Doing Business as an Affiliate...

To offset the cost of maintaining my promotional site [Maryland Wired, est. late 1999], I setup affiliate agreements with some of the retail links already existing on my site. [In late March 2004 when I entered into the agreements with these retailers, Maryland Wired was the only promotional site. Wired Pages was introduced in May 2004.] When I began to publish Wired Pages I re-signed the same retailers for the new site and stopped actively promoting Maryland Wired.

Ninety seven percent (97%) of the links on my site are offered without "juice". Why offer free advertising? When I began [1999], to garner an audience I felt my promotional site had to offer a robust shopping environment. I installed links to popular shopping venues without regard to the competitive marketplace or the benefit to me. My news service [Maryland Wired/Wired Pages] is meant to provide a vehicle in which to advertise my software programs. Offering "the best the web has to offer" in a central location without harassing ads, I felt would give my user a reason to return. Today about 3% of the retail links on the site are affiliate links.

Why would I put this information in my weblog...

There are several reasons:

1. Lessons Learned and Small Business...
   
2. Interesting reading for others considering becoming an affiliate
   
3. The overall number of links with "juice" is insignificant
   
4. To date I have received absolutely no revenue from being an affiliate
   
5. Good business practice...
   
6. Accounting issues...
   

My most prominent affiliate links are found on my Travel page. On this page there exists two dialog areas which allow my audience to search for great travel deals from priceline [airfares] and Travelocity [cruises].

When I first placed these links on my Travel page I was getting about 40 hits a day, from redirects alone. This was in May and early June. In June, I had a total of 187 redirects and in July thus far I have 118. I have steadily been getting more site visitors, yet all other numbers have declined since the original highs in May. [Keep in mind I can only measure redirects, and totals directly hitting my travel page are not reflected here]. To date I have had no sales and very few click thrus... And folks these are some great travel deals... My audience is not even curious about the cost of a cruise to Bermuda. I don't mind not having sales... I do mind my audience not being curious. I do mind someone else getting credit for sales generated through my site(s)...

All of my affiliate partnerships go through one holding or umbrella company. The premise by which these holding companies work is-- there are merchants and there are publishers. I am a publisher or an affiliate. These holding companies make it easy for a publisher to sign up with mutiple merchants and deal with one entity [the holding company] for all issues rather than each individual merchant.

It appears as if I am a failure as an affiliate. The problem is my numbers don't exactly corroborate this assertion. Have you had a similar experience as an affiliate? What lesson should I learn...