The affiliate business is often seen to be one of the dark arts of digital media, but I have always seen the potential of affiliates (at least the high quality ones) to be treated in the same way that you would treat your influential bloggers – like advocates of your brand. Nurture them and they will nurture your brand image – for the right price. Now a new company or service have been set-up to turn any tweeter, blogger, or facebooker into a micro-business or affiliate.
OpenSky allows any blogger or person interacting in a social space to profit from the recommendation of products and services to their social graph. At the moment OpenSky would appear to be slightly limited, but their are assurances that their will be a growing range of products available. The core to the way OpenSky works is that:
“Bloggers or Web site creators who use OpenSky can suggest that a supplier sell goods through OpenSky, or can pick goods from OpenSky’s stable of sellers. Sellers include companies that make custom cupcakes, reusable shopping bags and hand towels.
They can set up shops on their sites or simply link to a product. When someone buys it, OpenSky handles the transaction, the supplier ships it and OpenSky and the Web site creator split the profit evenly.”
Its an interesting model, but I would much rather see a time where I can get paid for talking about the great experience I had with my T-Mobile Blackberry Bold. The creation of store concept is certainly interesting though, so keep an eye out for a Digigen store selling all things technical, cool and highly commercial.
