TL/DR
What’s new:
- As the last piece of our update expanding affiliate program support for Kit, you may now see additional purchasing options appear automatically alongside Amazon links you share on Kit!
- For users who connect a Geniuslink account, we’ve added an option to allow you to toggle displaying of these additional buying options. We’re quite confident you’ll earn more by offering your audience additional purchasing options, but we wanted to make sure we provided you control here.
- Along with these changes, we’re also rolling out an important change to how creators and Kit generate revenue – To help sustain Kit as a free service, 25% of clicks on your non-Amazon links will be shared with Kit. You will continue to keep 100% of your Amazon clicks. This does not apply to users with connected Geniuslink accounts. To learn more about this change, check out our last blog update.
How this impacts you:
We’ve put the finishing touches on our last update, (which you can read about here) and are rolling out these last couple of changes to all users starting today, June 1st, 2021.
Additional Buying Options
The first thing you’ll likely notice is the addition of new purchasing options that will automatically populate when you share an Amazon product link.
We call this a “multi-retailer” approach to shopping. Somewhat similar to how a price comparison tool works, the approach is simple: for any given product, give the shopper a variety of options in which to buy that product. Some may buy from their preferred retailer, some may buy from the place that has the lowest price, and others may buy from wherever they can ship it the fastest. Sometimes Amazon, (the current default destination of the buy buttons on Kit), can fit all three of these criteria, but not always.
This update is designed to increase engagement, boost your total commissions, introduce you to new affiliate programs, and give your audience a better shopping experience. We wrote extensively about our reasoning for why we’re introducing these changes in our last blog, but we decided to hold off on releasing these changes until today, as we wanted to give Kit users ample time to sign up for the new programs before we start displaying buttons for them.
Not signed up for the newly supported affiliate programs? Check out our list of supported programs here to get started now!
Toggle Multi-Retailer (for connected Geniuslink accounts)
For Kit users with connected Geniuslink accounts – your clicks count towards your Geniuslink bill every month, so we know how important it is to have full control over when and where you’re driving traffic.
As such, we’ve decided to give Geniuslink clients the option to disable these additional buy buttons, giving you control over how many clicks are affiliated and reported by your connected Geniuslink account. We’re quite confident that you’re better off displaying and affiliating these options, but displaying them is still entirely up to you!
Changes to Affiliation Rates
Finally, it’s important to reiterate that starting today, 25% of clicks on your non-Amazon links will be shared with Kit if you are not using Geniuslink to manage your affiliation.
What does this mean?
Kit has always been a free service, and while we love supporting talented creators and artists by giving them a platform to earn affiliate revenue and share the products they love, keeping the service maintained for our growing user base does have some real costs we have to consider.
We’ve been discussing and experimenting with a few different ways we can improve revenue for Kit, without intruding on the user/shopper experience, and we have come to the conclusion that the best path for keeping Kit free is to implement a more consistent “click-share” model that can sustain us and our users.
Going forward, every time a Kit collection is viewed, we “roll the dice” on every non-Amazon product purchase button within that Kit, substituting our own, “in-house” ID’s ~25% of the time. We’ll still automatically apply your ID’s for supported products ~75% of the time, and we encourage you to continue testing your links to verify that they are affiliating.
Please understand that this is an important change that will help secure a future for Kit where we can continue development for the platform – eliminating bugs, adding new features, and providing new and better ways to earn affiliate revenue.
We hope you’ll help us celebrate this major update for Kit and the opportunities it provides creators looking to earn affiliate revenue recommending products they love, and further, that you understand our reasoning behind implementing the new click share model.
As always, we welcome all feedback about how we can best support you and Kit. Please direct any questions or concerns about these changes to help@kit.co – we’ll make sure it’s passed onto the team.