What banner program do you use?

[Jason]

Hey,

Question for you all enrolled in banner programs. What provider do you use? (doubleclick, sonar, luna, flycast, etc), or do you use your own in house sales? Is it working out? Are you currently using CPC, CPM, or a combination of both?

[Corbbmacc O'Connor]

I haven't really spent a lot of time on my banner advertisment system because I've been focusing on content for my site. However, I use Web Adverts (http://awsd.com/scripts/webadverts/) to rotate my ads. Does anybody know of some good affiliate programs.

[R_Russell]

Go to http://www.cj.com (Commission Junction)

[SteveS235]

I use Microsoft's bCentral on my home page (not an affiliate, but as a banner exhcange), but inside the site I use Commission Junction and Linkshare http://www.linkshare.com

They both have hundreds of affiliate programs, but I only have about a dozen or so that I show banners for using these 2 sites.

[Jason]

We've got a whole slew more listed at:
http://www.123webmaster.com/Commerce_Center/Sponsors/

[eformsolutions]

Hi all!

Big names, you cannot depand, I used LinkShare for almost two months on one of my site last year and still the due payment over $1000 never received from them. Even no replies to 100s of e-mail. Doesn't it sucks.

I join CJ, prove to be another sucker. . . . .

I had very bad experience with these ad exchangers, and I don't want to involve in it again.

[Jason]

Strange, did you try calling them? I've used CJ.com successfully for a while in the past, checks always arried on time. Did they contact you about any violations of their service?

[eformsolutions]

They contacted (LinkShare), not exactly, they replied to my very first mail, stating that, they are having some difficulties getting payments from the merchant and they are trying their best to get it, and thats it. No mail after that.

I am living in a part of world where my morning or day is not similar to them more than 16 hours different - couldn't make any phone contact.

I even try to contact the marchent directly, no reply.

[jehraen]

Hmm, and I was seriously thinking about signing up with either CJ or Linkshare. Anyone else have other comments, be it good or bad about these 2??

[eformsolutions]

Hi jehraen!

Try your luck! I am still providing space to LinkShare advertisements on my site but now I don't care - I didn't visit there site more than six months - and I really don't know the current status.

For CJ from last two months totally unable to even login there login data base sucks - error page keep poping up and that it.

Any way try your luck - may be it is only me.

[Jason]

I've met a few dozen people that have used both of these programs, eform is the first one I know that has had problems. These two companies arenlt super tiny, and if there were large scale infractions by them, I'm sure that we would have smelled the stink everywhere.

[GetClipHere]

Hey all - thought I'd add my 2 cents :)

I've pretty much used them all over the past few years on my main site, AbsoluteCross.com (http://www.absolutecross.com) (Burst, Flycast, Sponsorships.net, WebSponsors, CJ, LinkShare, & Standard Internet being the main ones, and of course tried my share of nonsense dupe programs as well).

I would have to say that each has had its "time in the spotlight" which mainly depended on a few things, such as the resources/partners I had at the time (come and go), and current trends on the Internet. I'll try to give a brief description of my experience of each that I listed above:

Burst (http://www.burstmedia.com)
This was my first banner provider, which I joined after realizing that I was losing thousands of dollars on the cost of hosting my site and not getting any return. They were great at the time and I quickly grew to about $400/month from them (about 1000 uniques/day at the time). Suddenly things went bad and profits dropped by more than half each month, even though each month had more and more impressions. I then switched to...

Flycast (http://www.flycast.com)
Flycast was a disaster from day one. I made much less from them, even with enough impressions, and payments were very very late. When they started adding POPUPS!! to the banners, I jumped ship.

Sponsorships.net (http://www.sponsorships.net/cgi-bin/referral.cgi?2146) and WebSponsors (http://www.websponsors.com)
I partnered with ClipartResource.com to collect an opt-in list for a new ezine, and needed some CPC and CPA ads for the confirmation page and offers and whatnot. We quickly got about 40,000 subscribers and offered CPA's from Sponsorships.net and WebSponsors.com as incentives (one of which was Gator, which was a trend at the time). This made several thousand dollars very fast. Due to some complications the ezine idea fell apart and, of course, no more money came in. At this point today, I still recommend Sponsorships.net and currently use several of their ads. If you'd care to sign up please do me the favor of using my affiliate link (http://www.sponsorships.net/cgi-bin/referral.cgi?2146) ;)

CJ (http://www.qksrv.net/click-3965-13337)
This is the program that is working best for me right now. I am running a few higher-paying CPCs and some targetted CPAs and making around $600-$700 per month with it. The large selection of merchants makes it easy to find targetted ads for your particular site, and if properly integrated, can do quite well. I could make more with these ads I'm sure, but I try to go easy on the ads so my visitors will be happy. :)

LinkShare.com (http://www.linkshare.com)
Had some success with the ThinkLink program with them but since ThinkLink's outta business now that's null hehe. There seem to be some good offers and variety, but not as good as CJ, and most pay less or only pay on sales instead of leads or clicks. The system also seems more cumbersome and not as featured as CJ's.

SearchTraffic (http://www.searchtraffic.com/wsignup.php3?abscrss) (Standard Internet)
I've had decent results with the SearchTraffic program from Standard Internet. It's one of those "seach the web" forms (and optional links). I've made an average of $100/mo from this program. They have a few others also dealing with blind links, popups, etc... but this one is best from my experience. They've tightened the rules and regs quite a bit lately, but it's still pretty good. They always pay on time.


Anyhow, that's the basic rundown... I hope it helps you choose the right programs to make the most profit with your sites. On the ones with affiliate links please use my ID hehe cause this is becoming a stinkin long message and I think I'll need the extra cash to pay my hand doctor hehehe j/k :)

[Jason]

I don't know about your hand, but if you become a regular around here (which seems to be happening) you'll most likely need one of these:
http://www.htmlforums.com/facemask.html

Mine doesn't seem to be working to well for me, but it's a precaution I would suggest taking.


Great post David. Very insightful :D


[Edited by Jason on 02-26-2001 at 11:02 AM]

[jehraen]

Lol Jason :p

Yep, thanks GetClip. I host a site to promote an online game and although hosting costs aren't that much, am thinking of getting a few more 'programs' to build my community and that might cost some. Therefore, I am thinking about signing up with an affiliate program to compensate the costs some. Your post has been very helpful insightful as Jason's said. Thanks for taking the time to write. :D

[JohnM]

As someone said earlier, Linkshare is not reliable, they still owe me $800 from last Auguest :(

[GetClipHere]

I got my check from LinkShare, back when I tried them out... but it was only for a few bucks (nowhere near your $800) so I guess they must just hate their "successful affiliates" hehe :)

I have a good personal solution though... don't use LinkShare! ;) I wish you luck in getting that check from them... if they're too dumb to pay you as an affiliate, maybe you can get them to buy one of Jason's facemasks from you hehe :D

Latah

[eformsolutions]

Hi!

Lucky you GetClipHere.

[Dave Swift]

Well I used LinkShare and the worst thing about them in my opinion was their Stats Tracking. It was always slow to update and confusing.
CJ however have a much better tracking service, and they also have a great banner rotation system.
But, like I think eforms said, I get lots of errors when I try to login.

[jollyfactory]

I use popuptraffic. It's pretty decent, $3.00 cpm

[surfman]

Since everyone is on the subject of site monetizing I thought I'd throw this one out there...

I just started monetizing my sites after almost 10 years of non-profit out of pocket provsioning. After adding Adsense I started grabbing about a 2-3% CTR which isn't too shabby. The first site is pulling down $50-60 bucks a month. So, with my new greed in tact I decided to do the CJ affiliate program because it is the highest rated that I could find. Now I"m not too sure if this is typical but in the first 3 weeks we have served 35,000 impressions with 14 clicks and just 1 lead for a whopping .50 payment. Thats right 50 cents. :eek:

Am I doing something wrong here? The banners I am setting up are the Banners - Free zones.... I figured that this was a freestyle banner so that I could mix up banner sizes in the same zones! Is this correct? or is this a literal FREE banner setting? As in NO commisions? The numbers just don't make any sense. Has anyone else had any problems like this and are there any tips to setting up CJ to be a productive system that would help me and others when choosing how our zones are set up...

Thanks