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Nicholas Lovell
Home   >   Self-Publishing   >   Sales   >   YouTube in “Sells games via Amazon” non-story

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YouTube in “Sells games via Amazon” non-story

By on October 9, 2008

YouTube announces that it will put a link besides video game trailers that will take users to Amazon where they can buy the game.

Well, duh!

Is it just me or is this so not newsworthy?

This is just affiliate marketing in its simplest form. All Youtube needed to do was go to Amazon’s site, sign-up for the Amazon Associates programme and it would be away. No need for press releases, no need for fancy negotiation, just a simple automated deal that earns YouTube between 4% and 10% of all sales made on Amazon in the next 24 hours by the clicking user.

If I were YouTube, I would be frankly embarrassed to announce this service only about, oh, ten years after everyone else started doing it.

For goodness’s sake, my blog already does this (see My Favourites on the left for an example). If this is the best that YouTube can come up years after everyone else, their monetisation strategy is in real trouble.

About Nicholas Lovell

Nicholas is the founder of Gamesbrief, a blog dedicated to the business of games. It aims to be informative, authoritative and above all helpful to developers grappling with business strategy. He is the author of a growing list of books about making money in the games industry and other digital media, including How to Publish a Game and Design Rules for Free-to-Play Games, and Penguin-published title The Curve: thecurveonline.com