Do you run an affiliate program and struggle to justify the money spent on keeping it up? Do you wonder if it's a wasted investment?

We do not think it has to be so! In fact, publishers like Trip Savvy and New York times earn more revenue from their affiliate program than from ads. This would not happen if their audience did not buy through their recommendations at a large scale!

Good content publishers really know their audience and engage them with valuable content. The fact that they have newsletters that people subscribe to, shows that people really care for their content. We have seen  anywhere from 30% - 50% open rates on email sent by one of our travel publisher partners.

77% of people trust recommendations of influencers or publishers that they subscribe to. So it is a win-win for brands and publishers to collaborate and bring the most relevant recommendations for the audience.

Declining ad revenue

The reason for declining revenue from ad spend is obvious. Most ads are either totally irrelevant or at least not to the context of the user. Showing an ad about super foods to prevent diabetes while someone is reading a travel article is just simply out of context, even if the reader looked up diabetes a few days back.

So why do many affiliate programs fail?

When a new publisher is on-boarded, brands start with low commissions as a percentage of sales generated. This does not add up to much for the publisher to make an effort to create good content and to present the products mindfully to the audience. It is particularly true in the lifestyle segment .

Consider an average order values of $50 - $200. Even with a 40% open rate, 5% click rate and 2% conversions resulting in 40 orders to brand new customers, a day of effort only yields $100 to the publisher.

The result is half-hearted campaigns that re-play the same messages or offers put forth by the brands, rather than thoughtfully written e-commerce content. It results in a waste of time, effort and enthusiasm for all parties involved.

So how can this chain be broken?

1. Someone has to pay it forward and put a leap of faith. How about onboarding new publishers with attractive incentives for a good campaign, like, a flat fee for an exclusive piece of content with embedded product recommendations? This helps them put in the effort. You can ask for audience insights, and figure out if there is a good match with the content style, and with the audience.

2. Use customer engagement  as a starting benchmark for performance,  not just hard sales numbers.

3. After a few campaigns,  add commissions or reconfigure the deal to a combination of a flat fee and commissions. Interestingly, right now, the trend is the reverse of this. Brands have a "wait and watch" approach before offering good incentives, and publishers do not feel inclined to take up new brands because of this.

4. Convert content creators into loyal brand ambassadors by offering exclusive coupons, rewards or by inviting then to special events. See this link for more insights on brand loyalty.

At Unthink AI, we offer tools like a writing tool based on #chatgpt and many other recommendation algorithms to simplify the creation of e-commerce content and product curation. We reduce the effort taken by content creators to create intelligent content with products that match the taste of the audience. For more information, visit