The Costumer's Manifesto is written by Tara Maginnis, and proudly hosted by William Baker.

THE MANIFESTO IS MUTATING!  IT IS TURNING INTO A WIKI THAT CAN BECOME THE HIVE MIND OF ALL COSTUMERS, FINALLY LIVING UP TO IT'S SLOGAN: "COSTUMERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!" YOU CAN HELP IN THIS PROCESS BY MOVING PAGES TO THE NEW SITE AT THECOSTUMERSMANIFESTO.COM, HELPING TO EDIT THE PAGES THAT ARE THERE ALREADY, AND ADDING YOUR OWN ORIGINAL INPUT.

 

Accessories
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 Costume e-Lists
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(Costume) History
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Military Uniforms
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Occupational & Occasion- Specific
Patterns
Questions?
Religious Dress
Theatre History
Travel for Costumers
Unite!
Vintage Clothing
Weddings
Weird Clothing

Ways for Makers of Informational Costume Sites to make money from their sites

Many costume sites (and other sites as well) with good content find after a short time that their popularity has a price.  Many people come to visit, download images, and quickly the site owner finds that their supposedly "unlimited bandwidth" hosting that they bought for $5-20 a month isn't as unlimited as advertised.  Their server company either stops the site from loading for part of the day after the bandwidth ceiling has been reached, or they start demanding more money. The process happens even faster on free services, so eventually any builder of a popular site has to decide how much they are willing to pay out of pocket, or how they are going to make a site pay for itself.

Happily, there are many ways to recover site costs by selling advertising links to products related to your site content.  Selling links to unrelated products makes very little money (and dilutes your site's focus) but accepting commissions for links to sites that sell related products provides utility to you site users and may also add content to your site.

As an example, AllPosters com provides images you can use at your site to illustrate clothing styles of various eras, images from movies showing costumes, and pictures of some regional dress as well.  You set up links in your site that show a thumbnail of the image like this:

Jan Vermeer - The Milkmaid, c.1658-1660
The Milkmaid, c.1658-1660
Jan Vermeer
Buy This Art Print At AllPosters.com  

 

 Then, when a user clicks on the image they can see a larger version at the AllPosters site, where there is also a link where they can buy the image in print form if they desire.  Whether or not they choose to buy the print they get to see the content, and if the buy the print you get a small commission.  While the individual commission is tiny, over the course of a year, these small amounts add up and can help pay your costs. You can go here to sign up at AllPosters to get commissions here:  AllPosters

The largest amount of commissions may be earned by making links to books, movies, and other media.  People are more comfortable with buying this sort of product on the net, and so sales in this area are brisk.  Many companies offer commissions for this sort of product, and there are books that match the subject matter of nearly any costume information page, so it is easy to match up your site's content with the advertising link content. Some companies that offer commissions for book and media sales are 

These other Commission sites let you link to a variety of products and stores to earn commissions, including costume sites:

Commission Junction has several costume related advertisers:

Specializing in costumes, wigs, masks, makeup ...

Torrid - the alternative for sizes 12 - 26! Sells Goth and alternative clothing in plus size

Hot Topic! Click here!

Click for the Official Shop of The Matrix!

 

 Certain sellers offering costume related products also have affiliate commission programs, these are good for providing tools to costumers who may be using your site:

sells costume wigs, and is good about payments. 

so does this site:  Best Wig Outlet Affiliate Program and  New Attitude Wigs Affiliate Program

Many sales can be made through this independent affiliate, especially during the month of October, and they are particularly good about timely payments:

Google AdSense will serve a variety of content-based ads on to your site

Fabrics-store.com sells fabric

SewVacDirect sells sewing machines

eBay Auctions sell literally everything that is legal

 
ItalianHeels.com: Partner Program
 
Actor Tips Home gives a small commission for sales and subscriptions to their actor newsletter, books of monologues, etc. 
 
Jokers' Masquerade - AffiliateScheme
 
SurpriseHim lingerie affiliate program

More Related Affiliate Links

 

The Costumer's Manifesto is proudly hosted by William Baker.

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This Page is part of The Costumer's Manifesto by Tara Maginnis, Ph.D.  Copyright 1996-2010.   You may print out any of these pages for non-profit educational use such as school papers, teacher handouts, or wall displays.  You may link to any page in my site.

This page last edited on 12/06/2006