10 affiliate sites that rock
Last week in this post I said I would give 10 examples of affiliate sites that I think are cool and are of real value to their users. Here we go…
1. Allkids- When talking to people just starting out in Affiliate Marketing I always use AllKids as a perfect example of what an affiliate site should be like. It was set up by my friend Elaine (who has no technical experience whatsoever) in 1999 when she saw a gap in the market for a site that offered resources for parents. She never intended it to make money - which is always the best way to approach a new venture I think. Anyway it now generates over £200k in sales per month for the merchants she promotes.
2. OSOYOU- Osoyou cleverly mixes a traditional shopping site with social media and a big dose of community spirit. Instead of just a static shopping directory they use datafeeds from the merchants they promote very cleverly by giving their users the chance to create a virtual shopping list of items they would like to purchase. This site is definitely worth checking out to see how a bit of lateral thinking should be employed in order to do things differently.
3. Loquax- This site has been around for 10 years now, which is a huge achievement in itself. Loquax is mainly known as a competition portal but has now expanded to shopping, discount codes and online gaming. It does really well in the search engines proving that regular fresh content does work and has an active community with over 167,000 members.
4. Travel Rants- winner of the Best Travel Consumer Blog in the recent Travolution awards. A shining example of how to find a unique angle in the saturated online travel market and exploit it. Instead of just knocking up another me-too travel site that features say “nice hotels in Benidorm” - yawn - Darren (the owner) has taken the approach of being a bit controversial and writing about a subject that anyone who has travelled abroad before will have experienced, i.e. bad customer service etc. His posts are always passionate and he is obviously knowledgeable about the subjects he discusses.
5. Alex’s Coupons- This site was born from a father’s need to raise cash for his daughter Alex who was diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia in 1998. Click here to read the full story. 10 years on the site is still going strong and has a very loyal following from people who have been touched by Leukemia and Cancer as well as a very strong following from people who just want to donate to a worthy cause by shopping through the site’s affiliate links. Not the prettiest site ever, but it does the job very well.
6. Shlogging- A deal site that utilises votes from users to display the biggest offers to users. A bit like Digg but for special offers/discounts. I really like the simple, clean crisp layout.
7. Purse Blog- “Shallow obsessing strongly encouraged” is the tagline for this site about designer handbags. I love the attention to detail and high quality photo’s on this blog. A really good blog and well monetised. Another example of writing with passion.
8. The Bargainist - Dead simple bargain and offer site that has tons of fresh content updated daily. This site gets a ton of traffic and rightly so. As I often say, simple is best and this site doesn’t try to be over clever and it works.
9. My Deco- Brought to us from one of the founders of LastMinute.com, MyDeco uses product feeds and affiliate links in a unique way. Instead of just a plain shopping directory the site lets you pick items for specific rooms in your house and visualise how they will look. It also offers tons of tips, style ideas, makeovers and loads and loads of unique content to bring users in. Very well put together and a great idea.
10. VoucherCodes.com - An example of a voucher code site done really well. Loads of fresh content, well optimised and gets a ton of traffic and converts well for its merchants.
Are there any affiliate sites that rock that I’ve missed out?
What I’m listening to right now: Usher – “This Ain’t Sex”
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 11:23 am and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I run UK Offer Media Ltd. I thought it would be fun to post a daily (well hopefully daily) blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing and more specifically Affiliate Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passions, music and cars. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I would add http://www.moneysavingexpert.com to that list - it manages to be a very profitable affiliate site whilst giving the illusion that it’s ‘free of ads’
May 13th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Your so right about myvouchercodes…there are so many now that just don’t quite hit the mark, but they have it down. The interface is wonderfully simple - and what a great idea in the first place!
May 13th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Just to qualify, I listed vouchercodes.com in my list, NOT myvouchercodes.com.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
I have a half coded (inspired by) version of mydeco.com sitting ready for action. I think its about time i get the programmer to get his finger out and finish it off!
May 13th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
An interesting list Kieron. What I think is encouraging is the overall standard of affiliate sites compared to where we were just a few years ago. These guys, and lots of others too, have clearly put a lot of effort into web design, content and overall ‘contribution’ to the web experience.
May 13th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
It would be nice to know what the rough visitors numbers per month are for the sites you’ve listed as well. Maybe a bit too much to ask. :o)
May 13th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Interesting you list vouchercodes.com and not myvouchercodes.co.uk any reason for this Kieron
I would choose myvouchercodes over vouchercodes.com anytime, they have several features which make it stand out from the crowd, such as user voting, rss feeds, custom disct alerts to name just a few, the site is far more user friendly, and its traffic seems to be way more than vouchercodes.com even tho its not been around for as long.
Thoughts?
May 13th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
These are the sort of sites that I was thinking of for the A4U Publisher Award 2008
May 13th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Hi Kieron,
Just reading this post alone has started the creative jucies flowing for me. Thx for doing the research and giving me a model to follow.
May 13th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Now let the copycats roll…
May 13th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Another tick for MyVoucherCodes… a fun and strangely addictive site that I wished I had come up with.
May 13th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Thank you for the mention Kieron
It’s the first time that I have heard Travel Rants as an affiliate site. I have to admit to not being a fan of affiliate sites because of the shear number of poor quality sites which confuse visitors more than help them.
I have only had a few affiliates for the past 8 weeks, as a test to see if I can earn good revenue. Whilst I’d not want to provide exact stats, the blog receives great traffic, yet it doesn’t each money in the way of revenue.
To be a successful affiliate, especially in travel I think you need to provide a service (i.e. hotel reviews) and add on affiliate advertising on top of this service.
Thanks again for the kind comments.
May 13th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
@ PWA
I think those that copy successful affiliate sites are generally people who do not want to be bothered with the amount of work successful affiliate sites create, it’s not just writing, forum/community management, but web promotion aswell, which takes up alot of time and effort.
May 13th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
There’s some great examples there Kieron and Teach Me$$ it’s got me thinking that I should try to think outside the box a bit more with some upcoming sites.
May 13th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
I don’t like the ethics of MyVoucherCodes.com, which is why I didn’t list it. Up until not very long ago they had iframes all over the place and were stuffing cookies left right and centre. Even now they encourage users to “click here for discount codes” even when there aren’t any. That’s why I didn’t list them.
May 13th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
And vouchercodes.com and other sites don’t and didnt use Iframes do this Kieron? Maybe it was because they kept their heads down no one noticed?! It’s an interesting choice you made as most people think myvouchercodes now when they think of discount codes sites, it must rock in a way? the sheer amount of talk about them and not to mention all their press coverage. They have done a lot for the growth of the voucher code sector.
I think you will find this on every page of vouchercodes.com
“Show Current Discount Codes + Site”
Anyhow, a great choice of sites, well done to all, and it would have been great to see some of the above listed for a4u publishers award.
May 14th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Kieron - I’m guessing the guy who posted as “My Voucher Codes” IS my voucher codes as his signature goes to that site! I agree with you regarding the ethics. There are plenty of negative comments on the a4u forum about that site.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:23 am
Isn’t The Bargainist a copy of UKHotdeals? If it was copied or inspired by UKHotdeals you should really list that site instead.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Sean, do you mean HotUKDeals? I haven’t listed them as they have been known to steal unique affiliate’s discount codes.
May 14th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
The only affiliate site I use regularly is flightmapping.com - shame that didnt make the list as its a really clever innovation
May 15th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Hi Kieron, yes I did mean HotUKdeals, oops.
I didn’t know they steal code, and if they do I agree they shouldn’t be listed. But then again is the Bargainist copied the concepted from Hotukdeals they shouldn’t be listed either.
May 15th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Whatever Sean. My site is similar the The Barganist and you know where I got it from…my head! I hadn’t even heard of The Barganist until a few weeks ago and I definitely never heard of the site you listed so does that mean I copied or does that mean truly unique ideas are hard to come by?
May 16th, 2008 at 12:33 am
Vouchercodes does it really well. You ask those ringtone super affiliates, it’s those animated arrows
You just feel compelled to click ‘em
May 17th, 2008 at 9:51 am
@Antony
I agree that flightmapping.com should definitely be in the list - it’s a great site in terms of functionality and usefulness and the SEO isn’t all that bad (but could be improved
)
May 17th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Yep, I’d agree that flightmapping should be on there, it’s the only affiliate site I know that I regularly recommend to friends & family. It got me back from the DFDS Amsterdam event at a bargain price and I’ve used it ever since.
I’ve been sketching out designs for a new discounts & sales site myself and it looks very like the Bargainist and I’d never seen it before, time to get the colouring pens out again!
May 19th, 2008 at 1:32 am
Interesting to note the common theme between most of these sites as they nearly all have white backgrounds and a magazine-style format.
I wonder what the nest trend in styles will be, or whether this will be the style for the a long time to come?
May 20th, 2008 at 5:48 am
I am surprised by the inclusion of vouchercodes dot com in your list. In my opinion the owner lacks ethics just as much as the owner of myvouchercodes dot com. He lists codes as being exclusive to him when infact they are available to all, he doesn’t post expiry dates and he actually quotes bigger discounts than what the vouchers actually entitle. These observations are from a quick 5 minute browse of the website…….
May 22nd, 2008 at 12:44 am
There’s a real mix here, and you’ve certainly done your homework with these, thanks for the input, Kieron! It’s great to learn about affiliate companies from an affiliate marketer!
November 25th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
hotukdeals is probably one of the worst sites out there. They get deals submitted by users and then add their own affiliate code to it automatically. they actually change the link which is worse than stealing! its deception as well.