# World Vision uses affiliate marketing partner to boost Christmas gift sales

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2002/12/02/world-vision-uses-affiliate-marketing-partner-boost-christmas-gift-sales/
- Published: 2002-12-02T00:00:00+00:00
- Author: Howard Lake

World Vision has teamed up with UKaffiliates.com to drive sales and donations at
its alternative gift Web site, great-gifts.org.
World Vision will pay Web site owners
between 1% and 5% on sales made by people clicking through from their site. Web 
site owners are given a range of banner adverts and links to place where they wish
on their site. UKaffiliates.com tracks the click-throughs and actions of people 
clicking on those links, and then handles World Vision’s commission payment to each
affiliate.

Great-gifts.org is based on an idea made popular some years ago by US non-profit
Heifer International. It encouraged supporters to buy practical presents for people
in the developing world, rather than buy presents for their friends and family who
probably did not really want them. Presents such as a cow, chickens or a sewing 
machine were on offer.

 
 [  World Vision is the second charity to team up with UKaffiliates.com to run
an affiliate programme. Save the Children joined earlier this year and offer affiliates
9% on donations generated, capped at £4.50 on donations of £50 or more.

Some charities already generate income from acting as affiliates of other merchants.
Indeed, it is effectively the online version of the charity credit card, an affinity
programme whereby the charity earns a fee for introducing a customer for the credit
card company and a small fee every time the credit card is used.

## Advertisement

 [⌊Posthub advert. You create the campaign. We'll handle the postal journey. Get started at post-hub.co.uk.⌉](https://fundraising.co.uk/ads/posthub-20261007-300x250/)

It is interesting then that so few charities have tested affiliate marketing. Perhaps
they believe that they can secure sufficient online advertising and PR through donated
space. The benefit of a professional affiliate programme, however, is that it can
offer much more detailed performance statistics, compared to simply relying on donated
space.

The range of banner ads on offer from World Vision is very good. Apart from the 
standard sizes of 468×60, 88×31, and 125×125, they also offer ths ‘skyscaper’ at
120×600. The theme of the ads is consistent, and most of them include an element
of humour. For example, “a goat is for life, not just for Christmas,” and “imagine
the kids delight on Christmas morning… We didn’t say it was your kids did we.”

For some reason the Great-gifts.org Web site makes no mention of the affiliate programme.
This omission is a mistake: there will almost certainly be visitors to the Web site
who won’t want to buy or donate, but who might be willing to help World Vision promote
the site.

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