don't you fall under boardingarea rather than your own account though?

Don't try to get CC affiliates right away, work on great unique content! I am in the process of developing content and building my site first. Any critiques or suggestions welcomed! Thanks everyone.

or find a niche!

I have also been told bloggers must first focus on content. Content, content, content. If no content, readers stop coming back. Period. Focusing on anything other than content is like a startup is focusing on the IPO and not on the business itself.

What I don't understand (yet) is how some Boarding Area bloggers do not offer any credit card referrals while others offer them in a very low key way and others pretty much pump the crap out of them! I thought that banks want a minimum number of apps processed and if the number is not achieved they can take the aff cc links away without any notice whatsoever. So...does BA have an umbrella quota criterion satisfied which allows some bloggers to offer them in a very low key way and not have to worry about hitting that minimum quota? Is this the reason why Boarding Area bloggers stay within Boarding Area as it would be really difficult to off aff cc links if you were on your own (unless you were TPG, MMS, of FTG?)

If anyone knows and feels comfortable/allowed to discuss here please do so!

Thanks.

I think Boring-Area must have a single account... I believe the house (Randy Petersen - one of the smarter guys in this biz) takes a cut of all the apps and rest goes to the blogger. But there is no doubt there must be some aggregate deal as there is no doubt some of the more obscure guys would get booted off the Chase program on their own.

Oh oh, I don't think they like me there. I was the one who kept tweeting repeatedly "Boarding Area is down...Again!" :D Good that they have finally fixed that issue now. I wonder how much revenue was lost!

So...Chase pays and affiliate company, Boarding Area, bloggers all get a cut. The card applicant gets a bunch of miles/points. What a country^

Ideally the bloggers would bid on your application. Then you'd go through the link with the highest percentage kickback.

Duplicate :)

Hmmmmm...been speaking to Cardinal Fang. He's got a great idea for a niche blog devoted to helping people get financial reviews, account closures and bank suspicious activity reports. He figures there must be referral income with links to debt collectors, bounty hunters and The Internal Revenue Service. :D

Every blog is completely and totally separate - just housed under the BA umbrella. The affiliate accounts are all totally separate. I have never been told any quota or similar number that must be reached - ever. That said, reading others accounts of their dismissal from affiliate programs there does seem to be some minimums required to get on or continue with an affiliate program (which makes sense to some degree as maintaining your account and ensuring what you say about the card is accurate does take some manpower). I have no idea what those are though as they have never been mentioned.

BA has nothing to do with which affiliate programs individual bloggers do or do not participate in. Truthfully, when I joined BA I thought we could not have affiliate links. Turns out that wasn't the case, and many BA bloggers do now have affiliate links. However, not all do, as it is totally an individual decision.

There may have been a period of time where being on BA was helping to expedite things in terms of getting set up with some affiliate companies, but my understanding is that isn't really the case anymore. I'm not even sure it ever was the case, but it might have been for a few months.

Since there seems to be a bunch of interest in affiliate links and how that works on BA, hope this helps answer some of those questions.

I have even lower volume than sbm12 and rarely mention my CJ deals, but they haven't kicked me out. In the year or two that I have been with CJ, I have earned a whopping $80, but that's because I rarely do anything with them. If you did some marketing or got a bunch of friends to sign up for stuff, you could easily make more.

Like sbm noted, there are many that didn't want anything to do with my site.

Mike

Thanks MommyPoints for the color, it is good to know. I appreciate there are now published minimums but it's clear from reports that there are in practice certain minimums required (see for example CrankyFlyer or InACents being kicked off the Chase platform)

I am surprised there is no cut for the house - maybe Randy is not as smart as I give him credit for :D I always thought the passport to wealth was own the land and charge rent!

It does now make sense though how each blogger there feels the need to put THEIR links in each and every post. If you go to the site and just click on a banner ad link I assume that does not credit back to the blogger. So every time something happens with a card that is why every blogger on BA presumably puts out a post on it, to get "their" link out. And this is what can make the site feel pretty distasteful a lot of the time these days, reading post after post about how wonderful xyz new card with a nice payout is, or how abc card's affiliate link is going to change tomorrow

Randy is very smart. He also really wants each blog to be their own site and doesn't interfere with that at all...or at least never has with me. The banner ads are a different set-up than the individual affiliate links. It can look silly when you look at the feed or go to the BA homepage and see 8 posts on the same topic (be it a credit card or something else), but since we all operate as individual sites, sometimes that is the nature of the beast.

From my own personal experience and discussions with my affiliate manager, the quota, which is dictated by Chase and AMEX in particular, and passed through the affiliate companies, can change with time. So for me to say it is X amount of applications per month could totally change next month. What I can say is that when it comes to Chase, we (InACents) were batting better than .500 per month to the mystery quota (which I didn't even know about till after the fact, and that was with very, very minimal even mentioning of credit cards on our site).

I hope that helps shed light on some of the mystery.

Just to be clear, I hope the jest in my comments was received. No doubt at all a guy that creates FT and BA is smart.