Referly Discontinuing Rewards, Paying Existing Links Through March 31st, 2013
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Re: Referly Discontinuing Rewards, Paying Existing Links Through March 31st, 2013
#2venture backed startup buying low quality content to drive affiliate purchases?
Re: Referly Discontinuing Rewards, Paying Existing Links Through March 31st, 2013
#3venture backed startup buying low quality content to drive affiliate purchases?
It's an interesting pivot. Not sure about the domain now, though.
I had signed up for and was excited about them potentially disrupting the affiliate marketing industry.
Re: Referly Discontinuing Rewards, Paying Existing Links Through March 31st, 2013
#4venture backed startup buying low quality content to drive affiliate purchases?
It's an interesting pivot. Not sure about the domain now, though. I had signed up for and was excited about them potentially disrupting the affiliate marketing industry.
Same. A Twilio-like aggregator for affiliate marketing could have been a special idea. Content/review sites could just sign up and have any product they reference from their content linked to the appropriate affiliate program.
They went in a more consumer-focused direction though. I wish them luck.
Re: Referly Discontinuing Rewards, Paying Existing Links Through March 31st, 2013
#5Wait, so every time someone posted a referly link to HN that seemed spammy, it's because it was spammy? That is, they were artificially constructed and there was money riding on that post getting upvoted?
Re: Referly Discontinuing Rewards, Paying Existing Links Through March 31st, 2013
#6Wait, so every time someone posted a referly link to HN that seemed spammy, it's because it was spammy? That is, they were artificially constructed and there was money riding on that post getting upvoted?
The majority of HN submissions that were to a referly link were from the founders, I assume the sort-of spammy nature is something they're afforded permission to engage in because they're a part of YC.
Re: Referly Discontinuing Rewards, Paying Existing Links Through March 31st, 2013
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an interesting pivot. Not sure about the domain now, though. I had signed up for and was excited about them potentially disrupting the affiliate marketing industry.
Same. A Twilio-like aggregator for affiliate marketing could have been a special idea. Content/review sites could just sign up and have any product they reference from their content linked to the appropriate affiliate program. They went in a more consumer-focused direction though. I wish them luck.
Wont work. Affiliate networks generally do not want that behavior. Mostly its because the advertisers of each offer are specific about who can and cannot promote it. With a reseller, you lose that control.
Affiliate networks would rather keep their advertisers happy (and not lose them, since they are the lifeblood of all networks) vs doubling income and potentially alienating/losing their advertisers.
Also, This is the first I have heard of referly pivoting. I have to say I also vastly prefer the previous business concept to this. However, I am fairly confident that because of how vocal/public the referly founders/team is that they should be able to find a acquihire regardless of what success they see in this direction.
Re: Referly Discontinuing Rewards, Paying Existing Links Through March 31st, 2013
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an interesting pivot. Not sure about the domain now, though. I had signed up for and was excited about them potentially disrupting the affiliate marketing industry.
Same. A Twilio-like aggregator for affiliate marketing could have been a special idea. Content/review sites could just sign up and have any product they reference from their content linked to the appropriate affiliate program. They went in a more consumer-focused direction though. I wish them luck.
Dan is right, and most affiliate programs we worked with were quite wary of Referly. I am writing a pretty in-depth piece on the affiliate world, this model, the potential for someone else to execute well in this space, etc. I think our consumer-focused approach was pretty unique, and I think it could still work but is probably better executed as an extension of a business like Skimlinks (who we use).
To those who feel we have spammed HN with our content/experiments I'm very sorry, we have used it as a test bed for various types of content written by ourselves and some of our contributors in order to figure out what HN readers want. We've got a ton of data on that now, and our focus going forward is on creating a network of writers focused on high quality content. Some of it will make sense of HN and end up here, but most probably won't.
Re: Referly Discontinuing Rewards, Paying Existing Links Through March 31st, 2013
#9This pivot puts them in a very crowded market with no shortage of competition from offshore willing to write articles for low pay. Going that route would make them a mahalo or demand media type play. Even if they are going the high quality content route there is lots of competition there and the current branding is wrong for it.
The original model seemed to be trying to solve a highly scalable technical problem in providing people with low friction affiliate links, there are other companies doing this but referrly was probably the most consumer focused.
Scalability of the new model is harder.
Re: Referly Discontinuing Rewards, Paying Existing Links Through March 31st, 2013
#10Wait, so every time someone posted a referly link to HN that seemed spammy, it's because it was spammy? That is, they were artificially constructed and there was money riding on that post getting upvoted?
The posts that have been upvoted a lot here haven't had any affiliate links in them.