Common questions about how Skimlinks works with Merchants answered

It’s the question everyone wants an answer to: Does Skimlinks work with merchants and if so, how?

The answer is that we do work with merchants – 48,500 of them – and we do it seamlessly.

How do I join Skimlinks if I’m a merchant?

Plot twist: you don’t join Skimlinks if you’re a merchant, or at least, you don’t join Skimlinks directly in the same way publishers do.

Our merchants start working with us via an affiliate network.

We partner with over 50 affiliate networks around the world (including AWIN, CJ Affiliate, Impact, Partnerize & Rakuten) and are always on the lookout for new players to integrate with.

As soon as we’re approved for your program on your affiliate network, our operations team will set you live in our system and we can get started.

WTF is an affiliate network and how do I join one?

An affiliate network helps merchants incentivise publishers to write about their products. They host affiliate programs for merchants, which enable merchants to pay publishers a commission on any sales their content directly inspires.

They also offer analytics for merchants to track performance, such as conversions, so they can measure how valuable their affiliate program is.

Skimlinks aggregates access to these networks into one platform for publishers, so they can find all the merchants they want to work with now and new ones they want to work with in the future, in the same place.

We work with all the major affiliate networks so it shouldn’t matter which one you join. The best thing to do is talk to any of the ones we’ve mentioned above, choose the one best suited to your needs and location, and join up. Once you’re on a network and approve us for your program we can get started.

Which merchants do you work with?

We work with 48,500 merchants of all shapes and sizes around the world. You can see all the merchants we work with here.

Our network covers everyone from large department store brands like Nordstrom and John Lewis, to ecommerce natives like Etsy, and smaller bespoke merchants too.

I’m live on Skimlinks. How do I scale?

There are a few easy ways you can promote your program through Skimlinks:

– First if you’re a member of AWIN, CJ Affiliate or Rakuten upload your offers in your network. We sync this information into the “Offers” area of our Publisher interface, so that our network of 60,000 publishers can find them and write about them.

– Then we highly recommend you open your program to all publishers: the more sites that can write about you, the more potential revenue you can drive from commerce content written about your brand and your products

– Last, something to consider is that when publishers think about the merchants to write about, as well as thinking about audience fit, they also look at the commission rates merchants offer and favour merchants paying higher commission rates because it means the publisher earns more when they drive a sale. For that reason we do advise increasing and varying commission rates to incentivise coverage. This also increases visibility as updated rates are communicated to publisher in emails and our Publisher Hub.

So there you have it: our common answer to common questions about merchants and Skimlinks. If you want to know more about being a merchant with Skimlinks, check out our merchant page here