Hi folks,

Many thanks to BK for clearing me in advance to post on this.

Some of you wil already know me, but by way of introduction I'm more of a "hobbiest" webmaster.

Through marketing my Irish boating business, I picked up an interest in E Marketing leading me to set up an Irish online boat club which now has 1,500 members and 150,000 page views per month.

Along the way I dabbled with building other community type websites and learning about other related subjects such as SEO,affiliate marketing etc. It's been fun and interesting.

I've just set up an Irish dating site www.thirtyflirty.com aimed at Irish Thirty Somethings. I've added an automated Affiliate function to the site as a marketing tool. This is where I'd appreciate your collective advice!

At the moment we have 300 actual members on the site and the dynamics are building slowly. I reckon that I really need about 1,000 members (critical mass) before it reaches an activity level that will justify charging for Premium membership. To start with, I am allowing the first 1,000 members to join as Free Premium members. After that, I think that affilliate marketing is the way to go.

Would potential affiliates such as yourselves sign up for a short initial "no return" period ( advertising a free to join site - No comission) until we reached the critical mass when we could reward these founder affiliates with a more generous commission say (30%)?

Or, would I be better off to market the site to critical mass level by using normal newpaper / magazine advertising ? I don't think that Google adwords are the way to go as the level of competition is so high and we'd end up losing a shed load of money in the great swamp.

Kind regards,

Stuart

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Club Powerboat.ie | Sailing Club.ie| Car Club.ie | Thirty Flirty Irish Dating

Personally speaking, Not a chance! If I am to use my time for this, I want to get compensated, simple as. If I was you, I would look into trying to create something viral, low money but can be quite hard to come up with something good.

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Geansai Gorm | Web Design Ireland | Free CSS Menus | Canavan Disease

I'd be amazed if you found a good affiliate who would do this for free.

Why don't you do some surveys and release interesting press releases? Have a look through a few nespapers and you'll see loads of companies do this.

The other alternative is sell advertising space on your website as you have an interesting demographic of visitor.

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Computer Room Cleaning UK|Keyboard Cleaning UK|Suction Cup Lifters UK | Cable Grommets UK | Koldlok UK|Snag Lists Ireland |
Interior Design Ireland|Stone Cladding Ireland |Glass Blocks Ireland |DIY Kitchens Ireland

Cheers BB, I have used viral successfully on a few occasions on my other sites. Much easier in a narrow niche established site, where you already have a foothold.

Where I was coming from with my model was, that I reckon that there must be people on here currently carrying affiliate banner ads that are not performing. It might be worth their while to take a short term gamble on my site with the promise of a decent commission in a few weeks when the site is up and running.

Other models that I am considering are:

• Fixed affiliate commission per free sign up say €0.50 which would get me to target for a few hundred euro following which I would introduce an attractive % based commission for paid membership.
• Newspaper and magazine advertising of free Premium Membership.
• Beer Mats / Night Club promotions
• Paid banner ads with the likes of you guys.
• Free Banner Swop with another webmaster(s)

Another angle that I am considering is to leave the site with Free premium membership for all to become a traffic focussed site.

Thanks for the feedback and kick starting the discussion !

Stuart

Hi Fintan,

Even in my other life where I would have a fairly good profile wih the specialist press, press releases are so hard to get into print these days.

Advertising has a touch of chicken and egg about it. No one will want to advertise until w are up and running. One compromise is the suggestion that I made above of a free link exchange with someone else trying to launch a site or better still a pool of us launching sites.

If 5 of us, each with a start up site with say 500 members or viewers, pool together to share banners, then that's a potential new audience of 2,000 each.


Stuart

Why gamble with you when we can gamble with other programs that already pay? Unless you have a payment structure already in place then its not worth our while.

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Hi Gavin,

We are considering two different payment structures. €0.50 per signup in the free period followed by 30% per premium signup.

In fairness, if you read my original post, we are not looking to partner with the mega players such as yourself, but rather other small sites such as ourselves, with say 100,000 to 200,000 page views per month. I reckon that it would be a low risk exercise for other sites like ours to band together for an appropriate banner swop. Many of the smaller sites (see other posts on this forum) are only generating less than €50 per week from their current affiliate partners. I'd have no problem paying up front to match that in the early days to remove the risk factor

When I researched the cost of getting a "professional" to get us up to critical mass I was quoted between €3k and €6k!!!! The figures just don't work!

Many of the online advertising agencies won't talk to anyone with less than 500,000 PV per month ( See discussion post by me in these forums a week or so ago).

I really think that there is a niche for someone suitable to set up an ad agency aimed at groups of smaller site in Ireland.

Kind regards,

Stuart

Hi Stuart,

I'm far from being a mega player but here is some numbers that I'm working with from U.S. firm.

$1 per click
$10 per profile
$100 per sign up

The numbers arent overall important for me its more to do with the conversions. I know you are only starting out so matching those rates is probably way off for you at the moment.

Understood Gavin, and obviously you are way out of our league making that kind of money every month.

As I said, we are only really capable of looking at affiliation with other small Irish focussed sites like ourselves, hence this discussion to investigate whether other small site owners (or owners of small sites)would be interested in clubbing together in a cross marketing exercise.

Stuart

Looks like the forums are going quiet as the long weekend beckons !

Thanks to Gavin, Fintan and BB for the contributions and to Blacknight for the use of the hall ! Much appreciated.

If there are any like-minded small operators like myself out there who might be interested in coming together to cross market with banners or an affilliate deal, email me off line admin at thirtyflirty.com or message me here ?

Enjoy the weekend all !

Kind regards,

Stuart