Advertising / affiliate programs - your opinion is wanted

[Mervi]

Yeah, I noticed too that it's the BD link that causes it. They keep linking to that port also in all the emails I've received, I'll have to ask their support about it. Thanks joost!

I'm not really happy about all the blinking that's going on in the index page now. Why can't they make more non-animated banners. :/

[Nuytsia]

Weird about the new bookdepository.com site...... I went there and logged in with the details I use on bookdepository uk and it worked!

Yes I must admit prices on BD UK seem to be a bit variable now, and books published in the US particularly seemed to go up in price recently. So yay for BD.com (presumably the US site) which seems to be a lot cheaper and as far as I know is the only US site with free postage to Aus (not that I've done an exhaustive search).

OT but I don't think I'm going to buy anything in an Australian shop any more! Except groceries, and I'm working on growing them and getting the rest from local people.

[joost]

Mervi,

Could you change the Bookdepository/Amazon links on the frontpage to open in a new tab (target="_new")? Would make it easier to switch from forum to store and back.

[Farseer]

Just letting you know that I passed this on to Mervi via an email, joost. It's obviously not urgent but I still thought it may alert her to your specific request and that way she can get back to it when she can?

[Mervi]

Just went through the affiliate links and polished things a bit again. Fixed the BD links so if you still see browsers timing out on loading the page, please let me know - then there's something seriously wrong. I added the opening in a new window where I dared - (that is, everywhere except with amazon, because their links are weird and policies scary). What else? Um, commissions. TBD.co.uk rises slowly but steadily towards our goal - it's at £16.06 currently. TBD.com displays a whopping USD 1.11 (but it's still a new program for us, so... ) - the audible.co.uk and the abebooks programs haven't generated anything yet. Amazon.co.uk sales have been very quiet for awhile now, but I hope to see some action there once the Inheritance starts shipping. Amazon.com recently gifted me with a $10.30 gift certificate that had been "in the making" since September 2009 (and it includes sales through some of my other sites as well). My apologies for the boring details - I think it's fair for you guys to know how this stuff works since you put up with the advertisements. If we collectively decide one day that it's not worth it, then I shall remove them. *kicks the amazon servers for being so slow to serve the widgets*

['thul]

So there are more ads than those two "the book depository" ones? These beings have rather advanced ad filtration built into the browser, so almost all ads are automagically removed...

[Nuytsia]

Thanks for the update Mervi!
It is interesting to see the stats.....

The BD link works fine for me!

[Farseer]

If anyone's interested, Amazon.co.uk is offering free postage of items to Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa until May 15th, 2011. The total order must be over £25 (which currently equates to $38.6069AUD) to be eligible for the free delivery offer.

[Mervi]

Some thoughts after looking at the most recent figures.
- my amazon sales have been dropping over the past few years anyway, probably due to competition from tBD etc. But most of the articles sold this year are not Hobb related at all, so they are either generated by my other smaller sites or are "random" sales - the initial click might have been from theplentynet but then the customer has started to browse other categories and decided to buy something else.

- it's been almost a year since I started the ticker, and we've almost reached the goal (currently at £24.73) - I'm pretty sure that commissions from thebookdepository.co.uk sales will cover our hosting costs for 2012 for which I want to say a HUGE THANK YOU to all of you who've been clicking the banners & buying books!
- tBD.com is still sitting at 1.11 dollars - but I'm willing to give it more time since a lot of people probably don't even know yet there's two (sort of) different sites to order from

- there's still no revenue at all from either abebooks program or audible.co.uk and actually so few recorded clicks I'm starting to wonder if there's a problem with the banners. I'm actually waiting for Commission Junction (which is the 3rd party for abebooks.co.uk and audible.co.uk links) to kick me out of their program for being unactive. I didn't expect huge sales from either since I guess our "target audience" would use them for searching used books mostly (and audio obviously) but the fact that there aren't even clicks is a bit weird...

Anyway, what it all comes down to is that I've been thinking about removing the current "store" tab entirely (perhaps replacing it later with something better if possible) as well as the amazon "essential reading" boxes from the front page. None of the other book sellers have such a handy way to link to a particular product and keep the info up-to-date, but since those seem to no longer generate sales (and are contributing to the slowness and general mess of the front page) I think it's time for them to go. However, I don't know when I'll have the time to redesign the front page so it might be awhile. So - if you're a big fan of the amazon boxes and/the store - now's the time to let me know!

I need to look again into the possible wiki extensions for affiliate programs. The couple of "test links" I insterted earlier seem to generate clicks for theBD links at least...

[Farseer]

Thanks for the update, Mervi.

I must admit I only use TBD.co.uk.