How Gawker Brings in Millions in Affiliate Sales

<i>As for the Velcro ties, 31,535 readers have purchased a 100-pack on Amazon, which currently run for $4.99. That’s $157,000 in cable ties, which could add $6,300 into Gawker’s coffers, assuming a 4% cut.<p>All told, the 10 best-selling items from a Gawker list posted in September might have brought in about $345,000 in revenue for the media company. To be sure, prices may have changed, and Gawker could receive a better rate than 4% on some items, so that revenue figure is potentially higher.</i><p>This is a poorly-researched article because at least with Amazon Associates if the buyer buys anything after clicking through the affiliate link for 24 hours, the referrer gets the commission, whether it be cable ties, or a set of speakers. Calculating Gawker&#x27;s take would be far more complicated than reporting second-hand on what the Amazon widget on one article page shows.

I think this is what the future of media will&#x2F;should look like: building your reader&#x27;s&#x2F;consumer&#x27;s trust in your publication by quality [1] content to make them come back to you when they need advice on a buying decision. The beauty of this model is that this advice can (and will [2]) be honest, because amazon and other retailers&#x2F;appstores etc. do not care about what the customer actually buys as long as it is from them, which allows the publication to lead the reader to the best product while still making money. Of course there are still imperfections [3], for example sending them to a specific retailer like amazon when another would be better for them, but this is a lot better than advertising for stuff you do not need or one-sided sponsored content.<p>[1] &quot;quality&quot; is not meant as an absolute value here, but relative to the publication&#x27;s target - so a &quot;quality&quot; article on Gawker will of course (and rightfully so) be different from one you will find in the New Yorker<p>[2] as long as they make the same money from two options it is in the interest of the publication to choose the honest one, because they want you to come back<p>[3] these imperfections are unfortunately the only thing the advertising market lives on, because if everyone could figure out what they need they would buy exactly this from the best&#x2F;cheapest retailer which would kill every incentive for any kind of advertising&#x2F;referral money. This will also be a problem google will face some time in the future: if their search engine gets too perfect there is no need to advertise anymore, because if the user would actually want it they would find it anyways and if not the money is wasted

I hate Gawker because they mastered the art of manufacturing outrage.

It&#x27;s impressive how good Gawker is at this racket. But I think the best part is that they never hide their motives for doing so—like too many other sites of their nature do. They strike an impressive balance between commerce and content, and a lot of the reason they are so good at it is because the things they uncover are generally great deals.<p>Lifehacker in particular is well-optimized in its balance between editorial content and commerce.

Good for them but that explains why Gawker is held in such low esteem. If editors start acting like salesmen then you can’t trust anything a medium has to say.

Reddit had an ad that did something like this — I assume by a third-party, but can&#x27;t remember.<p>The image was a nostalgic item from the 90s era Nickelodeon, with a title that made you go &quot;what, that actually exists?&quot; — a link to an item, out-of-stock (not sure if it ever had stock), but tagged with an affiliate link.<p>It was around the holiday purchasing season, so I&#x27;m assuming they raked in quite a few sales.