WHAT IS AFFILIATE MARKETING – BACKGROUND

Affiliate marketing is a business marketing approach where a business rewards “affiliates” for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s efforts.  Affiliates are those individuals/businesses that bring prospective customers to the business(es) or merchants providing the products.  Merchants compensate affiliates for bringing customers to them.  Both the merchant and the affiliates benefit from this business relationship. 

The concept of affiliate marketing has been around for decades but was put into the practice on the internet as early as 1989.  In 1997, Amazon.com filed an application for a patent regarding an “Internet-based customer referral system” which became Amazon Associates.  Expansion of affiliate marketing occurred at a rapid pace – in 2006 alone, it has been reported that affiliates worldwide earned $6.5 billion.

Affiliate marketing has received a bit of a bad rap, some of which is deserved.  Some affiliates have used techniques such as spam, bad advertising, adware, etc., to drive traffic to merchants.  Many affiliate networks, such as Commission Junction, ShareASale, and Awin have responded by implementing a code of conduct and/or terms and conditions that provide guidelines to help affiliates deliver confidence and fairness to product consumers.

REASONS WE PROVIDE AFFILIATE MARKETING

Before getting into the reasons we affiliate, let’s briefly discuss what it takes to create and sell your own inventory of products.  First, you need to find wholesalers to order products and build your product inventory. Then you must have a warehouse or place to store an inventory of products.  Next, you need to staff up to handle the take and process the orders and provide customer support.  This is not the business model we were seeking. 

Here are three reasons or benefits that you, as customers, will receive if instead we recommend products provided by other vendors:

Reason #1 – Saves You $

If you think about the costs described above, the approach of using affiliate marketing is a cost-effective solution to provide you escape room products.  If we were to have our own inventory, we would have to markup product prices to cover the costs of rent, labor, etc.  As a small business that is just starting out, it would be nearly-impossible to compete with multi-million or billion-dollar businesses such as Amazon.  Those that do tend to be highly-niched (specific product line).  But having said that, we are considering creating and selling escape room design packages that we have designed ourselves.  If we do that, we can then go to a hybrid model of selling our own products (with low overhead) along with quality products from other vendors.

Reason #2 – Wider Range of Product Selection

One of our goals is to provide a selection of products that has what you are looking for, all in one location (saving you time)!  This is much easier to do using an affiliate marketing business model.  As of this writing (3/2/2019), we are listing 100+ products and the list continues to grow.  A sizeable inventory such as this would require a significant business loan for a new business.  We want to grow this list to meet your needs, whether it be for an escape room business, mobile escape room, escape puzzles for school, escape room parties, etc.  If you can’t find what you are looking for in our store, please send us a quick email (contact@escapetheroomz.com) and let us know what you need.  Chances are, if you are looking for it, others are as well!

Reason #3 – Customer Vetted

This is important to us – we try to find products that are highly rated by customers.  Chances are, if others are impressed and happy with a product, you will be too!  One thing that is important to understand is that when it comes to escape room puzzles, it may not be possible to find a lot of reviews as these products are highly-niched (limited application beyond escape rooms).  But most products such as locks, props, etc. have uses beyond escape rooms and these products tend to have enough reviews to give you a good feel for the quality of the product.  If there are any escape room products that you would recommend to others, please let us know!

Hopefully this explains our approach to providing escape room products.  If you buy the types of products we list in our store, please consider joining our community.  We can really use your help in shaping the list of items we provide, and really want to hear feedback on the products you
use and recommend to others!