Thanks Brendan - I hadn’t previously seen this discussion. Perhaps this is an issue that Choice really needs to be more open about in the community - both what it’s doing and why? Obviously there are concerns, both here and in other parts of the fora, about how Choice as a consumer-focused entity can meet that mandate while staying viable.
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@mcziel2 @grahroll @postulative As mentioned above your feedback is greatly appreciated. I’ll be sure to raise this directly with our internal stakeholders, and please keep sharing your thoughts on the matter - either in the comments here, via private message if you’d prefer or also directly on our site.
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I think it was mentioned earlier by Brendan - CHOICE has been trying affiliate links since 2008. Initially with GetPrice, then Winnings, Amazon, Appliances Online, WhistleOut.
Some of them work for a time, some of them don’t pan out for a variety of reasons.
My particular interst is being able to close the loop for CHOICE members with a click. For the longest time we have given the best product then expect people to do their own research on buying. Many people on choice.community I assume are interested in doing the research - but not everyone.
Ideally we would implement an API that collates best deals on the net, but this is quite difficult from a digital development perspective (inordinately expensive) so we’ve been trying to leverage other companies that have affiliate links already.
The handy thing about affiliate links (besides closing a loop and a trickle of extra funding) is that they also tell you about bad links - they tell you when something is discontinued. This is a really valuable service for us as manually doing this is difficult without a lot of automation across 200-odd product categories.
We just keep on coming back to mission which is about safe, fair and just markets for all Australian consumers, which tends to keep us on track ethically. As long as we keep within those guard rails, we believe affiliates and partnerships are fine to experiment with to see how they can serve the needs of Australians.
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Thank you Matt for the reply, and I do understand the idea behind it all. Would it, as I mentioned previously, be worth making the CHOICE Home Shopper the default link for the product or develop the search link with your sister organisations and then just regionalising the search terms. With the CHOICE Home shopper you already have the item the purchaser is interested in and making it a small fee for service for non members or even a fee for members but still giving them a saving would produce a revenue stream without having to seek affiliate links.
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Somewhat off topic but relevant re business issues.
Has Choice considered a subsidiary or Choice brand essentially like the US Better Business Bureau? While it is not what it once was it combines business’s membership fees with ombudsman services with standards all member business are expected to uphold, and referral services to its membership. Being a BBB member was once more important than paypal (and similar) protections today.
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There are websites that already do this for a range of products, such as staticIce (for IT products). I know there are some really bad price aggregators out there, but some do a decent job - perhaps Choice could do a review of price aggregation websites and then consider whether any of them may be useful for members when considering particular products?
In fact, WhistleOut does a decent job, as does PC Part Picker… (I must admit that I run ad-blockers so have no idea how much advertising is on any of these websites.)
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It maybe useful to see how other sites treat this in a transparent manner.
Whilst OzBargain is owned by a for-profit media company it relies on trust and transparency for growth and retention of it’s community driven deal site. When they installed affiliate links for deal links there was a community outcry afaik and there was long discussion on how to balance values.
I can’t find the discussion yet but here is a page explaining the current model - Affiliation Links on OzBargain - OzBargain Wiki
Main points:
- Have a pop-up to give an option to go direct
- Also on the same popup have a link explaining how this works which on Ozbargain links to the above link.
- Members (those that register) don’t get the affiliate link as they contribute to the site.
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