Question 1
A. Assume you are marketing a hotel. Find the three best hotel portals.
As I am a marketer of the hotel, in order to decided to apply our application to be listed in what hotel portals, I will consider by using the criteria below
Let check who is our target market. In this case assume that our target customers are
1. USA
2. UK
3. Germany
Then, I will select the best hotel portals that popular among them. The way to do I use alexa.com to help me to do this job. After checking I decided to choose
The reason to choose are :
1. User comes from these country
| Hotel Portals | USA | GER | UK |
| www.hotels.com | 57.4 % | 6.8% | 1.7% |
| www.booking.com | - | 10.3% | 10.3% |
| www.travelnow.com | 42.4% | - | 5.4% |
2. Traffic rank in their country
| Hotel Portals | USA | GER | UK |
| www.hotels.com | 454 | 1,200 | 3,111 |
| www.booking.com | - | 393 | 264 |
| www.travelnow.com | 9,386 | - | 14,769 |
3.Percentage of global internet user who visit this Web increase from last 3 month AVE
| Hotel Portals | Increase |
| www.hotels.com | 14% |
| www.booking.com | 28% |
| www.travelnow.com | 9% |
4.Alexa traffic rank based on a combined measure of page views and users (reach)
| Hotel Portals | Increase |
| www.hotels.com | 283 |
| www.booking.com | 251 |
| www.travelnow.com | 3,227 |
Elaboration
What is Traffic Rank?
The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and data obtained from other, diverse traffic data sources, and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on a value derived from these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users).
Therefore, I now have the confident that my prospects will use these 3 hotel portal in significant number.
B. How to get the listed ?
1. Fill in application form by giving the detail of
A. Hotel name
B. Contact name
C. City
D. Country
E. Website Address
F. Star Rating of Property
G. Type of Property
H. Number of Rooms
I. Nearest land mark.
J. Hotel Picture
2. In order to be listed on Interactive Affiliate Network my property must be either linked directly with Sabre or Pegasus (a GDS) or with a property management company that is linked to these suppliers. This allows the hotel portal to pull availability from these GDS systems and provide our customers with a real-time hotel generated confirmation.
C. How much will it cost ?
No registration fee, no fixed cost, only pay a commission fee for revenue generated
Elaborate
By having our property appear on Interactive Affiliate Network we have to pay a 10% commission on all confirmed bookings. This commission is an addition to any fees or charges paid to any GDS or property management company. Failure to pay this commission will result in removal of our property from Interactive Affiliate Network. We will be invoiced monthly for the amount of commission due.
D. How do you think hotels are ranked in the searches or listings ?
The Hotel portal will rank our property base on several criteria
1. Most highest sales rate through website
2. How popular we are in the rank
3. Our special promotion and package
It should be noted that the hotel portals will earn from commission on all confirmed bookings. Therefore, they should also have their strategy to manage their revenue by putting the easiest one to sell first !!
Question 2
When choosing an affiliate program you have to ask yourself if this fits in with your tourism operation's web site objectives and if the program is something that would be of interest to your target audience.
Always put yourself in the place of your target market, what sites
A site like http://www.whichaffiliate.com offers a whole range of affiliate programs, divided into categories such as travel business, E-commerce, Webhosting and much more. This makes it easier to pick a related affiliate
How to make money from an affiliate:
There are:
commission based affiliate programs, nearly always pay-per-sale
Flat-fee affiliate programs (per-sale or per-lead)
pay per click programs
The best affiliate programs to enter are those which lead to the greatest income for the affiliate, this is why it is critical to find most successful programs. it's link quality, not quantity, that counts.
Even though CTR (click - through rate) was decided as the primary criteria, there are many other subjective attributes which influence CTR. These other subjective factors influencing CTR include:
- Affiliate website design
- Search engine optimization (SEO) effectiveness
- Search engine marketing (SEM) effectiveness
- Affiliate website content strength
- Products and services popularity on affiliate website
- Affiliate advertising efforts using Google Adwords, Yahoo Marketing, etc.
Affiliate sites that score very high are: 1. Amazon.com, 2. Shopzilla, 3.Orbitz, zZounds.com, Hydra network,...
Some tips:
check the “the return days”
What is the return rate?
Payment schedule and payment method
Marketing Material
Visit the Merchants website
Comparison shop
look at the commission rate
But again as I mentioned earlier, it's difficult to recommend which program is the best, it all depends on what you are selling and your target market....It goes without saying, your affiliate programs should be relevant to the content on your site.
So to conclude for our home work, which are the best ones for blogs:
The best affiliate program for blogs is the affiliate program of a product or service that you’re familiar with and one you can honestly recommend to your readers.
Match affiliate program offers to the subject of your niche and then work on driving targeted traffic to your site. That’s the secret of the best affiliate programs for blogs!
How to become memeber of an affiliate program?
Very simple, you just have to fill out the online registration form
Example: hotelclub.com
Joining the HotelClub and RatesToGo affiliate program is FREE and only takes a few minutes.
1. Read our Affiliate FAQs & Affiliate Agreement.
2. Complete the Affiliate Registration via our site.
3. Once you register, you will be confirmed shortly and receive your login information via email. Please ensure you use a valid email address in the registration form.
4. Follow the step-by-step instructions to set up the links on your site or web page.
5. Start earning!
Question 3
Go to alexa.com and select 5 of the most popular websites in Thailand (not search engines). How much would it cost to place a banner ad for a week? What options for targeting customers do some of these web sites have?
| | Top Sites Thailand | Link |
| 1 | MSN | |
| 2 | Sanook | |
| 3 | YouTube | |
| 4 | Pantip | |
| 5 | Kapook |
Cost of Banner.
1. MSN/Hotmail
| | Package | Price per week |
| Hotmail/MSN | 3 positions | 150,000 |
| | text link | |
| | 728 x 90 | |
2. Sanook
| Location | Size | Price |
| Full Banner | 380 x 120 | 75,000 |
| Standard Skyscraper | 160 x 600 | 14,250 |
| Button | 160 x 120 | Top : 75,000 |
| | | Mid-hi : 50,000 |
| | | Mid-low : 25,000 |
| | | Bottom : 12,500 |
| Leader board | 728 x 90 | 37,500 |
| | 728 x 180 | 50,000 |
3. Youtube
Youtube – Youtube is free of charge for putting the banner. But those who can put the banner must be their partnership.
And there are 3 qualifications for partnership as:
1 Have to create original videos suitable for online streaming.
2 Have to own the copyrights and distribution rights for all audio and video content that you upload.
3. Have to regularly upload videos that are viewed by thousands of YouTube users.
4. Pantip
| Location | Banner Size | Price per week | Page |
| A1 | 778 x 45 | 7,500 | Home |
| | | | |
| A2 | 250 x 125 | 3,750 | |
| | 250 x 250 | 7,500 | |
| | 250 x 375 | 10,000 | |
| | 250 x 500 | 12,500 | |
| | | | |
| B5 | 778 x 45 | 1,750-4,500 | List |
| | | | |
| B6 | 778 x 45 | 1,125-15,000 | |
| | | | |
| C1 | 468 x 60 | 875-2,250 | Details |
5. Kapook
| Location | Size | Price per week |
| 1. Big Banner | 443 x 262 | 45,000 |
| 2. Leader Board Banner | 728 x 90 | 200-1000 |
| 3. Side Floating Banner | 160 x 600 | 200-1000 |
What options for targeting customers do some of these web sites have?
Sanook, Pantip and kapook are the commercial website which have such a huge number of clients. Mostly the average ages are around 15-30 years old. These website provide many contents for clients, such as shopping, technology, lady, horoscope, traveling and etc. With the number of hits in different contents, which could separate target customers and could show that which page would be the best location for ads. These websites use these details to differentiate the price of each page and each part in a page.
It will also show the update link for clients to see easier. E-newsletter is also another one way that it might ask their clients if they are interesting to receive.
YouTube is one of the most hits website for everyone to post their clips, also some advertising. Another one-way for clients to search multimedia stuff. For those who want to add their own banner is quite difficult. Because YouTube require for a really good partnership who could reach their regulation, eg. Have to regular upload their own copyright video which is viewed by thousand of YouTube Members. The partnership could also earn money from their site.
MSN is also one of the most visit sites for all over the world. Which provide several effective advertising ways. They provide for example ; Skinner which the company that want to advertise their company will own the homepage for one day and that page would surround the consumer by the advertise message on the MSN network. VDO Wall, Synchronized, Peel Back, E-mail-Marketing. MSN also provide several of categories which similar to other commercial website (But not too busy).
Kris Mouton
Juthamas Brommanop
Massupha Silasant
