Affiliate marketing: yes or no?
-
Hello,
A colleague recently asked me about affiliate marketing for our clients, and my answer for a few years now has been emphatically "no", because I had not seen it done in positive way. How does everyone weigh in affiliate marketing, and what companies and/or software would you suggest? For example, is http://www.admedia.com/ a reputable source? I see lots of bad reviews on these guys. Any thoughts, suggestions, etc would be extremely valuable.
Thanks in advance!
-
I've been doing affiliate marketing since 2000 - when it really was a good solution for banner space (those things that used to get clicks) from smaller publishers long before a thing called Google came around.
Now, candidly, I see it mostly as a pathway for parasitic marketing - with little to no benefit to you.
Coupon and deal-site Affiliates will bid on your trademarks (even if you prohibit it) - and fight for your own organic SEO. Now, depending on what you sell, you might like getting a bunch of traffic from someone like retail-me-not, but keep track of how many customers are 'new' versus saw your coupon box and search for a coupon - used it for a discount, and then you paid a commission for that sale...?
For us, we do it - but we try to focus on review sites; odd-sites where you never know where the traffic comes from; and then yes, discount and coupon sites - because we get more new customers than for what we eat on customers (I call it "round-tripping") being on your site, finding a discount code box, and then searching the web for a deal.
-
Like Martijn Scheijbeler already said, this should not be run by someone with "a lot" of experience managing an affiliate campaign. If done wrong you can cannibalize your own sales, and worse. I would recommend MaxBounty to anyone. They have dedicated management teams for both advertisers, and affiliates.
As an alternative, you could seek out successful affiliates directly, and give them an exclusive offer, a relistic incentive. hint hint mike [at] informlocal.com
The benefit to the advertiser is a win win. They don't have to outlay money for ineffective advertising, and they get new customers. As the advertiser you have to set the ground rules to protect your self, or only deal with an reputable company, or individual affiliate like me.
-
Hi Guys,
I have always been super interested in affiliate marketing but never knew where to start in order to head down the rabbit hole. Any suggestions on any good blogs, sites that you recommend that pack some helpful and informative info on the subject?
Thanks in advance!
-
Affiliate marketing is a great way to expand your brand awareness. There are various sources of publishers that could work perfectly with your brand. Blog publishers, mobile publishers, charity publishers, coupon publishers, loyalty publishers etc. the list goes on and on.
In my experience my top Affiliate Networks are , Linkshare, pepper jam, Commission junction
-
Thanks for the response Martijn. Do you have any recommendations?
-
Affiliate marketing should always be a yes if done properly. I don't have any experience with Admedia but as long as you're on top of your affiliate marketing and working closely with the publishers you both will be happy in the end.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is Affiliate Duplicate Content?
Hi moz fans!
Affiliate Marketing | | KasperK
I'm working on some client sites.
They have a lot of products, which they are selling through their webshop and two affiliate sites.
But I can't stop wondering:
The affilate sites are using the same product descriptions and images - Will Google see that as duplicate content?
And if so.. How can I prevent that? The two affiliate sites are well etablished and huge sites, so I guess they know what they are doing.. Is there some way I can check it? When I do a google search, whit the "My product description text", I'm getting some different results: Sometimes all three sites appear (main site, and affilate) Sometimes it's only the affilates Sometimes it's only the main site. So to make it short:
If i'm using affliate, will Google see it as duplicate content?
How do I check it, and how do I prevent it? Thank you!0 -
Affiliate site
I have a client I am doing SEO work for. He sells a system that helps people win at video keno. He sells a system for like $200 that shows people step by step how to play and win. Its a good site and he has a ton of verified winnings. My point in saying that, its not a fly-by-night system he wrote in his basement. I know - gambling, not easy for SEO. I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner. Wouldn't this potentially be perfect for affiliate marketing? He offers a good commission to whoever sends him traffic if they buy. If anybody could direct me to a resource or two that is reputable and would handle as much of the set up and management of this I would be very grateful! Thank you! Matthew
Affiliate Marketing | | Mrupp440 -
Duplicate tracking of Affiliate and Organic orders
I started diving into the over lap between Organic and affiliate orders and can see that on average about 10% of my organic orders get tracked as both affiliate and organic (meaning i am paying affiliate commissions on them). I want to be able to better account for the different types of order and where they are coming from. My question is simply if anyone has any ideas as to how better to figure out if those orders should be canceled on the affiliate end or if there is a better way in analytics to see where the order is actually getting attributed to through some type of goal or advanced set up or something (the download of orders from organic that I compared to the affiliate ones was taken from Ecommerce > Transactions > Medium (Organic) then I compared that to the order numbers from the affiliate company I am using). Hope this makes sense and thanks for any information that can help with this!
Affiliate Marketing | | Gordian0 -
Can anyone help me find the broadband ISP affiliate program I need?
I have a couple sites that deal with broadband internet access, and I'm looking to monetize beyond adsense. I'd like to sign up for some affiliate programs from internet service providers like Charter, CenturyLink, Comcast, etc. I found a couple affiliate programs but I am having no luck at all figuring out the programs that so many other websites are involved with. In about every case, the user is able to enter in their address and then a search is performed, returning programs available at their location. The programs I've found just do the traditional ad click-throughs for a possible commission. Can anyone enlighten me what kind of programs they are using?
Affiliate Marketing | | bizzer0 -
Anyone Have Any Experience With Catch Marketing?
I was recently approached by Catch Marketing about a service they provide that uses a product data feed to create hundreds of pages with "unique" (algorithm generated) content on a subdomain of a website targeting long-tail keywords not already driving traffic to the site. It's an affiliate type setup with a commission-based fee structure. Admittedly not the most elegant solution to driving long-tail keyword traffic but my company is short on resources and long on revenue goals. I'm not really interested in hearing about creating awesome unique content written by a human as the better solution here; although I understand and aspire to those ideals the reality is that I have 60,000 products to market and I'm the only one who writes product content - after I tend to my other responsibilities. Has anyone used or heard of this service? Your feedback appreciated.
Affiliate Marketing | | eTundra0 -
URL Tags / Affiliate tracking help
1. If I give a sales rep a unique tag to put at the end of a URL for tracking purposes, will Google index the "www.mysite.com/service.html?unique-tag" version of a page and display it in search results? 2. Would a tool like Xenu be able to find that version of a URL? Reason for questions: If I give my sales people tags with their names in them, I don't want competitors poaching my sales people by search for all URLs on my domain. Follow up: are there any other potential issues that I should think about? Thanks!
Affiliate Marketing | | pbhatt0 -
Outbound Affiliate Links - Positive or Negative Effect
Hello I would like to increase the value of my value proposition to users by adding complimentor affiliate links and embedded widgets like postcode search to my promote my affiliate's service. I already have a great ranking.... Am I jeopardizing my position by putting outbound links to affiliate sites? Also would a nofollow tag on an affiliate link work? I understand Google is fast changing - so what is the latest advice on this for Spring 2011? Thanks a lot
Affiliate Marketing | | philipjterry0 -
How to use different affiliate link based on geolocalisation in a Seo friendly way ?
Hi All, My website Sportytrader.com http://www.sportytrader.com/ works as an sport betting affiliate website on the french language markets. With sport betting legalisation in Europe, only people from France can play on french sport betting website. The same for Belgium or swiss. We have traffic from everywhere. So we need to geolocalize all our affiliate links to provide the right affiliate link to the right person in function of his location? What is the best way and the more seo friendly way to do that? Thanks a lot, Renaud
Affiliate Marketing | | jarnac0