Woot's take on affiliate marketing

http://www.woot.com/minions

by minouye • 15 years ago

127 37 15 years ago

woot.com

ericz• 15 years ago

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

cilantro• 15 years ago

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

rst• 15 years ago

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...

CurrentB• 15 years ago

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.

ggrot• 15 years ago

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

patio112• 15 years ago

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• 15 years ago

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.

symptic4• 15 years ago

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.

blackysky• 15 years ago

Most of the top affiliate Marketers out there use "mom blog" or "coupon sites" like fatwallet to generate "massive" revenues. In oder word they build a platform that they can use with affiliate marketing or direct business with potential advertiser. not everything is shady out there but you should never buy a make money online ebook or something like... Anytime someone tell you affiliate marketing is easy then run as far as possible from this person... now you know

il4• 15 years ago

Actually, most of the top affiliate marketers make money by arbitraging paid or organic traffic. Very few are creating sites that are much more than thin landing pages.

il4• 15 years ago

(Un)Fortunately for woot, the professional/slightly greyhat affiliates are not going to bother building campaigns that compete with Amazon and eBay for a piddling percent of sale commission .

The only affiliates they(and 99% of the other programs on CJ) will attract are the newbs who will put a link on their blog or maybe try to SEO an article they wrote.

No individual affiliate of theirs is going to make a lot of money, but maybe the aggregate total of millions of Woot's customers referring friends to Woot through Twitter, Facebook, etc will increase their traffic.

In other words, amateur affiliates make pennies, Woot wins. Especially if affiliates have to reach a minimum commission threshold before they get paid.

b0b0b0b• 15 years ago

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• 15 years ago

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.

vaksel2• 15 years ago

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• 15 years ago

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.)

vaksel2• 15 years ago

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

minouye• 15 years ago

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• 15 years ago

The funny part - Woot is owned by Amazon.

fredoliveira• 15 years ago

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

threepointone• 15 years ago

Very creative. I laughed a little.

moontear• 15 years ago

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

endlessvoid94• 15 years ago

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

lachyg2• 15 years ago

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• 15 years ago

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."

lachyg2• 15 years ago

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.

millerc• 15 years ago

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.

Woot's take on affiliate marketing

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