How does a company who runs in a highly competitive field continue to acquire users? With the rising cost of Google AdWords for affiliate companies, they are running out of cost effective options to reach new publishers as well as advertisers but still need to get their name out there in order to even maintain their current volume.
So what are some of the options? You can obviously target ‘authority’ publishers within your space which most of the top affiliate networks already do (read: Shoemoney, John Chow) in order to raise brand awareness, even if the CPM rate doesn’t make since from a pure ad performance standpoint, they are able to make it back in the perceived valued of their brand.
So how is Affiliate.com trying to utilize their resources in order to build awareness, backlinks and a little bit of grass roots press? They are sending bloggers a pretty sweet T-Shirt in exchange for a blog entry. Their incentive is not only the shirt, but additionally they are going to award a $1,000 donation to the American Red Cross Haiti relief fund (which fits in nicely with my beliefs that investing in people is simply good business), but they are also offering the winning blogger a $1,000 bounty. So what would I do with this bonus cash if I am to be selected as the winning post? That money will be directly invested into my philanthropic web startup http://www.mybiggive.com.
This tee made for a good party shirt last weekend during some card games, fun socialization and an overall good time. Rocking the King of diamonds may just be my new good luck charm, and I am sure this network won’t complain about me wearing this shirt in a social setting since it has it’s URL plastered across the back 
Affiliate.com has made a good move here by offloading the shirts they had originally produced for Affiliate Summit West by getting a little extra press, some back link love in addition to some good will from bloggers and users! So if you are looking for a good group to be working with make sure you check out Affiliate.com as either a publisher or an advertiser.
