Mahalo Enhances Business Model With Affiliate Links

Today I had the opportunity to sit down with Tyler Crowley and Jason Calacanis from Mahalo to review their updates which launch tomorrow. My article regarding the updates goes live at 2:30 Eastern on Wednesday, so be here! Below is one update that Jason provided regarding the Mahalo business model.

Much has been made about Jason’s presentation at the affiliate summit last month. So it’s interesting that the business model update is around affiliates and affiliate revenue. Jason explained that Mahalo has added affiliate links where they make sense. Currently they are working with Amazon and Commission Junction. Links are added by the Mahalo guides and greenhouse workers as they create the pages.

He provided a couple of examples:

• $15 CPA for Big Brother live streaming signups on their Big Brother page
• $2 CPA for signups to New York magazine on their Lindsay Lohan page

My guess is that within 2-3 months, 80-90% of pages on Mahalo will have at least one affiliate link. Jason mentioned that they are double-noting that the links are sponsored. I would suggest that the Mahalo audience doesn’t get the difference because the links look exactly the same as the non-affiliate links. Here is an example of the sponsored links section:

The majority of pages on Mahalo are "rich" for advertising. With that said, affiliate revenue could surpass Google AdSense revenue for Mahalo in the long-term. Check out our previous Mahalo coverage.