Consumer Media

According to the Affiliates4u Forum John Lewis have stopped using voucher codes affiliates. This is a blow to the affiliate community as the John Lewis affiliate program is one of the largest and best converting. Last year they decided to exclude affiliates that offered cashback from the program in order to uphold their tradition of treating all customers equally.

Both voucher code sites and cashback sites can provide up to 50% plus of sales volume for many online retailers’ affiliate program. Although some affiliates will be hit by this news it creates an opportunity for them to make up the commission they would have got from John Lewis with other retailers.

Affiliate and online marketing consultant Peter Anderson did a study of voucher code sites and found there to be well over 100. This growth is down to consumer demand and the fact that in times of financial pressure people have been using the internet as a place where they can find bargains. in many cases this has been at the expense of the High Street.

Robin Goad of Hitwise showed the increased use of these sites in a Hitwise blog in December last last year.

“A whole online sector has emerged to feed British consumers’ hunger for discount vouchers for everything from supermarket shopping and pizzas to discounts at high end department stores. One in every 200 visits to an online retail website now comes from voucher sites such as Hot UK Deals or My Voucher Codes, while ‘consumer revenge’ website MoneySavingExpert has become the first port of call for many consumers before heading out to the high street or shopping centre.

(Between 2007 and 2008) UK Internet searches for discount vouchers have increased by 133 per cent over the last 12 months, while visits to voucher websites have gone up by 45 per cent.”

This growth in the voucher code sector has also lead to some of the industries leading figure evangalising on television, for example Duncan Jennings of eConversionss, owner of vouchercodes.co.uk was on the BBC’s Working Lunch recently.

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