One of the primary reasons I chose to re-design Lowell.com was to change my approach to advertising sales. At the moment, the sales process is manual, and advertisers cannot sign up without contacting me. Big mistake. I am not a great sales person when it comes to advertising, and I don’t like making cold calls or sending emails. As a result, I only have a few advertisers on the site.

With the new site (which I hope to launch within 2 weeks), advertisers will be able to create and pay for directory listings manually in the Yellow Pages, although the more expensive banners will still be generated by me. I’ve had considerable interest in Yellow Pages listings, and I expect the revenue from listings to pay for the re-design within just a few months.

Although I have a few local advertisers (including the Courtyard by Marriott), I want to add some affiliate banners as well (including a new prominent 728×90 spot and 250×250 spot). Finding appropriate affiliate programs is a bit of a challenge because of the broad nature of Lowell.com, but I want to share a few things that I am doing, hopefully starting a bit of a discussion.

Here are a few things I am considering when selecting affiliates from Linkshare:

• Does the affiliate compete with current local advertisers (like hotels or photography)?
• What companies are running advertisements on competing websites?
• What is the commission rate and length of time for cookies?
• Is there local brand recognition?
• Will the banners look good on the site?

I think the biggest thing for me will be testing. Since Lowell.com gets between 15,000 – 20,000 unique visitors a month now (despite not being updated in 2 months), there is enough traffic to test different banners. I plan to rotate affiliate banners, testing CTR/Revenue with different banner offers, as well as Adsense.

I know Adsense generates revenue as I have it in select spots on the current site, but I also know it leaves money on the table. I want to see if I can find compelling offers that will blow Adsense out of the water. I don’t know if it will be possible, but I am going to test it.

One thing I do know is that direct ad sales will be the most profitable banner advertising. I hope to be able to fully replace affiliate banners and Adsense banners within a few months. However, I am not counting on that since I don’t have a sales representative yet. In the meantime, I will be doing a lot of testing.

Have you run affiliate banners on a general interest website (like Lowell.com), and if so, what has your experience been?

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Please help me raise funds for the Ronald McDonald House

I’m still pretty enthused about affiliate marketing after spending some time at Affiliate Summit in New York a couple of weeks ago. On Saturday, I mentioned that I would like to do some sort of affiliate website for my next project, and I am looking to find a name in a category of interest. I had a couple of questions emailed to me about the project I am considering, and I wanted to explain it better.

To illustrate the idea, I am thinking about something along the lines of owning a name like DomainParking.com (just an example).  In addition to explaining how PPC works, discussing parking provider relationships with search engines, and other information, I would have a page dedicated to each domain parking company. The page will give information about the parking company with a sign-up button that has my affiliate link. It’s simple, but because of that, I will need a great domain name that will help me get good search rankings, so when someone searches Google for parking companies, the domain ranks well.

I am not actually looking to build a site in this vertical but wanted to illustrate my plan. It’s also not a unique business model, but I haven’t done a site like this yet, and I want to test out how it would perform on a targeted domain name. The goal will be to create a site that requires very minimal upkeep, and because of the targeted domain name, it will rank well in search engines. Not only do I want it to be in a vertical I am familiar with, but the affiliate payments should be high enough to offset development costs and the domain acquisition costs.

Like CabCompanies.com (which wasn’t expensive and has decent paying clicks), I want to be able to have an ROI of under 3 years. I don’t know if it will work out in the case of CabCompanies.com, but that’s the goal.

In any case, Rick Latona Auctions is now holding a CPA, Lead Generation, and Affiliate Marketing domain auction, and there are a couple of domain names I am considering. The auction wraps up on August 28th. Please note, I do not have any names in this auction, and since I may be bidding, I don’t want to create competition for myself so I am not going to list the name(s) I like. I am also looking at other venues as well.