Using Affiliates on Your Forum

[EWF]

Yea kalaz that is the one I had and it is what you are looking for

[Enchant]

kalaz said:

LINK REMOVED

sorta like this?

1789 said:

Yea kalaz that is the one I had and it is what you are looking for

These post could have been left off the discussion board and done in PM or ther means of communication. This is for discussion purposes only. Please make sure you read the rules and guidelines of this board before posting again. Thank you.

[unistar]

Getting back on subject. I only have four at the moment. But I have to say I have only had my site open for a little over a month and have 60 members. I personnally want different subjects and not the same type. Meaning no two Pirate RPG sites, but one could be discussion and one RPG and that is fine. It makes their chances higher of getting more traffic from mine, that way they want to affiliate with me. I know someone who is starting a site just for affiliates to list to make it easier for members to find the ones they want and the different types of sites. ((He is working on it.)) I plan to join that when it is opened.


axis101.proboards82.com/index.cgi

[Ímþ®óvîšâ†ó®]

One thing I've discovered about Affiliates is that....

Yes, they DO work, if you give someone the ability to affiliate with you, by use of the html code proceedure.

They WON'T work however, if it's the same affiliate button you've had for let's say....over 10 years. It's always wise to change the look of your button so that people who want to affiliate with you can see that you've been working hard on your forum and that it isn't dead.

Having said all this, my advice would be to affiliate with people that you know will invite OTHERS to join your forum. Also keeping in mind that there may be some members that want to see a different button that they haven't seen before. Although some of the members may not like having to change the url to the button that gets changed, at least it'll indicate that the admin of the forum is trying to make some improvements

[Rhiannon]

I have been looking to affiliate, but my biggest problem is this:
My forum is very small at the moment, and many of the boards I have found that affiliate won't affiliate with such a small board. But, if I had a lot of members, I wouldn't need to affiliate, now would I?
Is my very small member size going to continue to hinder affiliating? Anyone have any suggestions for me?
(And I'm sorry, but requiring 1000 members to affiliate seems a bit extreme to me.)

[unistar]

I agree with you. I don't think it should matter how many members you have. I don't care how many members a site has when I look for an affiliate. I look to see if they are active. You could have 1000 members but it won't do you any good if they are not active. I look to see what the site is about, and how it looks as well.

[Venomi]

i think affiliation is a good way to advertise your forum and possibly attract others to your forum but there are prices to pay

• it can seriously slow down your forum if you have lots of affiliates
  
• it can attract the wrong type of members]
  
• it can look untidy on a forum
  

but there are also good points

• It can attract usefull members
  
• Can boost your forums activeness
  
• can get your forum advertised to alot of people
  
  so i suppose overall it weighs its self out i dont think it is the best way to advertise but it is'nt the worst either either.
  
  Venomi:P

[~*Hunny*~]

How do i set up an affiliates box, im a newbie at all this and very confused..any help would be appreciated

[myke]

hunny said:

How do i set up an affiliates box, im a newbie at all this and very confused..any help would be appreciated

Hi, please ask in the Support Board.

[unistar]

I have noticed not all affiliate buttons are the same size and that the bigger ones get the most attention but they also take away from your site. So we made a code that resizes all the affiliate buttons to the same size. This way all the affiliates are on the same level and no one gets an unfair advantage. And it doesn't take away from our site. You want to advertise for them so they will you but not to the point where it takes away from your site.

[myke]

unistar said:

I have noticed not all affiliate buttons are the same size and that the bigger ones get the most attention but they also take away from your site. So we made a code that resizes all the affiliate buttons to the same size. This way all the affiliates are on the same level and no one gets an unfair advantage. And it doesn't take away from our site. You want to advertise for them so they will you but not to the point where it takes away from your site.

I think it's good practice to have an affiliate rule that affiliate banners cannot be over a certain size. 88x31 seems to be the standard size on ProBoards.

[Ímþ®óvîšâ†ó®]

rhiannonx said:

I have been looking to affiliate, but my biggest problem is this:
My forum is very small at the moment, and many of the boards I have found that affiliate won't affiliate with such a small board. But, if I had a lot of members, I wouldn't need to affiliate, now would I?
Is my very small member size going to continue to hinder affiliating? Anyone have any suggestions for me?
(And I'm sorry, but requiring 1000 members to affiliate seems a bit extreme to me.)

Not only that, there are other forum providers that recommend a website/forum has 1,000 registered members and over 100,000 total posts, just in order to Affiliate with them . That to me, is too hard to achieve. A member would have to be forcefully spamming and re-creating accounts to an extreme degree = Not cool.

Also, with regards to this bit....

My forum is very small at the moment, and many of the boards I have found that affiliate won't affiliate with such a small board. But, if I had a lot of members, I wouldn't need to affiliate, now would I?
Is my very small member size going to continue to hinder affiliating? Anyone have any suggestions for me?

Those forums that tend to knock out other boards in that fashion generally won't get anywhere. You, asking for a forum to affiliate with you, but won't because "you have a small board" is pathetically stupid. One day, your board could wind up the most popular someday, and that member whom you requested to affiliate with you, would've lost his/her chance

The point I'm getting at is, even when a forum has a small member count, *doesn't* mean that it will not be good to affiliate with it, it may just mean that the members there would be more active then a board with a 1,000 members whereby only a few of them post. So I wouldn't worry about them too much at this rate

[kelendria]

Affiliates is the most effective way of advertising for me.
I used to use buttons but if they ever went offline it got really ugly (so it's better to host your own)
I use text links now, not everybody likes this method but it's tidier for me.
An affiliates box on the front of your forum can look neat, however it may be advised to try & keep them all the same size! Just a thought!

[Gamoc]

I too have found affiliations fun, but I do not think that you should affiliate with everyone who wants to affiliate with you, it is never smart to do that. Your affiliates might get overcrowded and some people will never see all of the affiliates if there are a lot of them there. I think that maybe even thread affiliates work, a link to the forum with an image will work, and people will have a better chance of seeing them all more.

You never want to ask everyone to affiliate with you, not everyone you see at least. Just a couple of people at a time. If you don't have a whole lot of members, you don't need a whole lot of affiliates, it actually makes your forum look bad to have a lot of affiliates and like, 4 members.

Affiliates can be a great way for advertising, but I would not consider them to best and completely rely on them to get people to join your site, you need to try other forms and methods also.

[VoodooBlue]

Ok, so I have a question on affiliates. Well, it's more like opinions, but I would like to have some ideas on this issue and I'm sure there's probably other forum owners thinking about this.

As we know, most forums demand that you put their affiliate banner up immediately when requesting to be affiliated. So then you have their banner displayed on your forum and no reply to your affiliate request yet. And you check and check the forums forever and still no one has dealt with your affiliate request.

So my question is, in your opinion, how long does one keep a forums affiliate banner up and wait for an affiliate request to be accepted or declined before you take the banner down again and give up on affiliating with that forum at all or for the time being?