Run Marketing

Chris Lee   |   December 20th, 2009   |    view article and listen to podcast

Affiliate marketing has exploded in recent years as the Internet increasingly becomes the key battleground for advertising spend. So how can small businesses and start-ups benefit from affiliate marketing, both as a publisher looking to generate extra revenue streams and as a small business looking to advertise?

RunMarketing speaks to Alicia Navarro, CEO of affiliate marketing specialist Skimlinks, about affiliate marketing best practice.

Growing Business

Growing Business Online |   December 18th, 2009   |   view article

A company that enables online publishers to monetise their content through affiliate links has received £900,000 of Series A funding, it was announced today.
Skimbit’s platform, Skimlinks, automates the process of creating and maintaining affiliate links and enables publishers to link to relevant retailers and brands more easily. Publishers add a piece of code to their site footer, which converts retailer links into affiliate links, enabling them to earn commission from more than 7,000 retailers without spending time on their own affiliate marketing campaigns.
The Series A funding round was led by Sussex Place Ventures, with investors including the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) and The Accelerator Group and business angels, many of whom also participated in Skimbits’ seed round earlier this year.

UTalkMarketing.com

Liane Dietrich   |   December 18th, 2009   |   view article

2009 may have been a challenging year for the high street, but for online retail it has had a much more positive impact.

Consumers have turned online in their droves to look for the best bargains. Research carried out by Penn Schoen & Berland Associates in partnership with LinkShare (March 2009) found that 81% of respondents were doing online research ‘most of the time’ before buying a product.

In addition 92% said that they now have more confidence in online information than sales people in shops – this opportunity for the marketing industry has not gone unnoticed.

Online marketers are working more and more closely with other marketing channels to make sure that their affiliate and other online campaigns are part of the wider mix of communications tactics. The consistency of message is a priority; the connected consumer must be reached through multiple channels and the most successful campaigns are recognising and embracing this fact.

2009 has also seen blogs bloom into an increasingly powerful media channel. Many of the most successful are written by people from everyday walks of life. For them, the growth of online sales and the use of affiliate marketing means a chance to monetise their blogs and with third party technologies like Skimlinks now easily available, it is a trend that we expect to see grow strongly in 2010.

PaidContent:UK

Robert Andrews   |   December 17th, 2009   |   view article

After getting a “substantial” first-round funding as recently as February, founder Alicia Navarro’s UK affiliate marketing links firm Skimlinks is now getting another $1.5 million injection for U.S. expansion and other development.

Round two is led by Sussex Place Ventures, along with Nesta, The Accelerator Group and angels – all original backers – TechCrunch says.

Skimlinks affiliate sites use links like these to point readers to retailers’ sites, taking a commission of any sales. Skimlinks, too, gets a cut.

StrategyEye

Sarah Vizard   |   December 18th, 2009   |   view article

Affiliate marketing platform Skimlinks has raised USD1.5m in a Series A funding round led by Sussex Place Ventures. The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) and The Accelerator Group also participated, along with previous angel investors.

Skimlinks says it plans to use the funds to expand its US operations and invest in sales and marketing initiatives and product development.

TechCrunch Europe

Steve O’Hear   |   December 17th, 2009   |   view article

Affiliate marketing platform Skimlinks has secured a Series A round of funding, which we’ve now confirmed as $1.5 million.

The round, which was effectively a follow on, was led by Sussex Place Ventures and includes the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) and The Accelerator Group, along with a number of the original angel investors involved in Skimlinks’ seed round earlier in the year.

The new funding will be used by the company to expand its US operations, where it currently generates over half of its revenue, along with investing in sales and marketing initiatives, and product development.

As America’s biggest shopping weekend of the year draws to a close, affiliate marketing service Skimlinks can reveal what many Americans will be finding under their Christmas tree come December 25th.

Video game consoles and cameras top the shopping list this Black Friday, according to London-based Skimlinks. They help online publishers such Hachette Filipacchi Media  US and Mumsnet.com get rewarded for product references made in their editorial and user-generated content.
Over Black Friday weekend, Skimlinks helped drive over $2 million worth of sales on retailers sites, much of this on Amazon.com, which for the second year running is the most visited website in the US on Black Friday, according to Hitwise.

The most popular product sold via Skimlinks on Amazon.com was the Wii Fit Plus package, driven by the huge discounts on offer that day. The Nintendo DSi bundle was relegated to second place.
Other video games dominated the top 20 most popular purchases; including Guitar Hero 5 and Guitar Hero World Tour, but photography also made a strong showing, with the Fujifilm FinePix J28 model ranking as a bestseller.

It seems there’s also a touch of indecisiveness to current Christmas shopping habits – with $50 Amazon gift vouchers also a favourite.

Top 10 products sold via Skimlinks
1.    Wii Fit Plus package with Balance Board
2.    Nintendo DSi Bundle
3.    Wii
4.    Amazon $50 Gift Card
5.    Fujifilm 2 GB SD Flash Memory Card
6.    Fujifilm FinePix J28 Digital Camera
7.    Case Logic Compact Camera Case
8.    Guitar Hero 5 Guitar Bundle
9.    Xbox 360 Arcade
10.  ‘Up’ on Blu-ray

For further information, please contact:
Hannah Keys on 020 7382 6430 or hannah@skimlinks.com

About Skimlinks
Launched in December 2008, Skimlinks helps online publishers monetise their content in an ethical and user-friendly way by automating the process of creating and maintaining affiliate links. A publisher simply adds the Skimlinks code to their site footer once, and when a user clicks on these retailer links, Skimlinks automatically converts them into affiliate links on-the-fly. Rather than spending time and money doing their own affiliate marketing, publishers can concentrate 100% on creating quality content whilst earning commission from over 7,000 merchants across 22 affiliate networks internationally. Skimlinks is used on thousands of websites worldwide, including Hachette Filipacchi Media US, Future Publishing UK, and Mumsnet.com.