The bigger this site gets, the more offers we get from different companies to run paid posts/promotions. I personally hate reading these types of posts, mostly because I think the content becomes biased even if the author does their best to prevent this. Even if the content is 100% unbiased, there is always the perception that the content is biased so readers are unlikely to trust it anyway.
We’ve never accepted any of these offers, but recently I’ve been trying something new. Instead of providing me with an incentive, I’ve asked companies to provide our readers with something of value instead. To give you an example of how we’re doing this, here is a recent conversation I had with a bank/credit union. I’ve removed the name of the company in question as in this case they didn’t decide to proceed with the offer.
Examples
Them: We’re interested in working with sites like yours to promote an upcoming offer. The customer would receive $100 for <completing these actions> and you’d receive $75 per approved account that met those actions.
Me: We don’t run affiliate links for bank accounts, instead would you be interested in running an increased sign up bonus for our readers? For example, they receive $150 and we receive nothing. That way your customer acquisition cost is $25 lower per account and we get to promote an improved offer to readers. If so, based on the offer I described above we’d be happy to write a dedicated post about it, include it in our best bank bonus page and also promote it via Twitter, Facebook and our e-mail newsletter.
Problems
We’ve probably had a similar conversation pictured above 10+ times and companies have only accepted our offer twice (once was Raise and the other we’ll be talking about in a few days time). The main issue companies have is that if they give our readers a higher sign up bonus, sites that are using affiliate links complain that they can’t compete/receive lower sign ups.
Unfortunately there isn’t really anything we can do about this, except try to find companies that are willing to work with this model. One thing we’re trying is a time sensitive offer, for example our readers will have XX days to receive a higher sign up bonus and then it will fall down to the original offer that people with affiliate links offer.
Why We Want Do This
It’s always nice to make money from this blog, but financially I’m in an OK place. That being said, this move isn’t charity driven. This helps us out in two ways:
- We rely on readers sending us tips to provide content for this site. Without the useful comments and e-mails I get on a daily basis this site would be a lot worse off. By getting better offers for our readers we’re hoping that more tips/content suggestions will be provided and we also see this as a way of saying thanks.
- Our overall traffic should increase. Our primary income source is from the display ads from Google adsense, I think by providing readers with DoC exclusives we’ll be able to increase our readership and view numbers.
Final Thoughts
If you’re a company/website/product/service/whatever and you’d like Doctor of Credit to cover whatever it is your promoting, get in touch with us. From there we can work out if it’s a good fit or not and discuss what type of promotion (if any – I’m always happy to cover things I just find interesting as well) to run.
Fingers crossed we can run more DoC exclusive promotions in the future. Also it should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway. Our reviews will remain unbiased even if companies do decide to run exclusive promotions with us.
