Introducing Universal Affiliation Support through VigLink and Skimlinks
The Amazon Associates program is not the only affiliate program, in fact there are thousands of affiliate programs around the world. Some of those programs may be a good compliment or even a better fit for your specific needs and monetization strategies.
We are excited to announce that our clients can now monetize their links through tens of thousands of affiliate programs due to a brand new integration in the Geniuslink service with the top two affiliate monetization platforms available – VigLink and Skimlinks .
This is a huge step forward from the three affiliate programs we’ve supported auto affiliation for in the past – iTunes, Amazon and Microsoft Store – and we think it will help you, our clients, be even more productive and profitable.
We are really excited about the possibilities these integrations unlock for a few big reasons.
Access to Thousands of Affiliate Programs – We would never be able support all of these programs and honestly would never want to. Skimlinks and VigLink are both great at what they do and we all get to take advantage of that with these integrations. No need for us to reinvent the wheel! That being said we still plan to add direct support for many individual affiliate programs in the future.
Payment Aggregation – Both Skimlinks and VigLink also save you a ton of headache by consolidating and doing direct payouts of your affiliate revenue. You can take advantage of hundreds of different affiliate programs on their platform and still get one monthly check!
More Freedom – But most importantly we think that having the administrative work of signing up and getting paid for an affiliate program managed behind the scenes, and the affiliation of a link taken care of automatically allows you, the marketer, the freedom to take even more advantage of the tools we offer. Let me share a few examples.
Unlocking better usage of our tools
Advanced targeting – If you are promoting headphones with a geni.us link to Amazon, and have a sizable Russian audience, you have a bit of a challenge. While Geniuslink will automatically route a click from a country without a local Amazon storefront to Amazon store most likely to sell it’s likely that a local Russian e-commerce store will still convert best.
Turns out Mvideo.ru is the top electronics retailer in Russia, has an affiliate program, and is fully supported by both VigLink and Skimlinks .
Now you can maximize your revenue and boost your conversion rate for your Russian audience by simply updating your geni.us link to include an Advanced rule, setting the geography to Russia and dropping in the Mvideo.ru link to the same pair of headphones.
This simple tweak ensures that all clicks from Russia will now get sent to Mvdieo.ru and will be properly affiliated with VigLink or Skimlinks to ensure you earn commissions on the subsequent sales, and are paid out in a timely fashion.
Choice Pages – Authors and musicians are already taking advantage of the value of super targeted and simplified landing pages for selling specific books and albums (we offer these “ Choice Pages ”). With this recent integration and the ability to quickly affiliate thousands of other retailers it unlocks a world of possibilities for affiliate marketers that are looking to capitalize on the approximately 1 out of every 2 sales that happens outside of Amazon.
So back to selling headphones again. Amazon is always a great choice and experience has shown it converts well but now it’s time to start optimizing for the other 50% .
VigLink and Skimlinks support many other top retailers in the US like Best Buy, Walmart, Newegg and Target, which means that you can now offer your audience the option to choose where to purchase the product you are promoting, all while still earning commissions from every click. To take advantage of this, simply connect your VigLink or Skimlinks account to Geniuslink, create a new Choice Page (or convert one of your existing Amazon links) using links to a few of these other specialized retailers, and Geniuslink will ensure that every click is affiliated automatically – no matter which storefront your customers choose.
A/B Split – While you can leave the choice to your consumer, via a Choice Page, you can also do some testing yourself. The A/B Split link allows you to scientifically test how well different retailers convert by allowing you to specify exactly how much traffic is sent to each destination.
“Does a link to sell dog food give me the most affiliate earnings by going to Chewy or Amazon?” Now that’s easy to test and still make sure you earn from every click.
How do I get started?
If you haven’t already, sign up for a VigLink or Skimlinks account. Once you have been approved, grab your API key and secret from within your VigLink or Skimlinks dashboard, and add them under “Affiliate Aggregators” on the Affiliate page within your Geniuslink Dashboard.
That’s it!
Once these have been added to your Geniuslink account, you are ready to begin earning revenue from links to the tens of thousands of supported merchants. To build new links or when updating existing links, simply navigate to your favorite website (e.g. bestbuy.com or newegg.com), copy the URL of the product you wish to link to, paste it into your Geniuslink dashboard, and hit save. We will ensure that every click is properly affiliated for you, so that you can sit back and watch the commissions stack up.
Already have links to a supported retailer inside your Geniuslink account? No problem! As soon as you have attached your VigLink of Skimlinks account to Geniuslink, we will automatically start affiliating these links for you!
Interested in learning more? Check out our in-depth knowledge base article for more information on Affiliate Aggregators, and how to get the most out of them using Geniuslink.
There are a few important things to note:
- VigLink and Skimlinks support is fully functional inside the Geniuslink dashboard and service as of – March 18, 2019.
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A new VigLink or Skimlinks account will not automatically be approved for all merchants (eg. Ebay), but will be set up for most. Geniuslink will only affiliate with VigLink or Skimlinks for merchants that you are currently approved for, however, we will automatically detect and begin affiliating for additional merchants once you are approved.
- We encourage you to spend a few minutes exploring what retailers and affiliate programs are supported. Do that with the VigLink Merchant Explorer or Skimlinks’ Merchants Search .
- Both Skimlinks and VigLink rely on a revenue model where they pay you out approximately 75% of the affiliate revenue earned and keep the rest. These “costs” are separate from using the Geniuslink service.
- There may be overlap between the affiliate programs that are supported by VigLink or Skimlinks and the affiliate program tracking information you’ve added into your Geniuslink account via the “Affiliate” page. We’ll always use the information you’ve provided directly to us first. If no information is available we’ll check if your preferred affiliate monetization platform supports the link. If it doesn’t we won’t affiliate the link and just pass it along untransformed.
User Experience & Monetization
We talk a lot about how their are two pieces to the puzzle in maximizing conversions and commissions – improving the User Experience and ensuring a link is Monetized. Today’s launch significantly increased the ability to monetize links however, it’s a stepping stone for some even bigger things on the User Experience side.
Stay tuned in the coming weeks as we continue to add more great features to help you better diversify your affiliate earnings, and let us know in the comments below what other affiliate programs or features you would like to see added next!