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
-
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 links and parameters creating duplicate page titles
Hi, we have an affiliate system and use rel=**canonical **to canonicalise them to the right link. Still, we see those links creating duplicate page titles, in Moz crawl and in Google search console. How are we supposed to treat those links so they do not create duplicate content? Thanks for your help!
Affiliate Marketing | | guidetoiceland0 -
Can 302 chains (affiliate links) from "toxic" sources hurt you? Or are you "shielded"?
Hi, I'm going through some affiliate links, which send visitors to our website via a chain of several 302 redirects Some of them are relevant links, others perhaps not so much. I know that Google doesn't pass PageRank on 302s... But are they still considered valid links that pass, let's say, "reputation", "relevance", "link neighbourhood" kind of signals? Otherwise put, is a 302 similar to adding the "nofollow" attribute on a link? Sort of? Not at all? More succinctly put, should I be worried about "toxic" sources separated from us by 302 redirect chains? By the way, yes I recognize that (Google's 302 redirect chain handling aside) associating our brand with perhaps what some might consider spammy websites is not in general a good move; I'm concerned with the technical SEO implications here however. In fact, this technical information may very well help drive decisions/policies on where we allow our affiliate advertising to appear. Thanks 🙂 PS - The affiliate company by the way is cj.com if that helps
Affiliate Marketing | | ntcma0 -
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 -
How to prevent affiliates from bringing negative SEO?
Hi there, I'm just about to integrate iDevAffiliate network for one of my sites, however it occurred to me that affiliates may (unfortunately) resort to black hat methods without me becoming aware of it, which could pass negative link juice to my site. Is there any way to use affiliate networks such as iDev without causing this problem? I was thinking of simply using a different URL, but the problem is that 301 redirects won't mitigate the issue. Thanks!
Affiliate Marketing | | freeunlocks0 -
Which affiliate programs pass the best SEO value through their links?
How good is Google at detecting the affiliate nature of those links? How does this rate as a linkbuilding strategy?
Affiliate Marketing | | menachemp0 -
How do the engines look at pages populated using content from an affiliate site?
We are building out a section of our site using an affiliate partnership in the travel space. How would you suggest organizing the content so we do not get penalized for duplicate content? Do you suggest not suing the content at all?
Affiliate Marketing | | TSDigital0 -
Affiliate for SEO
Hello, If you get bad websites as affiliates through share a sale can that hurt your seo? Thanks Tyler
Affiliate Marketing | | tylerfraser0