Will affiliate marketing benefit with widgets

[Gajandra D]

What say if widgets are eventually adopted into merchant or affiliate sites. Any new affiliate can copy the widget and place it on their site and start earning right away without having to go through the rigamarole of signing-up and putting up banners. This are a few steps that might just work for some merchants as far as incorporating widgets into thier marketing plan.

1. Accessibility. Widgets must be formatted properly for the space they are designed to fit.

2. Customization. Widgets must be customizable by the webmaster to fit the overall look/feel of his site.

3. Content / Experience. Widgets must provide a good experience for the reader.

4. Branding. Widgets must offer branding to the merchant.

5. Sharing. Widgets must be easy to for the reader to copy from the site he is reading and place them on his own site.

Assuming that the widget can track properly why not give affiliates more than just banners to promote.

[Tephus]

What is more important is creating a system that eases the implementation of widgets and banners. There are many affiliates out there who are clueless about html and get lost when it comes to putting up banners/links.

I think once we get a uniformed system going, which the user can copy and paste a link onto the control panel and the site will do the rest will we see an explosion in affiliates.

[David Tan]

Well, if the merchant can develop their own widgets, they don't really need affiliate networks to help out much, do they? Just post it for free in their site or in widget download sites, etc and even at file-sharing sites like bittorrent and such. It's free, it's useful and it's easy, the thing will spread easily through the online community.