Aggregating voucher codes via twitter

October 9, 2009 | Affiliate Marketing

An interesting spin on the much debated voucher code sector caught my eye today and goes under the name of CouponFollow. The model is simple, aggregate all voucher codes that appear in twitter, then link out via your own affiliate links where the merchant has an affiliate programme in place. Better still, site users and twitter followers are encouraged to spread the word retweeting adding a viral touch.

According to an announcement,

“CouponFollow tracked more than 8,000 promotional codes and more the 27,000 related postings on Twitter. We are seeing an average of 350 new codes posted a day with about 3-4 times as many related tweets,”
CouponFollow creater Marc Mezzacca.

Immediate thoughts were:

Nice, simple, I can see this being an instant success.
Great for consumers, vouchers delivered right into your hand.
I wonder how long till the inevitable copy cat sites start appearing.
Does a UK version already exist, if not why not?

And then some concerns…

Where’s the quality control or policing of codes? Expired codes, promo duration, t+c’s etc. As it’s an American site it doesn’t fall under all the good voucher code best practice work championed by the IAB Affiliate Council.
If I was an affiliate with an exclusive voucher code would my codes suddenly start appearing on this site?
If that’s the case are they overwriting cookies and stealing commission?
Didn’t Amazon recently ban affiliates from using twitter? Does linking out via a website built around twitter content get around this?

One to watch I think as I can’t imagine this will be the last time we hear about this. What are your thoughts?

Thanks

2 Comments

Finch
Oct 12 at 2:03 am

Surely it would be tough for them to actually keep up with the merchant’s affiliate programs as they appear though? Is somebody gonna sit there and join up as an affiliate on every program that a coupon gets posted for?

It’s definitely an interesting concept, but I can imagine the quality control being an absolute nightmare for them to manage.

Reply
- Paul Wright
  Oct 12 at 4:46 pm
  
  Hey Finch,
  
  I’d say it’s pretty easy to keep up or apply to all the affiliate programmes. Most large publishers these days have direct network contacts or their own publisher manager on the network side to help them. Failing that there are also directory websites that list which programmes are on which networks so wouldn’t take too long to track them down.
  
  Failing all of the above there are companies such as Skimlinks that will automatically turn every possible merchant/product link into an affiliate link (for a small percentage of the commission of course)
  
  As for quality control though, I agree that this would be an administration nightmare.
  
  Thanks
  Paul
  
  Reply