Making marketing work for you

I dived deep into the digital marketing waters with the Digital Marketing Institute recently and I learned a lot. But relax, I’m not going to bore you with all of that… yet!

BUT… we’re all interested – to some degree or another – in saving money so I’m just going to share this not so new development, which I must admit I knew nothing about. Sites using affiliate marketing to save us money.

Now if you’re already aware of the likes of Fatcheese and Bethrifty then stop reading now, I’ve nothing new to tell you.

If you’re not and like me are often too busy to keep on top of a lot of this stuff or fully educate yourself about it then read on and you could save a nice few bob while doing your online shopping.

These sites are free to join and are don’t work through vouchers or discounts, they just exploit the benefits of affiliate marketing.

This means that if they direct a customer to Nike.com (for example) and that customer goes onto make a purchase from Nike, it has been tracked that they came to the Nike site from Fatcheese . So Nike pays a commission to Fatcheese for the “lead” or sending the buyer their way. It could be anywhere from 4 to 12 per cent of the purchase price depending on what the company is offering. It’s how affiliate marketing works.

Now the trick with these sites is they give YOU their commission and they then generate so much traffic they can use those visitor numbers to generate their revenue through advertising and other initiatives. You’re still getting the same product at the same price as if you went directly to the chosen site, but you’re getting cash back.

It does take a while, could be a couple of months before all the transactions are logged and sorted through, but you do get the money back eventually. It might not be a huge amount on a book or something like that, but if you’re booking flights and hotels it definitely adds up. I know I could have saved a nice sum on hotels in the last few years if I’d been using one of these sites.

Anyway, that’s my tip and I’m sharing it based on the fact that a few savvy enough people I’ve told about it were also not availing of it. These kind of sites are huge in other countries and getting off the ground here now too.

RTE explain the process succinctly here if you just scroll down to point number 2.

P.S. If this tip saves you money, then my commission should be paid in Coronas (beer, not misspelt currency) and Jaffa Cakes.