Bloggers can do so much with their notes. They are less constrained by length and can offer more backstory than print media, and they can link to other sources for additional information on a wine. They can podcast or vlog their notes. Most importantly, blog authors can also direct readers immediately to a source where they can buy the wines reviewed.
Besides doing their readers a service by making wines they reccomend easier to get a hold of, bloggers could potentially make some cash ala Amazon Affiliates for their referrals.
Currently wine-searcher.com is the only online servive I’m aware of that gives wine bloggers the ability to link to wines availbe for purchase via their search engine. Unfortunately the process of creating links is cumbersome and bloggers can only become affiliates (and get compensated for referrals) if they have over 100,000 pageviews a month. Which leaves out everyone but, well, Vinography. And even then, payment is based on click throughs @ 6 cents per refferal, instead of a cut of the total purchase. And finally, to top it all off, the results given in wine-searcher aren’t usually the best prices available. You have to pay wine-searcher for complete results.
Alder at Vinography is pretty good at linking to online mailing list sign ups, but other than him I don’t see other bloggers making it easy for their readers to actually get their hands on the wines they review. Making it easier for wine bloggers to link to places to buy the wines they review would be a great first step. An even bigger step would be to cut them in on the action and give them 4 or 5% of the total purchse when they refer customers directly to a winery’s online store. Producers give wholesalers like Southern 30% of the retail price, so I figure 4-5% is a small price to pay for a “new aquisition.” And yeah, we’re going have an affiliate program of some sort at Capozzi. For sure. So stay tuned.
Anyway this whole post was brought about when I wanted to provide links to some of the wines that we’ll be tasting this weekend in our (mainly) Russian River Valley Pinot palate training exercise. I wasn’t concerned with making any quick cash, but I was interested in getting people excited about Russian River Pinot and I wanted to provide links to places where readers could purchase some of the great wines we’ll be sampling. Due to the tediousness of actually providing links, however, instead I decided to post this rant.
The wines we’ll be tasting blind and “judging” are listed below. We have a nice sampling of vintages and a good cross section of the valley, from Green Valley up through Laguna Ridge and ending at Middle Reach. I’ve also thrown in a Seasmoke from Santa Barbara and a Robledo from Carneros for flavor.
I’ll let you know next week which ones were the favorites (no scores though, sorry).
00 Dehlinger Estate (RRV)
00 Dehlinger Goldridge Vineyard (RRV)
01 Marimar Torres Don Miguel Vineyard
01 Joseph Swan Trenton Estate (RRV)
01 D’Agostini (RRV)
02 Robledo (Carneros)
02 Harrington (RRV)
02 Rochioli Three Corner Vineyard (RRV)
03 Moshin 115 Clone (RRV)
03 Ketelsen Tudor House Reserve (RRV)
03 Merry Edwards Klopp Ranch (RRV)
03 Gary Farrell (RRV)
03 Moshin Lot 4 (RRV)
04 Holdredge (RRV)
04 Rochioli Special Cuvee (RRV)
04 Dutton Goldfield Dutton Ranch (RRV)
04 Seasmoke Botella (Sta. Rita)
04 Rochioli Estate (RRV)
04 Halleck Three Sons Cuvee (RRV)
Andrew
4 years ago
Can see you don’t read Spittoon!
each wine has a link to a stockist to buy the wine online (if known). But affliate links – where you get a % of the sale or a set figure – do no favours to an independent writer; a severe conflict of interest results.
Josh
4 years ago
Andrew,
Thanks for the comment. I do read Spitoon! But sites like yours and Vinography are few and far between.
As far as conflicts of interest go, I don’t think that supplying a link to purchase a wine that you have already deemed to be worthy of a good review and receiving a cut of the sale necessarily creates a conflict of interest. And if such a concern does exist, linking to places to buy the wines without taking a cut is really no different from Parker providing producer phone numbers for the wines he reviews.
Marty
4 years ago
Josh,
I really enjoyed spending the afternoon with you and your lovely wife, friends and parents sipping outstanding pinot. My wife (Anna) and I both thought the SeaSmoke was….AWESOME!
Of course, there were many other great pinots which we enjoyed. We buy Moshin at Uncorked in Saratoga so we were a bit biased. I thought the $115 was nice, and the D’agostini was great as well.
We stayed at the Farmhouse and spent big money on wines that were not nearly as tasty as the ones you shared with us!
Good luck with your first child. You have been blessed! We hope to see you again soon!
Regards,
Marty
Andrew
4 years ago
I am going to have to disagree with you Josh – how does anyone know that that wine you raved about only receives a decent write-up because you receive a cut from the link?
I actually can’t think of a single wine blog that uses the affiliation schemes.
Josh
4 years ago
Marty,
Glad you guys had a good time and enjoyed the wine. We ate at the Farmhouse not long ago and I had some of the best duck ever to grace a plate – and the portions were huge. Great place. Thanks for the comment and for the kind words about the boy. I know Candace can’t wait to have the little guy out of her ASAP.
Andrew,
Your comment reminds me of a great exchange from Meet The Parents:
“Can you ever really trust another human being, Greg?”
“Yeah I think so…”
“No. The answer is no.”
I think if you cultivate a reputation as being a straight shooter and are transparent with the fact that you will be making money off of the link and that it will help defray the costs of running the blog, well I don’t see a problem with that at all. People do it all the time with book reviews and countless other items on Amazon etc.
As for wine blogs that use an affiliate system, you do read one: Vinography. And I don’t think anyone questions Alder’s authenticity or independence. But the reason you don’t see any others is because for the most part affiliate systems simply don’t exist! Thus my rant above.
My whole point in suggesting this is to make an end run around the corrupt and evil three tier system and to supplant them with individuals running blogs like yours. I think blogs can be a profitable distribution channel, both for the winery and bloggers, allowing both to maintain their independence.
Great discussion.
Alder Yarrow
4 years ago
Here’s my take on affiliate links. I have an affiliate relationship with Wine Searcher. I send people to wine search to find a specific bottle of wine that I recommend. They, as you know, aggregate a bunch of online vendors who sell that wine (as does winezap.com by the way).
Wine searcher pays me to do this. The retailers don’t. My reader is free to choose whatever retailer they want to purchase the wine from. There is zero conflict of interest.
But I’ll go one further. Even if I sent people to a SPECIFIC retailer, and got a cut of the sale, I don’t believe that to be a significant conflict of interest. The effort required to create a reasonable wine review (which, incidentally, readers are able to judge) far outweighs the returns from such an affiliate scheme, at least far enough that it would make the effort of simply writing reviews of only/all the wines that a particular retailed sold a non-starter (unless you were particularly masochistic).
At the end of the day, you’re doing the reader more of a favor than you are the retailer, and you don’t affect whether or not that person chooses to buy the wine or not, so it’s pretty hard to argue for a conflict of interest. I see it as a totally different animal than, say, selling advertisements on your site for a particular winery or producer and then writing a review of the wine.
Finally, someone has contacted me and is setting up an affiliate system very much like the one you describe, Josh, where wine bloggers will get a percentage cut when someone buys wine.
Alder
Josh
4 years ago
Good to hear Alder.
The more conditioned people get to buying wine direct, the healthier and more diverse the industry will become – especially for small producers. Blogs like yours should lead the way.
Jason Coleman
3 years ago
Just ran into this old post. Few points:
- Helping readers/users find wine for purchase is very important. WineLog has affiliate links first to help users buy wine they are interested in and second to make money for us.
- Still if people realize that you’re making money off clicks and referrals, they may be a little put off. Especially because the amount of money we’re talking about can be pretty small, it might be a better idea to nix the affiliate part of the link and just link to the best place to find the wine.
- However, as stated, these intermediate affiliate programs are really good at helping you find the lowest price, etc. And I don’t feel like spending my time finding which site is selling x wine for the cheapest. I’d rather just link to WineZap, Wine Searcher, or the site Triggit (very cool) tells me to.
- In my experience so far, I am getting much less than 7.5 or 6 or even 3 cents per click through affiliates that give you a percentage of sales vs. a set price. I’m told that outfits like Triggit are working to increase the % that goes to the publishers, which should help here. At the size we are now, it is more important to go with the affiliate program that gives us the most reliable links and cheapest prices for our users. For good business reasons this will probably always be the case.
- And a slightly related aside: Believe me, I’ve thought of hundreds of ways to increase click throughs and generally generate more affiliate $ and ad $ on WineLog, but at this point it’s not worth the damage it would do to our image to pimp things too hard. Now maybe when these changes are generating an extra $5k per month for us, rather than just an extra couple hundred bucks, I’ll consider losing my integrity… but I doubt it.
Cheers.
Vino2Vino Blog » Blog Archive » Revenue in a Wine 2.0 world
3 years ago
[...] blog posting from last year, including comments from some of the most noteworthy wine bloggers – How Blog Tasting Notes Should Be. While there was some discussion about conflict-of-interest for wine bloggers recommending a [...]
Catie
3 years ago
At one time I considered listing wine searcher on my blog, but later chose not to since I only write about the local Walla Walla wines and I want to give the sale directly to the winery. I always link my tasting notes directly to the winery and always checking the availability first. No, I don’t get anything from the wineries for the links and that’s okay. Afterall, I am really not linking for the winery but for the convenience of my readers.
Death to the Fine Wine Retailers!
2 years ago
[...] isn’t a new idea, and it isn’t be hard to implement. In fact I wrote about how to do it almost two years ago. People do it all the time with goods on Amazon. It’s called an affiliate program, and the [...]
Ryan
1 year ago
Just came across this – clearly I’m a little late. However, I think Snooth is a great way to do this now. As far as I know you can both easily link up a wine, AND they have a great blog widget for searching their site directly form your blog. My understanding is that clicks trough this widget earn you affiliate credit when you enroll in their program. Cheers