My intention was to start reviewing affiliate partner sites today. But I had almost forgotten about one more survey site. I signed up for E-Poll Surveys http://www.epollsurveys.com/ at the same time as MySurvey https://www.mysurvey.com/ . I have earned $30.00 in Amazon Gift Cards with MySurvey and still don’t have the required points (I have earned 2700) to receive a $5 gift card (3500 points) at E-Poll.
E-Poll Surveys is pretty a pretty straight forward survey site. You just answer surveys and collect points. The points can be traded in for a number of things. One thing I thought was cool is that they allow you to donate your points to a number of different charities, 2500 points is a $5 donation. You can refer others through an email sent from E-Poll Surveys. I don’t see any reference to benefits for a referral.
As soon as I reach 3500 points I will drop this site. I have only received 3 or 4 surveys in 30 days. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I just have other things to focus on.
As far as I can tell E-Poll Surveys is not a scam. All the referral sites I have reviewed so far, offer you an opportunity to make money and be paid. It is up to you to decide how to use each site to your best advantage. None of them are scams. They deliver exactly what they offer. None of these sights make claims of wealth and power. Keep that in mind when looking at new sites on your own.
Now, on to affiliate marketing partnerships. An affiliate partnership is much more complex than a site that pays you a commission for referrals. As an affiliate partner you are representing a company as an advertising agent. You basically receive a commission for leads or sales generated. It is up to you to promote the company and its products.
Depending on who you are using (I am using Commission Junction and ClickBank) as a “broker” there are endless companies to represent. I don’t want to get bogged down in how affiliate marketing works at this time. I want to get into who I have chosen and why as Affiliate partners. Here is a very good article explaining affiliate marketing. http://www.workathomenoscams.com/2009/08/03/free-affiliate-marketing-ptc-course/ .
The first affiliate marketing partner I signed on with was Candy and Gift Boutique http://www.candygiftboutique.com/jamaffiliates/jrox.php?uid=emac2011 . Like I said this was the first one I found at ClickBank . My thinking was I could market it in more than one way and I also figured people buy candy and flowers online every day. So I tried a banner link at the blog site, posted it on Craigslist in a couple of places and even bought some targeted email addresses. I have had 73 visitors to the main site. Zero sales.
What I didn’t do was really look at what they were selling and how much they were charging. The product line looks nice enough, but the pricing is very high for those products online. I do not think they are even close to being competitive with any other online store in the same category. Shame on me. I will stay with them for 90 days and If I still have zero sales I will look for something to replace them.
Candy and Gift Boutique offers a very nice clean, easy to use Affiliate portal. They also offer a number of statistical and advertising tools that are free to use. They also offer a referral program for those who would like to sell rather than buy. What I don’t like is the pricing and the fact I sent an email a month ago requesting a specific type of text link and have still received no response.
Are they a scam? Since it costs you nothing to become an affiliate and they offer you a bunch of free tools to promote their product, I would say, not a scam. Are they a profitable affiliate partner? The data so far says no. This could change with Mother’s day, Father’s day and Easter on their way.
On the up side, I have been using the tracking tools at Commission Junction and I am seeing an increase in traffic at this site over the last week. Yesterday, I had 209 impressions and my affiliate sites had over 20 impressions each. I haven’t seen any sales, but I am very excited about the jump in traffic.
This may due to the fact I beefed up my “tags” (keywords) using Google Adwords Keyword Finder. I also noticed I am getting some hits coming right from a search engines (Google, Comcast). This is another positive indicator.
So, I will keep working behind the scenes to boost traffic while I review my other affiliate partners over the next week or so. As a teaser, once I have reviewed all my affiliates, I will start to review free web hosting sites like Yola.
Like always, sign up and follow the blog, use the banners and text links to visit and sign up and start making money. Any questions you may have or sites you would like me to review can be posted at the EWAHR Forum page.
In my next blog I will review ProCard International http://www.procardinternational.com/EricM9993.
Peace.
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