Girly blog company Sugar Inc. has announced a new affiliate marketing program for bloggers, based on ShopStyle, the social-shopping and product-search site that it acquired last year. It's called ShopSense.
Here's how it works: if style, culture, or shopping bloggers write about a given product that's in the ShopStyle directory, they can add a ShopStyle widget so that readers can actually buy the product or can use the ShopStyle API to further customize the app. The blogger gets a cut of the revenue.
Sugar started as a content company, with an inaugural celebrity gossip brand called PopSugar, but has recently expanded significantly into services for other bloggers--furthering the comparisons with Glam Media, the ad network and blogger services company that started with fashion and celebrity news sites but has since moved into more diverse cultural niches.
Sugar recently started allowing bloggers to use its own platform, OnSugar but has said that the affiliate program is open to anyone regardless of how they host their blogs. It is, however, directly integrated into OnSugar.
"Given the current state of the economy, and with the holiday season fast approaching, we are excited to open up a new revenue stream for fashion bloggers and developers alike," said Sugar vice president Andy Moss, who's in charge of ShopStyle. "With ShopStyle's breadth of products and beautiful images, ShopSense has the ability to provide significant income for its participants."
One snag: Given the current state of the economy, is anybody going to cough up the cash for that pair of Louboutin heels?
AOL's Platform-A subsidiary is now bringing affiliate marketing to widget ads. If that sounds like a lot of media speak, that's because it is.
To power widget ads, AOL acquired start-up Goowy in February, and it has already worked the acquisition into Platform-A. As part of Tuesday's announcement, Goowy's technology has been officially incorporated into Buy.at, an affiliate network that AOL also acquired earlier this year.
"Once a publisher places a widget on their Web site, consumers can grab it and distribute the widget to other locations on the Web, including social-network pages, desktops, and blogs," a release from AOL explained. "The publisher earns revenue for each sale driven by the widget, even if it's several download generations away from the publisher's site."
AOL has made many significant advertising announcements in recent months as part of its refocus on online media, but it's still having a rough time as a subsidiary of Time Warner.
While AOL's ad revenues were up 2 percent in the second quarter of 2008, it wasn't enough to make up for losses at its once-powerful access service--which Time Warner plans to spin off.
Google is using this optimistic graphic to help sell affiliate marketing.
(Credit: Google)
JotSpot became Google Sites, Writely became Google Docs, Picasa might become Google Photos. And as of this week, DoubleClick's Performics affiliate ad network has become the Google Affiliate Network as part of Google's $3.1 billion acquisition of the ad firm. The premise remains the same: publishers get a commission when someone not only clicks on their ad, but then goes on to buy something.
Right now, per TechCrunch, some of the big advertisers include Target, Verizon, and Barnes & Noble.
DoubleClick acquired Performics in 2004 for $58 million; the search advertising start-up had been around since 1998.
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