Evolving affiliate marketing

There’s a very thought-provoking post on SugarRae about how affiliate marketing is changing and what you need to do to keep up. You don’t have to agree with every point, but read it and think about it. The core meaning boils down to this:

It used to be you could just build an affiliate site around a product, call it a day, and wait for sales to come in.

Then everyone did that. And their brother, and their dogs. It became too common, too easy.

Now, the trend is audience participation. Even Target allows people to put product reviews on their site. The online catalog is less appealing now. People expect to be asked to engage with the site somehow - publicly. In front of others.

I think it’s still possible to have a site full of helpful information that sells products without inviting people to comment or engage in some way. But this begs the question: why would you want to? Why not allow participation? What’s to lose? And as for what’s to gain - who knows?