WebDiggin.com: An Adventure to Make Money Online

What makes a good affiliate program? Let’s look at Skype which was one of our first affiliate programs that we signed up for on Commission Junction. We’re not actively promoting it using Pay Per Click PPC search engines, but there are still several good features about it.

Good things about the Skype Affiliate program

• It’s a product that we use ourselves, so we know it’s good.
• It’s run by Commission Junction which has a low minimum pay out of $25. (Unlike Amazon or Google).
• Since it’s part of the Commission Junction network, we can also try to sell other products. We don’t have to get $25 in commission from Skype to get paid. We could get $9.46 from Skype and the rest from other companies. Bottom line is that an affiliate network is easier to promote because you have more products to work with.
• It has a 5 star rating on Commission Junction. (This means that it is one of the top companies in the network, in terms of the volume of sales it is doing. This means it’s a big pie so we should be able to get a sliver of it.)
• However, the best part about the Skype affiliate program is that you can deep link into their website. A lot of affiliate programs only let you link to the homepage or specific landing pages in their site. Skype lets you custom build an affiliate link to any page in their website.For example, if someone is interested in getting a custom online phone number, you want to send them to the SkypeIn page that has information about getting a custom phone number. You don’t want to send them to the home page because then they have to find the link to the page they want, and maybe they’ll just get bored and leave. Check out our SkypePro review to see how we custom made our links to go to different landing pages.

Bad things about the Skype affiliate program

There are two really horrible things about the Skype affiliate program that makes it not worth your time to actively promote. (Compared to some of the other great affiliate programs out there.)

• First, the 7 day Earnings Per Click and 3 month Earnings Per click is quite low. (See the CJ picture above). This means on average, people are making around $8.74 USD per hundred clicks. Or, put another way, around 9 cents per click.We don’t know how much people are spending to get those clicks. Some people might have content websites with regular traffic from the search engines. So they’re paying nothing to get the clicks and that 9 cents per click is all profit.

  Other people might be trying to sell Skype as a Pay Per Click PPC search marketing campaign on Google. (We tried early in our career. That was one of our mistakes. But, in our defense, the EPC was around $13 when we tried to get it to work on Google.)

  Skype as a PPC search marketing campaign would never work on Yahoo because the minimum cost per click is 10 cents per click. It might work on Google if you had a quality ad that only cost you 3 cents per click, but lately when we’ve tried, we’ve been told to increase our minimum bids to some ridiculous amount.

• Second, Skype only gives you a commission for purchases made on their website. This is what makes Skype so weak as an affiliate campaign. Sure, they have a 90 day tracking cookie (action referral period), but they only pay commissions for sales made on their website, not the Skype interface.What this means is you’ll never get a commission from a repeat customer unlike some other affiliate programs. Chances are, if a Skype user likes Skype, they’ll just buy more credits from inside the Skype software. You would only buy from the Skype website if you needed to get a proper receipt.

Bottom Line: Here are some things you need to look for in an affiliate program.

1. Is it part of a commission network? (Are there other things I can sell to help meet the minimum payout amount?)
2. How much is the average earning per click? (How much can I make from this program? Is it high enough that I can try selling it using Pay Per Click ads? Is it high enough that it will be worth my efforts?)
3. How well is the affiliate program doing? Is it a 4 or 5 star program? (The bigger the program, the bigger the pie, the bigger your small sliver of the pie will be. Plus, you have to ask yourself, what is it about a 1 star program that keeps it doing so poorly? Why aren’t people trying to sell that product?)
4. How good is the landing page for the affiliate link? Does the landing page get visitors to buy or do they have to click again to get to the information they need? The best affiliate programs are the ones where you can deep link into any page in the advertiser’s site.
5. What is the commission? What do I have to do to get the commission? Some products have a 100% commission for the first sale. Other products offer a 35% commission. Some products offer a 1% commission. It ranges. And the conditions for the commission vary as well. Skype might offer a 25% commission, but if it’s next to impossible to get repeat customers, you might reconsider your competition.

Question: What else do you look for when signing up for an affiliate program?

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