Friday, October 19, 2007
Is Sheffield University a Super Affiliate?
How many times have you searched for something on Google, and found an Amazon aStore with the tag "chemistry-books" or "Scientific" or "webelements01" in the page one results?
I'm seeing them on an increasing number of search results, so I thought I'd take a closer look. The stores (http://astore.amazon.co.uk/chemistry-books-21/ - I don't think they need any more incoming links) start with the subject matter in hand and then other categories and sub categories, like Toys, DVDs and Music, have been assiduously added.
These are Amazon Associate links that are linked to from webelements.com - a chemistry reference site. They have aStores for UK, USA, Canada, Germany etc.
Webelements is owned by WebElements Ltd which in turn seems to be owned by Sheffield University. Webelements.com has achieved Google Pagerank 8. The "chemistry books" aStore is Google PR 7, and has 73,000 pages indexed in Google.
I can only think that the prevalence of this aStore in the search results must bring in a huge number of sales.
What do you think of this? Is it a good example of an organisation using its ingenuity to bring in much needed revenue? Does it show what we can all achieve by creating a genuinely useful resource and monetising it after that? Or is it a University using its online authority to build up a commercial enterprise that squeezes out rivals in the genuine private sector?
I'm seeing them on an increasing number of search results, so I thought I'd take a closer look. The stores (http://astore.amazon.co.uk/chemistry-books-21/ - I don't think they need any more incoming links) start with the subject matter in hand and then other categories and sub categories, like Toys, DVDs and Music, have been assiduously added.
These are Amazon Associate links that are linked to from webelements.com - a chemistry reference site. They have aStores for UK, USA, Canada, Germany etc.
Webelements is owned by WebElements Ltd which in turn seems to be owned by Sheffield University. Webelements.com has achieved Google Pagerank 8. The "chemistry books" aStore is Google PR 7, and has 73,000 pages indexed in Google.
I can only think that the prevalence of this aStore in the search results must bring in a huge number of sales.
What do you think of this? Is it a good example of an organisation using its ingenuity to bring in much needed revenue? Does it show what we can all achieve by creating a genuinely useful resource and monetising it after that? Or is it a University using its online authority to build up a commercial enterprise that squeezes out rivals in the genuine private sector?
Labels: sheffield univ
Permalink // posted by Rob @ 12:45 PM 
Comments:
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lol
Yeah, seen this site around a few times on quite a few phrases.
Wonder how much they're making.. must be a decent whack every month.
Yeah, seen this site around a few times on quite a few phrases.
Wonder how much they're making.. must be a decent whack every month.
I had seen these guys around a bit also. i wonder if it is the head of chemistry ( or what ever he is) or the university making the money.
Who ever with a link from a pr 8 site the astore is well place for virtually every search
Who ever with a link from a pr 8 site the astore is well place for virtually every search
Permalink // posted by 
: 11:54 PM
: 11:54 PM
Thanks for the comments.
John - Must be a very decent whack indeed. Would love to see their stats.
Purple - Interesting thought lol. They have formed an actual limited company for it based at the uni, but hmm a less than scrupulous affiliate might be tempted down the path you mention :-)
I used to do IT support in some very large organisations, and I wish I could go back to deploy my aff cookies to thousands of desktops.
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John - Must be a very decent whack indeed. Would love to see their stats.
Purple - Interesting thought lol. They have formed an actual limited company for it based at the uni, but hmm a less than scrupulous affiliate might be tempted down the path you mention :-)
I used to do IT support in some very large organisations, and I wish I could go back to deploy my aff cookies to thousands of desktops.
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