Affiliates aren’t considered “insiders” as far as the SEC is concerned for the companies that they market, but a lot of time as affiliate marketers we get some visibility into the health of a company that others just don’t see. Is a company’s website converting really well? Better than their competitors? Has a company’s site conversion rate dropped significantly? Has a company made some communications to their affiliate partners that might indicate future trouble for the company? We see this information all the time!
Here is an example. Like a lot of affiliates we have a relationship with Walmart. In June of 2007 we got a notice that Walmart was cutting their commission rates due to budget issues and that all departments across the board were being asked to make cuts. Take a look at Walmart’s stock chart from June of 2007 until today:
That’s almost a 10 point slide! Predictable? Probably. Shortly after that email came out they totally missed their quarterly numbers.
Here is a stock chart for a company we started marketing back in October of 2006. The campaign shot through the roof from day one. I didn’t know much about the company, but had I purchased their stock based on the strong site conversions I was seeing, I could have made a pretty penny:
Maybe there is a business around using affiliate conversion data to predict stock market behavior?
What do you think?
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