Why diversifying your affiliate revenue is a sensible idea
Stuart Miles
Learn how not to lose all your affiliate eggs by reading this article.
There’s a proverb that says you shouldn’t “put all your eggs in one basket” and yet so many website publishers do just that when it comes to their affiliate programmes.
It’s easy to see why. The chances are the editorial team is already stretched with all the additional requests you’ve asked of them over the last couple of years. Write the story, take some nice pictures, can you do video, what about social?
So, asking them to go off into the internet on the hunt for the best price they can find from various retailers who might or might not stock it before then working out which affiliate code to use is a tough ask.
If you’ve convinced them to do the above then you should be patting yourself on the back for your amazing negotiation skills, before realising that in doing so you’ve also probably added around 20+ minutes to their workflow every time they write anything.
So, we do what’s quick, easy, and for the most part, pain free. We turn to the world’s largest and savviest online retailer to solve the problem for us.
The problem in picking just one affiliate retail partner to work with though is that all your eggs are in that one basket, and that’s bad for both you and your readers.
It’s bad for your readers because they don’t always want to shop at the same store every time. It could be that site doesn’t have the best price, doesn’t ship to them where they live, or something else entirely that might be more altruistic - let’s give the little guys a chance.
It also allows doubt to creep in. What if it is cheaper elsewhere? That tends to lead to the reader leaving your site to do their own retailer search on Google. The moment that happens you’ve lost the affiliate click and the potential revenue that comes with it.
Meanwhile it’s not that great for you, on the publishing side either. In working with just one retailer you don’t get the chance to work with multiple parties in multiple countries and all the benefits that brings to not only your affiliate efforts, but also the wider potential for your ad teams too.
Many publishers will happily tell you that by leveraging the successes from one programme to another is where the real money is earned as your teams work together to produce something that is more than the sum of their parts.
So next time you go to put all your eggs in one basket, remember if the basket gets dropped, you might find you lose out.