5. Observed performance of many different
types of sites:
• Blogs
• News sites
• Magazine sites
• Content sites
• Social shopping sites
• Forums
• Widgets and web apps
• Twitter
Observed performance of many different
types of sites:
• Blogs
• News sites
• Magazine sites
• Content sites
• Social shopping sites
• Forums
• Widgets and web apps
• Twitter
14. Affiliate marketing is hard to do well
• Small % of affiliates make a lot of money
• Technically challenging
• Time-consuming
• Error-prone
• Onerous maintenance
• Fragmented networks and merchants
• Competition from cashback/coupon
15. Traditional publishers don’t do it at all
• Core business is content and community
• Structured around display ads
• Fragmented departments
• Editors don’t think commercially/technically
• Requires distribution of logins to everyone
• Tend not to link to broad variety of merchants
• Yet these publishers carry influence and traffic
16. Traditional banner advertising not working
• Ad blindness
• Low CPM rates
• Limit to number of ads on page
• Brand advertisers don’t like small sites
• Small sites struggle to make money
• Web 2.0 technologies ≠ high page impressions
• Incentivises keeping users onsite
18. Social media sites convert much better
• Forums convert 5-10x more than editorial sites
• Social shopping and blogs convert 2-3x more
than editorial
• Personalised recommendations
• Deeper links
• Friendlier calls to action
20. Sites should be rewarded based on:
• The calibre of traffic
• The delivery of a service
• The fostering of a community
• Allowing and encouraging outbound links
21. Social media monetisation is the future!
• Nurture an eco-system that encourages more
forums and social sites to form
• First way these sites can genuinely monetise!
• Initial pain for merchants (was free traffic)
• Future joy for merchants:
– More forums created
– Better moderation and encouragement
– Compelling designs
– More optimised search for posts
22. Opens way for more forums & social sites
• Traditionally a labour of love
– Expensive to run (licenses, hosting, bandwidth)
– Pressure to be free and run fast (no ads)
• New business model = new innovations
• Great for all parties
– Merchants get communities talking about them,
and highly converting traffic
– Publishers can sustain their sites
– Users continue to use valuable services for free, no
intrusive ads
23. Ethical framework is required
Value chain of ethics
…to publishers…to users…to merchants
Ethical framework is required
Value chain of ethics
…to publishers…to users…to merchants
24. Rules for ethical behaviour to users
1. Must uphold user/site
contract
2. Non-intrusive to user
experience
3. Always err on side of
user-experience
4. Be careful when fiddling
with UGC
5. Retain editorial integrity
6. Disclosure (it may help
with revenue!)
25. How to retain editorial integrity
• Editors write what they want, but add link out if
they have an affiliate program
• Use services to allow agnosticism
• Rotate attention to different merchants
• Offer multiple links to products
• Link to where editor would look – make it useful
• Avoid finance/news, just subjective content
27. Ethical grey areas
• Avoid affiliate-enabling pure news
• Take care when making financial
recommendations without disclosing
affiliations
• Using affiliate links in URL shorteners/Twitter
– Standard way needed to disclose
– Can lead to mistrust unless genuine
28. Rules for ethical behaviour to merchants
• Add value to the purchase process
– Value = content OR a service
– An eco-system that encourages purchases
• Therefore:
– No cookie stuffing random merchants
– No toolbars
– Coupon/cashback need to add value to brand
• Reward merchants that perform well for you
– Extra content/widgets
– Use their CPA banner ads
29. Nice things to do for merchants
• Offer differentiated service to merchants
– More content
– More links out
• “ASOS don’t have an affiliate program so lets
not link to them as often. Focus on products
from merchants that have an affiliate
program.”
30. New services to reward great
merchants
New services to reward great
merchants
31. Rules for ethical behaviour to publishers
• Reward highly converting traffic
• Reward community managers
• Grasp opportunity of social media
• Support deeplinking to products and search
result pages
• Offer good landing pages for out-of-stock
products
32. Conclusion
• Social media sites
should be rewarded
and nurtured as they
are the best converting
type of site
• Remain ethical to user
and merchant
• Help publishers that
drive traffic to your site
to survive.
Talked to hundreds of publishers who don’t do it because it yields small results for too much effort.
The ones who do it well make their site especially for affiliate marketing, which not everyone wants to do
Non-affiliate publishers find it prohibitively difficult
Forums tend to be a labour of love, take years to develop, with no revenues in meantime. No one advertises on forums.
ALICIA
JOE – (thank you to our interviewees – ask for questions)
