There is a whole new level of affiliate marketing, by bundling from various vendors into one website. Have you heard of moneysupermarket.com? They are one of the biggest affiliates in the world. This one website made the founder a billionaire!
The Internet opens vast opportunity to make lot money fast by running campaigns. Here are success stories and examples of sites that so affiliate marketing in the unconventional sense. What need to remember is that affiliate marketing is a simply a business model and many multiple ways to make money through affiliate marketing.
Trip Advisor
Almost everyone knows TripAdvisor. This website assists to make a good decision in relation to your travel plans in a simple manner and they do not charge you. So how do they make money? Their motto is “If you’re not paying for the product, then you’re the product”
http://www.wadenhoe.com
They have affiliate partnerships with some of the biggest travel companies in the world. Since they are such a trusted company, most people do not even realise they are an affiliate. Travel companies pay them generously for each lead and sale because their high lead quality bringing visitors turn to the customer.
TripAdvisor also receives a ridiculous amount of traffic. They have an Alexa rank of 81 and Similar Web estimates that the site receives 116 million visitors a month.
PC Magazine
The PC Magazine is an excellent case of a business that pivoted into the right industry. Most people know that they started as a humble print magazine back in the early 80s. Then, it grew its reader base and eventually became one of the biggest computer news and information portals on the web.
The traffic stat for PC Magazine is 45 million visitors a month! From there it can be estimated that a good chunk of the revenue comes from their affiliate commissions only.
PC Magazine review computers, software and other products. They dominate for some of the biggest keywords in their niche, like “best laptops”, so lots of people are buying based on their recommendations.
Their conversion rates must be high since people trust them so much. They also have relationships with Dell and other companies, since they push such huge volume to their sites.
Consumer Search
Most people will look at the review before they make their purchase either online or offline. Consumer Search is a site that analyses reviews and aggregates them. This site apparently very popular. Consumer Search has found a different way to make money without charging a subscription fee – they generate revenue by pushing traffic to Amazon, which is their affiliate.
Being an Amazon affiliate is super competitive, but ConsumerSearch has found a way to make it work. The site became so successful that the founders sold the site to the New York Times for $33 million. They also have a particular way to provide the review. Consumer Search realises that there are millions of products on Amazon. They only want to provide products that are high quality so that they develop high consumer trust and word of mouth.
They find the best product by ignoring the one and five-star reviews on Amazon. Instead, they look at the reviews in the middle. The reason behind this is these reviews were usually more honest and usually had more to say than “awesome smartwatch!” or “This model sucks”.
This was just a part of their strategy, but it’s helped them automate their business model to a high degree, which means they can focus on the marketing side.
Top 10 Reviews
Still related to the product review, Top 10 Reviews, in general, is not providing something new however they did change things up a bit. They provide top ten reviews of everything (the ten best dating sites, etc.), and everything is also ranked on a 10 point scale.
http://speedendurance.com
In term of the functionality, it is not much different from any other website. Even so, it still stands out and it shows you don’t need to be completely original to make things work. You just need be a little different and appeal to people’s nature (people love ranking things in order).
They became so successful that they were able to buy out lots of other web properties, like LiveScience.com. TechMedia Network, the holding company of Top 10 Reviews, generated over $100 million in 2014, and we can assume that, since Top 10 Reviews is one of their most valuable properties, the site accounted for millions in revenue.
The Points Guy
The website is basically about collecting points. The founder of ThePointsGuy.com, Brian Kelly has 30+ credit cards. He also has a company rule: “If they don’t accept credit cards, we don’t do business with them“.
He started the site while he was working full time showing people how to travel for almost nothing just using points. Now it’s a full-blown affiliate site for credit cards, hotels and flights.
They get 2.5 million monthly uniques, and he’s getting paid out $50-$400 per credit card someone signs up for. He pays for Facebook Ads, but a tonne of his traffic is coming in from organic / word of mouth sources.
Lesson learnt from Affiliate Marketing Success
The lesson that we can learn that, there are plenty of successful affiliates out there, and these websites are excellent examples of approach affiliate marketing creatively. It is worthwhile to look and to learn their business models.
Here are a couple of takeaways to get you started: Huge affiliate marketing success stories take time and definitely not built overnight or ripped from a spy tool. It is advisable you work with proven brands or become one. When already in that position of leading voice like PC Magazine, you can get awesome deals going direct with Fortune 500 brands like Dell. Providing great content is not sufficient, to make it work you have to be a great marketer. There is a tonne of great content out there that never gets found because they creator can not sell himself.
Thanks, great article.