Comments for Impulse Communications Corp.: Domain Names and Making Money Online

Comment on Viral Videos – OK Go by t

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 05:00:37 +0000

I like the song, nice rhythm. I also like your sharing options

Comment on Viral Videos – OK Go by andrew

andrew — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:47:35 +0000

That was unreal. I like how they also included a TV with the treadmill scene from the last video

Comment on Bone of the Month Club by admin

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:24:29 +0000

Good idea, I will do that.

- Eric

Comment on Bone of the Month Club by t

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:09:12 +0000

Kool, you should also add the social bookmarks sharing options to your content pages on dumb and other sites, I think people would be more apt to share jokes, games, and pictures.

Comment on Bone of the Month Club by admin

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:43:49 +0000

I added social bookmark buttons now.

Comment on Bone of the Month Club by admin

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 01:19:06 +0000

Yes, that is a great idea, I will do that soon.

Comment on Bone of the Month Club by t

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:18:52 +0000

I think you should put up a post asking people to pick a domain you have and what their ideas of what to do with it. You have names with potential that would need little work i feel to make good money. Least of all it would be interesting reading.

You never know some people may choose a domain that relates to their industry, which you may benefit from their expertise, connections, etc. for their domain pick/idea.

Comment on Bone of the Month Club by admin

admin — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:14:01 +0000

That is a good idea for a business, I am just not sure it is a good use of the boneofthemonth.com domain name.

Comment on Bone of the Month Club by t

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 09:22:59 +0000

Shipping costs alone makes it a bad idea, as well as other factors….bone of the month could be a dog calendar , A dog with a different theme or whatever each month,.Calendars are Cheap to make, Design, and Shipping costs would be exceptionally low. Better Yet Here is what you do, Have users upload their photos of their pets and select different themes, even add text to the page, narration , pet talking , etc. .. With their purchase of the calendar they get a widget with an online version of their pet calendar they can share online at the same time free advertising for you.

Comment on Bone of the Month Club by Daniel Lambert

Daniel Lambert — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 11:36:38 +0000

Interesting idea Eric. BTW could you get your developer to add social bookmark buttons to each post so I can easily share them on Twitter.

Comment on Bone of the Month Club by Dan

Dan — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:19:52 +0000

It’s not a bad idea. I’ve seen vendors at flee markets that sell all types of chewables, from rawhide to cookie type of bones. Some dogs go through two bones per month. The only issue I see here is shipping cost, but you may be able to keep the cost down with snail mail.

Comment on Bone of the Month Club by admin

admin — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 01:07:12 +0000

It is possible that somebody who has more pet supplies experience might be able to make something out of my idea/domain. In general I try to create automated entertainment type sites, not ecommerce sites that involve shipping, inventory, and customer service, so this is not really my type of business.

Comment on Bone of the Month Club by Patrick

Patrick — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:45:57 +0000

Please don’t be mad.

But for the very reasons you cited above, I think this biz idea should be filed under:

Bonehead Idea of the Month.com

Just kidding, sort of.

Comment on Big Domain Development – Part 2 (WatchMovies.com) by admin

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:14:29 +0000

I am very happy they said that. I would rather they just focus on my sites. I found them several years ago, I can’t remember how. they had a company url but I can’t remember what it is.

Comment on Big Domain Development – Part 2 (WatchMovies.com) by BF

BF — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:21:52 +0000

Wow. Regarding their response. How weird is that? How did you come across them without a company URL?

Comment on Big Domain Development – Part 2 (WatchMovies.com) by admin

admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:59:16 +0000

I emailed them to ask for their company URL and they wrote this to me:
“Actually we are really busy with finishing up the content for
the 200 sites we are creating for you. So I am not in a position to take up work for a while.
Again if I take up anything I will deviate and then it will chaotic…”

Comment on Big Domain Development – Part 2 (WatchMovies.com) by BF

BF — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:57:21 +0000

Can you share the company you use for content?

Comment on Expanding Your Internet Business by t

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:05:01 +0000

Some sites are meant for traffic and others for revenue. They should compliment each other, each focusing on what each does best. It would be impossible for you to do it all considering an average mans life expectancy. You may not have the money to hire a 100 talented people to focus on particular projects to grow and evolve, but you may find people that see an opportunity and willing to work for future revenue shares.

I kept this post short Not an easy task for me.

Comment on Expanding Your Internet Business by admin

admin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:44:50 +0000

Yes, I have used Clickbank and other affiliate programs, but I have found parking a domain makes more money and is much easier than putting ecommerce type links on it.

Comment on Expanding Your Internet Business by Karl

Karl — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:10:35 +0000

Although without a doubt you have most likely seen and heard and probably purchased tons of CB “how to” courses and products asserts their success in teaching you how to make lots of revenues with Clickbank!

Comment on Expanding Your Internet Business by admin

admin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:57:24 +0000

That is a very good question. Unless you are at the level where you have a great idea and can raise venture capital for it, I think it is best to start several sites and then see which ones do best, and then focus on those. Maybe just 3 or 4 good sites are enough, but the problem is that if you focus just on one site, there is a chance it will never make it and then you are left with nothing. I have put a lot of time and effort into many sites I thought would hit it big, but most of them never did. Sometimes it is the ones you don’t have high expectations for that end up doing well.

Another factor in all of this is what type of personality you have. Personally I like to multitask and get bored just working on one site for more than a few days. But, other people are totally the opposite, and get overwhelmed dealing with multiple sites.

In the end I would rather have one really big site than 100 small ones, but it is hard to know ahead of time which site will be a success. The only shortcut for this is to buy a big site, but there are risks with buying a site also.

Comment on Expanding Your Internet Business by Grant

Grant — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:28:43 +0000

Great article, now here is a question I would love you to answer.

If someone walked up to you today and said, should I focus on 1 site or start 100-250? What would you say?

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by admin

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:29:42 +0000

I agree, leads would pay better than Adsense, but I don’ really want to deal with the handling advertisers directly. But, I am testing some domains with this service: rootorange.com , which handles the leads for me.

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by t

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:10:50 +0000

A quality score of 4 and 10 may mean the difference between a dollar click and a 10 cent one, but from a seven to a ten, I doubt u will pay ten times less, anyways keep the ad score thing in mind if you ever decide to advertise on google or yahoo in the future,..oh yeah ctr helps your score.
Well unfortunately its not a quick fix, …imo then you need to make as much money as you can from each customer, and thats where the facebook fan page can help…….
..Im going to check out your names really quick…ok took a 5 second look and chose to take a look at what you have for filebankruptcy, ok let me ask you what do you think someone that buys that domain will do with it,..First I will tell you what they won’t do, and that is rely only on pcc ads, you have lawyers paying twenty a click, whats google giving you ? Do you have an idea how much a bankruptcy lawyer would pay for those leads , especially if they are good.

Put a simple contact form on the site for people to get more info , you still get the ppc revenue but now you have leads which will make you alot more than your ppc revenue.

I remember reading that when you first implemented adsense you were like wow, imagine if you never did, same with leads, and it wont hurt your ppc and takes very little space.

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by admin

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:07:00 +0000

If I start adverting again I will do that, but right now I am not running any Google ads. Those stats I showed you were a test at Christmas time to see how profitable it would be. I spent $1900 over a few days at around $1 per click and only made back income of about $200 from it, for a loss of $1700. I would have needed to cpc prices to be 10 times cheaper to make a profit from it, so raising my quality score would not make nearly enough difference to make it worthwhile to keep advertising.

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by t

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 05:56:11 +0000

I am very surprised not just you but there alot of people who have never heard of the quality ad score, when its the most important factor when google determines how much to charge you for the keyword. Remember A couple years ago when people noticed that keywords they were bidding on all of a sudden shot up to $5 and $10 thats because google implemented their ad score, those rates were for people with a very low score on the particular keyword. I remember when I first saw it I was like wtf ! Now googles working with da man ! but no they wanted a more relevant experience for their users and this would be a way to effectively curtail irrelevant ads. Although the founders will be selling off his shares in the next five years, That will mean they will not be soo nice in how they conduct business.

I notice your MAIN keywords are 7’s, which is a good thing cause that means you will notice the difference when you raise those scores to 10.

7’s are good, but ten’s are better of course, and as long as the keywords your advertising are relevant to your site then its a piece of cake, for an seo guy that is. I would think it would cost you less than $500 for the one site. Don’t do it yourself, unless you don’t have the money. And when your looking for someone make sure he knows how to raise your score, and experience raising them on other sites he can show you as examples.

After you raise your scores, Your keywords costs will be lower no doubt about it !
I’m soo pleased with myself

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by admin

admin — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:21:01 +0000

I took a look now at my keyword quality score (I had never heard of this before) and found they were mostly 7’s and 10’s. I don’t think the table from the AdWords report will copy very well into this blog posting, but here it is:

Campaign Ad Group Keyword Keyword Matching Keyword Status Est. First Page Bid Quality Score Current Maximum CPC Keyword Destination URL Impressions Clicks CTR Avg CPC Cost Avg Position
GetFlowers.com Flower(s) Only flowers Broad Active $0.60 7 $1.01 default URL 57,158 292 0.51% $1.04 $303.26 5.9
GetFlowers.com Bouquet(s) Only bouquets Broad Active $0.25 7 $1.01 default URL 5,869 143 2.44% $0.88 $125.60 4.1
GetFlowers.com Flower Delivery free flower delivery Broad Active $0.40 10 $1.01 default URL 1,166 110 9.43% $0.84 $92.08 3.6
GetFlowers.com Gen. Flowers – KIT wedding flower bouquets Broad Active $0.40 7 $1.01 default URL 1,600 63 3.94% $0.86 $54.07 2.0
GetFlowers.com Gen. Flowers – KIT flower wedding bouquet Broad Active $0.50 7 $1.01 default URL 1,347 52 3.86% $1.00 $51.77 3.9
GetFlowers.com Flower(s) Only floral Broad Active $0.45 5 $1.01 default URL 2,662 49 1.84% $1.00 $49.15 4.6
GetFlowers.com Gen. Flowers – KIT flower arrangements Broad Active $0.55 7 $1.01 default URL 1,919 44 2.29% $0.96 $42.17 4.6
GetFlowers.com Gen. Flowers – KIT discount flowers Broad Active $0.80 10 $1.01 default URL 938 41 4.37% $1.00 $41.05 5.0
GetFlowers.com Gen. Flowers – KIT white flowers Broad Active $0.25 6 $1.01 default URL 1,752 32 1.83% $0.99 $31.67 2.9
GetFlowers.com Gen. Flowers – KIT buy flowers Broad Active $0.80 10 $1.01 default URL 1,290 31 2.40% $1.01 $31.23 4.7
GetFlowers.com Cheapflowers.com – new cheap roses Broad Active $0.60 10 $1.01 default URL 719 27 3.76% $0.99 $26.75 5.0
GetFlowers.com Cheapflowers.com – new discount flowers Broad Active $0.80 10 $1.01 default URL 2,067 24 1.16% $1.01 $24.29 6.3
GetFlowers.com Gen. Flowers – KIT floral arrangements Broad Active $0.65 7 $1.01 default URL 814 23 2.83% $0.98 $22.57 5.1

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by t

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 18:32:41 +0000

I was just glancing through the posts and noticed you didnt answer the most important variable in regards to your search engine advertising. What is your google quality ad score for your keywords ? Each keyword has its own score. The better your score the less you pay for the same keywords. If your score is low thats great news for you, that means all you have to do is raise your score and you may be rolling in those .10 ads

http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10215

I think this may be it !

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by admin

admin — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 10:04:51 +0000

I think most people who are local enough to visit somebody in a hospital would use a local florist to send flowers to the sick person. The only advantage of using an online florist to send flowers in the area you live is that you can place the order 24 hours a day, but other than that you are better off contacting the local florist directly.

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by t

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 09:41:52 +0000

Your right, you would have to catch them when they’re looking to buy. There is a large customer base thats always looking to buy and not just on holidays, birthdays, or special occasions. And thats the hospital space, everyday people buy flowers to give a sick loved one from the gift shop, ..What if you put a big sign outside the hospital, maybe not right outside there doors, I’d guess they’d have a problem with that,you can research where, anyways maybe focus your marketing on after the patient goes home. Something like : Patient Discharged ” It’s never too late to give flowers” .

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by admin

admin — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 01:17:17 +0000

That may be true for most types of sites, but I have found media buys for my flower sites to be totally ineffective because other than through search engines, it is very hard to target people at the time they are about to buy flowers.

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by t

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:11:46 +0000

I have two words that I don’t want to make public although it very much already is just not to the little guy,. If used properly you will pay less for higher quality traffic,…The Most successful affiliates have gravitated away from ppc to this…..MEDIA BUYING !

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by admin

admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:06:16 +0000

Right, I get very little traffic from the 350 geographic flower domains. I did not individually optimize them for the search engines.

I get around a 2% conversion rate from Google ads, which translates into a cost of around $50 per customer, and I only make a profit of $10 per customer. That is when I pay around $1 per click. If instead I only pay 10 cents per click, it makes a profit, but Google shows the ad so infrequently that it results in less than 1 order a day so it is not significant. I have also tried online yellow page ads, offline yellow page ads, and banner and text ads on other sites, but none have ever made a profit. The 50+ orders a day I currently get at CheapFlowers.com are almost all from free search engine traffic (I am #1 for the search Cheap Flowers) and from repeat customers.

I do sell chocolates at CheapFlowers.com, but only as an add-on ($15 extra) when you buy flowers. I don’t sell orders of just chocolates because only mail order flower services sell those. It is not something I can have a local florist deliver. As far as I know no online florist offers that, unless they are a mail order florist. I do though offer candy and junk food gift baskets at http://cheapflowers.com/Gift-Baskets .

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by t

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:28:59 +0000

Very minimal traffic I’m sure from those geos unless they each have at least one page optimized on each domain for seo. I own nyvehicles.com, nycvehicles.com, and newyorkvehicles.com, i made a quick page for nyvehicles.com awhile back so when i start developing on it it won’t be a new page, .

What are you conversion rates for you different marketing campaigns and I don’t just mean ppc, but they are the easiest to measure. If your advertising with google or yahoo is your quality ad index high, if not that’s your first priority, .also find out how you compare to those in the industry in regards to conversions. How much does it cost you to acquire a new customer, if you can’t answer this question then you need to find out.

i just went to your site for another quick look and HELLO ! you don’t sell chocolates ? Isn’t the markeup nice on them, and I’d figure as a package people would buy it, maybe a picture of a big heart chocolate say i love you with a red rose, or a chocolate made of a cat, you know girls like cats,..ok I Like cats Anyways you know what I mean. Put a nice size picture of it in place of the Delivery guy, thats soo 2000 you don’t have to let people know you deliver theses day. bye

Comment on Big Domain Development – Part 2 (WatchMovies.com) by admin

admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 11:36:10 +0000

The Netflix banner on WatchMovies.com is shown by Google Adsense. It is not an affiliate banner. I soon will try using some affiliate links on the site though. For the content of the site, I had a company in India make it for me. They do SEO and articles and site design. I have used a bunch of different overseas companies for this kind of stuff, and have almost always been happy with them.

Comment on Big Domain Development – Part 2 (WatchMovies.com) by BF

BF — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:45:28 +0000

Hi Eric. I noticed as of today, you have replaced the Netflix affiliate banner ad on header of site with a good AdSense banner ad. Did the affiliate banner ad from Netflix not perform well? Also, I was curious about how you work with content in general. Do you write content for your sites yourself, or do you use content writing services or have writers you go to? Thanks.

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by admin

admin — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:48:56 +0000

The customer’s credit card bill says “GetFlowers.com” not CheapFlowers.com, so nobody ever sees the CheapFlowers.com name. Yes, I have around 350 geo flower domains (like nyflowershop.com), and they are all used to drive traffic to my main flower site.

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by t

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:08:11 +0000

p.s. I glanced at my posts and wow didn’t mean to talk soo much. This may sound stupid but if i bought a girl flowers from a store called cheap flowers, umm i wouldn’t, flowers are too impress arent they ? Hosting companies are known for selling hosting under the umbrella of a few brands,..I would say try that but i think you may have, at least im thinking it was you, at least 50 geo keyword domains if memory serves correct,.. but then again i may be thinking of someone else. Well I notice i left you too many posts feel free to erase a couple of them. oh and sorry don’t mean to sound like an asshole in my posts.

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by t

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:36:03 +0000

Your fan page is like a glamorized newsletter in a way, once a user becomes a fan he gives you permission to contact him anytime, And theres many ways to go about interacting with them. AND its alot easier to get fans than newsletter subscribers.

Some newsletters give users information they want or enjoy, and then the soft sell or ad links. You don’t push flowers on your fan page you have pages full of poetry, babies, stories,animals,or whatever ..and ur interactions with them should be about strengthening and growing your base ,,

Facebook in the end is just a tool its how use it that makes it powerful.

I like to going to my .com site and clicking the facebook logo that takes me straight to my fan page so i can see what customers and people are saying on my page without logging in Sometimes i have to login to answer a customers questions, I don’t mean to ramble, just sharing.

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by admin

admin — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:07:37 +0000

The minisites are for getting listed in the search engines. Once the sites have traffic, I can make money from ads on them or from affiliate links on them.

As for linking to CheapFlowers.com from my other sites, I have tried that and it leads to zero sales, so it is not worth it. Plus, those links have no search engine value because none of my other sites have anything to do with flowers.

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by t

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:54:40 +0000

you know how you hear its better to have ten good pr links to you than 100 low ones, or how one master affiliate is worth more than a thousand average ones, 200 minisites, you better have some other forms of generating revenue from them, like lead generation, marketing your other sites, wait let me see something,..wth, your asking what you can do for your flowers site and you don’t even put an ad on all your online properties. Flowers are general you don’t need a niche site. I would love to hear your results if you placed a nice banner for the flower site on all your properties, and hear the results ! What would u lose , ad revenue, very little I Think,.. umm ok not sites that have a high ppc and ctr.

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by admin

admin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:34:28 +0000

Yes, I am working on developing mini-sites on 200 of my domains, including migraines.net.

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by t

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:30:25 +0000

migraines guy,..
I just took my ecommerce site to another level, Facebook works wonders with customer retention and new customer acquisition, …btw a site thats a generic like migraines.net gets most of its traffic from the search engines, by parking it you killed that, throw a nice ad for migraines.net( because it happens to appeal to a more general public) on your low paying ppc high traffic sites and bam! you made more than just parking it.

Reiteration – Do Not underestimate the value social network sites can provide to your business,..not just marketing but more importantly building and reinforcing your brand, thats what you need to take up a notch. The big guys spend a tremendous amount of money on branding. Good luck

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by admin

admin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 01:46:51 +0000

I also changed the intro text on CheapFlowers.com to use some of the higher class wording that you suggested.

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by admin

admin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 01:09:00 +0000

I changed the photo of the flowers and the delivery person now so it looks better.

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by admin

admin — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 01:27:58 +0000

Before I bought the CheapFlowers.com domain (I paid around $35,000 for it 5 years ago), I ran my flower site at GetFlowers.com for 3-4 years. When I bought CheapFlowers.com, I made it an exact copy of GetFlowers.com and found it had just as good a response rate when I advertised it, but a slightly better repeat purchase rate, probably because the name is more memorable. I now run both GetFlowers.com and CheapFlowers.com but I focus mainly on CheapFlowers.com. The vase majority of traffic to CheapFlowers.com is from people searching for “cheap flowers” in Google, so I don’t think they are too put off by my domain.

I will try some of your wording suggestions though, to see if it generates more sales. I will also change the picture of the flowers on the main page, since you are right, they look bad.

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by Mary Mary

Mary Mary — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 18:49:00 +0000

Could it be that your customer dynamic is off the mark? I haven’t seen your customer profile but could it be that the word “Cheap” is the probbo?

Most flower sales occur around highly emotional events… weddings, funerals, true love. The last thing people want at those times is cheap. They want to express big emotions with something wowsa and beautiful and classy, traditional. Cheap? uh uh.

Have you ever received a gift of flowers purchased over the internet? Nine times out of ten the arrangements are so damn CHEAP. You know the sender got ripped off.
1-800-Flowers? More like 1-800-Crap-In-a-Vase.

People have gotten wise to internet flower buying. Cheap? Hell no. I wouldn’t send “Cheap” flowers ever. Never, ever. When I shop for flowers online I look for something that says ‘individual attention to your special order’ and we make sure you get “only the very best”.

I think you should say in very large letters at the top of the screen…

ONLY THE VERY BEST.

Cheap is a death word in the gift business. You’ll have to work around that handicap. People want cheap of course… but they don’t want others to know they’re a tightwad.

Your picture of the delivery guy with the vase su…ucks. That is one cheap-ass floral arrangement he’s holding. I wouldn’t send that for even five bucks. You need a way better image and a good tag line

“So cheap your Mom would be proud — flowers so nice she’ll never know.”

CheapFlowers.com is a fab name — must be handled with care. Lucky you! and best wishes for future sales.

mary mary
ochplace.com

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by admin

admin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 11:08:20 +0000

One problem with offering specials is that my profit margins are so low (because I really do have the lowest prices of any florist online) that if I offer a special, I make no money on the order. Unlike when Best Buy or Amazon offer a special just to get you to their store, almost all my customers just order 1 item, so it does not work for me to lose money on the sale item but then make it up from the other items the customer buys like the other stores do.

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by John Humphrey

John Humphrey — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 11:00:11 +0000

Hi Eric,
Like you, I’d be worried about my customers getting upset that I was spamming them. On the other hand, I’m hearing over and over again how powerful a good email list can be. Coupled with a great offer, an email to your former customers that included an opt-in link probably wouldn’t be too offensive. From there I would think it would about offering specials, maybe once a month. But perhaps at that point it would be smart to consult with an email marketing super-pro.
Best,
John H.

Comment on Taking Your Business to the Next Level by admin

admin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:45:30 +0000

The selling point for CheapFlowers.com is that it offers the cheapest prices for flowers online. But, that does not leave me room to pay a big commission like the other online florists do. The bigger issue though is that I have found it very hard to target flower buyers, other than from a search engine. No site I have ever advertised CheapFlowers.com on gets any significant sales, even ecard sites or a site about birthdays. So, although I do get some sales from affiliates, I don’t think any big site is going to make much money from a florist affiliate program.

Yes, I used to do discount long distance phone service from 1995-2000 and I had some deals where I gave money to the charity for signing up members. I did try something similar with CheapFlowers.com where I tried to get schools and charities involved, but I did not get any extra sales from it. You can see an example at http://getflowers.com/charity/redcross.html . Also, I tried seeing if I would get more sales on the website by having 10% of all sales go to charity (the customer chose a charity from the drop down list), but that did not lead to increased sales either, at least not enough to cover the money I was giving to charity.

I have not done any surveys on CheapFlowers.com, but I have used Amazon Turk to have people go to the site and tell me what they like and don’t like about it.