Yes, this is “one of those sites” where someone talks about a product, makes recommendations, and then, if you click their link to go check it out and you end up making a purchase, the person who made the recommendation gets a commission of the sale.
In this case, that someone is me =)
The kind of affiliate marketing I am doing here is the only proper kind, if you asked me. It’s called involved affiliate marketing.
According to affiliate marketing and passive income legend Pat Flynn, it’s this: Involved affiliate marketing is where you’ve used a product or service, truly believe in it, and personally recommend it to your audience.
In this case, I’m a Blinkist affiliate.
I use their product on a daily basis, take a close look at it, analyze it, and go through the entire user experience. Here is my exact histroy with the product:
As you can see from my about page, the page where I explain what Blinkist is and my in-depth review, I’m not just someone who found the latest marketing scheme and recommends some useless product.
I have been using this product for a year now, as you can see from my original email confirmation of the Stack Social deal Blinkist did in January 2015.
I started reading a book summary on Blinkist every morning, to get the most out of my 90-day free trial. I didn’t do it for the full 90 days, but read a fair share of book summaries on there.
Eventually, before it ended, I found out that you can share a personal link with others, and when someone signs up for the regular, 1-day trial, you are awarded 7 free days (I show you where to find that link in my Blinkist review).
Thinking it was a valuable resource, I started sharing the link with a lot of my coaching clients, and eventually gathered another 120 or so free days – awesome!
Sadly, I couldn’t make reading one per day stick and let the last 40 or so days go to waste. Until fate slapped me in the face.
A friend of mine, Cathryn Lavery from BestSelf had launched a Kickstarter Project: The SELF Journal.
The campaign blew up, collecting over $300k in funding. By backing the project I would win in 3 ways:
- I would help a friend.
- I would finally get a proper journal.
- I would get 6 months of Blinkist Premium free, which was one of the stretch goal bonuses.
I knew this was my second chance to make Blinkist work for me, so I backed the project, and promised myself I would only redeem my coupon when I was ready to read one book summary per day.
In the meantime, I had become a proper Blinkist affiliate, after learning that Blinkist has an affiliate program. In contrast to the previous link, which just got you more days with the app, this program pays you for each referral.
Blinkist has 2 payment options: Plus for $50/year and Premium for $80/year. If people sign up through my affiliate link, I receive a one-time commission of half the annual subscription price, so $25 and $40 respectively.
For all signups to the free trial I receive $0.50, which is really generous of Blinkist, considering they haven’t made a dime yet.
I installed this banner on my blog, which I created using a few free graphic editing tools:
The banner would redirect through my affiliate link to Blinkist’s own landing page, and if someone signed up, I’d get a commission. For several months, I just left it like this, and a few people even bought the premium subscription.
Here are my payouts as of December 25th, 2015.
Not too bad! Considering I don’t have huge traffic (around 3,000 unique visitors per month), I was surprised. Blinkist’s landing page was obviously convincing (I do think so, it’s compelling).
Apart from a few Amazon links in my blog posts, this was my first real step into the affiliate marketing world, and I just wanted to tip my toe into the water.
However, I wasn’t happy with the way I was marketing. I didn’t just want to send people to a landing page, which is why I came up with Four Minute Books.
Now, I’m reading a book summary on Blinkist every day, pick out some major points that strike me as particularly important, write about what I learned, and give a recommendation.
I own some of the books I write summaries for, but (sadly) not all of them. If I do, I will always let you know in the “Final thoughts” section.
However, I will always have read the entire summary on Blinkist.
Nevertheless, as a Blinkist affiliate, my job is to promote their product, because I like it so much – not replace it.
Luckily, that’s not even possible, because each summary contains anywhere from 6 to 18 pages, or blinks, in Blinkist terms. Just by looking at my summaries, you can already guess that it would be impossible for me to distill all the valuable information into 1,000 words or less – I couldn’t even do it if I tried (which I’m not).
I make an effort to focus only on the blinks, which seem most relevant to me personally and are part of the core message of the book.
You can rest assured that there are plenty more examples, interesting facts, tidbits, and new insights to discover, should you choose to go ahead and read the full summary on Blinkist.
That said, I give you 3 options at the end of each summary. You can:
- Sign up for Blinkist and read the blinks for the book I’m talking about (and 1000+ other books).
- Read a free preview of the book on Amazon (and potentially order it.
- Learn more about the author before buying anything.
Here’s what it looks like:
Therefore, you will only find few kinds of affiliate links on this website, 99% of which are:
- My Blinkist affiliate link or
- A shortlink to Amazon with the book you just learned about.
I’m reserving myself the right to use other affiliate links of products I use (for example to Evernote), but you can expect these to show up very, very rarely.
I hope this explained our affiliate policy clearly and honestly. I try to be as transparent as possible. Should you have any further concerns or questions, please email support[at]fourminutebooks[fullstop]com.
Enjoy the content on this site and please, whatever you do, keep reading.
If you decide to move forward with the purchase of a book or a Blinkist subscription, I would be very grateful if you choose to go through my link – you’ll be rewarded too – every Four Minute Books reader gets 35% off their first year.
But as I said on my about page, no worries if not. Whatever you do next, I’m glad we connected.
Read the latest summaries on Four Minute Books >>
Last Updated on June 15, 2021