Question
What do you think about displaying ads on my website? I'm thinking they could be added to the blog and they could link to me and I could like to them. How would I track referrals and commissions on these ads?
I was thinking that we could add an area on the blog right hand nav that would serve as a "Promo Space" similar to the home page. This way I could change the image/link as needed. I would work mostly on trade with a few other blogs….i.e. we would offer the ad space and maybe a blog post about their company if they reciprocated. I realize it would take people off our site but the hope would be that the exposure on the other blog would bring a lot of new traffic…
Your thoughts? and is this doable?
Answer
I don't love the idea of displaying advertisements in your blog. Yes, you might be able to make some money from it but you'll take people off you site, which we recommend avoiding.
The inexpensive way of doing it is as you suggested, having a "Promo Space" for these folks (simple images visitors can click on to be taken to your vendor's site). This is something you could do in WordPress or something the support staff can do for you at our standard rates. If you wanted to track referrals and commissions on those referrals, then you'd need something like Commission Junction (www.cj.com).
Again, I don't love ads on e-commerce website and there's zero SEO benefit from them linking to you and you linking to them (e.g. the links cancel themselves out). You can of course get some added traffic from the referrals when your ads are on their site, which is great, I just don't like taking people off your site!
Those are my thoughts ..
Date Created: 07/18/13