Buying a Bed! An Affiliate Marketers Experience.
First off this isn't Spam...I am not trying to sell you a bed, nor am I asking for Bed Advice here as that would be a bit inappropriate.
Kyle's recent post about Reviews reminded me of this recent experience I had and how it really shon a light onto the Dark Side of the Affiliate Marketing World. So thought I would share it with you all
Bed Buying Journey.
We have just gone through the process off purchasing a new bed, and this was an incredibly eye-opening experience. We wanted that Hotel Bed Feel at home, like the one in the cover photo so began some research, It turned out Buying a bed was EASY, but buying the Mattress was something else entirely.
From the first moment I googled "mattress," My Social media feeds and Google adverts we were inundated with Mattress adverts. All promoting the same "new" memory foam type products. These type of mattress had never appealed to us and we we looking at a high end "old School" Pocket sprung Mattresses. Like Hotels use.
The Uninvited onslaught from Social Media and Google Ads was pretty surprising. We have all searched for something only to see it appear in our feeds and ad windows, but this was something else. We simply stopped seeing any adverts for anything else and on FB for example every 2 posts was a miracle memory foam mattress advert. It was as if buying an "old" pocket sprung mattress would be madness.
So we then started googling for reviews of these New mattresses. (My mind instantly sprung to the idea of building a site myself, but the market was very heavily saturated already.) All these sites we giving very very positive reviews, and they we not all Affiliate sites either, big name reviewing companies all raving about the same products. And providing pretty negative reviews of the older traditional style mattresses.
Finally, we headed to our local department store, that sold both the traditional style that we wanted originally and a selection of the new Memory foam mattresses. So we could ask Advice.
When we approached the salesman (Non-Commission) and told him our predicament, he turned to all his colleagues and simply laughed, before telling us to buy the traditional and how the memory foam mattresses we basically junk. All in attendance agreed.
We then explained, that my wife also works for the store (different Department), in which point his mood turned again, and he then went into great length and detail, as a fellow employee, exactly why the Memory foam we junk. The exact technical reasons they WILL fail and why we would be wasting our money.
There was simply no decision in his eyes the New wonder product was junk. And the age-old tried and tested product was still far superior. I mentioned my line of work as an affiliate marketer and how the internet basically says he is wrong. He was obviously;y well aware of this and Stated its all just huge marketing budgets.
The disconnect between what we read online and heard from a non-biased sales source was Staggering.
These companies use around 70+ % of their turnovers on marketing alone (dosn't leave a lot to actually make quality products right) And they offer huge incentives to marketers to promote the product.
They also go after the Bloggers and advertisers that are more honest and negative about their products, tieing them up in legal battles until they have no choice to fold (Kyle and Carson know all about what that is like!) I imagine they pay for positive reviews and pay off Negative reviewers. It's a horrible and murky world and this is just the Mattress industry. It really is enough to bring the whole thing down!
We, Obviously, bought the Traditional Mattress. ( A Hypnos mattress who also make hotel mattresses and is utterly fantastic) But we can imagine most people in our situation would not have found the advice we did and will currently be lying on a $100 that they paid $1000 for and will fail 2-3 weeks after their money back guarantee ends.
As Kyle says, keep it honest. The continuation of our industry relies on us staying honest and providing real quality helpful advice. As we all know if you game the system or operate in a short-sighted dihonest negative way, eventually it will bite you on the ass.
Recent Comments
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Sorry, but I must disagree. We have several mattress merchants on our network, and I personally know several mattress bloggers. Your guy may be non-commissioned, but he still has goals or quotas, and only the inventory the store allows.
Yeah, the bloggers I know do keep it honest. And that's the right thing to do.
Hi Jeannine,
You may have missed the part where my wife and the sales guy work for the same company. It's not just any company either. It is John Lewis and if you are not British you may not quite understand what that means, but essentially it is a Co-Ownership, the employee's own the business. This leads to a totally different way of working and thinking.
It also led to a much more frank discussion, such as the amount of return stock that was coming through the business (Both Mattresses were available through the business) and discussions he had with the CEO of the Memory mattress company. The Dynamic at play was no longer salesperson to customer, but employee to employee.
And it was very eye-opening.
Have a read of this!
https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-bloggers-lawsuits-underside-of-the-mattress-wars
And then tell me ALL Mattress bloggers are honest.
I am sure A LOT of them are especially the smaller guys, and the ones I came across that were not, were not bloggers but articles in big publications who clearly have no morals anyway.
It is certainly a murky world. Try typing "Which Mattress" into Google and see what happens to your social media feeds!
Actually I do know John Lewis. We had their affiliate program on Awin.com. I totally agree that the waters are murky, and that's where the buyer must be discerning. Sadly there are a lot of folks who do manipulate their content based on highest bidder.
I also wonder if some things are different in the UK than the US when it comes to mattresses.
Wow..... Thanks for educating us as to how the mattress industry works.
I am glad that you found one that you really like. Most hotel that I have stayed at do an amazing job of finding really comfortable mattresses for their beds.
Best wishes for a profitable year.
Oh my, I didn't know they would actually go after Amazon niche marketers and tie them up with legal matters. So they either make honest marketers leave, or they turn them into not so honest marketers... Sad.
Luckily, in my niche that involves digital technology, every product I promote is good one way or another, it just depends on what exactly the personal is looking for. What needs, what budget etc.
Thanks for offering your experience, Stephen, this was interesting to read for sure!
Great story and great analogy based on Kyle's post yesterday. Thanks for telling the story. We need to keep integrity in what we do!
Cal
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Thanks for following me. I take it that WA is not a scam, cause you're still here after 3 years. lol