The war to sell you a mattress
fastcompany.com
The war to sell you a mattress
1–10 of 235 posts
Re: The war to sell you a mattress
#2This was fascinating.
Re: The war to sell you a mattress
#3Amazing to see people stumbling upon millions. Most techies are trying to come up with clever technical solutions to try and build an online business. Whilst elsewhere there are people making millions from reviewing mattresses. Or whatever the next accidental hot market will be.
Re: The war to sell you a mattress
#4> Much of this traffic went to Amazon (when Derek lacked a direct affiliate relationship, he sent traffic to a brand’s page on Amazon, with whom he did).
Something is not not right here. Was Derek banned from the Amazon affiliates program? How else does he "lack a direct affiliate relationship" ? I made a viral cat videos site for kicks and was approved by amazon affiliates to link to cat product reviews... so why wouldn't someone like this guy be able to get a direct amazon.com affiliate account?
Re: The war to sell you a mattress
#5> Much of this traffic went to Amazon (when Derek lacked a direct affiliate relationship, he sent traffic to a brand’s page on Amazon, with whom he did). Something is not not right here. Was Derek banned from the Amazon affiliates program? How else does he "lack a direct affiliate relationship" ? I made a viral cat videos site for kicks and was approved by amazon affiliates to link to cat product reviews... so why wo…
I think the author meant he lacked a direct affiliate relationship with the mattress websites. So instead of linking to the mattress websites, he linked to Amazon.
Re: The war to sell you a mattress
#6Amazing to see people stumbling upon millions. Most techies are trying to come up with clever technical solutions to try and build an online business. Whilst elsewhere there are people making millions from reviewing mattresses. Or whatever the next accidental hot market will be.
> Whilst elsewhere there are people making millions from reviewing mattresses
True, but from what I read, this guy had SEO experience and ranked #1 for "Casper Mattress Review" for many years. In other words he was clever at marketing his site which was stuffed with affiliate links along with 1 on 1 agreements with some mattress companies.
Most techies who are coming up with "clever technical solutions" either don't validate a need for their offering, or really suck (add me to this list) at marketing their solutions / online businesses.
Re: The war to sell you a mattress
#7Great read, thanks for sharing!
Re: The war to sell you a mattress
#8> Much of this traffic went to Amazon (when Derek lacked a direct affiliate relationship, he sent traffic to a brand’s page on Amazon, with whom he did). Something is not not right here. Was Derek banned from the Amazon affiliates program? How else does he "lack a direct affiliate relationship" ? I made a viral cat videos site for kicks and was approved by amazon affiliates to link to cat product reviews... so why wo…
I think you just misread this. He did have an amazon affiliate account.
Re: The war to sell you a mattress
#9What does YC think of companies that make affiliate revenue? Is it a positive or a negative in the VC world?
Re: The war to sell you a mattress
#10Amazing to see people stumbling upon millions. Most techies are trying to come up with clever technical solutions to try and build an online business. Whilst elsewhere there are people making millions from reviewing mattresses. Or whatever the next accidental hot market will be.
True, but there's a survivor bias there - for every guy who stumbles into millions there's 100 writing content that gets ignored and making nothing.