Affiliates tend to like incentives, especially if the incentive doesn’t involve the ubiquitous iPod, and so it’s a bit of surprise that not a lot has been mentioned about the launch of the Groupola affiliate program on Affiliate Window. The daily city deal group buying site is giving it’s affiliates the chance to win a brand new Mini Cooper, holiday to Barbados, a Macbook or an iPad.

Groupola is the latest site from Secret Millionaire and MyVoucherCodes man Mark Pearson (Markco Media). It’s one of a number of daily deal sites aimed at localised groups that have sprung up during 2010. Techcrunch likes to call them Groupon Clones. Groupon are mainly USA focused, but do have a London section and no doubt will be looking to expand. They will join the likes of MyCityDeal, Likebees, Wahanda and coming soon Crowdity in battling with Groupola for the best deals and customers.

A good way to do that is by using affiliates and Groupola will be hoping to get ahead of their rivals with their bundle of attractive incentives. However, if you’re thinking “that car is mine” there’s a few things to consider. The winner of the car will be the affiliate who “generates the most amount in the six months, over £50,000 in revenue”. So if you make £50,002 and I do £50,001 that £1 difference will be a set of wheels! You have until the 1st of November to earn over £50k by the way.

I’d have liked to have seen the above as a prize draw for affiliates over £50k, just so that if more than one affiliate broke that barrier there’s a chance for all to still win. That said, it’s nice to see a big incentive on offer for affiliates and it most certainly makes a change from the iPods etc.

Could you get to £50,000? Well, commission offered to affiliates is based on the value of the deal purchased and ranges from £1 to £10. However, it’s unclear if repeat customers earn an affiliate revenue (if yes then that’s good news). There’s also no remuneration for email sign ups as offered by MyCityDeal, who are also on Affiliate Window.

One thing also worth considering is that Groupola has been introduced via MVC whereas other group buying sites have had standing starts. In other words one had a ready made audience and the others didn’t – and from an affiliate point of view the latter may yield better results in terms of new customers.

One thing that did tickle me about the Groupola affiliate program, bearing in mind voucher code site misdemeanors of the past, was it’s terms and conditions.

Any sites consistently presenting apparent offers from Groupola that do not exist will not be paid commission for their activity. This applies in particular to the promotion of discount or voucher codes. Affiliates will not be paid for such activity if:
(a) In our opinion the implication of the affiliate promotion is that we do have discount or voucher codes when we do not
and/or
(b) In our opinion the intention of the promotion is to drop cookies, rather than promoting our business in a constructive way.

I’m sure they’ll be one or two smiles raised after reading that.

Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see how Groupola performs, not only within the group buying space, but also in terms of affiliate activity. Will, for example, another voucher code site promote a company owned by it’s main rivals? Or will they look to tie up special deals with competing daily deal services? Will more of group buying sites embrace affiliate marketing? And will any of them provide a daily updated product feed?