Doctor Who Affiliate Marketing – Fixed Points in Time and Space
Posted under: We all know that Doctor Who travels in time and space in his TARDIS, but why doesn’t the historical line change as he visits various places? Well the explanation is that there are some events he can interfere with, whilst other events are fixed in time and space and they can’t be changed, for example The Waters of Mars episode. Only The Doctor knows what can and can’t be changed.
So what has that got to do with affiliate marketing?
Well, some things we do to promote a merchant are going to be in flux. They can be changed as and when an update is required. For example if Merchant X has an expired voucher code or old competition and then releases another one, it makes sense to “interfere in time and space” and update that code in the directories or databases we manage.
However, what if we’ve spent some time writing a more indepth article (or blog post) that’s been dated to comment upon or promote something Merchant X is doing? Let’s say they’re having an Easter Egg Treasure Hunt. Our article would be dated, explain what’s going on and because we’re after traffic and sales hopefully SEOed accordingly.
This article or blog post is essentially a fixed point in time and space. By this it means it’s something that’s not going to be changed or interfered with ever again. In exactly the same way that a newspaper or magazine article remains part of the history of that publication if you like.
Writing content takes time and effort, and so there’s nothing more frustrating than getting an email saying “Merchant X has seen your site and wants this, that, and the other doing” to an article that’s “fixed in time and space”! Sorry, but we don’t write articles so that they are to be constantly updated retrospectively.
Why some merchants/agencies don’t “get this” I really don’t know? What I do know is that getting a “we’ve just audited email” (especially when the merchant doesn’t email you at any other time) is just annoying. In fact it just makes you want to not bother writing content or promoting the merchant.
Rather than use the beat them with stick approach perhaps dangling a carrot might work better? For example why not send an email saying “thank you for promoting us. The offer on your page is good, but it’s now out of date, perhaps you could write a new one with our current promotions which are blah….”.
So come on, let’s stop this time wasting auditing milarky. Give an affiliate new content to work with so that they can write more content, linking in their previous articles and building up your promotion. That’s how things should work – and that’s an easier concept to understand than the physics of time and space.