On referrals as commodities…
Following the thread of my previous post, the proliferation of referral rewards programs has led to an interesting consequence; the commodification of referrals. If a referral to purchase a given product has a specific value (whether a commission of up to 10% from Amazon or 1/4 of an iPod from TiVo), then it seems natural that a market will spring up to allow the barter or sale of that referral.
It seems not too farfetched to imagine a sophisticated consumer who simply factors the value of a given product referral into the cost of that product itself – for example, someone who sets up two Amazon.com accounts; one to create Associates links and the other to purchase goods through those links, in essence buying both the goods and the Associates commission.
Put this together with the booming popularity of Google Ads and we have a return to the traveling sales representative model for middlemen, one in which rather than buying goods from producers and selling them at a profit (the wholesaler/retailer model that boomed through the last century), these mediators earn a commission from producers for delivering consumers – a model in which mediators work for producers, not themselves.