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$275,000 Raised from One Blog: Politics, Blogging, and Affiliate Marketing
Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching: one blog raised over $275,000 for John Kerry as well as another $40,000 for the Democratic Party. Duncan Black, the famous, formerly anonymous, blogger Atrios is a cash cow for the Dems.
Two weeks ago, the GOP made news with a Commission Junction affiliate program. While the Dean Campaign achieved remarkable results with its online fundraising, online marketers wondered if the Democratic National Committee (DNC) would respond to the GOP’s affiliate marketing challenge.
It seems the Dems do, in fact, have some type of affiliate program that they built in-house and are even saving the network fees. Black lists how much money he has raised for Kerry, the DNC, and other political candidates from his blog on his site. It’s unclear whether he is receiving a commission, but he is certainly being compensated.
While Black raised most of his money for Kerry, it’s traditional for campaigns to reward high-dollar fundraisers. For instance, the DNC’s Patriots - supporters who raise $100,000 or more for the party - receive VIP credentials for the convention and tons of other perks. It’s obvious that Black is attending the convention as a journalist and a VIP.
There are 51 official bloggers with press credentials at the Democratic National Convention. Not only do these bloggers raise money, but they also energize the Democratic base with their opinion writing.
This is just another way the Internet is fulfilling the promise of American Democracy the Founding Fathers envisioned over 200 years ago. Since Black was recently outted, there is little written about him, but we know he is a middle-class, middle-aged public school teacher in Philadelphia. Now he is an influential opinion leader, journalist, and key fundraiser for the Democratic Party. In a year where there is more money in politics than ever, despite the new campaign finance laws, it’s refreshing to know that the heart of Democracy remains intact due, in part, to inexpensive and available technology.
Much has been written on the blogger as a modern day pamphleteer. Remember the patriot Thomas Paine from history class? He was one of the first journalists to use the media to rail against the existing power structure, much like Black’s attacks against the Bush Administration.
Paine wrote in “Common Sense”, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” Through the press, he thought, “we see with other eyes; we hear with other ears; and think with other thoughts, than those we formerly used.” Sounds like the Blogosphere… doesn’t it?
In another case, Paine mentioned, “If the freedom of the press is to be determined by the judgment of the printer of a Newspaper in preference to that of the people, who when they read will judge for themselves, then freedom is on a very sandy foundation.” Paine was a blogger at heart.
Paine’s statements could come from either 1776 or 1997 at the start of the Internet boom. Technology might change, but questions regarding freedom of speech and of the press stay the same.
I wonder what Paine would think of RSS? While Paine sold 500,000 copies of “Common Sense”, he did not make a pence. He wanted his writings to be accessible to everyone for the sake of the cause. With RSS, he could just hit enter and 500,000 people would read his commentary daily. He could have built a huge grassroots movement in a few days as oppose to the 15 years it took for the Revolutionary movement to coalesce during the late 17th century.
To pull this back to online marketing, I’m emailing Black in the morning with a VIP offer for my affiliate program. In fact, there are 50 more bloggers at the Convention that would make great partners for Audible. To find potential affiliate bloggers for your program, you can visit Feedster.
And as a note, since blogs are unique content, Google and Overture highly rank them. A blogger won a search engine optimization contest for the highest page ranking in Google. Blogs can be super affiliates.
Paine would be pleased that, despite all the spam that fills the search engines, it’s individual expression and content the search engines value. For bloggers, search engine rankings yield economic and social power: bloggers are free to express their opinions and choose merchant partners that will drive the most revenue for them.
Blogging and affiliate marketing… hmmmm… it seems incredibility pompous to say that affiliate links on blogs fulfill the economic and social promises of the American Revolution.
But when you think about Black publicly ranting against the party in power and monetizing his blog by using an Amazon affiliate links to Al Franken’s book, “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right”, it’s the codified social, economic, political freedoms in the Bill of Rights that empowers him to do so. Black would never be permitted to operate in the People’s Republic of China nor the former Soviet Union. So, perhaps, it’s not so pretentious after all.
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Paine would have loved the Internet.
Of course if he was around in 95 it wouldn’t have taken this long to get here.
Great piece.
From Thomas Paine to Blogging to Affiliate Marketing… not too many people could’ve pulled that off. Nice to see this kind of quality writing at the new ReveNews!