Sharing affiliate revenue with users

[chmac]

A discussion about sharing affiliate revenue with the users who spend the money, effectively offering a discount scheme.

[rms]

It's a good business model but most affiliate programs ban this type of revenue sharing. You'd have to individually negotiate with the affiliate programs or operate under the radar.

I made a very respectable amount of money (and a polo shirt and hat) several years ago by paying my friends to sign up for Party Poker accounts under my affiliate bonus code. I could have made a lot more if I had more money to put up. It was debatable whether this was allowed under their terms of service... they froze my money for 6 months but I got it eventually.

I believe that all the rakeback sites that are operating legitimately have individually negotiated agreements with the poker sites. Similarly, if you wanted to set up an Amazon buyer's club on facebook, you'd have to negotiate with Amazon.

[chmac]

Whether the affiliates would allow the revenue share is a valid point. I was thinking from the perspective of a community site. A site with even 200k active members in a specific field would have a good basis to negotiate a specific deal with an affiliate. I think it's a trend we'll increasingly see.

Fundamentally, affiliates make money by giving recommendations, but they're paid for giving those recommendations, so they can't possibly be totally objective. In a revenue share model, the affiliate is paid for negotiating a better deal for their users. Instead of the current situation where only the affiliate wins, this model means win-win for affiliate and user.

That's how I reckon it'll play out anyway... :)

[vlad]

I've seen sites do this.. Read this post and the comments about Google AdSense revenue sharing:

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/006387.html

[chmac]

That's an interesting point. We're working on some AdSense revenue sharing stuff at the moment, thanks for the link.