Blog Indiana Speakers?

[Tricia Meyer]

Just wanted to see who else from Smaller Indiana is going to be speaking at Blog Indiana this year. I'm excited to be both attending and speaking there for the first time. My panel discussion will be about how to utilize affiliate marketing to generate revenue for blog sites.

Anyone else care to share their topics or plans for participation?

[Tim Piazza]

I'll be there, Tricia. I'm involved in the Social Media Summit on Saturday. I don't have a particular topic to present this year, but I hope that this year's involvement gives me a growing opportunity to contribute to the overall success of the conference. I feel it's really important to be involved and engaged. I don't get out of my office enough otherwise!

[Tim Piazza]

I do have a question for you. Would you suggest that affiliate marketing is a good way to generate inbound links to a website that includes an ecommerce component? The client's goals are not necessarily to sell more product through the store, but to generally build greater brand awareness through their web presence (among other activities). They already have an active social media plan that we're in the process of rolling out, but we're also looking at doing anything that builds long term momentum with little up-front investment.

[Tricia Meyer]

If you are looking for inbound links just for brand awareness, then affiliate marketing is great. If you are looking at them for SEO, it doesn't work quite as well because most affiliate links are run through networks and cloaked.

It's definitely very little up-front investment. A few hundred dollars will get you set up with a network. Then you are only paying if the affiliates are generating sales. I think Shareasale has one of the lowest setup costs and only a $25 monthly minimum.

If I were the affiliate of a lesser-known brand name but a product that I thought would be good for my members, I would ask the merchant for a sample of the product. On my own dime I would then make a video, upload it to Youtube and FB, Twitter about it, and then add the links to my site. I might not even end up with a sale, but the merchant would end up with a lot of new information out there about them for only the cost of the sample.

Does that help?

[Tim Piazza]

It does help me focus my thoughts somewhat, Tricia, thank you. I think the main idea is to push the brand out into more places. They have their products in places like Cabela's and Bass Pro Shops, as well as hundreds of independent retailers around the country. Plus they sponsor college teams and professional events. But we're always looking for more ways to extend their brand.

Do you think that there is a chance that through an affiliate marketing program they could acquire a tarnished reputation? Do you lose control of the brand message which for them is (loosely) "a quality product that provides great performance while being affordable"?

[Tricia Meyer]

Out of curiosity, are people already promoting those products through product feeds from the affiliate programs of Cabela's and Bass Pro Shops? For example, are they showing up in shopping comparison search engines? If so, they may actually be engaged in affiliate marketing to some extent...only without any of the direct benefit of having the links come back to their own site.

[Tim Piazza]

Bing! The light just went on. I had to dig pretty far down into the search engine results pages, but I did find internet retail sites that at first glance appear to be typical independent retailers, but their products are actually links to Cabela's or other major retailers who offer Affiliate programs.

On one site, their "contact us" page gave an address and showed a picture of a very modern office building. The caption "future home of...". The physical address, however, is a home in a suburban cul-de-sac. The site had hundreds of products from a number of businesses with affiliate programs.

I don't see where an affiliate program like this causes any harm to a brand image, as it's simply an extension of the retailer relationship. It does make me curious, though. I can see how this type of website can generate some revenue, but it's not a "sticky" site. If, for example, I click on a product and end up at Cabela's, in the future I will go straight to Cabela's. I suppose the trick to making this type of program work is in creating a community portal in conjunction with the affiliate side so that people start at the portal rather than only at the retailer.

[Tricia Meyer]

You are exactly right. Part of the stickiness of sites like those are that they add extra value through price comparisons, cash back, coupons, product reviews, etc. The downside of your client not having an affiliate program is that if someone does a search for a particular product name with "review" or "coupon" or something else in the search and ends up on any of those sites, the only links that will show up will be the affiliate links to Cabela's, Bass Pro Shops, etc. Any blogger who uses your client's product and likes it and wants to monetize a review on it will review it but instead of linking back to your client's site directly to tell people where to buy it will link through an affiliate link to one of the retailers.

It's kind of hard to say in the abstract how much business is going through the retailers that could come directly to your client if they have their own affiliate program, but it's at least worth looking into.

(BTW...I grew up in Newburgh!)