
Woot's take on affiliate marketing - minouye
http://www.woot.com/minions
======
patio11
Affiliate marketing is, to reuse a quote from the guys behind Spreedly, a
"star search.". Many will enter, few will win. You keep the barriers to entry
low in the hopes that you find one of the comparatively few professional
affiliates who know what they are doing, as opposed to more numerous people
who either intend to put a single link on their blog or, worse, have recently
bought a Make Money Online ebook.

What successful affiliates are doing is very frequently some shade of gray,
which is one of the reasons to have affiliates in the first place - plausible
deniability. [Edited to add: a well-designed affiliate program also generates
organic SEO benefits, and this facet profits even from a single link on an
unremarkable blog, when that gets duplicated at scale.]

~~~
contravert
I've worked for an affiliate marketing company, and some of the highest
earners do truly earn impressive amounts (tens of thousands of dollars a
month). You are also incredibly right about the shady business that goes on in
this industry. In my opinion, the most profitable and highest conversion
campaigns are always the most gray. The fact that many advertisers usually
require a landing page (rather than a direct link) is really fishy by itself.

~~~
symptic
I used to make a healthy living designing landing pages for affiliates.
Several of my clients were making several million a year (all made a "healthy"
living) and I was bringing in several hundred a day from just designing
landing pages. I left because I couldn't handle that "gray area" people talk
about, but I swear those are some of the most intelligent and hardest working
people I've met. Shame many are missing that deep entrepreneurial spirit many
here on HN have.

~~~
stephenbez
I'm not too familiar with this field, can you explain what the "gray area" is?

Is it people linking to the affiliate without disclosing they are getting
something from it? Or is it more blackhat SEO and spam?

~~~
patio11
I could talk for hours on this. Some things which amused even a jaded SEO:

1) Rebill scams. (Theft, basically.)

2) As a reward for winning this trivia quiz, here is a one month free
subscription to $OFFER.

3) Review site: stars awarded based solely on affiliate commission.

4) Brand arbitrage. Many ways to do it. The easiest is "$BRAND is a scam.
Don't buy until you read this!"

~~~
notahacker
5) "This offer is only available if you subscribe via this special link before
12pm on [script returning today's date]"

6) Essentially worthless "make money fast" products that are little more than
product-based pyramid schemes shilling the opportunity to make money by
signing up themselves to marketing the "product" to other suckers

7) Virtually anything related to casinos - especially the ones purporting to
explain how to "beat" them (and amongst those, especially those providing
information on how to churn casino bonuses playing blackjack that's actually
accurate)

------
minouye
How to manage expectations:

1\. Amazon Associates: "Make money advertising Amazon products"

2\. eBay Partner Network: "You can earn a lot of money"

3\. Woot: "...destroy your online reputation AND earn literally pennies
through dull, thankless tedium"

~~~
edanm
The funny part - Woot is owned by Amazon.

~~~
fredoliveira
But have clearly maintained their culture post-acquisition (as they said they
would)

------
lachyg
I did very well myself with affiliate marketing. The trick (if you want to do
affiliate marketing and still feel good about yourself) is to provide some
value add.

So when I started iPadCaseFinder (now owned by someone else and changed into a
storefront), I built a really cool 'finding' application so people could find
the perfect iPad cases for them. It earnt pretty well!

~~~
edash
I think the disagreement most people would have with this approach is that
you're coming at it from the wrong side. It's money first and then "oh yeah,
I'd better add some value."

~~~
lachyg
You're wrong, I decided to found this site because my friend dropped and
cracked my iPad, and I couldn't find any suitable cases. The site was inspired
by a true life problem, and I know 100's of people that found it very useful.

------
CurrentB
Pretty funny, and interesting that this comes from an Amazon company, Amazon
having pioneered the online affiliate industry and finding much success in it.
Still, It's a pretty accurate portrayal of the whole affiliate scheme, and I
think it might have the effect of keeping away the low-value affiliates while
not deterring those who could actually provide a mutually beneficial
relationship.

------
b0b0b0b
I wonder if anyone at woot had the groupon idea (before groupon came out) but
was quashed because it just wasn't woot-like. It seems like woot lost a couple
orders of magnitude of scale by (apparently) making themselves the fulfillment
bottleneck.

~~~
Helianthus16
They're both important. I'm never sure I'll use a groupon when I buy it, but I
can always be talked into buying a gadget if it's cheap or a shirt if it
strikes my fancy.

------
vaksel
it's actually a 50/50 proposition...many affiliates who actually make
sales(besides the few rare super affiliates), do so by simply ranking for the
first page as "[brand] review, since that way they reach the customer just
before they hit the buy button

So as an advertiser, you basically just end up paying money for sales that
would have been yours anyways

~~~
thenomad
Well, that depends on if the top review would have been good otherwise.

One thing affiliate programs appear to be awesome at is stuffing Google with
positive reviews of a product.

(Which leads me to wonder how long it will be until the Big G starts
downranking pages with easily-spotted affiliate links.)

~~~
vaksel
they already do that, which is why affiliates link go to great lengths to hide
the fact that they are linking to an affiliate site

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rst
Well, if you're worried about scaling issues from a flood of affiliates, I
guess this is one way of trying to manage the volume...

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millerc
Very well done! Looks like a full script of our experiences with AdWords back
when it was new and shiny.

So, Woot is actually serious about this? Glad to see someone put things as
they are.

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endlessvoid94
Of course they have that opinion. Affiliate marketing requires time and
targeting, neither of which woot.com can offer affiliates.

------
ggrot
It's certainly more creating than adding a link to your commission junction
page. It'll probably get more visibility too.

------
threepointone
Very creative. I laughed a little.

~~~
moontear
I didn't think it was funny at all, very creative indeed though.

------
ericz
The cool landing page really gets killed by the unfortunately drab commission
junction page

~~~
cilantro
I like the way your eyes get directed on that page. Read the whole pitch then
follow the trail back to the top.

