Look Beyond Your Borders
Learning how to effectively double your commission came by accident to me a few years ago. At the time I was looking for a cheap web hosting company and came across NameRoute. This Scottish company offers both a domain name registration and 10 MB web site hosting for a complete year for just $15.00 USD. I signed up and a month or so after I set up the web site I began noticing a significant portion of my visitors were from the United Kingdom as opposed to being Americans. It dawned on my that since my web site was being hosted on a computer in Edinburgh, Google UK included it in its ‘local’ index.
Unfortunately none of the affiliate programs I was promoting at that time shipped to the UK. So I tried to find affiliate programs I could send those visitors to and came accross a UK affiliate network called AffiliateFuture. While it is nowhere as big as the major American networks, it does have a good selection of merchants, great technology and excellent support. Plus I soon found out the best part of AffiliateFuture is that they pay in pounds sterling. So while my first cheque with them was around £450.00, I was credited with around $1100.00 by my bank when the cheque cleared! (You can see the current exchange rate at XE.com)
The interesting thing is that I found the amount that the UK merchants were charging were comparable to those of the American merchants with no conversion rate (i.e. the UK merchant was charging £10 for a widget while the American ones were charging $10 as well, with the commission also comparable). So the extra money earned when exchanging money was a great bonus for dealing with UK merchants. As well I found there was a little less competition with other affiliate sites in Google UK’s local results. Indeed I was the first result for “ink cartridges” for a little while.
What have been your experiences promoting affiliate marketing outside your country’s borders? Had any difficulties or great experiences? If so please leave a comment.