Jumia and Konga may prefer their affiliate program to Google adwords

Posted by Felix Okoli on Wednesday January 1, 2014 at 18:46:13:

Jumia and Konga has recently introduced an affiliate program for publishers and social media users and this is one which allows members to earn money from the online shopping giant. First Jumia had theirs through Commission Junction and later switched to their own in-house program while Konga recently began theirs in partnership with Post affiliate pro

For a long time in the past, online shopping websites in Nigeria like Konga and Jumia had been using Google adwords as one of the major ways to drive traffic to their website. This is due to the fact that search engines like Google are among the most visited websites in Nigeria.

When Nigerians search for products or services to buy, one of the first places they normally go to is Google and this has made Google's advertising platform - adwords, a much sought after platform for getting effective traffic to new sites seeking for traffic.

A single campaign with a Google adwords account can turn a relatively new website into one of the most visited websites depending on how deep their pockets are. The cost of advertising on search engines like Google are based on clicks on impressions and the cost of a click can be as low as $0.10. This means that advertisers who are seeking for traffic to their websites from Google would have to pay for traffic they actually receive, irrespective of whether that click eventually converts to a sale.

With the way we know Nigerian users, there are a whole lot of people who are just browsing the web and clicking on Google ads without actually buying anything and such clicks eventually leads to a loss to the advertiser since they are ineffective.

I guess a lot of non-converting clicks on Google adwords has been eating away into the profits of these Nigerian companies who are into online shopping and it seems only reasonable for them to diversify their marketing expenses into other areas and hence their introduction of an affiliate program.

In the past, a lot of money had been spent on Google adwords by Konga and Jumia in creating a lot of publicity about their platform which allows Nigerians to shop online and pay on delivery, something relatively new in Nigeria. Nowadays, they've already got that publicity and now it seems that they are trying to save costs and look for a better way to generate sales and hence the need for an affiliate program.

An affiliate program, unlike pay per click advertising allows merchants like Jumia and Konga to only pay a small commission only when sales have been made unlike what obtained in PPC campaigns when they had to pay for all clicks irrespective of whether sales were made or not.

I guess Google adwords is good for publicity and traffic but what happens afterwards? Will it still be a profitable business for these online shopping giants to keep using adwords. Personally, I think trying out both affiliates and PPC adverts would help them make a better decision.

Already, a lot of publishers who own blogs and news websites are subscribing to their affiliate programs which pays between 3% to 9% per sale.

I think, if sites like Jumia and Konga eventually switch to affiliate programs rather than Google adwords, they might be able to cut down their advertising expenses by a big margin. However, this would only be successful if they have a large affiliate network that converts a lot for them.

Perhaps, they should still stick with using adwords when it comes to direct advertising on search engines like Google since Nigerians will still keep using Google anyway but they could save a lot if their ad campaigns are only restricted to the Google search engines and exclude third party websites. They should then allow publishers on their affiliate program to fill in the void where potential buyers don't click on the ads on Google.