UK startup affiliates aggregator Skimlinks claims that £2m merchant sales in sales have gone through the site since it re-launched from its earlier Skimbit incarnation in December. Publishers are using Skimlinks to earn incremental revenue, especially now traditional banner advertising is suffering a decline.
Online publishers including Channel 4, OSOYOU, TechRadar and T3 are currently using Skimlinks, which automates the process of creating affiliate links from normal merchant links. It’s currently holding 7,000 merchants across 18 affiliate networks worldwide. Publishers sign up to Skimlinks for free and the service retains a percentage of the commission paid by the affiliate networks. In return publishers get a great deal more control over the affiliate advertising which appears on the site – a huge bug-bear with affiliate advertising in the past.
We’ve written extensively about Skimlinks in the past, and in February it sealed first round funding. Investors in Skimlinks include NESTA, The Accelerator Group, Sussex Place Ventures, Duncan Jennings (eConversions) and Alex Hoye (Latitude Group and Chairman of Skimbit).
Skimlinks’ Joe Stepniewski spoke at GeeknRolla recently on affiliate marketing.