5 Star Affiliate Blogs

GIVE THE GIFT OF CHOICE! One of the most popular gifts given this holiday season will be gift certificates and gift cards. Makes so much sense to let people choose the gift they want. I would think conversions on gift cards would be really high. HOWEVER affiliates be advised - in the majority of affiliate programs gift certificates are NOT commissionable, so don’t promote that option on your site unless you verify you will get a commission.

CLUELESS GIFT CERTIFICATE MERCHANT ALERT - As I researched the affiliate gift certificate market for this story I decided to log into CJ to see what I could find. WOW I thought - I hit the motherload! I was so excited to let you guys know about this merchant. Then I checked deeper. Oh-oh…

DISCLAIMER - I’m not in the habit of writing negative program reviews or critiques, and this whole story would have been extremely positive but…

The Merchant - GIFT CERTIFICATES.com

To the left is a low res screen capture of their most popular banner copy.

Problem #1 - There are NO Christmas banners, no holiday banners at all! I’d have banners with presents under the tree and with Santa’s bag full of gifts saying “Can’t decide? Give them the gift of Choice!” OK so it’s only November. I suspect gift certificate sales are highest toward the end of the holiday selling season - however affiliates have been working on their holiday promotions since Sept. Plus there are still “gifts for grads” banners up, so why no Christmas banners?

Problem #2 - There are no birthday banners. Birthdays happen year round. They have no season. Birthdays happen every single day of the year and gift cards or gift certificates make the perfect last minute birthday present.

Problem #3 - If I were managing this program or running this offer as an affiliate, one of the biggest advantages I would want to feature is the choice of top name brand stores. I would most certainly have at least one general merchant banner that flashed names like Macy’s, Staples, Old Navy and TigerDirect to visually drive home the point that there are all these options and more. They do have some tiny static buttons for individual buttons, but none that highlight the variety. I would also have a variety of banners that showed groupings of top merchants by category. Gifts for him, gifts for her, electronic gifts, travel gifts, etc.

The other cool option this company offers is their Dining Gift Certificates where you can choose from top restaurants like Black Angus, Claim Jumper, Chilis and 27 more. Here is a screen grab of their DINING banner. Does that image say “yummy food? to you? The colors are really bad for food IMHO. Slap a big juicy steak on that thing and we’re talkin!

I don’t really consider myself a banner critic, but these things just jumped out at me as such obvious mistakes and omissions.

LAST but not LEAST - From an affiliate management viewpoint - their affiliate landing page has NO JOIN LINK. It talks about CJ and links to CJ home page, but no join link. I wanted to give you guys that link and invite you to join this program, but…

If I still did affiliate management and was looking for a new client, I’d be contacting these folks to see if they need some help. I think this program has HUGE potential that hasn’t been tapped. (Hint, hint to all the OPM’s that read this blog.) /end rant!

The PROS and to their favor…

200 Name Brand Merchant Stores - Customers can choose from hundreds of popular stores and restaurants including Macy’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, Staples, Barnes & Noble, Overstock, Crutchfield, TigerDirect and hundreds more! Plus they have a whole section of 30 top restaurant gift cards.

5% Base Commission - this is really not bad considering some of the merchants on the list may pay less. Some may pay more too, but I would think conversions would be higher.

SUMMARY - if I were an affiliate I would still run this program, I would just make my own banners. If I had a site in a specific category I would make a banner that featured those merchants. For instance, tech blogs I would think could do very well showing a banner that flashed gift certificates for all the merchants in their Electronics category.

Happy selling! I hope some of you make a bundle from gift certificate sales this Holiday season!