How to connect and use affiliate programs on your website: my case study

Introduction

The article isn't finished yet; I'm waiting for statistics and results for the final chapter. But for now, you can familiarize yourself with what kind of affiliate programs to use and how to apply them on a website like mine.

1. First, we'll look at what an affiliate program is and which ones I'll be using.
2. Then, I'll show you my website stats so you understand the framework I used to place my affiliate programs.
3. Next, I'd like to share my approach to how to integrate affiliate links into the website.
4. And finally, I'll summarize how much I earned, where I earned it, and what's next.

About affiliate programs

An affiliate program is a strategy for attracting customers to their products and services through a third party that offers them(the products) to their own audience.

1. CPM (Cost Per Mile) - Cost per 1,000 views, like YouTube
2. CPC (Cost Per Click) - Cost per click
3. CPA (Cost Per Action) - Cost per user action after a click. This could be a registration, purchase, or subscription.
4. CPL (Cost Per Lead) - Cost per lead
5. CPI (Cost Per Install) - Cost per install

Which affiliate programs will I use?

1. Beget - hosting provider and domain registrar
2. Reg - hosting provider and domain registrar
3. Timeweb - hosting provider and domain registrar

Why these affilate programs, or how to choose your own?

Of course, I considered using affiliate programs from GeekBrains, Udemy, and SkillBox. But that's against what I'm doing here. Namely, self-study, where, oddly enough, you have to discipline yourself and learn independently. That's it.

1. Determine the location and content (article) where you'd like to insert the affiliate link.
2. Determine the type and niche of affiliate programs that match the intent and target audience of the material. For example, an article about deploying a website on Timeweb hosting. An affiliate program from Timeweb or similar hosting providers would be ideal. Thought for english speaker it's not ideal, I admit it.
3. Find the necessary affiliate programs. Search engines are ideal for this. They also make it easy to filter by country or language. You can also use specialized aggregator sites for affiliate marketers, such as partnerkin.com or admitad.ru.
4. Be sure to test it and decide whether it's worth recommending. Ideally, you should already be using it and have some opinion on the matter.
5. Insert links in the appropriate places.

Some advertisers allow you to specify an entire website as a traffic source, without having to insert any links at all. For example, all three hosting providers (Beget, Reg, and Timeweb) allow this. This method has only two significant drawbacks: it is not available to everyone, and it is impossible to track who came from where, so you can understand what works and what doesn’t.

Now about my website's stats

1. Self-taught and independent developers
2. Technical website creators
3. Python/Django developers

Integrating affiliate programs into the site

1. Homepage – This is where I can recommend the most affiliate programs, and the best ones at that.

1. Pagination Pages - I also wanted to leave recommendations here when selecting certain filters. Don't rely too much on this section.

1. Articles and Tools - I created a "What I'm using" section at the very beginning. Plus, you can seamlessly incorporate your referral links into the article/tool ​​content.

This app, Affiliate, is designed to support multilingual websites like mine. Therefore, an English-speaking visitor will never see an affiliate program designed for Russian speakers.

from django.db.models import Q from django.template import loader from django.template.response import TemplateResponse from Main.utils import getAllWithTags from Post.models import Tag, Post from .models import AffiliateLink, AffiliateLinkConnectionTag, AffiliateLinkConnectionSlug, AffiliateLinkConnectionSpecial class AffiliateMiddleware: def __init__(self, get_response): self.get_response = get_response self.handler = None self.home_view = ('home',) self.post_view = ('article', 'tool', 'tool_main') self.pagiscroll_view = ('PagiScroll/base_post_list.html',) def __call__(self, request): response = self.get_response(request) return response def process_view(self, request, view_func, view_args, view_kwargs): self.handler = None if view_func.__name__ in self.home_view: self.handler = self.home_handler elif view_func.__name__ in self.post_view: self.handler = self.post_handler return None def process_exception(self, request, exception): pass def process_template_response(self, request, response: TemplateResponse): if response.context_data: response.context_data.update({'isAffiliateLinkMiddlewareConnected': True}) if self.handler is not None: self.handler(request, response) elif response.template_name in self.pagiscroll_view: self.pagiscroll_handler(request, response) self.handler = None return response def home_handler(self, request, response): if response.context_data: affiliates = [] affiliates_context = AffiliateLinkConnectionSpecial.objects.filter(special=AffiliateLinkConnectionSpecial.SpecialPages.HOME) if len(affiliates_context) > 0: aff_ids = [] for aff_id in affiliates_context.values_list('affiliate'): aff_ids.append(aff_id[0]) affiliates = AffiliateLink.objects.filter_by_lang().filter(id__in=aff_ids) response.context_data.update({'affiliates_partners': affiliates[:3]}) def post_handler(self, request, response): if response.context_data: affiliates = [] # Делим строку urlList = request.path.split('/') # Чистим не нужный мусор c = urlList.count('') for i in range(c): urlList.remove('') # Проверяем есть ли такой инструмент slug = urlList[-1] post = Post.objects.get(slug=slug) affiliates_context = AffiliateLinkConnectionSlug.objects.filter(slugs=post) if len(affiliates_context) > 0: aff_ids = [] for aff_id in affiliates_context.values_list('affiliate'): aff_ids.append(aff_id[0]) affiliates = AffiliateLink.objects.filter_by_lang().filter(id__in=aff_ids) print(affiliates) response.context_data.update({'affiliates_partners': affiliates[:2]}) # Updates posts lists def pagiscroll_handler(self, request, response): if response.context_data: affiliates = [] tags_names = request.GET.getlist('tag', []) tags = Tag.objects.filter(Q(name_ru__in=tags_names) | Q(name_en__in=tags_names) | Q(slug_ru__in=tags_names) | Q(slug_en__in=tags_names)) if len(tags) > 0: affiliates = getAllWithTags(AffiliateLinkConnectionTag.objects.all(), tags) if len(affiliates) > 0: aff_ids = [] for aff_id in affiliates.values_list('affiliate'): aff_ids.append(aff_id[0]) affiliates = AffiliateLink.objects.filter_by_lang().filter(id__in=aff_ids) response.context_data.update({'affiliates_partners': affiliates[:3]})

{% if isAffiliateLinkMiddlewareConnected and affiliates_partners|length > 0 %} <div class="border-r-2 border-solid"> <h2>{% trans "Партнёры" %}</h2> <hr> <div class="flex flex-col p-2 gap-3 grow basis-2xl"> {% include 'Affiliate/affiliate.html' with affiliates=affiliates_partners %} </div> </div> {% endif %}

1. AffiliateLinkConnectionSpecial - responsible for insertion on special pages, such as the homepage and about page.
2. AffiliateLinkConnectionTag - responsible for insertion on pagination pages using tags.
3. AffiliateLinkConnectionSlug - responsible for insertion into posts (Articles and Tools) using slugs.

Now we need to wait

1. My site was approved by Yandex Advertising Network. Which in itself requires a separate article.
2. The invasion of Chinese bots on the site and how I blocked them using the .htaccess file. Read it, it'll be interesting.