Ebay Partner Network vs. Amazon Associates.

As I posted once I had small business idea for promotion through Ebay Partner Network. But unfortunately EPN is still keeping me automatically rejected after submission of my application to the program. As I mentioned already in my previous post I have browsed the issue around the web and found there is not problem for US or North America based applicants or most of European countries. But seems like Czech Republic or Bulgaria are not on the list.

Some years ago I signed up for Amazon Associates affiliate program. I never put attention to this program. I always wonder if there is anybody making some good money from it. I have found couple of post in forums.

You can check some discussion right here...

Generally there are not so many folks doing money from Amazon Associates. But I just once posted about newly released book, Warren Buffett Biography - The Snowball, and it returned quite nice number of ordered books. My conversion rate is 7,7%. It would hardly bring such a conversion and earnings with Google Adsense and other CPC program. In addition to that Amazon Associates gives reader really related content as it is pointed directly by writer. For me, Amazon Associates is very good as secondary income source whenever you want to highlight some interesting book.

Affilate program for every website - Matched.

There is a new advertising option for monetizing your web site or blog. Company called Matched.

Generally for publishers program is based on fix rates paid monthly. There are not special requirements about page rank or number of visitors. You receive £3 per page. One domain can have up to 5 pages with banners. Number of domains is limited, up to 5.

It makes £3 x 5 x 5 = £ 75

If you sign up right now you can receive additional bonus £5. Registration is very easy and takes you around 3 minutes (sign-up here). Then your account is activated and Matched starts to search relevant ads for your sites.

Payment is done either to UK bank account or via PayPal. Here is the prove of the payment.

UPDATE 20.11.2008

Here is the extract from the email which I have received today from MATCHED

MATCHED HAS CLOSED==================It is with much regret that we announce that Matched.co.uk has closed.Matched has been running as a beta experiment for some time and, after much careful consideration, it has been decided not to progress the project to the next stage.As a result, Matched will not be accepting new sign-ups and will no longer be assigning adverts to its current publisher base.If you completed your last payment run before November 19th 2008, you will still be paid, but please note that no future payments will be made after this. Therefore, we recommend that you remove any Matched ads from your websites.Thank you very much for being part of the Matched.co.uk experience and we wish you the best of luck for the future success of your websites.

New start up business. Affiliate sales.

Recently I got two ideas for new start up businesses. Both are based on affiliate sales as a referral.

1.) The first one came to my mind like 1 month ago. And the business is linked with affiliate sales through EPN (Ebay Partner Network). Which is actually new program offered directly by Ebay. Up to now all affiliate programs for Ebay actions had been offered by 3rd party sites like Commission Junction or Auction Ads. And here is also showstopper. By 3rd party companies I had been accepted without any problem but Ebay refused my application to Partner Network. In fact I received automatic email right after I submit application. In email letter there was just stated "We cannot accept your application at this time".
I have browsed the issue around the web and found there is not problem for US or North America based applicants or most of European countries.

Well let's see in future if I will find the way how to get accepted. I don't want to post more details about the niche product which I would like to promote. But definetely I see this as a very profitable. It has high number of bidding and no shipping costs. If everything will go fine I promise to post more details.

2.) For the second business I can provide more details. It is about affiliate sales of flight tickets. I found Czech based server Kralovna which search for independent home based travel agents. After approval you receive access to search and sales engine for air tickets. You can either promote on your web site as a HTML code or directly refer sales with your unique affiliate number.
The whole service is for FREE. About commission, you receive CZK 380,- (around EUR 15,-) plus 5% from the price of air ticket. Fix based commission equals minimum rate for transactional charges.
As mentioned before you can offer this to you web site visitors or to your friends wishing to buy flight tickets. Good point which you can highlight is that their price will be free of transactional charges. And this makes cheaper deal for them and great business for you.

Top affiliate program for business and financial blogs.

Recently I started to use new affiliate program from RevResponse on my investing blog StockWeb. And I found it as a very good source of income for financial and business bloggers. In fact it could be use for any area of blogging.

The product which you offer are free magazines and newspapers. Most of them are electronic but some are also delivered as paper. And as you know whatever is for free it attracts attention of your visitors. Therefore you can expect high CTR (click-through rate).

You can choose from huge offer really interesting magazines and newspapers or newsletters from are of finance, business, accounting, trading, information technology, engineering or online marketing. Even such a top papers like The Economist, Business Week or CFO. Visitor usually receives 4 free issues.

And here how your offer can look like...



You can customized your ads with number of different ads format. In addition to that RevResponse will create for you customized version of site with magazines related to your topic. Design will be exactly in line with your blog or web site. Please see their excellent work done with my site.

The rates vary from $1.5 to $20 for one free subscription. They also offer 1 tier referral program.

Here is the link for sing up to the program RevResponse.