It is no breaking news. A lot of content producing companies (socalled sponsors) are in need of visitors. Where do these come from?
A daily growing group of internet users, so called webmasters are the engine behind the ever growing need of visitors for the sponsors.
The sponsor is not able to set this up himself, so he searches for hundreds (if not thousands) ow webmasters to do the job for him.
Of course, you will get paid. A lot. In fact the price you are getting paid is a sort of simple arithmetic.
There are some parameters that we need for an equasion:
- n = the number of visitors the webmaster sends to the sponsors website in a certain period.
- c = the conversion (an average): how much sales are generated by your traffic?
- p = the (average) price a visitor pays to become a member.
- r = the retention. Meaning if a visitor stays 2 periods of a membership, you get twice the comission
- s = your share (a percentage of every sale)
Without much trouble we can now set up an equasion:
your money = n * c * p * r * s
This means that EVERY parameter has a DIRECT influence on your income.
n is obvious. More traffic means more sales. Be ware: Q will have influenc on it! It can be expressed in Raw and Unique visitors.
Figures that can be seen: 13 raw, 10 unique. Or 1432 raw and 1254 unique. Not uncommon: 19234 raw and 14231 unique. If you wonder why we
mention as well Raw as Unique? A Unique visitor can visit the same website the same day twice or more! Hence the raw visitors should be higher
c is the glue between the effort of the webmaster and the effort of the sponsor. In fact we can say that
the conversion is in fact the same as the Quality of your traffic and the sponsors website and content.
It is expressed in the number of visitors are needed for 1 sale (on average). Often found figures are 1:75 (search engine traffic), 1:350 (TOPLIST, good TGP or CJ), 1:800 (CJ or TGP) up to 1:1500 (not so good traffic)
But: conversion is AND the Quality of your traffic AND the quality of the sponsors website and content. If the sponsor sells lousy content, conversion will be bad (1:2000).
If the sponsor has good content bad a lousy preview, again a low conversion is to be expected.
Prices can differ. Good content deserves a good Price. If all other parameters are kept the same a different price
can and will influence your income. However, if a price changes, the conversion changes as well. If the price is to high, people will no longer pay for it.
A low price can have unexpected effects. More visitors will be able to pay for it. But other visitors know what a paysite is worth.
A low price often means low quality of content (or just little content).
In case of a WEBSHOP the average prices can be a lot higher than compared to that of a (membership) paysite. However a shop has a retention of 1.
There will (usually) be no rebills.
Retention is a positive figure, more than 1. Retentions can differ from 1.0 to 4.
It does also depend on the offered membership periods and prices.
Normally retention is calculated as the number of months a member stays a member. If all members stay 3 months, the retention is 3.0
Your share (commission, percentage) is a factor of 20 to 80 percent (0.2 to 0.8). Very commonly used is 40 to 50%.
Higher percentages are paid for webmasters that deserve a sort of bonus.
If you are dedicated to your work as a webmaster you can get shares of 60%.
All of the above parameters should be taken in consideration when choosing WHAT traffic you are working in and WHERE to send it.
(c) R. Hankel, top webmaster
