So mainstream is so great...
 

just checked my CJ stats for highly targeted niche websites and what do I see?

Impressions: 93,994 Sales:1 Commission: $0.26

I have to laugh otherwise I would cry...

Damn that is rough. :Oh crap

I wouldn't be wasting anymore of my traffic there if I were you.

In my experience, I've never seen anything worse than 1:500 for mainstream websites. You'll normally see more like 1:50, give or take. How did you pull that off?

What's your site, what's the product, and how were you selling the product?

Buy skimmed traffic from your favourite adult broker, send to landing page, profit.

Now just scale it by 100,000 times.

Damn, my mainstream sales are huge at around 1:100.. What products are you pushing?

I don't want to mix adult with my mainstream and give out sites but I am using well known companies from REI, Zappos, Car Fax, 1800florals, travelocity, hotels.com, Restaurants.com, Groupon, Adobe, PC Mall, etc.

Old established sites and extremely targeted sponsors on extremely targeted content rich unique pages. No purchased traffic which is more than 98% US traffic.

suesheboy -
Is there a reason you are using CJ? Are the programs you want to promote not direct with the advertiser? If they are, I would go direct before ever going with CJ. You are going to earn less, as CJ takes about 20-30% from the advertisers on top of your payout. Meaning they have to pay you less thru CJ than if you went direct with them! I won't even get into it about their tracking :)

Also, maybe you need to find a better vertical to promote. Feel free to hit me up and you can pick my brain a bit!

-=Chipmunk=-

Well, it doesn't matter if he was producing the product himself. Those numbers suck for 'highly targeted niche websites'.

OP, mainstream has nothing to do with it, you're clearly doing something very wrong.

:2 cents:

Though I have to admit, CJ can be rough, you can make more and easier money from just adsense.

I agree those numbers suck for sure! However, where is the problem? The Advertiser, CJ Reporting, Technical issues, Where he was Advertising, His site? Lot's of questions unanswered for sure.

-=Chipmunk=-

I don't think anyone in the history of affiliates has ever made anything worth talking about with CJ, or maybe its just me.

Plus, they are idiots to deal with.

The reality is there are a lot of pubs that make a serious amount of money with CJ. There are pubs that prefer to work thru CJ, regardless if they will get paid more by going direct, for the reassurance that they will get paid without games.

-=Chipmunk=-

Theres where you are doing it all wrong.. find a product(s), buy it, store it, sell it and ship it. Mainstream blows away anything i've ever made in adult easily. It's sooooo not even fucking close.

QFT. CJ is weak

Way to many traffic leaks and reasons why you don't get paid.


Bottom line I make the real money with paid placement. Adsence is paying all of my hosting and domain money.


The only way to get what you deserve is to sell your own product with or without fulfillment.

The sites you list above are targeted by marketers with advertising budgets starting at 10k a day. What you really should be pushing is high paying, selective niche products to specific markets.

Unless you have a network the size of texas, forget these highly promoted wide appeal products and services, you simply can't compete with the marketers dropping 10s of thousands of dollars a day pushing them.

There's nothing wrong with CJ, it's your selection of things to promote that's off.

You have no idea what you are talking about. :2 cents:

I have that ratio with ADULT WEBCAM SPONSORS..

However I do great in mainstream and never had something worse than 1:90, seriously.. 1:90 would be too bad.. normally is around 1:20 or 1:30...

I really can't find a way to reach your RATIO, man.. even if I was marketing english people with a Chinese written text, I would do WAY BETTER than that. You are obviously missing something there... That ratio is impossible in mainstream, even if you did anything you could, to get it.

You are so far off base it is not funny.

You can't compare selling unique adult content versus name brand sneakers or tents, especially with traffic leaks like a phone number on a sponsors site that when called you lose the sale, or if they already bought from the sponsor before you get no sale, cookie blocking etc.

Banners sold on the same sites make me a nice living and I know they convert very well. It is just not any good for an affiliate programs such as CJ anymore.

Are you personally doing any decent money with CJ? How specific are you willing to be, because I wrote them off a long time ago but I would love to be corrected.

(In response to your previous post):
Isn't *everything* on CJ semi-wide appeal and/or heavily promoted ?

I would take the offers in the thread and pick some brains! Delicious brains! sorry, slightly zombied out there.

Maybe your niche is still too general? Instead of sneakers, how about all terrain air cooled hiking shoes. Instead of tents, how about single person lightweight easy to set up tent for backpackers.

Good thread anyway

PR_Tom. Some is extreme niche and yes much is very broad such as "camping gear" on pages for camping.

Adsence has about a 2% CTR across all of these sites.

Too much promotion by other sites as well to too many previous existing customers of non exclusive products purchased on computers with with too high a privacy setting with other cheaper vendors for my surfers to purchase from means I make shit.

May just pull all these links and put another ad network up in its place. Can't ram in any more adsence on the pages or I would.

Time to write the e-book.

:pimp

those who cant do teach ;)

This is the way to go. ^ :2 cents: :thumbsup

I promote a few products from the CJ stables.

One is a Social Network solution/software platform. It pays 15% of each sale. Average commission is around $100 and in February referred 19 sales.

Another is a Business to Business marketing product, it pays a flat rate of $50 per sign up, in February I referred 36 sign ups.

There are more but I'm not sharing them. You need to do your own homework. However it's fairly easy to use some common sense to understand what you wont sell without a large network.

Products/Services like Otel, Yahoo Webhosting, Godaddy etc are saturated beyond belief and despite many of them showing high EPC it's almost impossible for a smaller affiliate to make any money out of them.

You need to find a niche product, with an audience that you can target with some precision and market to that audience.

Ever considered Lead Gen? It can be very lucrative if you have the right skill sets.
-=Chipmunk=-

I know this is the route I will be taking for 4 sites when I have the time.

Adult King, I figured at this point the niches I love just don't pay to refer sales for hard goods unless I am taking orders and having them fulfilled.

The majority of the traffic I create is for a niche I am very passionate about and have become and extreme expert on. It has also created killer write offs and the most fun I could ever have, make a difference in the world and the ability to meet the most amazing people you could possibly imagine.

Adult was fun at the beginning, but it is super boring to me now and without the passion, why do it? Never was a member of a porn site and rented 1 video in my life. The shows were fun though.

When I first started, being an affiliate was my bread and butter. Now it buys the ingredients for me to brew my beer.

Don't get me wrong I am not complaining about making a living. I have a nice house in Boca Raton and a place with lots of property in the mountains and was in the black in less than 2 months. I am just glad I adapted or I would be real hungry.

I have a real yearning to also get into renewable resources and conservation and may be going that route including actually taking orders or consulting.