Hotels most profitable?

I see a ton of hotel sites.. are these generally all affiliate sites? Is this perhaps the most lucrative affilate area? I tried several things on cj.com but couldn't do anything.. Amazon is OK?

Lots of them are... they are usually easy to tell as the action links go to different domains.




I think you make money at what you know. I have tried a number of things and success usually comes back to the areas of my education and personal interests. I know these inside out, can write lots of good content and know the keywords and how people think about them. If you are just getting started go with what you know.





hmmm... First, they are reliable payers and have great selection and usually good prices (programs that sell at MSRP put you at a disadvantage to the discounters)

My personal opinion, though many will disagree... is that amazon only pays 5% and has been stingy with the big ticket items - capping the commission at $10. They have been getting better at this lately, however, IMO amazon affiliates are losing money right and left to commission snatcher scumware and sites like ebates.com that caters to credit unions, schools, etc. You deliver a lead to amazon website and the commission snatcher detects that the browser is on amazon's site and replaces your affiliate code with their own. To be fair, this plauges many of the most popular affiliate programs - and as the membership of the rebate groups become larger and as the scumware accompanies more downloads trying to make affiliate income will become more difficult.

Hi Eric,

Try the www.ian.com network. They own hotels.com, travelnow and some other travel sites. I know the manager who is very good and they have affiliates earning over 100K a month.

I am a total ****. I should chase money more diligently.

Eric

OK, this is my next month's resolution.

Cheers to all of U!

Eric

Remember on your travel sites to offer other travel related programs to help increase your site revenue. Travel insurance and luggage are good add-ons to carry. LuggageOnline.com is one of our clients. Write a little text ad like "Travel in Style, with brand name luggage at guaranteed lowest prices!" or "Ready for your trip? Got luggage?" Then add a link and some discount coupons.

If you are creative what would work really well on travel sites is a little text bank of ads, on the side similar to Adsense ads. One for computer cases, one for wheeled carry-ons, one for luggage insurance, etc.

Happy travel sales!

Linda

Linda,

Please give me your best idea on something... If I have a site that has lots of pages about specific locations - mostly rural fun destinations for hunt/bike/climb/fish/camp - and I have a 200x200 pixel space where I am willing to put one outlink and some text or graphic... What's your best shot at making money from a travel program?

Thanks!

If anyone else has a great idea for this type of space let me know. I am all ears.

EGOL

Hi EGOL,

We are getting ready to launch a brand new affiliate program for CitySearch.com which will be a pay per click Yellow Page type of program. That may be good to let your visitors search for restaurants and things to do in the cities they will be visiting.

Let me think and see if I can come up with anything else for you!

Thanks, Linda AKA Catalyst