Affiliates

[Brack]

Do you just affiliate with anyone or do you think about who you affiliate with?

I have 37 affiliates on my forum which link back.

I have various rules which I adhere too before contacting sites for an affiliation.

 

[Nebulous]

No.. Affiliates are an eye sore. Especially scrolling affiliates bars..
But if someone else chooses to do that on their forum, I dont mind..

 

[David]

37 = suicide.

Target a certain niche. Make sure the other forum has members which would actually like to join your forum, not just "oh they have 10000 members, why not affiliate with them". Thats just suicide, and you will get nothing more than a backlink. Look for forums which have a similar purpose, so linking with a "hair dressing" forum would not go with "Hard core RPG". You get it?

 

[Nathan]

No.. Affiliates are an eye sore. Especially scrolling affiliates bars..
But if someone else chooses to do that on their forum, I dont mind..

Same as theezy on this one.

 

[Bejay]

I can't stand these as a description for a forum. There is a thousand other places where they can be placed. I don't even think they do much anyway. If you want to have a affiliate then just a simple text link will do. Most of the images don't even look good which turns people away from the forum.

 

[Zenrer]

I can't stand these as a description for a forum. There is a thousand other places where they can be placed. I don't even think they do much anyway. If you want to have a affiliate then just a simple text link will do. Most of the images don't even look good which turns people away from the forum.

They are just plain ugly

 

[Nebulous]

37 = suicide.

Target a certain niche. Make sure the other forum has members which would actually like to join your forum, not just "oh they have 10000 members, why not affiliate with them". Thats just suicide, and you will get nothing more than a backlink. Look for forums which have a similar purpose, so linking with a "hair dressing" forum would not go with "Hard core RPG". You get it?

Actually you should affiliate with forums of a different genre. Say you run a harry potter forum. Why would you affiliate with a bunch of harry potter forums? Your members are already on your forum talking about harry potter so why would they care to go to another one and do the same thing. Affiliating with different genres is probably the most beneficial for both parties.

 

[David]

Yes and no. You would like users of the same interest, eh? It really depends on the type of forum, but if you put it in your perspective, then yeah, you're right, but for me, the most beneficial would be of similar genres.

 

[Fergal]

Brack, maybe you could set up a partners / resources page for your affiliates, rather than showing them all scrolling on your forum homepage.

 

[AquaTeen]

37 = suicide.

Target a certain niche. Make sure the other forum has members which would actually like to join your forum, not just "oh they have 10000 members, why not affiliate with them". Thats just suicide, and you will get nothing more than a backlink. Look for forums which have a similar purpose, so linking with a "hair dressing" forum would not go with "Hard core RPG". You get it?

Actually you should affiliate with forums of a different genre. Say you run a harry potter forum. Why would you affiliate with a bunch of harry potter forums? Your members are already on your forum talking about harry potter so why would they care to go to another one and do the same thing. Affiliating with different genres is probably the most beneficial for both parties.

Maybe more beneficial to not lose members, but who is going to click harry potter on a fishing forum? Links should really only be made to ones of similar genre, because people don't click them anyways for the most part. It's mainly to help with your google ranking. Relevant links = higher ranking.

 

[Justin]

I add affiliates but I keep it to a max of 5 because a lot makes the forum look messy and incomplete. Scrolling affiliates are something I hate!

 

[Bossanova]

I affiliate with anyone except other Star Wars forums and forums that break ProBoards TOS.

 

[Nebulous]

37 = suicide.

Target a certain niche. Make sure the other forum has members which would actually like to join your forum, not just "oh they have 10000 members, why not affiliate with them". Thats just suicide, and you will get nothing more than a backlink. Look for forums which have a similar purpose, so linking with a "hair dressing" forum would not go with "Hard core RPG". You get it?

Actually you should affiliate with forums of a different genre. Say you run a harry potter forum. Why would you affiliate with a bunch of harry potter forums? Your members are already on your forum talking about harry potter so why would they care to go to another one and do the same thing. Affiliating with different genres is probably the most beneficial for both parties.

Maybe more beneficial to not lose members, but who is going to click harry potter on a fishing forum?

Lots of people could and would. People have different interests. If you only affiliate with the same forum as you have then nobody is going to benefit.
I do agree with similar ones though. Like if you ran a harry potter forum and affiliated with a book or movie lovers forum, lord of the rings forum (or any other type of story), chances are that will be effective.
But in general if you are affiliating with the same exact specific type of forum, it wont be beneficial to either party.

 

[Acorn]

You should get a stat counter and see if you are getting any hits from your affiliates. I was doubtful myself until I did two things: put up a poll for active newbies to vote on how they found us, and installed a stat counter. These things showed that about 10-12% of our hits were coming from affiliates, and that a higher proportion of the hits from affiliates with same-genre sites were sticking with the game. So we not only stuck with it but expanded it a little in an attempt to counter a slump we've been going through. It's not the windfall everyone longs for but for us, it hasn't hurt. And I think the little buttons down there are pretty XD