Hi guys,

Yet another merchant on our wonderful Wednesday for you. But first I think we need to explain a little about the merchant and why you should or shouldn't be interested in promoting them.

The British Standards Institute is the worlds first and foremost standards agency, responsible for creating the standards for best practice that ensure that people don't die at work, products are manufactured to be safe and non-toxic, houses don't collapse in high winds, etc. As such there is a massive pool of businesses who need to know how to do what they need to do to comply with the relevant British Standards, often at short notice, and use the internet to find the standards. 9% of UK businesses spend hundreds of thousands of pounds each year for hard copy standards that have a 10-day turnaround to send out - now that the BSI has online pdfs available for immediate download the demand will increase and the revenues to go with it.

The B2B market for affiliates has tended to have limited volume for affiliates as the kind of purchase decisions has usually been closely regulated by the company, and tend to be taken offline. In comparison, Standards are high ticket value items important to the company that are bought using discretionary budgets. Implementing a Health & Safety policy? Need an health & safety standard? Quick search and purchase. BSI are the sole supplier and are cited in legislation as necessary, so people are price insensitive, but the traditional route takes time, whereas the online route is immediate.

Another great thing about BSI's appeal is it's broad reach - companies of so many hues need to have official, verifiably up-to-date standards to work to in order to gain compliancy when they are being audited. Often work can be delayed or even halted while the company waits for the hardcopy standard(s) to be sent over - buying online removes that bottleneck. Faced with a production halt, suddenly companies become inclined to buy as quickly as they can - and currently don't tend to know that they can get standards online, as they usually go through their industry organisation.

As a result search volumes are fairly high, and all the anciliary products provided by BSI are there to help people who don't understand the actual standards they've bought. As long as you can point them in the right direction, there should be a considerable amount of traffic that isn't yet being served online. As a result this programme is probably best for affiliates who have business traffic or are able to tap into the PPC and SEO space to find those lost souls looking for standards.

Anyway, down to the specifics:

  • The British Standards Institute pays 10% of the total basket value for all sales, including training and help guides, and they have an average basket value of £75.
  • There will be 27,000 standards in the XML datafeed for you to link to when it fully up and running in the next few days.
  • The BSI sells 130,000 hardcopies of British Standards every year. Already they are seeing increased sales from having instant access, online sales.
  • A couple of BSI affiliates have entered the PPC arena online and are generating unexpectedly high revenues online, demand is not currently being met.

If there is anything else you want to know, please get in touch.

Cheers

Ben


<a href="http://www.bsi-global.com/en/Standards-and-Publications/Industry-Sectors/"><img src="http://www.dgmpro.com/shared/media/client/logos/BSI_120-60.jpg"></a>

BSI British Standards

The BSI British Standards programme enables affiliates to monetise B2B traffic that is looking to ensure that their company, product or service is accredited to UK and international standards. The most important standards can be updated every 6-12 months and therefore creates a recurring market for affiliates to market to. The market for standards is big and there are plenty of opportunities for affiliates as companies look for specific standards.

Commission is paid at 10% of total basket value, which ranges from £5 to £1,000+ for standards and several hundreds of pounds for training days and seminars. The average basket value from the site is currently £75, with many customers repeat purchasers within days for supplementary help.

Creative for the major standards sectors and an XML feed are available from the management area. For details on how to deeplink, please contact the account manager.

BSI British Standards is the UK's National Standards Body (NSB) and was the world's first. It represents UK economic and social interests across all of the European and international standards organizations and through the development of business information solutions for British organizations of all sizes and sectors.

BSI British Standards works with manufacturing and service industries, businesses, governments and consumers to facilitate the production of British, European and international standards. BSI British Standards is a non-profit distributing organization, which means that any profits are reinvested into the services it provides.

Key areas for Standards:

  • Health & Safety
  • Environment
  • Disaster Recovery
  • Fire
  • Quality Control
  • Healthcare
  • Manufacturing


Key Facts:

  • Over 130,000 BSI standards are sold each year in hard copy alone.
  • The price of a standard reflects its complexity; the price range for BSI standards is £5 - £1,150.
  • The average price of a standard is £75.
  • BSI British Standards has 27,000 current standards; this equals one for every 59 businesses in the UK.
  • There are approximately 6,000 standards in development at any one time.
  • Over 14,000 organizations are engaged with the BSI every year; this is equivalent to just under 9% of all UK businesses.
  • The most popular standard in the world (ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems Requirements) is used by over 670,000 organizations in 154 countries.