In an attempt to widen the net for my affiliate sites, I’ve recently set up a number of full page ads using the Pagerank10 advertising service, which they emphasise is NOT a paid links directory. They state that because of this you can get real targeted visitors to your website via the ‘full page ad’ you create. “Create Full Page Ads & Free Text Ads to advertise your website, products or services and receive real targeted visitors”.

The pages even have referral reports in the account control panel so that you can see how your site is being picked up & found in the search engines & which search phrases your visitors are using.

Each of the pages cost a minimum of £10 (£30 if you want one without text ads along the top) and can consist of just basic text, or can be designed using html. So far, I have created 8 of these full page ads, the first being for Cashback Shopper.

The first step is to choose a key phrase that will suit your site. Each pages’ URL is that key phrase, so you need to check what is available & what hasn’t already been taken. For Cashback Shopper, I chose cashback shopping site and since it was created on 23rd February 2008, it has received 593 unique visitors, directed from many different sources.

I’ve also set up pages for each of the My Travel Extras products:
airport hotels uk airports
airport lounges uk airports
airport parking uk airports
cheap car hire search
cheap flight tickets
discount london theatre tickets
short breaks

which have not yet received any visitors from the search engines (as they’ve only been live for a few weeks), but are receiving visits from other pagerank10 users.

I originally sourced my car hire search from Affiliate Future as it seemed pretty comprehensive at the time. However, reading a thread on the Affiliates4U forum, it was suggested that I try CarTrawler™, offering as it does, real-time access to pricing, availability and booking from over 450 car hire suppliers, at 17,000 locations in 134 countries! CarTrawler™ is a next generation global car rental distribution system, now serving over 95 international airlines and over 1,500 online partners & is the leading provider of online reservations technology to the global car rental market.

I signed up to the affiliate programme & was pleased to be accepted. Implementation of the search tool was very straightforward & the form itself is customisable in terms of design & colour scheme. There is also the option to produce the search form in 16 different languages & I have utilised this option to create a car hire search in seven other languages for now – Czech, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portugese & Spanish. It was important to ensure that the Robots meta tag was set to no index & no follow for these pages, as the rest of the content is still identical (debating whether to have it translated!!) & this would be penalised by the search engines!

I was very pleased to get two bookings through the Car Trawler tool in the first week, when I had received none through the previous form….I plan to start a PPC campaign on car hire in the next couple of weeks, hoping that targeting various long tail phrases will pick up some bookings missed by the major players!

I’m sure everyone knows about the phenomenon that is Facebook! Now one of the worlds most visited websites, it seems that everyone & his dog is facebooking, poking, posting & answering incredibly pointless quizzes! Does anyone in Britain’s offices NOT have a minimised window open for a sneaky look when the boss isn’t around?!

So, when Facebook started taking ads, it seemed only sensible to consider this as a new advertising arena for affiliate marketeers. I originally set up a couple of ads for Cashback Shopper, but these were rejected by Facebook for contravening their terms & conditions / It would appear that because my cashback site contains a section on Gambling sites, it cannot be advertised, presumably due to the Americans laws on internet gambling!!!! Don’t get me started on how ridiculous I think that is!

However, I decided to leave the Facebook ads for a while but placed a few yesterday relating to My Travel Extras.

Facebook ads let you target the ad to a users interests, so I decided to create a separate ad for each product on the site. For example, Theatre Tickets targets “people age 18 and older in the United Kingdom who like Billy Elliot, Buddy Holly, Dirty Dancing, Going To The Theatre, Grease, Hairspray, High School Musical, Les Miserables, The Lion King, London, Lord Of The Rings, Musical Theater, Musical Theatre, Musicals, Nights Out, Oliver, Oliver Twist, Phantom Of The Opera, Restaurants, The Sound Of Music, Theater, Theatre, or Wicked.”

Facebook’s ad creation system is VERY picky about punctuation & proper use of capitals & symbols, so a few mistakes led to repeated rejections & a lot of frustration! However, once you are familiar with what you can & can’t do, it was pretty straightforward to create ads for Theatre Tickets, Car Hire, Theme Park Breaks, London Theatre Breaks, Airport Parking, Airport Hotels, Airport Lounges & Short Breaks.

Initial assessment of the stats shows that click through rates are pretty low compared to what you would be aiming for from Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing, so the jury is still out. The best result so far is from Airport Lounges, with 0.12% click throughs! I’ll give the ads a week to see if they are worth continuing with.

Not wanting to be restricted to just theatre breaks, I decided to try & find a company supplying just theatre tickets, without the hotel stay.

I came across Encore Tickets, a ticket agency for trade clients, including airlines and tour operators needing group bookings, but who also operate Discount Theatre, which offers online booking for all London Musicals and Plays for retail customers.

Encore Tickets also offer a white label solution, which allowed me to build a site complementary to My Travel Extras. I toyed with the idea of incorporating the site in an iframe, but was advised against it & decided to offer it as a standalone site, with links between the two.

The site was set up very quickly & all I had to provide was a title banner image. The site is now live and generating some sales already!

At the My Travel Extras Theatre Ticket Shop you can buy discounted theatre tickets for London shows; we offer London theatre tickets & great money saving theatre packages, including a show ticket and dinner before or after the performance.

SAVE UP TO 50% ON WEST END SHOWS!
We are always looking out for great deals on London’s top theatre shows so that we can pass the savings on to you. From plays to musicals to spectaculars, our variety of offers guarantees something to entertain everyone’s tastes.

DINNER AND A SHOW FOR UP TO LESS THAN THE PRICE OF THE TICKET!
An evening at the theatre wouldn’t be complete without a pre- or post-show meal. We have searched the city to find excellent restaurants and deals to compliment your trip to London’s West End. With a guaranteed reservation at restaurant near the theatre, you won’t have to worry about rushing to the show or missing the opening scene!

What’s On NOW

Never Forget – Top price reduced to £32.50 for May only!

After rave reviews while touring the UK, the much anticipated Take That musical comes to the Savoy Theatre. Top price tickets (normally £49.50) are reduced to £32.50 for midweek May performances only

My Precious…Top Price reduced to £37.50!

Experience The Lord Of The Rings at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, and be amazed and astounded by this truly involving musical spectacular! Join Frodo, Sam and Gollum on the journey of a lifetime – get your hands on those ‘precious’ tickets today!

Dirty Dancing – Good May availability

Everyone’s favourite 80′s movie stormed the West End as a live musical version. Re-live Baby and Johnny’s romance on stage, featuring all of the infamous songs from the film.

Summer Has Arrived – Top Price reduced to £37.50!

Join the Von Trapp family in welcoming this heart-warming show’s newest star – Summer Strallen from TV hit series Hollyoaks. You’ll leave the London Palladium with a spring in your step and a smile on your face after seeing this timeless classic on stage.

Joseph

See the star of the show Lee Mead, as he wears the coat of many colours in this fantastic biblical tale.