New GoDaddy Coupon! $1.99 New .com Domain!
The way DotWeekly.com stays “live” and free is from affiliate commissions, advertisers and sales of products or services. Just like most websites. Well, I do not have advertisers and I really only lightly promote a couple other things I have. So my main income from DotWeekly is from affiliate links I use in my articles and general links on the site.
With that said, affiliate links are very important to the life of DotWeekly. Making $1.73 for an entire days of work (blogging, research, hosting, time etc) just doesn’t work. It doesn’t pay any bills. Tuesday, that was my income of DotWeekly. $1.73 via Commission Junction. I don’t know many people who work for 12 hours and make $1.73.
So, I spent a lot of time thinking of ways to improve things for not only me, but you the reader!
On June 17, 2013 I wrote about two helpful and interesting topics that included techniques that I was trying to improve the income of DotWeekly and for the reader. This may seem simple to a non-site owner, but be common to site owners. It is hard to directly send you to a location (product or service) and get credit for it! Is this the affiliate providers fault? Sometimes. Is it the advertisers fault? Often, simply due to campaigns being offered and the options provided to the affiliates.
So, on June 17, I used a new tactic that I discovered on the 16th. Deep Link Generator, which is provided as a valuable tool through CJ.com . GoDaddy uses CJ.com to manage its affiliate program. I added the link creator to my browser as suggested and created my links! This is going to be great for both me and my readers I was thinking.
I am going to be writing about GoDaddy’s Domain Discount Club and now I can directly send my readers (via a link) to the DDC page, and conversions should greatly improve. Why? Normally I would have to send the user just to GoDaddy.com and hope they a.) click the affiliate link b.) find what I was talking about on a massive site..
Using the Deep Link, I can send a reader directly to the page and product that I was talking about. Not a general location like GoDaddy.com. A specific location and actually provide you with exactly what I was talking about… So I did just this. Created the link using the tool provided by CJ.com. I even provided a couple different links with discount codes directly attached. I tried to even create a link with the DDC, discount right to the GoDaddy Cart. Basically a one click thing.. but GoDaddy didn’t have the cart page enabled.
Well, long story shorter… As the day went on after my research and using the new deep linking tool, nobody was clicking. No commissions? What was going on? I even had people contact me, asking what coupon I had used. What? I provided links in the story I wrote. Then, somebody contacted me and said they purchased the DDC and they “tried” with my link in my story, but IT DIDN”T WORK!
Oh man, I thought! No wonder why I’m seeing no commissions, no clicks. Maybe I didn’t copy and paste the link correctly? I tried to fix it and it simply didn’t work. Oh yeah, I didn’t test the link, maybe I should have! I didn’t, because CJ is a big company and they “should” have things working correctly. Well, I didn’t test it and the links I applied didn’t work. The links didn’t resolve.
Lesson learned, but why are the links not working… I had others try my link, didn’t work no matter who I asked to try.
I contact CJ.com with my issues. All is good, stated the first reply from them. I tried another computer, 3 browsers… the links did not work. I could create the links, but they didn’t resolve to GoDaddy. They resolved to a blank white page on a domain owned by CJ.
Another CJ contact and this time, they discovered something… GoDaddy doesn’t have Deep Linking enabled. So that is why it doesn’t work. Does GoDaddy not want affiliates to easily and target click locations? That seems odd!
Well, longer story shorter. GoDaddy doesn’t have deep links enabled. Nor does Domain.com, another affiliate of mine. I stopped checking after those two, due to frustration. A great tool available, but the advertisers are not playing the game!! Who wants higher conversions right! Who wants to make visitors happy and send them to exact locations, right?
Shame on you CJ as well, for allowing the link generator to even produce an affiliate link for a provider who doesn’t even have it enabled!
Deep linking is important to readers, because it makes your experience more enjoyable. Conversions should improve, because you can send a user directly to the location you intended.
I have contacted GoDaddy Affiliate department, with two different contacts, asking for direct linking to be enabled. So I will see if my efforts of the emails, explaining and this blog post help in this effort. It simply makes sense to allow direct links, with affiliate credit to them. Both for me and you!
I learn lessons with this blog everyday. The 17th was a BAD DAY. I messed up my self created link that allows you to visit a domain auction I talk about. There was a space in the link I created, which prevented people trying to visit the Retweet.com auction, not to land on the auction.. because that link was broken (my fault, but also a direct linking issue via CJ / GoDaddy for not allowing auctions.godaddy, cart.godaddy or any deep linking). My second article of the day fell flat on it’s face with my affiliate links to DDC not working at all. Income, $0.00 due to two stories I wrote, with 100% useless links.
Just another day in the life of a domain blogger!
This has happened with all of us at some point or the other. I remember how I lost hundreds of dollars in a month because a link to keen.com (a CJ program for psychic reading 10 odd years ago) didn’t work. Normally I would earn hundreds of dollars in a month just through that one program. Later on, CJ.com was taken to court for link cloaking or something like that and hundreds of affiliates (including me) received $450 as compensation. Well, some received a lot more. This is what I had received. I am certain that quite a few readers will end up helping you out here by clicking on the banners shown on the side of this page. Maybe that’s what you wanted all along. Maybe not. Either ways, a nice article for me to read.
Savio, I’m glad you enjoyed the read. I always share in my articles without holding back any info, so this article was no different. Just me telling my story and how it happened, why it happened etc. I never would, will or ask anybody to simply click something to help me. I try my best to provide helpful information and in doing so, if I provide help and bring something to your attention in an article of mine, and I happen to provide a link, you click it, then I think I earned it. Banner ads suck, I hate them… I’d rather not put up a single one, but it is what it is. Google adwords and one CJ banner. Overtime, I will find something more useful for those banner ads, but for now as I get use to blogging again, they will stay in place. 😉 Thanks again for stopping by, and hope to see you again.
Thanks for revealing this valuable information!
Jamie. I have been deep linking for years and all my picks go straight to the GD auction. It’s easy. CJ messed it up yesterday while they were trying to fix something. I’m working with GD to fix it. Same thing happened for a few days last year at this same time. GD helped me with a work around. I would help you but if I remember a quote from an email you sent me last year after I asked you for help on links. “If I help you then I will make less commission” 🙂
I have the auction link that took me a week or so to create for direct linking auctions but direct linking other stuff, not so much. I’ll figure it out if I need to, but the tool provided from CJ just makes it so much easier, simply makes sense for GoDaddy to activate it etc. P.S. Shane, I think I remember helping you recover some $$ that would have been missed 🙂 but I do recall not wanting to give out the link I made. 😉
See below. You are correct. You have been a great help
I used CJ affiliate links for about a year on a number of sites and view it as a total waste. While Google AdSense CTR might be low and clicks don’t pay much, at least you earn something. With CJ I didn’t make a dime despite I believe hundreds of thousands of impressions.
I owe you an apology. How quickly I forget that in between that first time we had issue that you were nice enough to work with me on getting a fix. Again, my apologies, you’ve been a great help and I was wrong to say different