Skimlinks Review - comment page 1
A Skimlinks review, this is the information I wish I had known before signing up to the Skimlinks service. This Skimlink review covers why you should not use skimlinks to gain revenue from your blog, website or forum. The conclusion … Continue reading
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Whitney from VigLink here! Eager to hear your thoughts on your VigLink trial. To address the idea that installing code affects load time, which leads to Google penalties, I wanted to point out that with VigLink, you install a short snippet of code that is low impact and negligible on load time. In fact, VigLink is even backed by Google Ventures!
We have a handy Merchant Checker at tools>coverage from your Viglink account, so that you can see who is covered in our affiliate program. You can always suggest someone for us to include in the program – we have a full merchant team working on new partnerships every day.
Again, eager to hear your thoughts, and please feel free to email supportATviglinkDOTcom with any questions that arise!.
I wasn’t aware of the Google ventures backing which certainly adds weight to Viglinks. We’ve now realized that a blog is probably not the best trial site for something like Skimlinks or Viglink. I’d say link replacers are best attached to a forum, or product review website which mentions Amazon and Ebay products repeatedly by trusted members of the community.
In the end, both skimlinks and viglink are free and cost nothing to try, so for those reading this, give them both a shot!.
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Hi Nerdr,
Its Alicia Navarro here, CEO of Skimlinks. Sorry you felt you had a poor experience, but let me clarify what you identify as “cons” of Skimlinks:
1. Speed – speed is one of the things we are the proudest about, so proud we even make our speeds public at http:SLASHSLASHapi-status.SkimlinksDOTcom/554403 – at 150ms this makes us faster than any other player in the market. We are zippy little javascripters!
2. Merchant coverage is also the other thing we are super proud of. With Skimlinks you are live and active on almost 20k retailers from day 1, which is a unique differentiator of Skimlinks’, and while that does include a lot of long tail merchants (which means we can support bloggers from any vertical or geography), that also includes every single large merchant that has an affiliate program. Try us out, every big merchant that offers affiliate marketing is part of Skimlinks!
Finally, to explain your confusion: what “non-affiliated merchants” means is the clicks to destination URLs that are not monetizeable, such as youtube, twitter, etc, so the fact that you are monetizing 10% of your outbound traffic is actually completely standard, and in fact, very good for a blog. We also have a fabulous merchant team not only working on getting more merchants approved and integrated into Skimlinks, but negotiating higher commissions via our Preferred Partner Program.
You are welcome to try out VigLink, and I’m confident you will see that they too only monetize a small proportion of your outbound traffic (which is normal) and you will no doubt love and return to our speedy javascript, our huge merchant coverage, our brilliant reporting that lets you drill down into almost any aspect of your site (try out the new page level reporting too!), and our awesome tools like our RSS monetization and URL shortener.
Thanks for taking the time to review Skimlinks!
Alicia Navarro
CEO – Skimlinks.
Alicia! Howdy.
At the time of writing this review we had not yet reviewed the Google Ventures backed Skimlinks competitor Viglink/Viglinks. Now that we have reviewed Viglinks, I would add the following to the above Skimlinks review:
1. Skimlinks provides much better reporting functionality than Viglink.
2. Skimlinks has better merchant transparency and shows commission rates – as an affilite this is great info and shows you guys are all about transparency.
In the end we have, for now, stuck with Viglink since it converts and earns more revenue per mille. We’ll continue split testing Viglink vs. Skimlinks across the accounts and will use whichever earns best.
Something else I’d point out is referral commission. The referral commission for Viglink sits at 30%, which is huge compared to Skimlinks 10%-12%.
I’m secretly rooting for you guys, but key points where Viglink win are: Revenue and referal commission. Revenue is partly due to chance, but referral commission could do with some serious consideration. It gets reviews, it gets traffic, it gets signups and 10% is not much at all.
BTW, loved the Mixergy interview!
Nerdr.
Hey Nerdr,
Thanks for the updated review and lovely words! I agree our reporting is excellent, and transparency is a big deal for us too.
Regarding the referral commissions, I agree there is room for improvement, we know and are working on it… watch this space very shortly …
Regarding the revenue and conversion, that is – as you say – completely and utterly up to chance… what merchant links your users click, what they choose to buy at a certain point… its near impossible to do a fair side-by-side comparison in a short time frame, so I encourage you to keep trying us over time and see how it goes.
Glad you liked the Mixergy interview. And we may not be Google Ventures backed, but we are backed by other fabulous VCs
Alicia
CEO – Skimlinks.