Indiatimes Launches Affiliate Network With Shoogloo – Can it Work?
Indiatimes Shopping has launched an affiliate marketing programme in an exclusive partnership with Shoogloo Network. Shoogloo Network will be responsible for managing Indiatimes’ affiliate marketing programme for its shopping and other e-commerce portals. The partnership will give publishers access to over 7 million products from different categories including from books, music, movies, electronics, apparel, accessories and jewellery.
As affiliate programs are expeted to function the products will be fed into an xml file which will then be used by affiliates on their websites. Basically, affiliates will be able to integrate these feeds dynamically and display a fully updated range of products from the Indiatimes store on their websites. This will help people in technical terms to have a full fledged online shop by simply putting a piece of code on their site. As such there is nothing innovative about this except for the fact that you are using an Indian site’s products instead of an Amazon or an Ebay store.
But the larger question on the mind is, will it really work – in terms of scale and scope of the business. The technology is taken care of, and was never much of a hassle anyway for most top Indian publishers. But where are the customers? Where are the affiliates who sell and what is their advantage in front of the customers.
Internationally affiliates have worked because they tapped the long tail and niche segments. Say a musician’s blog about guitar tutorials and him having an affiliate partnership selling musical instruments. It works there because his audience is targeted, and they have a purchasing instinct.
In India it is not an unkown thought that E-commerce is yet to pick up despite making an entry several years ago. People still lack trust over transacting on the medium. And even though it is growing and is getting adapted, shopping portals need to invest their time and resources in ensuring a better online shopping experience so that it continues forward. Currently even if people spend online they would prefer doing it with a trustworthy provider. Ideally I feel that any affiliate network in India to grow to its fullest potential will take a few years time when people would be more convinced about transacting from anywhere on the web would fall in as a habit.
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Although I hope it works, I don’t think it will because the whole range of products just does not match the affiliate’s website. For me, my affiliates that sell beauty and health products have a good match with my products like Facial Massagers and Aromatherapy Diffuser. In contrast, a website containing every product you can think of just does not make sense for the affiliate. A sports affiliate selling trombones and flutes, and a whole slew of ‘other’ products takes away from the website and what its trying to do.