Mark Macdonald tells us how Skimlinks works for retailers and publishers.

Affiliate marketing has become a vital channel for driving incremental sales to many e-tailers’ sites. It’s also a great way for those writing about the latest styles and trends to earn commissions from their content in an ethical and user-friendly way.

Traditionally, it’s been an overly complex technology to set up, but our products are designed to make this as simple as possible. Instead of signing up to thousands of individual merchant programs through multiple affiliate networks, publishers can take two minutes to install the Skimlinks code, and we take care of the rest.

Editors and journalists can then concentrate on writing great copy, linking directly to relevant product pages, and Skimlinks adds the required affiliate tracking automatically.

Since launching Skimlinks.com at the end of 2008, our technology has been used within some of the UK’s largest online communities. On sites like Handbag.com, Cosmopolitan.co.uk, OSOYOU.com and Mumsnet.com, users are constantly recommending the latest styles to each other.

Thanks to these affiliate marketing technologies, brands can monitor and analyse forums and blog comments to see what people are actually buying, and publishers can earn the revenues required to support such communities. It’s a great way of targeting your campaigns and make the most of your marketing budget.

Skimlinks works for the largest national newspapers and the most niche of niche blogs, and opens up a whole realm of opportunities for listening to your customers and readers.

Written by Mark Macdonald, Account Director at www.skimlinks.com