My point is that conversions are good, but the % is too low to bother sending significant traffic to.

It is much easier to send adult clicks than "mainstream" ones. I actually think a 1:31 ratio is not great for people who clicked on a link to buy a specific book they just read about.

I agree on the AdSense, as I know for a stone cold fact that AdSense would pay more, which is why I mentioned I use that above affiliate programs to monetize in that space.

With spelling and grammar mistakes like this It's designed it for the total beginner people still buy????

No clue, it fulfilled a need, we purchased it and were happy with the results :)

Build small web sites for local mom and pop businesses an charge a monthly maintenance fee plus extras. (I know of companies that charge up to $1000 a dollars a month for this in my area for simple, basic old school websites, if there is any type of simple scripting involved the prices go way up which is fucking ridiculos).

Build a local business directory for your clients and charge them a monthly listing fee.

I know a couple big success stories... mostly making stuff for either photography or sports.

One was/is a device for photography. Guy invented it and promoted himself,sold it only through his site. Made a mint.

Another are guys that would take a piece of sports equipment that cost a ton in America and euro and would import the same piece from China and rebrand it.

Make it Americanized and then sell for a discounted rate over the competitors and only do it online. Promote it through the sport specific forums and boards. They were smart cause they knew what would sell and it did. Kinda like the guys who knew what would sell in porn aka brazzers and bang bros.

I know of some other that have targeted specific sports and made t-shirts for them too. works very well!

If your just reselling shit that is available everywhere that aint gonna work. You either have to do something cheaper or rebrand it or something completely unique.

But just being an affiliate selling stuff that everybody is? I think your up against forces that are smarter and better capitalized then most.

THIS is telling like it IS, or so I believe. As I said, I have limited experience with "mainstream" but some of the stories and advice in this thread is fantastic.

So basically there are Pros and Cons (or Pros and Amateurs, heh) in the big, wide world of "mainstream". Cool. Bring it on! :thumbsup

How about advertising for non adult on adult sites? Is there any money there?

Anytime I've ever sold in mainstream stuff online or even offline its been selling my own product or service.

I think the affiliate model is just far too low paying for mainstream. Seems most big sites that have lots of surfers are usually selling ad spots.

That and fraud is pretty rampant (on both sides). In mainstream it's fairly common to hear stories about the company taking the leads you supply and then canceling them and taking the order over the phone in order to avoid having to pay you commission. It's the same with all the stories about people making thousands only to one day have it cut off just like a switch was thrown.

The truth I think is that in order to make a lot as an affiliate in most cases there needs to be favorable conditions for it where the company NEEDS you badly. All too often these companies don't feel they need the affiliates (let's just direct market instead, etc) so it's easy to fuck affiliates and say "so what?" if they catch on and threaten to walk. It's the difference with adult now too. A lot of these (bigger) companies if you notice just don't give a shit about an affiliate sending them a couple hundred or thousand clicks a day. They have these partnerships with the tubes or their own tubes. They don't care.

When it's your own thing you don't have to worry about any of that crap.

Yea I also tend to notice all these guys that claim to make loads of money as affiliates, tend to also be the guys trying to sell you members ships to how to make money online.. LoL

Now on the other had I have no doubght that guys that owen athorty sites on various subjects can make lots of money from advertisers.

Agreed.

The vast majority of mainstream affiliates (at least on the larger boards) that are vocal about how much they are making all typically have those scammy 'make money from posting on social media' type membership sites.

If you actually go the route of membership sites based on something the customer is interested in, how to diet and exercise properly, eating healthily, building body mass at the gym, etc, the revenue streams are definitely there and you are actually providing them something they want to learn about and will continue to spend their $ with you month after month.

A couple of niche paysites I stumbled across that I thought were clever: prerecorded online guitar lessons, and revealing the secret behind magic tricks.

If only there were affiliates for iTunes - that would be a business. Does anyone have that figured out?

I use to sell swords.
I found a guy that would drop ship them for me.
I would post on ebay as lord or rings sword, excalibur sword or whatever.
They order from me thru ebay for 50 dollars I send the order to guy for 30 dollars and he ships to customer.

Then my listings started to get taken down saying I can't say it was lord of the rings sword or whatever.

End of that story.

WTF? That's just retarded.

Was there no way of changing the verbiage for the listing so you could say it was without actually saying it was?

make some good coin from mainstream domain name sales, still own around 500 .coms from 1998-2013, nothing I do in mainstream makes a ton of cash, just the combo of having so much shit running it adds up :2 cents:

yeah, I tried alot of different wordings like Lord of the rings replica. Lord of the rings style. You get the idea. They didn't want any reference to lord of the rings or any other movie. I guess they seem to think they owned the english words arranged in that order.

I've been doing alright with AUTO BACKLINKS :thumbsup

- 20% commissions
- 100% control of the links that you show
- cookie never expires - customer is yours for life!
- BASIC registration is completely FREE, but clients can buy (recurring) additional link credits :)

I can only speak for Europe, but "mainstream" + affiliate can mean:
http:/www.tradedoubler.com (publicly listed affiliate network)
http://www.zanox.com
http://www.euroads.com
http://www.tradetracker.com
etc..
So basically the same shit as http://cj.com

The "hot" moneymakers are blogs. Not splogs.
If you know how to get people to your blog and to follow it, you're in the money. Especially in fashion. The commissions are LOW (compared to adult), like 5-10% of sale.. but the conversions are 1:100 etc from clicked traffic. Tradedoubler etc also have iSales, which means you get commission if a visitor SEES you banner, but doesn't click it (and types in the sale). This is fun if you have a high-volume site, with brand name ads which also do offline ads which work in you favour.

..or if you have a big "niche" site, be it cooking or fashion, you can become friends with media agencies or traffic networks and sell traffic CPM/CPC.. or if you have a BIG site, just join rubicon, google adExchange etc and start selling preferred deals with RTB capabilites to media agencies.

..or if YOU sell goods, ie. you have an ecommerce site, do the opposite.
Add your program to the affiliate networks, start BUYING RTB traffic etc...

mainstream is boring

ADULT is boring.

If what is being posted in this thread is your understanding of "mainstream" and the potential money makers (blogs, cj, ebay), it's no wonder some of these affiliates are struggling. There is a lot more out there and it's clear you need to do some additional research.

:2 cents:

Can you share what you are referring to?

I think he means anything that isn't blogs, ebay, cj, amazon, etc... He'd also be right.

So what isn't like blogs, ebay etc.. ?

Want me to hold your hand and walk you through things step-by-step?

There is this amazing invention called the 'internet' if you couple it with a company offering name 'Google' you shall find the answers you seek...

Seriously though, there are thousands, millions of different ways to make money outside of adult, you just have to find one you are comfortable spending a decent amount of time developing a traffic base for and you'll make bank.

Hell, you could even take a few of the things we have in adult and make them cross-over businesses... DMCA requests are needed in mainstream too (and not just by the major film and music companies) as one example...

Not if you don't know what you are searching for. Most people looking to make money search 'make money' and end up buying scammy products from people who don't know how to make money, on making money.

If I searched 'make money in mainstream' I wouldn't find any answers.

Many of us webmasters here at gfy keep asking that same question over and over in different threads - "What do people do in mainstream?" and we all know how to not only use google but to get listed on the first page too (with variable success).

I guess what most of us are asking is how to make money in mainstream in a manner that mirrors what we already know in adult. If not blogs, free sites etc... then what is the model?

Then don't even bother looking to make money in mainstream.

You have to actually work, not throw up hosted tube clips, galleries, free sites, etc...

There is no comparison whatsoever.

sweepstakes (win offers) - not on google
bizz ops (ebooks)
Diets pills

most of these can go on Google / Rightmedia / Bing if your landers are not to hard

If I may crawl inside the mind of Webmaster Advertising here, I THINK what his reply is saying is "Hey boy, you don't show enough gumption or smarts to figger it out yerself - which is what is required - so there's no comparison". Yes? :D

Because otherwise, if you are seriuos, then I disagree with you. There IS a comparison to adult in mainstream:

You still have to build websites
You still have to get traffic to said websites
You still have to SELL SOMETHING in order to make money (a service, information, a product, something)
You still need to write good sales text
You still need to display graphics effectively
You still need to capture emails and user info
etc

But what you CANNOT do is NOT THINK. Adult has a wonderful but frustrating "infra-structure" (or giant circle jerk) already built. So it's relatively "easy" to get traffic in large numbers to an adult website. It seems like with "mainstream" (really, anything non-adult) you have to be more creative. You simply can't post video to YouTube and get traffic.

Good thread. Trying an amazon affiliate website of water filters now. I see now where getting my own product and selling through Amazon would be a better idea. Also, I am out done in SEO by sponsored ads.

Maybe better to setup a blog on the dangers of fluoride or contaminants in water and putting adds up for the more expensive Reverse Osmosis filtration systems.

First I need to get the traffic, then get the sales.

If someone decide to go with Amazon make sure Amazon has you state in affiliate list. Last time when I checked it ~1 ago CT wasn't, means they will not pay if you are form CT(something with laws). I think there are few more states.

What % would you get from Amazon for the expensive ones if you did this?