I have caved; Journey with Words is officially affiliated. What’s an affiliate? Which are my affiliations? What does this means for me and the blog? What does this means for you, the follower? How does it affect the blog? Will reviews be influenced by this? Why did I do it? What will I use the money for? I’ll answer your questions here.
What is an affiliate program?
Affiliate programs or “affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's own marketing efforts.” (Taken from Wikipedia)
Basically, for every customer that I refer to the affiliated site I get paid a commission.
Which are my affiliations?
I have applied (and been approved) to two affiliation programs; Amazon Associates and The Book Depository Affiliate Program. Therefore, only links to either of those two websites will have any effect on commissions. I sometimes add links to other places (sites) like Goodreads or Smashwords. You will usually see them in posts that are tied to a Blog Tour or Hop (or related event); I do not have any affiliation with those sites. I only add them to give you guys better content.
What does this means for the blog?
For the blog it means that now, whenever you click on a link that takes you to Amazon or Book Depository, there is a chance that I get a commission from the transaction. The commission percent begins at 4% from the sale.
What does this means for me?
This means that now I have a way, or at least the possibility, to maintain the blog effectively.
What does this means for you, the follower?
It means that whenever you click on a link that takes you to Amazon, a temporary cookie will be stored on your browser that will help track the transaction to, accordingly, attribute the sale to my affiliate.
How does this affect the blog?
Not drastically. The biggest impact will be that reviews will carry product links to Amazon. In some past cases I have added the links but I had not affiliated them to the site, so I never received any commission from those sales (if there were any).
New reviews will carry the affiliated link, which will be identified as Amazon. I have begun the process of adding affiliated links to past reviews and products.
Book reviews will, from this point on, carry an extra field denoting the Source. The source will describe how the book was acquired (bought, borrowed, gifted, supplied for review, NetGalley, etc.).
Will reviews be influenced by this?
No. Journey with Words is my personal blog, which I have dedicated to reviewing books and other related topics. The reviews and other posts are, and will continue to be, my sincere opinions and/or those of my contributor(s). In no way or shape the affiliates program or any other relationship with authors or publishers will sway my reviews one way or another.
Why did I do it?
As a college student working under a trimester scholarship (which is only available during academic terms), money is sparse and hard to come by. In addition, maintaining a blog is, surprisingly, an expensive enterprise which my pocket is not in shape to fully support. Neither is my boyfriend’s pocket capable of sustain it for long; he is an Angel since he has support this endeavor so far (albeit a bit reluctantly).
What will I use the money for?
Primarily, the money will funnel completely back to the blog. Its main use will be to pay for the blog’s maintenance –blog design, giveaways, prize delivery, etc. One of my goals is to move the blog to its own domain so that I can have more control over it and expand it; all of these require a capital that I currently don’t have.
Policy
I’m currently working on rebuilding and implementing a better blog policy to comply with the FTC Guidelines. The policy will, hopefully but not necessarily, be in place during the next couple of days. I’ll send a post to everyone once the policy is in place; plus I’ll keep it on its own tab for easy access when necessary.
If you have any more questions regarding this matter, please use the comments section below or the contact form that can be accessed through the Contact Me tab up top. I’ll be more than happy to answer all your questions regarding this matter.
Works Cited
"Affiliate Marketing." Wikipedia, The
Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., n.d. Web. 18 June 2012.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing>.
UPDATE:
- Information about Book Depository
- Information about my affiliations
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