We all know how huge of an industry affiliate marketing is. Nowadays it seems that just about every other blog link you see is an affiliate link for some product or service. For a long time, credit cards were one popular product to promote. Chase was the first creditor to participate, but eventually Bank of America, Citi, Capital One, American Express and many others got in on the action. But that was all before the financial turmoil… how are credit cards doing these days?
Here are three things that are now different with credit card marketing:
Overly Competitive
One of the biggest problems with credit cards today is that there are simply too many people promoting them. Blogging was a new concept several years ago, but today almost everyone has a blog. Of course among those, there are many who blog full-time. So now when you write a review of a given credit card, there are literally thousands of others out there reviewing that card too. To make matters worse, there are now many high profile personal finance sites which advertise rebate credit cards, balance transfer offers, etc… going up against them is no easy task.
Not As Many Credit Card Offers
Most of the credit card companies pulled out of the affiliate channels during the economic turmoil. Today, the number of banks participating you can count on one hand. On a brighter note, Chase credit cards recently came back onto the affiliate channel, but it sounds like they are trying to steer away from reviews. For example, Shelly over at CreditCardForum.com recently reviewed the Chase Sapphire Card, but she was surprised to discover there are new rules: “My Chase Sapphire Card review had to be looked over before publishing. I didn’t mind, but I would imagine there are many bloggers out there who would not like doing that.”
More Rules
The credit card companies are stricter than ever when it comes to their reviews. For example, American Express requires disclaimers to be posted in reviews. These disclaimers can’t just be hidden at the bottom of the page, rather they require them to be the same font as the review and they must be next to the link. Credit card companies are also requiring the content to always be up-to-date. For example, if the interest rate on that Chase Sapphire card were to change, Shelly would then need to go update his review ASAP to reflect the change.
Are Credit Cards Still a Good Online Business?
To be completely honest, the answer is no. Even the top sites in the niche make only a fraction of the money they were several years ago. For this reason, many of them have started to switch to CPC advertising instead.