build a Niche Stores. You can make a lot of money if you dominate a keyword or keyword phrase. For example I recently setup Cars Under 1000 Dollars, the point being that I’d make revenue from each car sale and it’s benefit is that it’s targeted to buyers with less money to spend but still has a high payout for me as a publisher. I’ll keep you updated as to what happens with this site.

Seems like the days of adding your eBay affiliate link to say a blog post is over as you’ll now be earning less money to do so. Google Adsense isn’t the answer either as their payouts are terrible too.

Conclusion

They’ve changed from CPA Pricing where it can take upto 30 days to know the amount to EPA pricing where the revenue is known by the next day, this is one benefit. I know affiliates are getting fed up with these changes and the worry that one day they will be removed from the program with no notice. I love eBay and makes me money but need some stability from their side also.

Also seems about driving “relevant optimised traffic” to your site. This sounds like something you’d read on Adwords which gives me the idea that top publishers will be driving as much traffic as possible to their sites using paid searches, so the little guy like me and you won’t benefit at all from these changes. Prove me wrong guys!

Best Blogs Asia.

About Asia Clickz

Based in Singapore, they are focused on the Asian markets and offer relevant affiliate programmes to publishers. They also offer help to advertisers to drive sales through various sectors of the site – AsiaClickz Connect (Hands on marketing), AsiaClickz Reach (Viral Marketing) and AsiaClickz 360 (Mobile users).

Using Asia Clickz

Signing up was fine, had to wait a couple of days whilst my application was approved and signed in via https://edge.asiaclickz.com.

They use a system of having already pre-defined banner sizes, sign up with advertisers and then you implement the iframes banner code on the page.

List of Adverts

At the moment advertisers range from:

• Newsweek Asia
• Reebonz – A Luxury shopping site

Asia Clickz Site

Sign up at the Asia Clickz Site

Conclusion

The site could do with more advertisers, but the layout for publishers is more easy to use than say DGM Asia, which I found complex to find offers. I think it’s a bit of shame they are using iFrames and no actual text links, whilst it maybe easier to track…implementing something like this on a Wordpress CMS rather than editing HTML would be very hard and is aimed at more experienced website coders, which is a alienates a lot of bloggers who don’t know anything about designing sites.

I think it’s very interesting they are using Mobile Advertising. It’s something I had yet to come across with other Asian based affiliate programmes and for that reason alone I think they are worthy to sign up with as both a publisher and advertiser.

Best Blogs Asia.

Using DGM

Firstly, DGM are highly rated so perhaps more reliable than say Nuffnang, Advertlets and other Asia Affiliate Networks. They use reputable advertisers like Apple, British Airways and HSBC!

The sections are split into:

• Text Links – link to a product or company
• Banners – Stable and Rotating banners
• Promotions – One off special offers

DGM Experience

I found logging in complicated. They have too many options, country selections and urls to access – the best page to log in is via http://www.dgmpro.com/index.cfm.

You then need to apply to have your website accepted, this is pretty useful to veto bad sites but also there can be a long time delay (one acceptance took over 2 weeks). You then need to access a few pages for each particular advertiser, then click the symbols in the top right corner to get your banner or text link – a bit confusing.

Affiliate commission can be as low as 2%, but these are high priced items so in the long term it maybe profitable.

I also get the feeling DGM Asia is a small start up, with only 9 different advertisers and a main Singapore focus, is hard to target particular Asian websites.

However, the quality is there to see, with exclusive Asian based advertisers such as Apple, HSBC, British Airways and Newsweek you can really create a lot of revenue if you have these Asia based niche sites. This is also let down by lesser affiliate programes such as RBS, Moffy and Pfingo.

Examples of Advertisers

Apple Hong Kong

Apple Singapore

British Airways China

DGM Asia Site

Sign up at the DGM Affiliates Asia Site

Conclusion

The site still seems a bit work in progress, for example the useful feature “rotating banner” doesn’t work and the lack of available advertiser choices isn’t so great. However, the quality of the few advertiser is so great that I’d recommend you sign up. If for example, you are able to target Singapore or China based Apple users then you could make a lot of money!

Best Blogs Asia.

Using Bidvertiser

These publishing tools can be used on any Asian country and publisher adverts can be displayed as:

• Banners
• Skyscrapers
• Rectangles
• Buttons
• Free Design

Free Design allows you to use custom sizes/colours, a very useful feature to fit in adverts on pages with limited advert space. Then after choosing one of the selections above, you then need to implement Javascript code.

Example of Banners

Benefits of Bidvertiser

I think the main benefit of using Bidvertiser is as a Advert Buyer, since it enabled you to buy cheaper clicks than Google Adwords on high quality sites.

You can also use it alongside Google AdSense. However, you need to make sure to change the colours so they are not the same as the AdSense ads (based on Google’s new TOS).

I also like how you get to choose which adverts you can show on your site and how much the advertiser is willing to spend. You could except all the highest paying adverts and try to make money that way, or choose a mix of low-high paid ads in order to get a wider variations of clicks and therefore more revenue in the long run.

Sign Up

You can sign up to Bidvertiser now, all major countries are supported.

Conclusion

Bidvertiser is still a great company and useful for publishers seeking low minimum payments ($10 minumum payment), custom ad sizes, or simply an alternative to AdSense. They provide cheap clicks as and as an alternative to Google Adsense Public Adverts, I’d recommend them.

Best Blogs Asia.

ADSDAQ/Contextweb

(www.contextweb.com) I applied for the program, received a courtesy email but then no reply from them to say whether or not I’ve been accepted.

Clicksor

(www.clicksor.com) They are used by a large group of people and from my experience I’ve received money from them in the past. On one occasion I was meant to receive a $50 payment, but the transaction didn’t go ahead since I received “fraudelent” clicks on my ads. No explaination why and I lost all the money. Avoid.

Emagin Adbank

(www.emaginadbank.com) I can apply, received a confirmation email (which also requires confirmation by fax and post) but the account wasn’t activated.

Kontera

(www.kontera.com) Applied got accepted, but I didn’t like the low paying amounts offered or the large amounts of underlined ads per page.

Max Bounty

(www.maxbounty.com) Max Bounty wasn’t so bad, I had a personal email stating “Our decision was not a judgment on the quality of your website, but rather that it was not a suitable match for our current list of sponsors”. So I hope in future they have more relevant advertisers for bloggers in Asia.

Shareasale

(www.shareasale.com) You click on the link, enter your details and then receive a message stating they are no longer accepting affiliates.

Text Link Ads

(www.textlinkads.com) I’ve already written about Text Link Ads, they pay but you can’t control the price of links and they are all dofollow which effects PR.

Conclusion

Shoemoney made a recent post stating that you should apply for as many affiliate programs as possible. I don’t agree, I think you need to be selective on what programs you apply to, make them relevant to your site and avoid the ones listed above and perhaps recommend these Asia Affiliate Networks.

What do I expect from an affiliate network?

I expect them to at least have a working web site, contact/sign up page which isn’t overly complex, support telephone number and email address, I expect replies as to why I haven’t been excepted, would like referral links and also more importantly, great products to promote with a fair commission structure.

Best Blogs Asia.

About Yes Asia

Yes Asia is similar to Play Asia where they sell Asian based products to a worldwide audience. They seem more “Asian focused” compared to Play Asia, since they have a bigger back catalog, more products in local languages.

I like the way the site is split into other Chinese languages, catering for a worldwide audience and the layout has simple navigation. I’ve also used them before with no problems and have received free shipping (also applies to rest of Europe, US and Canada).

Target Audience

As shown on their website, their main customers come from English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean speaking countries and supporting the relevant currencies. Products are targetted at these specific groups, where I’d imagine the US and Europe are the biggest markets due to the unavailability of these products at home.

Yes Asia Affiliate Program

The system works when a user clicks on your referal link, makes a purchase and you get a percentage of the sale in EUR, USD or GBP. * Note: They do not allow affiliates who run discount voucher/coupon sites to promote the program. Also, do not promote any Sony Hardware/Software to the EU regions.

The commission rate with a 30 day cookie is:

• 10% for DVD, CD
• 12% for YA Entertainment DVD Box Sets
• 7% for Games, and DS and PSP consoles
• 5% for Toys and Books
• 2% for PS3, PS2, Wii XBox360 and Electronics

Example in Action

Sign up

You can only Sign Up via Shareasale or Webgains.

Conclusion

The site looks good, is reliable and if exploring a certain niche – can make some money from your sites.

Best Blogs Asia.

Popularity of Asian Dating

I’ve spent about 30 minutes trying to think of reasons why Asian Dating is so popular, having tried to do some research on the internet…and couldn’t think of a real reason. I think the main popularity comes from mainly Western men who particularly like Asian women and Asian women who are fond of Westerners and the lifestyles they lead. Dating may lead onto marriage, visas etc., so promoting these types of activities would be benefial too.

List of Asian Affiliate Dating Programs

Friendfinder is probably the biggest dating network available on the net, with Asia Friendfinder being the best niche site to promote.

Friendfinder – Signup
Statitics: USD 1-2 Per Lead, USD25 Per Sale, 50% of Sale, Recurring: Yes.

Asia Friendfinder – Signup
Statitics: USD 1-2 Per Sale, 50% of Sale, Recurring: Yes

Date – Signup
Statitics: Earn $35 per paid subscription.

Example in Action

China Region

Guanxi – Signup
Statitics: USD $0.05 per free member sign-up

Indian Region

Indian Friendfinder – Signup
Statitics: USD .50-1.00 Per Lead, 60% of Sale, Recurring: Yes

Malaysia Region

Cari Kawan – Signup
Statitics: USD .50-1.00 Per Lead

Korean Region

Korean Friendfinder – Signup
Statitics: USD 1-2 Per Lead, 60% of Sale, Recurring: Yes

Thailand Region

Thailand Date – Signup
Statitics: USD 0.10 Per Lead, 50% of Sale, Recurring: Yes,

Philipines Region

Filipino FriendFinder – Signup
Statitics: USD 0.5 – 1.5 Per Sale, 100% of Sale, Recurring: Yes

Conclusion

There’s a lot of money being made from affiliate dating programs, look at Marcus Frind! This is a particular niche area which Blogs in Asia can explore and try to make reliable revenue from.

Best Blogs Asia.

Amazon Associates

Signing up is very easy, you need a current site and email address and you’re ready to go. The main benefit of the program is that you can link to any of the products in the catalog, placing your referral url and then implement the code on your website. They also have regional versions in local languages so Japanese and China customers (via Jojo) can be targeted.

Types of Sites to Use Amazon

The types of site that use Amazon can range from product review sites, blogs, customized storefronts and recommended book reading lists. You can use integrate it on your Wordpress blog.

Example in Action

Types of Code for your Site

There’s a number of creative ways that you can link to their site via:

• Recommended Product Links
• Search Box
• Context Links (Text)
• Slide Show
• Widgets
• Site Stripe
• aStore

Commission Structures

They offer two types of payment structure, depending on the size and growth of your site:

• Classic Fee Structure
• Performance Fee Structure

Classic Fee Structure

It’s a 4% referral fee on items or by third parties, some product’s fees are capped at $25, and Video On Demand as well as Amazonmp3 products are capped at $1.50 per item.

Performance Fee Structure

You earn a referral rate from 4% to 15% on items shipped or third-party sellers. Screenshot of referral fees structure:

Payment Types

Payments range from paper check, direct deposit into a checking account or Amazon.com gift certificates. All payments are made in U.S. dollars and there’s a minimum payout amount of $20.

Sign up to the Amazon Affiliate Programme

• Amazon Affiliate Program

Conclusion

The payouts from them may be considered a little low, but Amazon are a trusted brand and will be around for a long time yet. I’d suggest experimenting with locations, perhaps place a widget in a sidebar, implement links within pages for certain products etc.,

I found faults with their use of Javascripted widgets which would delay some page loading times and also having spent time to check for out-of-stock products and links which are no longer active.

As of 2009, Associates will not be paid referral fees for paid search traffic.

It’s not a major source of my revenue, but is still a site I use now and again. In the past, I’ve made my major income from it by selling DVDs and books but now there’s more options available to users.

Best Blogs Asia.

About Play Asia

Play Asia is a trusted online computer game, dvd and toy seller based in Hong Kong. They are popular and in the past I’ve bought many items from them with no problem.

Their main selling point is that they can buy products cheaper in Asia and sell them to worldwide customers, whilst still making a profit. Games and DVD’s may also be “region free” so have the benefit of being played on most machines, which is another benefit of using them.

Target Audience

As stated on their web site, the top countries that visit and buy from the site are from Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. This is worthwhile to note if you’re an affiliate in any of these countries. The keywords they suggest using are quite broad and range from:

• Video games
• Toys
• Music
• Cds
• Dvds
• Movies
• Gadgets
• Shopping
• Anime
• Classic Gaming

Play Asia Affiliate Program

The affiliate program is very flexible, they state you don’t even need to own a website to promote them and links can be promoted via websites, forum footers, IRC channels, e-mails & footers, message boards and shopping directories.

The commission rate is between 3 – 12% of the total purchase value and there’s a selection of:

• Iframe banners
• Standard banners (rotating)
• Buttons
• Html Text Links

Example in Action

Sign up

• Join the Play Asia Affiliate Program

Conclusion

I’ve used them as an affiliate many times and found their reports basic, but useful. If you live in the targetted countries, it’s worthwhile joining the affiliate program. The ease of use of implementing their code is great and wish other affiliate sites did the same!

Best Blogs Asia.

About Adbrite

Adbrite has been around for a while now, developed by Pud who is a serial entrepreneur. It came about as an alternative to Google Adsense, but very different in that a price is given for a set period of time and for a set price. There’s no ppc (pay per click), which is favoured by Adsense and it’s copycats. The point of Adbrite is to get as many clicks possible to your advert in the alotted time.

There are a few options to promote your product:

• Text Links – Standard Text link adverts, with a title and description and link to your site
• Banners – These can be graphic banners of any size, although you may be restricted by kb size
• Inline Ads – Adverts on special text keywords.
• Full Page Ads – It would link to your custom landing page
• Britepic – Used in Videos and Images

Advert Tips

The point is to drive as much traffic possible to your advert, so as an Advertiser I’d suggest the following:

• Use Text Links and Banners, you can find cheaper ads this way
• Try to keep adverts relevant to the site
• I’d prefer to use Text Links, so make the wording clear and exciting
• In the Site Directory, use the category filters and sort by Uniques.

Adbrite Publisher Tips

As a publisher (which may be the best option), you can display potential advertiser’s adverts on your site. The pricing structure is allocated by the number of uniques, pagerank and impressions your site has! I’d also suggest the following:

• Manage your Ad Zones, experiment with Text Ads, Full Page and Inline – although Text Ads are best
• Keep initial startup prices low and DO NOT use the recommended price adjuster
• When increasing ad prices, they need to be justified..if you’ve got a backlog of advertisers, then that’s the time to do it!
• Make sure the ads are on all pages, even 404′d ones..there’s no restriction compared to Adsense
• Limit the number of adverts. I use a vertical section of 4 ads only

Join Adbrite

They also have a publisher program, which offers:

• 50% of AdBrite’s profits for the first 3 months
• 10% of AdBrite’s profit for the next 9 months

Conclusion

Adbrite isn’t so great, I always feel I could of got a better return somewhere else and think is designed for sites with huge amount of traffic and unique visitors. I also felt that a few years back when they sold off part of the business to BLA, I lost a lot of revenue so it takes time to establish yourself as an advert seller.

If you need any help, ask me here.

Best Blogs Asia.

Using CJ

Commission Junction (aka CJ) is so huge in affiliate program numbers, it’s also become it’s downfall. Let me start this post by saying the user interface is really, really poor. For example, you need to make 3 to 4 clicks to see reports, some affiliate programs won’t accept you and you’ll be on an unknown pending waiting list, the contract terms change regularly as do the actual affiliates and finally finding the right product can be an impossible task since there’s so many.

Asian Offers

Luckily CJ offers a worldwide regional selection box on the top links section as well as specific languages, although it didn’t work as well as expected. Here’s some example of offers I found which are available to people in Asia (Sorted by Commission/Sale amounts):

• FriendfinderNetwork – 100% (Asian Dating)
• eToro.com – 100USD per lead (Banking/Forex)
• GoDaddy.com – $105USD per lead (Virtual Dedicated Hosting)

Experience of CJ

My experience of using Commission Junction has been good, sometimes I made £20 a sale on certain items, whilst other months I’d make nothing at all. They’ve always paid me on time and the constant email messages which display updates on advertisers/CJ itself, are actually useful.

Commission Junction as a Steady Stream of Income?

I’m not sure what the answer is, offers change regularly and so to have many sites with many offers – it can be a bit daunting to have to continually check which offers are live, which offers are new and which offers don’t convert. Something automated would be useful.

I’m also concerned that an affiliate program like CJ is so commercial that it becomes too dilluted with the same affiliates promoting the same products.

In regards to Asia, there isn’t many Asian target or Asian based programs available on CJ, so I’d suggest applying…but wait until the right offers come up.

Apply to Commission Junction

• Commission Junction

Best Blogs Asia.

Choosing an Affiliate Network

An affiliate network is an intermediary service to promote affiliate programs between merchants and affiliates. Generally an affiliate marketing network provides services such as affiliate tracking, reporting, database management, paperwork, legal documentation, payments to affiliates etc.,

What to look for in a Network

There are the things to look for when evaluating an affiliate network:

• How good is their analytics and reporting?
• Can you add tracking ids (sid) to your affiliate link?
• Can you sort your sales by product and vendor?
• How often do they pay? Do they do direct deposit/paypal?
• Whats their commission rate?
• How accessible is the Affiliate Manager?

Asian Affiliate Networks

Networks that support site owners in Asia are quite rare. However, this may work in your favour since the smaller lesser known affiliate programs have the potential of making a lot more money since there’s less competition.

Asian Networks I use

• Clixgalore
• DGM Asia
• AzoogleAds

General Tips

• Don’t be afraid of using other affiliate networks
• Check PPC policies and affiliate program terms regularly
• When revenues are high, don’t forget to ask for special rates
• If something works, don’t try to change it too often.

Best Blogs Asia.

Using Text Link Ads

Last month I integrated Text Link Ads on Best Blogs Asia, inspired to do so by Darren Rowse of Problogger Fame, he’s even promoting it on the TLA Publisher Sign Up Page.

After signing up, I found it was easy to integrate their publishing code on my Wordpress blog via a custom plugin, which can be easily activated in the WP plugin’s section and then left alone.

Text Link Ads Problems

The problem with it being so simple is that it’s confusing for the publisher to know what’s going on. I didn’t realise the Text Link Ads plugin was activated until I received an email confirming I’d sold an advert.

I must say the ease of use is great and selling ads is automatic. You can post a new article, it’ll get checked by TLA then any related keyword phrases will be sold to advertisers. Adverts are sold on key phrases, per post. So the more posts you have and more lengthy articles, the greater chance you have of selling an advert.

The problem I found is that I had no control over which ads to display, knowing their frequency and expiry dates. Also another problem feature is that I couldn’t set the price!

Why I won’t recommend Text Link Ads

The main problem is I that felt I lost control of my site. Keyword phrases were being highlighted all over my site, with advertisers being able to purchase different keywords at one price.

Price is another thing, not being able to set a minimum price is outrageous! I’ve now displayed 10+ adverts on my site, over a 1 month period and only gained $20+ dollars!

Finally, the adverts show up as backlinks to advertisers. I thought they’d at least be “noFollow” links, so ontop of all these issues – I’m also losing “link juice”.

For this blog, I’m using Direct Ad Sales as a stable form of income.

Problogger using TLA or not?

I’m confused by Probloggers TLA posts , he writes on his blog that he doesn’t use Text Link Ads, even goes as far to suggest that Google may ban your site for using them…so why endorse them in the first place?

The point is that they’re a sponsor of his site, so it’s an advertising feature…but credibility will be lost be promoting something that has the potential of harming your ranking/site position. I’d personally never promote something I didn’t have faith in and not do it for the money either ;(.

Best Blogs Asia.

Affiliate Marketing for Blogs

Money can be made from clicks to related links, but as a main source of revenue it’s lacking. This is where Affiliate Marketing or Affiliate Schemes come in.

In relation to the Asian market, there aren’t many although I’ll provide a list of who I use later on. At the moment Best Blogs Asia has few affiliate schemes other than myself recommending sites to you.

Affiliate Rules

Check out these Affiliate Terms and also some marketers use the following rules:

• Don’t promote rubbish, visitors who read you regularly trust you if you start promoting junk they will lose the trust.
• Check all the affiliate links and page redirects.
• Try to use affiliate links where you get anywhere from a 4-50% commission on the sale.
• Outline the benefits of the Program and make sure that you’re coming across as honest.
• Determine what works well for your blog.

What Affiliate Marketing Programs do you use?

Best Blogs Asia.

About Nuffnang

To quote from the site “there are 80,000 bloggers in Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines and Australia and Nuffnang has received publicity from all corners, having been featured on mainstream newspapers like The Star Malaysia, and The Straits Times Singapore.”.

Nuffnang Experience

Unfortunately I couldn’t sign up since they only accept addresses in Singapore, Malaysia and Australia. You think in this day and age with digital media it shouldn’t matter where publishers are…never mind. Having Nike, Citibank aimed at Asian blog publishers is exciting though, so if you are in the accepted countries I’d see no harm in signing up with them.

Nuffnang Website

Nuffnang

Best Blogs Asia.

About Advertlets

You place some Javascript box which acts as a widget which displays adverts on your site. Sizes range from 120×600 all the way to 728×60 pixels.

Advertlets Experience

I’ve temporarily placed the code on the site. I’ll see how it goes, I don’t expect to earn much as I won’t make use of their system of contacting advertisers to publish articles about their products. You can embed javascript on pages too.

My initial reactions are that to monetise it you need to accept advertisers reviews. If you are skilled at writing, it shouldn’t take long to knock out an article and have great traffic. But if you already have great traffic and writing skills, then I suppose you wouldn’t need a service like this since you could accept private advertising!

Also there’s no referal code/commission, cheques only and having Javascript only links is annoying.

Advertlets Site

Advertlets.com – Putting the bling in blogging

Best Blogs Asia.

Dropping the Asian Affiliate programs

My initial thoughts is that not enough users from Asian signed up, which is a shame. Also Hong Kong domains have a history of spam and by all accounts so does India. As for Singapore, I can only think of 4 or 5 popular affiliates from Singapore and not sure if any of them are using eBay on their sites…

Here is what eBay wrote in an email

“Beginning February 1, 2009, we will begin redirecting traffic from geo-targeted affiliate links destined for eBay Hong Kong and eBay Singapore back to eBay.com. Publishers currently geo-targeting traffic to these sites will not have to do anything differently, since we will re-direct this traffic automatically. However, please note that creatives for Hong Kong and Singapore will no longer be available in the eBay Partner Network interface. Publishers not working with these programs will not be affected.

We have also decided to make India a limited invitation-only program. We want to focus in the next few months on growing the Indian program through larger affiliates that have established track records in India or in other emerging countries. Publishers currently accepted in the Indian program will not be affected and will be able to continue to promote the Indian site. New publishers joining eBay Partner Network will no longer see the Indian program as an option upon sign-in and will have to apply separately by contacting customer service if they want to promote the Indian Program.”

Best Blogs Asia.

Adbeans Development

I found their site useful in that:

• The give a monthly quotation of your site, based on Alexa, PR and backlinks
•  Adverts need no user intervention
•  Specify layout, style and colours of ads as well as how many per site

Adbeans Problems

I’ve been using Adbeans for a couple of months now but found the following problems:

• Sub-domains have to be seperately added.
• No default advert or text is shown when no ads are on the site.
• They pay in USD only, 1 payment per month (min $50) with a wait of 7 working days.

It is frustrating to use them, but the payments are very good. I’d really like to use them more in the future…

Contact Adbeans

Check out the Adbeans Publisher Network.

Best Blogs Asia.

General Affiliate Tips

• Text links may perform better than banner ads, but if using banner ads make sure they rotate or change over time.
• If you know something about the affiliate product, this will provide a great incentive for users to visit the affiliate site.
• Make sure you visit the affiliate sites, that they have a professional looking page and sells the products. Also make sure the company can be contacted by phone, postal address and by email.
• Programmes which offer something for free rather than selling to the user directly may yield higher commissions in the long term. Make sure the commissions can be paid to your country – by cheque, wire or electronic payments.
• Find out the affiliate company’s reputation on the web, by doing searches for “problem Affiliate Company” or “affiliate company sucks”.

Affiliate Definition Terms

Affiliate Fraud: Fraudulent activity by an affiliate designed to generate illegal revenue. This can include using automated scripts to falsely create leads or clicks, or humans to do the same. Interestingly, some fraudulent affiliates set up dummy accounts with networks and generate large value cheque transactions for which payment never arrives. They are betting that the merchant may not reverse commissions generated in this way.

Affiliate Network: An affiliate network provides a third party service to merchants and affiliates. The network will provide tracking, reporting and payment fulfilment services and allows merchants access to a large pool of affiliates. Networks generate performance based revenue by charging the merchant an override on top of affiliate commissions.

Affiliate Programme: An affiliate programme is a performance based form of marketing products or services offered by a website. The merchant pays a commission or lead rate on sales, enquiries or other actions to affiliate partners.

Banner Ad: Graphic advertisement displayed on an affiliate site.

Click Through: A web user clicks on an affiliates banner or link and is directed to the merchant’s site.

CTR: Click Through Rate/Ratio. Click through rate is calculated by dividing the number of clicks an ad receives by number of impressions. Thus if a banner ad was shown 100 times and received 20 clicks it would have a click through rate of 20%.

Click Reference: Most affiliate networks offer a facility to create unique tracking links containing a click reference. This allows affiliates to identify sales that have come via a particular page or link within their site or PPC campaign.

CPA: Cost Per Action. Metric for payment of commission based on a recordable action.

CPC: Cost Per Click.

CPM: Cost per thousand impressions. There are some affiliate programmes paying on a CPM basis.

CR: Conversion Ratio. This is obtained by number of click throughs to merchant divided by number of sales generated.

Commission: An affiliates payment for sales generated by their traffic based on percentage of sales or a fixed lead payment basis.

Contextual Linking: This refers to the process of placing affiliate links to appropriate products within related text or articles on a website.

Conversion Rate (CR): Percentage of clicks that convert to a sale. I.e. 4 sales for every 100 visitors would constitute a 4% conversion rate.

Data Feed: A data feed is a file (usually in CSV or XML format) containing product information for a merchant. This file will typically contain urls, names, images & descriptions of products offered by the merchant.

Drop Shipping: A lesser known form of affiliate marketing. This involves an affiliate taking orders and payment, and having arranged for a merchant to deliver product direct to client. No stock is required, and buying stock at wholesale prices means commission income is higher.

EPC: Earnings per hundred clicks. This is the most commonly used metric for determining the financial return provided by an affiliate programme. It refers to the average earnings of affiliates for every hundred clicks they deliver to merchant. Many affiliate networks make this data available to affiliates, but tends to be calculated in a slightly different way by each network.

Impressions: Refers to the number of times a banner ad or web site page is requested from the server.

PPC: Pay Per Click. The practise of paying for traffic from search engine advertising services on a cost per click basis. Ads are served based on keywords or themes.

Residual Earnings: Income generated from programmes where merchants pay commission on subsequent transactions by customers originally referred by an affiliate.

Tiered Commission: Commission structure offered by merchants which increases on a sliding scale based on performance. This can be based on number of sales or sales value.

Two Tier Affiliate Programme: Programmes of this kind reward you for signing up sub affiliates. This means that you are paid a certain percentage of their earnings for the life of the affiliate.

Unique Visitor (UV): This differs from the number of clicks in that it is a metric which refers to the number of unique individuals clicking on a link. For example, one person could click on a link 3 times in one day creating 3 visitor sessions and one unique visitor session.

Best Blogs Asia.