Updates to the TCGPlayer Affiliate program!
TCGPlayer has made some changes in their Affiliate program not only making it easier to get more referrals but the new system provides more value than the old. Here is how it works for you as a content creator.
AetherHub is closely partnered with TCGPlayer and provides our Content Creators with the opportunity to earn revenue via our sites by posting decklists. We are unique in doing this and the way this works is the same as the way we use our own referral code with TCGPlayer. Once you are set up we will replace our own affiliate code with your code, making all cards in the decks you make on AetherHub and articles to earn you income instead of us.
What is an Affiliate Program?
A partnership in which TCGplayer pays affiliate web sites a commission to send them traffic. These affiliate web sites post links to TCGplayer with a unique ID and get paid if those links lead to sales. All of AetherHubs card links to TCGPlayer are embedded with these IDs. Once you are part of the program your profile will get an affiliate card like below showing that users buying cards via your content is supporting you instead of AetherHub.
How does TCGplayer's Affiliate Program operate?
As an affiliate partner, we’ll provide you with a unique affiliate code that we’ll use to track your referrals and their actions once they land on TCGplayer.com. You’ll receive weekly and monthly reports for tracking that include data and metrics including referred users, conversion rate, transactions, and revenue. If you do not receive any reports, that means no sales has been made in the current timeframe.
The commission rate is 3.5% of any purchase directly referred to TCGplayer. This is through last-click attribution, meaning the credit will be given to you for any purchase made when you’re the last referrer associated with that user. If you refer someone to a card and then they browse around and add 10 more cards to their cart, you’ll receive credit for the whole cart!
Payments are made ~45 days after the end of each month and are for an entire month of earnings. So all earnings made during January would be paid ~March 15th.
AetherHub Content Creator Status
As a TCGPlayer affiliate, you will also be getting a lifetime status as a Content Creator on the website. This gives you more visibility on the website making it easier to get referral sales. Your content will show up to all users of the website in their Home Feed, you have access to the article system, your stream will show up on the front page when you go live on Twitch. You can read more about the Content Creator status here.
How do I sign up?
For content creators, we are looking for content creators with either a Twitch Partnership or at least 1000 subscribers on Youtube. If this is you, reach out to us at the Contact Us page. We need the following information:
- AetherHub username
- Twitch Channel if applicable
- Youtube Channel if applicable
- Content creator name/nick to be used
- Your full name
- Location in the US or Abroad
- Your PayPal email address
- Your mailing address
- The phone number you can be contacted on
What is different from the old system?
TCGPlayer changed into this system around April, earlier the commission rate was the same but it was a lot more strict in that you only got paid if the users you referred to TCGPlayer were not already registered at the site. Meaning only new users earned Affiliates any income. In addition, there was a three-month window where users earned a percentage of all purchases that the user made. Now you instead earn a commission for all purchases made with clicks from your decks/articles/cards in descriptions, no matter what.
Some tips for referral sales and how to get traffic
Using AetherHub for posting your decks is one thing, getting a deck with a lot of views will push it up in the views list. Our algorithms distribute points based on how old the deck is, combined with views, comments, and downloads. By looking at our date for Content Creator sales we see some users performing vastly better than others, and those are the users posting the decklists on external sites. Youtube is a great example of this, a lot of Youtubes userbase will consume a video of a content creator, click their link to check out the cards and then buy a couple of cards they need to complete the deck. They are way more invested in the deck than users clicking around on AetherHub, looking for a deck to play in MTG Arena. With Twitch you have our DeckHub extensions that work on stream and our panel extension that links to decks in your profile, these are also great for a referral sales boost and works best for streamers with a large audience.
The DeckHub Panel extension displays your last updated decks
Another tip for referral links to decklists is articles. Almost no one posts articles but in my own experience, these are very powerful if used correctly. they have the potential to outmatch even the big content creators if your article is posted on a subreddit and gets popular. The key here is posting something that is useful for your the audience, a detailed deck tech writeup for Spikes, links to your new brews for the coming new set, or as I have done which have been very popular; Posting decklists from the current meta, for events or for coming sets by compiling lists others have made. While I always give credit to those I have gotten the deck from, the decks are on my own profile and earn me (AetherHub) commissions. While there is no view counter on the Article, looking at the decks inside of the articles will give you a picture of what is popular and not. Here are some examples of popular articles:
https://aetherhub.com/Article/Commence-the-Endgame-Counters-Event-High-Wins-Decklists
https://aetherhub.com/Article/The-MetaHub-Detailed-overview-of-the-current-Metagame-and-statistics
https://aetherhub.com/Article/The-MetaHub-Detailed-overview-of-the-current-Metagame-and-statistics
