Why I Start With Skimlinks
The unconventional value of this referral middleman
Hello & welcome to Affiliate Insider. I’m Ewen, a content brand operator, media investor, and 10+ year veteran of the affiliate industry (on the publisher side).
In previous editions are covered the top overall affiliate platforms & the top NICHE affiliate platforms.
Today I’m going to explain how (and why) I love using Skimlinks…. even though it’s technically a middleman.
Not Quite an Affiliate Network…
First, what is Skimlinks?
You may have heard about it in passing or tried it out, but I’ve found many publishers don’t quite know how or where Skimlinks fits in the ecosystem.
In short, Skimlinks is an aggregator of affiliate programs and platforms.
Once approved to Skimlinks, publishers gain access to ALL of their relationships with one easy to use interface & link building suite.
The downside is that they take a cut of sales, often up to 25%. Ouch…
It’s easy to write off Skimlinks because of this. Who wants to pay a tax?
So Why Do I Use Skimlinks?
There’s a few reasons I love to START with Skimlinks on any new project.
Universal Approvals: Skimlinks is approved to almost ALL of the affiliate programs you care about already.
Team Management: Skimlinks has easy user management roles, making it easy to have team members build links in one dashboard.
Auto Affiliation: I don’t always use this feature for mature sites, but for an easy - near instant - way to monetize a site, Skimlinks can auto affiliate any naked link into an affiliate link if you install their scripts on your site. You can then follow the data to see what’s working & optimize further.
Data: Skimlinks has incredibly deep tracking capabilities, often down to the page level and includes all kinds of sortable metrics and trends data.
Highest Commissions: Because Skimlinks has SCALE, they can often negotiate the best rates with brands. What you see in Skimlinks is often the result of years of performance, negotiations, and relationship building. Yes, Skimlinks takes a 25% cut off the top, but it’s still better than your default rate in most cases.
Use Skimlinks to Negotiate Direct Deals
The main unconventional way I use Skimlinks is to gather intelligence for direct negotiations with brands.
There are so many instances where I find brands with 5% commissions on Shareasale or CJ, that then have 10-15% commissions in Skimlinks.
Many brands would much rather work directly with affiliates and it’s easy to ask for something they are already paying to Skimlinks (or even beat it slightly).
Pro Tip: Conduct a gap analysis of your current top affiliate partners to see if your current rates are equal or better than what Skimlinks is listing.
Final Note
This is one of those “simple” optimizations that can 2-3X your affiliate business if executed consistently over time.
Rather than stressing about traffic, subs, readers… focus on making more revenue off of the users you have.
Best of all, the Skimlinks method doesn’t require increasing ad loads or affiliate link placements (user experience)… just making more off the links you already have.
In my next newsletter I’ll cover my top ways to NEGOTIATE commission increases. Having Skimlinks is a great “table setter” for many of these tactics.
What I’m Reading
Creator Funnel by Richard Patey: Creator ecosystem guides specifically for funnel builders.
Simon Owen’s Media Newsletter: Excellent context on what’s happening in the broader content / media ecosystem.
A Media Operator: Well developed deep dives into the media & publisher landscape.
Small Bets Newsletter: Great insight from Daniel Vassallo into a variety of solopreneur & lifestyle digital businesses.
Great issue Ewen, I'll have to take another look at skimlinks - thanks for the shoutout again but my substack is no longer live, it's now at https://create.beehiiv.com/ :)