I just got back from affiliate summit in Miami where I met some pretty cool people, was introduced to a few companies, and got a chance to look more into affiliate marketing and what it’s all about. This got me thinking about one of the most lucrative markets online – credit card offers – and how difficult it is to find a genuinely good credit card offer from a consumer’s perspective.
There are thousands upon thousands of websites online that deal with credit cards – review pages, comparison searches, recommendations, you name it. The big players in this vertical spend lots of money and resources on SEO, PPC, and driving traffic to their networks of sites.
It’s hard to find a good credit card offer because most of the information out there is being driven by affiliate sales. Most affiliates push their most profitable offers above the truly good ones. Many sites are made to look like unbiased comparison shopping sites or other trusted resources, when in reality they are far from partial and are made to drive the most traffic and conversions to the most profitable offers.
The problem with the most profitable offers for affiliates is that they are usually the worst offers for consumers. They highest converting payouts come from cards with really high interest rates and/or yearly fees. Since they make so much money from the customer, the companies are able to pay affiliates really well for pushing those offers.
In contrast, the truly good credit cards for consumers are the ones that have low interest rates, good introductory APR’s, and no yearly fees. However since the cc companies don’t make much money from their customers from these offers, they won’t pay affiliates very much to promote them.
Since the market is so competitive (for organic search results and even more so for pay per click ads), margins and economic forces drive affiliates to advertise the highest paying offers. You’ll often find offers that “look good” but in reality are a bad deal for the consumer. One example is a credit card with a low introductory rate but very high APR’s after a few months. Others have restrictive terms or penalties in their contracts.
One trick you’ll often see is a credit card offer with a really low APR. In the fine print, however, you’ll find that these low rates only apply to those with stellar credit records. The majority of applicants are offered a rate that’s significantly higher once their credit does not come back spotless.
In a highly competitive and lucrative market such as credit card offers it becomes difficult to find resources that do not have an overbearing economic motive beyond helping the consumer. Obviously the same applies to pharmaceuticals (especially for something that rhymes with shmiagra) and other “hotly contested” online markets.
What’s good (and profitable) for the affiliate site is not what’s good for you or me. They’re just basic economic forces at work.
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