The California Wine Club: Huge Affiliate Potential with Datafeeds

Welcome to Part Four of our 3-Part series, Datafeeds of the Rich and Famous presented by Greg Hoffman Consulting and starring me, Robin Leach. Four articles in, I’m not going to pretend I’m trying to think of a better title. This is the schtick, ladies and gentlemen.

First, thanks to the folks that reached out asking for a Datafeeds 101 post. I’ve started writing, and will hopefully have it ready for publication this week.

Today we’re looking at The California Wine Club! If your audience has any interest in wine—and they do—you need to be involved with this program. The basics are basic: a 15% default commission, a 90-day cookie, auto-deposit, a datafeed and manual approval of affiliates. This is pretty standard stuff for programs managed by Greg Hoffman Consulting. What sets The California Wine Club apart is their aggressive stance toward affiliate recruitment and retention (and this ties into their datafeed, just watch).

Sales Bonuses

You can earn an extra $260 every month in bonuses. Generate just five sales, and The California Wine Club will give you a ten dollar bonus. Generate ten sales, and they’ll give you $25. And it goes up from there:

• 5 sales – $10 bonus
• 10 sales – $25 bonus
• 20 sales – $50 bonus
• 40 sales – $75 bonus
• 80 sales – $100 bonus

They’re cumulative, so if you finish with more than 80 sales at the end of the month, you’ll have recieved $260 in bonus money. (Limited to content affiliates. Ask Greg if you qualify.)

Leapfrog

Content affiliates (bloggers, for example) have long been concerned that their commissions could be “stolen” by coupon sites when a customer sees a coupon code field at checkout and goes searching for a coupon to use. Leapfrog solves that issue, and The California Wine Club has had this technology in place for about a year with great success.

Promo Bonuses

This ties into the program’s datafeed. Remember datafeeds? This is a post about datafeeds. Using the Custom1 field in the datafeed, The California Wine Club is able to offer a $40 bonus to affiliates that refer customers that purchase eligible clubs in the Premier Series.

A savvy affililate promoting The California Wine Club might create a spot on their site that rotates featured wines with an emphasis on the wines that will generate bonuses. That can be done by searching the Custom1 field in the datafeed for the code “promo40”.

Add it All Up

The top affiliate in this program last December generated 29 bonuses. Five of those were Sales bonuses, and the remaining twenty-four were Promo bonuses. That's over $X,xxx (edited by GH) just in bonuses. This affiliate also benefitted from 21 leapfrog transactions. Without Leapfrog, those 21 sales would have been lost.

The Datafeed

There are currently 48 products in the datafeed and since product availability and pricing is very stable, the feed is only updated every two weeks or so (generally) or as-necessary. The following columns are utilized:

ProductID | Name | MerchantID | Merchant | Link | Thumbnail | BigImage | Price | RetailPrice | Category | SubCategory | Description | Custom1 | LastUpdated | status | manufacturer | shortDescription | SKU | AddToCartURL | mobileURL

Featured Items

One of the more popular items, this Premier Series club is eligible for the $40 promo bonus!
Name: Premier Series Ongoing Membership – Two Red Wines – Monthly Delivery
Price: $39.95
SKU: Pre-MORED

For serious wine lovers, this three-month club is fantastic.
Name: California Wine Club 3-Month International Red Wine Gift Membership
Price: $204.00
SKU: INT-CLUB-034

Clubs can be purchased in one month quantities, 3-months, 6-months, 9-months or a year. Here's a great club in the 6-month category.
Name: The California Wine Club 6-Month Signature Gift Membership
Price: $696.00
SKU: SIG-CLUB-019

An example of one of the best year-long clubs, this is attractive to people who know wine!
Name: The California Wine Club 12-Month Signature Gift Membership
Price: $1,272.00
SKU: SIG-CLUB-037

Not yet signed up for The California Wine Club affiliate program? Frankly, I’m surprised. I thought you would have stopped reading after I talked about the bonuses and gone to ShareASale to sign up. I’m disappointed. SIGH. I guess I’m not as persuasive as I thought. I'll try one more time. CLICK THIS BANNER!

Cool?

This article predates the transition to Apogee and may contain outdated references or links. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.