Here’s a guide to the options available for anyone that wants to promote flights online. I hope it’s useful to someone!

Flight Comparison Affiliate Schemes

I’ve put these “meta-search” schemes at the top since they offer a great way to make some money for publishers of travel websites. Typically they will pay for every lead rather than a booking, so while payouts are low you should be able to get a steady stream of income from them.

• Cheapflights.co.uk – This scheme at CJ pays out a flat fee of 20p every time a user clicks on a partner offer. With typical conversions of over 100%, it is common for multiple payouts to be earned from a single user. They have some good search banners which seem effective at encouraging users to search.
• Fly.com – This scheme is at Tradetracker. I just found out about it so haven’t reviewed it yet.
• Liligo.co.uk – Via CJ. This is a nice site. They pay between 3p and 33p for outgoing clicks.
• Skyscanner.net – The Skyscanner affiliate programme available via CJ has some useful “who flies where” widgets to encourage your visitors to do a search. Instead of a flat fee for a lead skyscanner works on a revenue share deal.

Airline Affiliate Schemes

Here’s a list of airline affiliate schemes. There may be some that are on two or more networks at the same time so I would be grateful for any comments if you spot any omissions or errors.

• Aer Lingus – The Irish low cost airline which also has a base at Gatwick can be promoted via Tradedoubler.
• Air France – CJ
• Air New Zealand – Affiliate Future
• Air South West – Affiliate Future
• Avro – Affiliate Future
• British Airways – Affiliate Window & Tradedoubler
• Brussels Airlines – Affiliate Future & Tradedoubler
• Canadian Affair – Not exactly an airline but if you can promote Canada flights you’ll find them at Tradedoubler
• Cathay Pacific – Tradedoubler
• Emirates – CJ
• Finnair – Tradedoubler
• FlyBE – Tradedoubler where you can earn 1%. Will need to sell a lot of flights to retire early.
• flyBMI – flyBMI have quite a proactive affiliate manager. You can find the scheme at CJ
• flythomascook.com – the seat only website for Thomas cook has their affiliate programme at affili.net. Publishers can earn between £5 and £8 per booking.
• Iceland Express – A bit niche perhaps but there is a generous payout of over £15 per booking on the schemes availabe at Affiliate Future & Webgains. (webgains has the higher payout).
• Jet2 – At last a low cost airline with an affiliate scheme. You can join the Jet2 scheme at Affiliate Future. They only fly from the North of England, Scotland and N.Ireland though so be careful where you promote.
• KLM – KLM have a massive longhaul route network via Amsterdam. You can find them at Tradedoubler
• Lufthansa – Tradedoubler
• SAS – Tradedoubler
• Singapore Airlines – Tradedoubler
• Snowjet – The snowjet affiliate scheme is at Affiliate Future where you can earn £5 per passenger.
• Swiss International – Tradedoubler
• TAP Portugal - Affiliate Future
• Transavia – This off shoot of KLM can be found at Tradedoubler. Not much UK activity by this airline right now though.
• Virgin Atlantic – Affiliate Future

Online Travel Agency Affiliate Schemes

Even in these days of cutting out the middle man, promoting an online travel agency (OTA) instead of an airline direct can reap dividends. Because they offer more choice of flights there is a higher chance of conversion. It’s also true to say that without a good converting website an online travel agent won’t last long in this slim margin industry so generally they convert OK. You can also use these sites for airlines that don’t have affiliate schemes or have such duff websites that you’re better of sending the traffic to the OTA.

• ebookers – Affiliate Future
• Expedia – Tradedoubler
• Lastminute.com – Tradedoubler
• netflights.com – Tradedoubler
• Opodo – Affiliate Window
• Travelpack – Affiliate Future

You might also find that coincidentally you get some conversions for hotels too via the OTAs, as they are in general better at dynamic packaging than many of the airlines.

Why Promote Flights Online ?

“In the past 25 years the [UK air transport] industry has seen continuous growth, and the demand for passenger air travel in particular is forecast to increase from the current level of 236 million passengers to 465 million in 2030″ source : Wikipedia

For many airlines, their direct to consumer websites account for the majority of their bookings. Some low cost airlines rely on online channels for a high ninety something percent of their total seats sold. For this reason you can expect their websites to be optimised for conversion and have very few offline leakage points (such as high street shops or call-centres). While airlines do of course have call centres they don’t encourage their customers to call, often hiding the phone number or making it expensive to call.

Related posts:

1. SAS Airline UK affiliate scheme
2. Transavia affiliate programme
3. Lufthansa Affiliate Scheme

Post from Rob Barham's: Affiliate Marketing for the Travel Industry blog.

Airline Affiliate Schemes

I can’t think of anything much more annoying as a publisher than having to change existing affiliate links because a company decides to change network. If you have done a lot of deep linking and have a lot of sites it can be quite a lot of work to change the links and unfortunately it doesn’t create any incremental revenue for you.

So I can’t share the enthusiasm from Lastminute.com who are “very happy to announce that the lastminute.com affiliate programme is now exclusive on the TradeDoubler network.”

Closing date on CJ is September 2010.

Related posts:

1. When Customers Pay More For Using Affiliate Links

Post from Rob Barham's: Affiliate Marketing for the Travel Industry blog.

Is there anything more annoying than having to change links ?

Just wanted to give an update on the new niche travel affiliate network that is quietly developing away at “TourCMS”…

TourCMS is a reservation system used by 70 or so small tour operators and specialist holiday providers such as adventure holiday companies. Most of these companies are available via an affiliate network (“marketplace”) run by TourCMS.

If you send traffic to the tour operators’ own websites then the TourCMS tracking will ensure you are paid for your marketing efforts. One feature that caught my eye and interesting in these days of constant mumbling about voucher codes ruining the affiliate arena, the tracking works on first click attribution.

The standard terms are that TourCMS pay 6% on an average transaction value of 1000 GBP (1600 USD). Alternatively if you wish you can use the TourCMS affiliate system for tracking but handle the money transfer side yourself on whatever commission model you devise with the merchants…. So if for example, you suspect that a specialist tango holidays in Argentina tour operator will be converting a lot of your traffic offline you can propose a pay per click model.

All products are geocoded and have images, dates, prices & availability available via XML. You can use some basic JavaScript widgets to quickly add products to a site if XML is not your thing. Here’s an example of a “ticker” widget:

One downside of the TourCMS system is that once you have signed up as an affiliate you have to contact individual suppliers to suggest they work with you. However there is an email system so you can send an alert to them all (with a click to connect link contained within). This makes the process a little easier. Or you can contact them individually (their full contact details are available in the system).

Related posts:

1. Marketplace for niche holiday companies

Post from Rob Barham's: Affiliate Marketing for the Travel Industry blog.

TourCMS introduce multiple tour operator affiliate network

The Sunshine Holidays affiliate scheme is now available on Paid On Results. ( 90 day cookie, 7% commission on hotels, transfers and airport parking ).

As explained on the Sunshine blog there will be new reporting available which will include making available which specific hotel the customers have booked.

There is a couple of other features from Paid On Results that I am fond of. First is their “daily summary” email which gives you details of new pending / confirmed commissions for that day.

Secondly, they have a “payment on demand” feature – once you have been paid by them twice you move onto their Payment On Request payment model (if you are being paid by BACS) this is a faster payment model allowing you to request payment at any time, for all validated sales made to the date you request payment.

Related posts:

1. Magpie embrace affiliate model
2. Sunshine.co.uk Affiliate Banners

Post from Rob Barham's: Affiliate Marketing for the Travel Industry blog.

Sunshine Affiliate Programme

Bit of a weird email just received (copied below)…

It’s quite nice and everything, it just seems a little bit strange to write all that and not even include a real name ! ?. I suspect this is something like an off shore / out sourced service that the company concerned are using. I don’t think that is a very wise way to operate an affiliate programme.

Dear Associates,

I hope this letter finds you well.

After talking to many experts, we have come up with a strategy to enhance our relationship and help you to capitalize maximum from our affiliate program. And this is the first step in the same direction.

I am a new affiliate manager working for —— affiliate program and I have something to offer you to take our relationship to one step ahead.

In order to take care of your each and every need I am here dedicatedly handling —— Affiliate program for you. I will not only help you get your order process and provide you with creatives on time; but I will talk to you and listen to you, your views and your suggestions. I will make sure your queries and problems are resolved within the given time frame. I will provide you weekly updates about our top selling products, new products, new banner, new feeds, etc.

I am here to serve you, so that you can get maximum return out of our affiliate program.

I and our entire —— affiliate team want to provide our associates the best affiliate program service experience in order to help them earn maximum out of our program.

Obviously, this will not be possible without your coordination and support. So feel free to email me or talk to me to quickly resolve your issues or in case if you need anything to maximize your campaigns; below you will find my contact details (Email and Live chat ids).

I am looking forward to hear from you.

Regards,
–
Affiliate Manager

No related posts.

Post from Rob Barham's: Affiliate Marketing for the Travel Industry blog.

Outsourcing Affiliate Management ?

Some people think 1% is not enough to get out of bed for, I quite like airline affiliate schemes though. Flight tickets don’t tend to leak to offline channels and it’s now a very mature e-commerce market – people are in general very comfortable booking their flights online these days.

So it was interesting to see that the Flybe Affiliate Programme has launched on Tradedoubler. There’s actually a whole load of airlines available to promote at TD – mostly of the “flag carrier” variety.

About Flybe

Flybe is one of Europe’s largest and most successful regional airlines, with 202 routes serving 13 countries, operating from a total of 70 departure points (38 UK and 32 European airports). Their route network is 76% domestic UK, 14% European business and 10% European leisure destinations.

Flybe Affiliate Programme Details

• Flybe will pay affiliates 1% of the total basket value of a Flybe flight
• The Flybe affiliate programme has an average order value of £188.48 (average over the past 2 months)
• 30 day post-click window
• An API feed is available to all affiliates on request, if you would like access to this, get in touch with Tradedoubler after you have applied for the scheme

Related posts:

1. First Choice Affiliate Scheme
2. Lufthansa Affiliate Scheme
3. SAS Airline UK affiliate scheme

Post from Rob Barham's: Affiliate Marketing for the Travel Industry blog.

Flybe Affiliate Scheme

My New Job

After what turned out to be around a year as a full time affiliate, at the turn of the year I had a nice offer to be part of something bigger and joined an e-Commerce outsourcing company called “Boozt”. Boozt designs and operates etail websites for fashion brands. The services on offer also include the warehousing and fulfilment of the goods. We work like a super ultra affiliate and get a cut of the revenue generated.

Affiliate Marketing Strategy

I’m not hanging up my affiliate marketing mouse and laptop though, Oh no. I hope to be able to use the cushion of a steady income to outsource some of the boring bits?!, perhaps acquire some memorable domain names and do a bit more experimenting with my existing sites. One thing I do have to work on now I have less time though is to get over my twin addictions of stats checking and domain name buying.

My New Blog (Theme)

Unless you are reading from the RSS (hmm, hope that is still OK?!), or viewing the mobile version, you have probably noticed that I have given the affiliate4travel site a makeover. After I spotted those 2 nice wordpress travel themes from woo the other day I bought them. Since they do three for the price of one I also bought a more “corporate” theme called delegate which is what you are seeing now. I am really impressed with the custom woo back end and options. Makes using WordPress even easier. Please let me know what you think of the new design and if you can spot anything that sucks.

No related posts.

Post from Rob Barham's: Affiliate Marketing for the Travel Industry blog.

New Job Rob, New Blog Rob

I’ve recently signed up for Skimlinks so here is my initial review.

I will try and report back in more detail later, after I have tried it out on a few sites.

What Is Skimlinks?

Skimlinks is a service that will convert normal hyperlinks into affiliate links automatically. The links look the same to the user and the system can be used in-conjunction with any existing affiliate links you have.

They seem to have thought of everything – there is a URL shortener so you can monetise e.g. twitter links, there is also the skimkit software which helps you find products and their images and deeplinks. There are other goodies too, like exclusive discount codes.

The main advantages that I can see are:

• Save Time – Concentrate on great content and marketing or analysis.
• Save Time – No need to sign up for hundreds of affiliate programmes across multiple networks.
• Aggregation – Great for smaller affiliates – all your cash will be in one place so no having to wait to hit a payment threshold.
• No Worries – When a merchant changes network.
• Deeplink More – Have you ever linked to a merchants homepage because you couldn’t be bothered deeplinking? now you can deeplink away and that will most likely enhance your conversion rate.

The disadvantage of Skimlinks could be that you take a hit in the pocket – they take 25% of the earnings.

Which Travel Companies Use Skimlinks?

When I do a search for UK and the “travel, flights & hotels” category there are 324 merchants listed in the Skimlinks directory. So the answer is that most travel merchants are available through Skimlinks. They have however included some very vaguely travel merchants such as The Ordnance Survey and Millets in that total of 324 though. By comparison, when I checked the USA section there were 104 merchants listed. For some merchants you’ll also be able to see the average basket size and conversion rate. Some affiliate networks offer this too of course but with Skimlinks it’s all in one place.

Tiered Commission

There isn’t too much of this in the travel industry, but tiered rates of commission do exist on some – Expedia, Hotels.co.uk, Holiday Extras Air New Zealand, Ramada Jarvis, Butlins, are examples off the top of my head. In these cases, assuming Skimlinks can find their way into the top tier, then the 25% cut that skimlinks take would be made up for in many cases by the extra commission.

Skimkit – Content Creation Tool

Over to youtube for an overview on this one….. I can imagine it being very useful for e.g. gadget and fashion bloggers, will let you know if I can find some good uses for the travel sector too.

Disclosure : Skimlinks are operating an affiliate / referral scheme off their own… If you use my referral link to join Skimlinks I will get 10% of your earnings for a year. It’s not taken out of your earnings though, it’s from Skimlinks own margin.

No related posts.

Post from Rob Barham's: Affiliate Marketing for the Travel Industry blog.

Skimlinks Review

The short answer : This blog is hosted by EZPZ Hosting, I am also happy with the hosting I have at native space & Evo Hosting. All of the latter offer cPanel hosting. I use Heart Internet for domains and like the control panel but don’t currently have any hosting there.

Best Hosting For Affiliates

Because affiliates want their sites to perform well, there is no real difference between what would be the best hosting for an affiliate compared to what would be the best hosting option for any webmaster. If you are a full time affiliate then of course it’s even more important that you get as close as possible to 100% uptime, fast and reliable support and reliable backups and security.

Buying Web Hosting – Tips

• Time saver – sign up to a host that offers installation scripts such as installatron & fantastico deluxe.
• Don’t get sucked in by cheap introductory offers – moving hosts is in general a hassle.
• Keep hosting & domains separate - gives you more control in “last resort” situations.
• cPanel control panel – not the prettiest but does a great job. Some hosting companies build their own and they are usually lacking in one way or another.

Why Reseller Hosting ?

Many affiliate marketing dudes are domain name kleptomaniacs and end up with a domain collection in double figures or more in no time, the solution for all those domain names (if you want to keep your domain / site ratio respectable) could well be a reseller hosting account.

• It’s often much cheaper to take a reseller account than a standard hosting account.
• Each website sits on it’s own account so it’s easier to sell the site.
• You always have the option to actually start charging for hosting.

UK Hosting For SEO ?

There is often talk that you are best of with UK hosting for UK SEO. I think this is a bit over done but you may find your site loads faster if your site is hosting on a UK data centre so that’s worth something. Also paying in £ you don’t have to worry about exchange rates when it comes to renewal time.

From an SEO point of view, if you are using .co.uk / .org.uk domains then you should be fine to host in the US or elsewhere. If your website is on a .com / .net and you are targetting UK customers, you are probably best of with UK hosting, but if you aren’t, it’s not the end of the world. Just make sure your site sends others signals that you are targetting UK users. Here’s a few ideas :

• A UK postal address published on the site.
• An entry with your UK location in Google Maps and equivalents.
• Links from .co.uk / .org.uk sites.
• Entries in UK specific directories.
• There is an option in Google Webmaster Tools where you can specify Geo-Target.

Related posts:

1. Pronet Hosting – “Insane” Offer
2. Free hosting from Affiliate Network
3. Hosting for WordPress

Post from Rob Barham's: Affiliate Marketing for the Travel Industry blog.

Web Hosting Tips

OK, not a cruise ship.

A mini tidal wave of cruise companies have hit the affiliate industry recently.

One of my former employers Thomson Cruises has been live at CJ for a few years but in 2010 they have been joined in the affiliate scene by a few others :

• Cruise giant P&O Cruises at Affiliate Window
• Ocean Village also at Affiliate Window
• Cruise.co.uk (who paid $1 million for domain cruises.co.uk) at Affiliate Future
• LowCostCruising.com at Affiliate Window

And from other cruise merchants that have been around longer, easycruise at Affiliate Future also deserve a mention as do DFDS who recently gave me Spotify Premium.

Speaking to an ex colleague about this they expressed surprise that the commission available is so much lower than available to cruise travel agents. Cruise agents are on high commissions yes but they tend to use these to give cash discounts / free parking / free insurance etc. Some cruise companies meanwhile give online discounts so in the future there should be space for affiliates to do OK from cruise.

Much to the relief of many traditional travel agents, online conversion for cruise holidays is rather low and will take a while to increase significantly but it definitely will over time… but think about the basket values… Around a year ago I read that Cruises.co.uk were converting around 10% online (ouch) and highest basket value back then had been £24k!

Related posts:

1. Travel programmes to promote in the credit crunch
2. Marketplace for niche holiday companies
3. BookMe2 affiliate scheme

Post from Rob Barham's: Affiliate Marketing for the Travel Industry blog.

Cruise Holiday Affiliate Programmes