I don’t think its as simple as looking at the mechanisms of affiliate marketing re PPC, SEO or cashback sites. I think the real issue is the nature of the product, the affiliates promoting the product and their own personal beliefs. Sex is so personal, it could be difficult to separate personal moral beliefs and then readily accept others. The Media is so contradictory and the only time we ever hear about sex is always in a negative way, “The woman was tied up and raped”. Women trafficking, child porn and so on. The other factor is lots of affiliates will not want kids stumbling across adult products, so rather then take that risk, they would rather just stay away from LoveHoney altogether. I feel one of the challenges if we want main stream affiliates is to get those main stream affiliates promoting LoveHoney and doing it without mentioning sex or the products. We know people are buying these products, doctors, teachers, psychologists, affiliates, and merchants too, in fact who has not got some kind of sex aid, perhaps is the question?

The following is a snippet from my own blog post “LoveHoney.co.uk affiliate program has gathered considerable pace in the last few months, affiliates have been slow to begin with but once they put their links up, bang! “ A nice little converter”. Some affiliates have seen that they can fit LoveHoney.co.uk (specialises in adult themed products) into their main stream sites by honing in on the lingerie sections, or the health sections. Condoms being acceptable and accepted by the majority of people. You see consumers are by and large very curious about adult products most will openly say they don’t own any adult products but we kinda know that that’s not the case for a lot of them. If you’re the bashful type or you think your customers are the bashful type, then help yourself and them out. See a whole paragraph and I have not mentioned the “S” word once. Has any one clocked the Durex Playring advert? they don’t mention the “S” word once either. LoveHoney.co.uk was even featured in the Guardian back in the day http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2004/apr/29/businesssolutionssupplement5. We know sales are rocking so some one is buying them. It’s when you shove the product in your visitor’s face without even so much as a reason why its there, which can be off putting. Softly softly does it.”

I love LoveHoney.co.uk aff program because it has all the right ingredients coming together to make a high performance affiliate program. Conversions are great, commissions are lucrative, cookie date great. We have not aggressively gone out and thrown this program in affiliate’s faces, Richard may disagree here with our methods, rather we have introduced LoveHoney to the affiliates and let the affiliates first get their heads around the moral dilemma of promoting an adult store, secondly we can show them how to promote LoveHoney without even mentioning sex or toys. If we want main stream affiliates we need to promote lovehoney in a way that does not make any one feel ill at ease or uncomfortable, if the affiliate is relaxed about us, then this will be reflected in how they promote LoveHoney to their visitors. Of course a lot of affiliates are guys and will be able to go full on and no embarrassment, the lads amongst lads. Some affiliates are not like that and this is who we need to cater for too. This is not a traditional affiliate program, we are not selling knives and forks, we are selling sex aids and this will always be deemed as a bit risqué.

“If you’re a merchant, like LoveHoney, that has its PPC pretty well covered in-house”

We run our PPC in-house, very well. We also allow PPC affiliates to send traffic direct to merchant, and the two complement each other very well.

Graham

Well I’m not a PPC affiliate by any means, I concentrate on niche SEO, and building email lists, also in niche areas, however one of the programs I promote is Ann Summers so I hope I can contribute something useful.

I have some of their top products at #1 on a number of engines, and across several phrases, but I know for a fact there is a ‘long-tail’ of phrases I get SEO traffic for that is not being touched by PPC, so much so that I’m starting to move into PPC to get 2 listings on the SERPS and pick up traffic I already know converts.

Never believe that you’ve ‘got it covered’. on PPC. Sure, block off the brand stuff if it makes sense, but your affiliates can give better reach than you’ll ever do. That means, PPC, SEO, emails, the whole lot.

If I’m covering areas that Ann Summers have missed, think how much space is out there for a smaller brand like yourselves.

That kind of thinking is so ass backwards it’s borderline retarded.

LET AFFILIATES SELL YOUR PRODUCTS, I guarantee you that you will increase sales dramatically if you let affiliates bid on your terms.

This is not true on all programs – sure, if he had an open PPC policy the sales would be higher, but if he’s getting a better, more controlled ROI from PPC then why would he look to stop that?

This is such a naive attitude, As good as your in-house team may be. They will never be as good as the collective PPC ability of all the PPC affiliates.

Having affiliates share the PPC space with your own PPC campaign will give you much more visibility and will likely push some of your competitors down the rankings.

James Jenkins-Yates

Nice site though

That kind of thinking is so ass backwards it’s borderline retarded. LET AFFILIATES SELL YOUR PRODUCTS, I guarantee you that you will increase sales dramatically if you let affiliates bid on your terms. First off, you cannot think of every angle. Second, smart affiliates will use your “banned word list” to promote your compeition on ppc engines. Third, having 100 affiliates promoting your products on ppc engines means 100 times the sales activity that you could generate alone.

Stupid merchants who think they’re losing money if they let affiliates compete with them should be shot.

best wishes,
G