As a start I looked at AuctionAds which seems to be in vogue at the moment. I joined yesterday to see how it all works in practice. There is now a sample of their ads in the side column of this blog - towards the bottom of the page.
Their program started on March 6th of this year and by July 7th they had over 17,000 partners. This is quite an achievement as their target was for 10,000 in the first year.
So what is it all about?
AuctionAds make it all sound very easy. You sign up, get the code, place ads on your site relevant to the keywords that you choose, visitors buy products they're interested in and you make money.
If only life was that simple!
You have to delve a little deeper. The ads are all linked to eBay and you make money when your visitor takes an 'action'. So what is an action? To quote AuctionAds own words: 'Actions are defined as a Winning Bid, a Buy-it-Now or a confirmed user registration.'
If you think about this carefully money making isn't perhaps quite as easy as first thought. I'm not talking with experience, as I have just joined, but from my first impressions.
What is the commission?
Auction Ads say they are committed to pay out 'a minimum of 100% of eBay commission revenue. They then refer you to the eBay's affiliate program for the details of what this actually is. I'll do the same, please click here for the information.
There is also an inbuilt affiliate program whereby you can earn 2% of all income generated by the people you introduce - but I see this is for six months only.
Payments are made via PayPal, with a $10 minimum.
So how have I done?
There is only my first day to report. My stats show I had 904 impressions and out of these there were 22 clicks. There are 30 day cookies on all referrals.
First Impressions?
I'll reserve judgement on AuctionAds but I feel that there is probably better ways of making money with a blog. I imagine the click rate percentage might be okay but the actual 'actions', that make the money, may be more difficult to come by.
I don't want to sound too negative, there are some good features. I like, for example, that the ads are based on keywords that you choose yourself. This can still produce some strange listings, though still technically relevant to the actual keyword. The keyword I used for the ads on this blog was 'money'.
I'll keep you informed as to how I progress with AuctionAds.
My instinct is that it will take serious traffic to make any decent money - hopefully I'm wrong!
Good luck,
Mike.
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Celebrity Watch: Yesterday Celebrity Insider featured Galilea Montijo photos, with lots of cleavage, and the UK Big Brother's Charley Uchea, Chanelle Hayes and Shabnam Paryani. The three of them had a bit of a romp together. The TV channel wouldn't televise the footage but Celebrity Insider has photos.
