I need some feedback on the value of affiliate aggregators like Link Share
-
My company decided to start a Link Share affiliate program at the beginning of this year. I've had serious reservations about the value of the program since the beginning but was overruled.
Here are my concerns:
-
The majority of publishers seem to be coupon scraper sites or borderline link farms
-
I am told the biggest revenue earners in our network are publishing articles about my company with links back to our site but if they are Google Alerts sure isn't finding them and a manual search hasn't turned up anything either. This makes me think these publishers are using some sort of unsavory way to drive traffic to our site or maybe even cookie traffic that was coming to our site anyway in order to get credit for the sale.
Most of all I'd like to hear from anyone else who has used Link Share in the past.
Secondly I realize there's not a lot of information here but I'm wondering if this passes the smell test for anyone else.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
-
-
OK, I am going to say this and I will follow up with you in another format. You must insure that they are not using your name, etc. and simply driving traffic by capturing what you would have already. I think you may be missing something important.
I am assuming the sale must take place on your site. (I went to it and drew the assumption).
-
One of the largest problems in the SEO industry is unquantified actions. "We'll fix your site and make it #1 but don't ask us how". SEO isn't some book of secrets, really. Sure there are some obscure tips and tricks but it's mostly links and content.
I don't like the smell here. Especially when it comes to them making third party content. The links don't sound high quality either. Last but not least, you're basically buying these links? That sounds like a recipe for devaluation.
-
Thanks for the feedback Robert!
So far the people running the affiliate network have been excited because they have beaten the revenue goals they laid out for themselves in the first two months - although we have yet to approach the cost of setting the whole thing up, not to mention the cost of paying one person to manage the whole thing and having it take up about 70% of her time.
I just find it hard to believe some of the revenue numbers I see coming in. Example: one site has a PA & DA of 1, claims to be an SEO firm based in Arizona, and I can't find where they've ever posted a link to our site, yet they have been credited with $2,800 in sales on our site.
Also, we are not a lead gen site but an ecommerce site - does that change the calculus any in terms of using affiliate aggregators? Seems to me the Value Per Visitor is much higher for lead gen than it is for ecommerce.
Thanks again for your opinion!
-
Back Burner
Our firm, years ago, was first a lead gen firm and then began using affiliate aggregators to assist in the production of those leads. I have worked with some of the bigger and a few smaller aggregators and there are plusses and minuses. We no longer do lead gen (other than having clients who develop leads for their own businesses) and we do not use publishers or aggregators.
That said, the issue is not necessarily Link Share itself. (and I have never used them), it is that having affiliates is a full time job requiring a full time tracker, modifier, enforcer, discoverer, etc. Many publishers are the original SEO Blackhats and I give them a lot of credit for exposing the flaws that existed. Unfortunately, for every solid high end publisher who is doing it legit, you have 100 sleazy, low end, pubs trying to simply beat the system if only for the evening. That is what makes it difficult. They are trying to minimize their cost in order to profit on your offer. That ultimately leads to abuse. So, it is not necessarily that any one aggregator is flawed, it is that the system is flawed. Remember the best publisher would be superb at SEO and have no cost to speak of yet drive you traffic. Most are not that.
I doubt this helps you, but if you are trying to convince people who believe it is good, ask this question: How many real site visits has it brought and from those how many sales? Was it worth it? Then you will have the answer.
I spent lots of $$$ in that world...I won't again.
Best,
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
-
Person using expired domain and its links to drive traffic
Hi, I know about people using expired domains to drive juice to their primary site but what about people using AN expired domain as their primary site (totally changing that site into a trashy affiliate-marketing vehicle)? The site I'm looking at is thegunzone.com. It has, according to Semrush, almost 38K links. It used to be a legit 17-year-old firearms hobby site, and this is what it originally looked like: http://web.archive.org/web/20120213184627/http://thegunzone.com:80/ Here is its last page before it closed and the domain purchased by the affiliate marketer: http://web.archive.org/web/20170315084035/http://www.thegunzone.com/ It closed around February of 2017, and some affiliate marketer bought it and all its backlinks. However, all those backlinks, which were previously to various articles, are now directed back to those articles (which don't exist anymore) but the homepage, including Wikipedia links. Here's an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygonal_rifling At the bottom, in the 7th Reference, there's a link to an article called " "Learning About Shooting . . ." but if you click on the original link, it just goes to thegunzone.com homepage. Again, the site's totally different. And there are just thousands of such backlinks to former articles that don't exist anymore but are redirected to this schlocky site's homepage (and it's passing its juice through too). My question is this: this cannot be kosher with Google backlinking policies, right? Is this prevalent on the internet? Why hasn't thegunzone.com been found out and its rankings penalized yet? And how do I report him? I see tons of other sites using this basic strategy too on search results with various hunting keywords. (Disclosure: I do own a hunting/firearms blog, but I don't do any backlinking at all.) Any help would be sincerely appreciated.
Affiliate Marketing | | HandyWoman1 -
Setting up small affiliate network - Do follow?
I have a client that I help with both SEO and marketing. I have thought about approaching 5-10 niche appropriate bloggers to join a custom affiliate network. I'd like to gain both sales and backlinks. I know it's gray, but do you have any advice?
Affiliate Marketing | | julie-getonthemap0 -
Affiliate marketing for our Amazon Products ??
Hi Guys. Can any recommend or is it possible to build an affiliate marketing programme to generate sales from our Amazon product pages rather the the traditional way of generating sales through your own website ? Can anyone advise ? Or recommend any companies ? Thanks Gareth
Affiliate Marketing | | GAZ090 -
Comparison of affiliate marketing programs
Looking for a comparison of major affiliate marketing programs (Amazon Associates vs Commission Junction). Can someone point me in the right direction?
Affiliate Marketing | | nicole.healthline0 -
Affiliate Programs
Hi, I am wondering what if any affiliate management applications are being used out there. Anyone using Shareasale... I am looking into them.
Affiliate Marketing | | unikey0 -
Affiliate marketing dead?
I have created a network of travel websites that I have decided to promote little by little.. Also so they getdomain age and google trust.... but now when you search for all my main keyphrases... you either have wikitravel,lonelyplanet,frommers and other big brand. I guess that Google gave them better value as to get trusted travel information... However, it seems it will be very difficult to rank my sites. I could do long tail keyphrases but again might not be worth it... I used to work as a SEO consultant for other travel sites selling products... they still rank pretty well as they are sites of value selling something.. of course threy compete with other sites but we are in the same level. How can you compete with loneyplanet with your affiliate site because I am not selling anything on my sites. I am pretty much desperate. I designed a network of 30 sites... all good content with good SEO on the page... of course, I will be honest. I might have to change the content to make it better... you can check one of my site here; www.simplyparis.org it is worth it or better stop this project and focus on 1 product oriented website ? Is anyone working as an affiliate marketer with experience after google panda and pinguin ? is affiliate marketing dead in 2013 now?
Affiliate Marketing | | sandyallain0 -
Amazon Links destroyed my rankings, I removed them, will my site recover?
Hello, Last week I got the glorious idea to put amazon affiliate links on my website. I didn't put a rel=nofollow on them or deindex the pages they were on. Precisely I put some reviews and 10 different amazon links on one page and I put that into my navigation so all inner pages were linking to that page. When Google crawled my page again, I had a 60% traffic drop. 3 days later when I found out what caused this (amazon links) I completely removed the site containing those links and removed all links to that page from my site. Now my rankings are still down, will my site recover from this or is it lost? And how long would you think it'll take?
Affiliate Marketing | | SeeSharp10 -
SEO and Affiliate Links
Hello, We run a travel related website and we started to run our own affilate newtwork to promote the sales of our products. At the moment the affilate links pont to a spacific affilate url in order to tack conversions : abcweb.com/affiliate/nameqaz I'm wondering how is the best way to run a private affilate programm considering SEO: Is there a way yo benefit from those links ? What are the best strategies to do this? If yes, Is there any benefit from redirecting 301 those links to the original page (the one accesible to google and the one we want to rank for) or is it better to use a king of canonical method. Thanks a lot for sharing you experiences , giving your opinion and indicate resources. Best Regards Daria
Affiliate Marketing | | stereo690