TopRanked.io Weekly Affiliate Digest: What’s Hot in Affiliate Marketing [EKSA Affiliates Review]

Quick Disclosure: We’re about to tell you how great EKSA Affiliates is. And we really mean it. Just know that if you click on an EKSA Affiliates link, we may earn a small commission. Your choice.

The “most wonderful time of the year” is fast approaching.

And as an affiliate, that should mean one thing to you.

Christmas presents.

And no, I’m not talking about buying them. I’m talking about selling them.

So I though it was time to take a look at an affiliate program for something a little more “retail” than our usual fare.

Let’s take a look.

TopRanked.io Affiliate Partner Program of the Week — EKSA Affiliates

Half the time, if you wanna promote the sort of stuff that makes good Christmas presents, you’re gonna find the commissions aren’t that great.

But, there are a few programs around where you get to promote killer gift ideas, and make a lot of money doing so.

Kinda like this week’s top pick — EKSA Affiliates.

EKSA Affiliates — The Product

EKSA Affiliates is the affiliate program behind the popular gaming headset brand known as… yep, you guessed it… EKSA.

Or, at least, gaming headsets are probably the main product you’ll be promoting with EKSA Affiliates. It’s what the brand’s mostly known for.

But, just in case you were thinking, “well, that’s kinda limiting… where’s the upselling and cross-selling opportunities?”, fret not. EKSA Affiliates has a few other products behind the curtain which will work well.

Now, admittedly, with EKSA Affiliates being all about gaming headsets, most of these cross/upsell products are headset-oriented.

But, there’s also stuff like a flash gaming keyboard you can sell with EKSA Affiliates. Although, that’s pretty much it, so maybe be prepared to sell a lot of headsets if you join EKSA Affiliates.

EKSA Affiliates — The Commissions

So, I promised you EKSA Affiliates had good commissions. And, as promised, EKSA Affiliates does indeed have good commissions.

Now, as for exact dollars, that I can’t tell you. That will depend on what products you sell through EKSA Affiliates, and how many of them.

What I can tell you is that EKSA Affiliates will send between 15-24% commissions your way on whatever you sell.

For the mathematically challenged, works out to $15-$24 for every $100 of product you sell with EKSA Affiliates.

With that said, EKSA Affiliates top rate of 24% is only available if you sign up through ShareASale. But you can also join EKSA Affiliates with Goaffpro if you want.

EKSA Affiliates — Next Steps

Let’s face it, Christmas is prime time to be selling the sort of stuff you’ll be promoting with EKSA Affiliates. So, with time running out, here’s what I’d do if I was you:

I’d go join EKSA Affiliates right now (here’s a link to their affiliate program).

Of course, if you’re one of thse “on the fence” sorts who wants more info, that’s cool. We got you covered over on TopRanked.io with a full, in depth EKSA Affiliates review.

Affiliate News Takeaways

Filling the Void

There’s a phenomenon in this world that we see play out time and time again in a thousand different ways.

Something disappears.

Then something appears to fill the void.

Take smoking, for example.

Someone quits smoking. So they turn to food/whatever to satiate their oral fixation.

Or here’s another one — a company shuts down. So another steps in to fill the void.

Don’t believe me?

Here’s an example — Vice shutdown at the start of this year. A bunch of their former “Motherboard” journalists found 404 Media, and it’s now one of the more prominent niche news players.

Journalism too small time for you?

Okay, here’s another example — Twitter shutdown Vine in 2016.

TikTok filled the void in the biggest way possible.

Anyway, hopefully, you get the point I’m trying to make by now.

That is, when something disappears, there’s a void to be filled. And, if there’s a way to extract $$$ from that void, then you might as well fill it.

This leads me to the news story — Gannett, an effing huge media giant (USA Today is one of their brands), is shutting down reviewed.com.

So, what’s so special about reviewed.com?

Well, there was a bunch of controversy over whether they actually had people review the products. The rumors were, they were just using AI to spit out reviews en masse.

And so, “After careful consideration and evaluation of [its] Reviewed business, [Gannett] decided to close the operation.”

Now, with Gannett being the megacorp that it is, everything was parsed through the friendly PR filter. So, yeah, they’re not letting much on.

But, I’m still gonna take a guess at what’s happened — the reputational damage from the AI product reviews accusations has destroyed its reviewed.com brand.

Takeaway

Look, that last paragraph where I guess at what happened is just a theory.

But, I needed a theory to give you an actionable takeaway, so I’m gonna run with it anyway.

I’m also gonna throw another hair-brained theory out there — if using AI ruined Reviewed.com’s reputation, it wasn’t because of the AI per se. It was because no one was testing the products.

So, here’s what I think might work — create an AI-powered review site, but don’t hide the fact you’re using AI.

Shout it out loud, and let people know about it. Just do it in a way that convinces people your reviews are actually valuable.

Stuck for ideas?

Here’s a couple:

• Our AI algorithms scrapes Amazon listings to find the most pertinent reviews, detect and eliminate fake reviews, and summarize the lot so you don’t have to scroll through thousands of reviews.
• We gather product reviews from all over the internet and have our advanced AI neatly summarize the most information so you don’t have to.

Kinda see where I’m going here?

If you wanna test out some ideas of your own, then why not spin up a quick headphones review site as a test? I hear EKSA affiliates pays its affiliates rather well.

Sports Fans Are Making Bank — Here’s How You Can, Too

This week, this story caught my attention.

The basic outline is, there are a bunch of so-called sports “superfans”. Basically, people who are famous for being massive fans of a sports team.

Apparently, these people are parlaying that fame into cold hard cash.

They’re charging brands to put logos on their outfits.

They’re charging fans to take photos with them.

You get the gist.

And that got me thinking that there must be an opportunity here for affiliates.

Now, I know what you’re thinking — who wants to go to the effort of becoming a sports superfan when there’s easier ways to riches online.

And I hear ya — I had the same thought myself.

So then I thought, maybe we can do this gig 100% online. No expensive costumes. No travelling to games. No hoping and preying that the cameras catch you, and that people actually start to recognize you.

Nope, I have a better idea.

Virtual influencers cum die-hard sports fans.

Seriously. I think this could work.

Now, to be totally honest, I’m not 100% sure it would work with traditional sports. Not sure there are that many die-hard fans are gonna feel any sort of connection with whatever you cook up with AI.

But then I had another idea.

You know how vtubers started getting really popular during the Covid days and never really went away?

Now, if you don’t know what a vtuber is, it’s basically a gaming streamer who uses an anime avatar instead of appearing on camera.

And as for how they did this in 2020, before AI became good — the secret is motion capture.

But it’s not 2020 anymore, so I reckon you could spin up your own AI vtuber pretty easily.

And, instead of streaming games (because playing games with AI is hard), just stream/post/etc. some fan content for the biggest gamers (because generating content with AI is easy).

Takeaway

If traditional sports fans are anything to go by, there’s money to be made in being a fan.

So maybe it’s worth testing the strategy out with some non-traditional “e” sports (gaming).

Of course, if you’re gonna try to do this, then you’re also gonna wanna monetize. And for that, I’ve already got one great idea for some highly relevant offers — EKSA affiliates.

Closing Thought

Just as everyone predicted, OpenAI was holding off a bunch of launches until after the election.

And now we’ve got the lull between Black Friday/Thanksgiving and Christmas, that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Apparently, they’re calling it “shipmas”. And, I “ship” you not, the first time I read that, I did not read it as OpenAI intended.

So anyway, this sounds like a news piece. Where’s the closing thought?

Well, I thought why not take a look at some of the techniques the fastest-growing startup in history and the people behind it use to sell themselves.

Take Altman, for instance.

He’s a master of persuasion and manipulation.

Case in point, go read up on what “wooden language” is (hint: it’s a favorite with politicians and PR types).

Or, if you can’t be bothered, the tl;dr is it’s when people avoid saying anything concrete, play around with definitions of words, lean on tautologies, use bad metaphors, divide the world into good and evil, and a bunch of other rhetorical devices.

The aim of all that is to dodge questions/say nothing, but still leave people feeling like they’ve heard something profound/meaningful/etc.

Now go and watch an interview with Altman. Any interview will do.

Or, here’s his most recent interview from this week, the NYT Deal Book interview.

Just minutes into it, when pressed about what he meant when he said we could have “superintelligence in a few thousand days”, he’s ducking and weaving like a pro.

He never answers the question.

He never tells us anything concrete.

He’s doing the whole “there are different definitions” trick.

There are a bunch of “wooden language” techniques right there. And he uses plenty more throught the rest of the interview.

And, by the time he’s done, you feel like you’ve just been let in on a little secret about something magical that’s about to happen. That is, if you don’t think too hard about it.

But I didn’t just want to talk about Altman himself.

I also wanted to talk about OpenAI’s partridge in a pear tree… err, I mean, their $200 ChatGPT “Pro” subscription.

That’s the first “ship” in their first day of “shipmas”.

And it’s raised a few eyebrows.

And there’s been a billion and one hot takes.

But here’s one hot take that I haven’t seen yet — this $200 price point is yet another maneuver that’s designed to persuade and influence people.

To see what I mean, I’m gonna retell you the story that Robert B. Cialdini tells in the opening paragraphs of his book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

Apparently, Rob got a call from his friend one day. This friend owned a jewelry store, and she’d found herself stuck with a product that wasn’t selling, despite it being high season and having already attempted a bunch of sales techniques.

Defeated, Rob’s friend left a note for her staff — “Everything in this display case, price ×½”.

Now, as the story goes, Rob’s friend had messy handwriting — her staff saw x2, not x½. So, instead of halving the price of everything, they doubled it.

Wanna guess what happened next?

Yep, everything sold out.

The moral of the story is, people use pricing as a signal.

The higher the price, the higher they perceive its quality — people saw the same jewlery at twice the price and immediately assumed it must be higher quality than it was.

I’m sure we’ve all fallen victim to this trick before.

So, what’s this got to do with OpenAI’s $200 “Pro” subscription?

Well, my hot take is that they’re hoping people take the price as a signal of its quality.

Think about it — there are a bunch of competitors snapping at OpenAI’s heels. And some of ‘em have got models that are pretty close to matching OpenAI.

And, if the rumors about the limits of scaling are true, then what’s OpenAI got left to to differentiate itself with?

A slightly better score on some obscure benchmark that doesn’t translate into real-world utility?

Its user interface?

Its developer experience?

Trillions of parameters?

Nah, eff all that — anyone can copy that stuff. Plus, they’re not the strongest selling points.

But a $200/month price to signal you’re the best? — that’s how you sell a product that’s 5-10% better for 10x the price.

So, how do you use any of this as an affiliate when you aren’t the one who sets the prices?

Well, here’s one option — use it to promote higher-priced offers over the cheaper options.

Combine that with some “wooden language”, and people’s brains will literally fill in the blanks for you. No need to justify anything yourself.

Take OpenAI’s lead as an example — it’s a masterclass:

“ChatGPT Pro provides a way for researchers, engineers, and other individuals who use research-grade intelligence daily to accelerate their productivity and be at the cutting edge of advancements in AI. [Oh, and by the way, bro… it’s $200 a month]”

Now try this out with, I don’t know… a top-of-the-range headset offer from EKSA affiliates.

“The EKSA® StarEngine BT Wireless Gaming Headset provides a way for pro gamers, audiophiles, and other individuals who listen to high-fidelity audio daily to deepen their listening experience and be at the cutting edge of advancements in audio technology.”

When people’s brains combine that with the price signal and they start imagining how great that headset must be, they may just be tempted to buy.

But that’s just a theory for now.

If you wanna test it yourself, an EKSA affiliates signup form is just one click away.

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(Featured image by SevenStorm JUHASZIMRUS via Pexels)

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