Ancestry.com Affiliate Program Updates

Thursday, December 22, 2005

February is Black History Month

I wanted to give you a lot of lead time on a fairly large promotion that Ancestry.com will be involved in, beginning February 1. To celebrate Black History month, we are partnering with PBS, Coca-Cola, Proctor and Gamble and the Boys and Girls Club of America for a month-long campaign. The following will be going on:

1) PBS will air a show called "African American Lives" on Feb 1 and Feb 8 (with 4 years of syndication following) in which they will present 8 famous African Americans with their family tree and narrate one story in particular. We provided the research and support for the show's content.

2) Coca-cola is doing a sweepstakes during the month of February promoting the PBS show, Black History month, and family history. Through that sweepstakes, we will be giving away 3500 copies of FTM + World Deluxe Annual subs and 10 consultations with a professional genealogist. I believe Coke is giving away trips to your homeland, or something like that. Coke will brand PBS and Ancestry.com on the packaging, and the sweepstakes will be in 8 major markets across the country.

3) Proctor and Gamble is promoting the PBS show in Target stores on end-cap displays, using one of 8 brands... I can only remember 5: Pringles, Pampers, Downey, Charmin and Crest. They will be branding Coke, PBS and Ancestry.com during this February month-long promotion, nationwide.

4) PBS will be holding an educators training in each of the 8 major markets, giving teachers the resources and encouragement to teach their students about doing genealogy. Ancestry.com will have a presence at these trainings, and will be giving away 10,000 copies of "Creating Junior Genealogists" (http://shops.ancestry.com/product.asp?productid=3562&shopid=0).

5) PBS will be joining with Boys and Girls Club of America to encourage participation in family history during the month of February, and Ancestry.com will be providing each club/chapter with a free subscription and a portal designed specifically for the BGCA.

In addition to all these promotions we are joining with other companies to do, Ancestry.com will independently be doing the following to promote Black History in the month of February:

1) We are creating a Content Center (similar to the current ones, found here: http://www.ancestry.com/learn/contentcenters/contentCenter.aspx?page=census) which will reside in the current Learning Center. This center will aggregate all of our Black History content, and will be called "African American History Center".

2) There are 13 databases that are relevant to Black History, and Ancestry.com will be offering them for FREE during the full month of February, through the content center mentioned above. We will be making graphical and textual links available for affiliates, and using the content center as our landing page for the promotion (and probably post-promo for permanent links to African American content).

This would be a great time for affiliates to develop African American-centric content to take advantage of the attention and interest in family history caused by this promo. As we develop more ways to promote and publicize Black History Month, we will keep you updated.

Let us know if you have any ideas or requests that would be valuable to this campaign!

Monday, December 19, 2005

Affiliate Team Holiday Schedule

FYI - The affiliate offices will have the following schedule over the next couple weeks:

CLOSED - No One Available
December 26
December 27
January 2

MINIMAL STAFF - 1 to 2 Team Members Available
December 23
December 28
December 29
December 30

Thanks for your patience during the Holidays. We hope you have a very Merry Christmas and Wonderful New Year!

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Important Notice to All Affiliates

Ancestry.com will be launching a new pricing and packaging model to new and current subscribers. To align affiliate compensation with the new pricing and packaging, the commission structure will change. Instead of offering a percent of sales commission, the new compensation model will pay bounties for each subscription.

To better understand the changes, here is a brief description of each package followed by the new compensation structure. Both packages will be offered as annual or monthly subscriptions.

  • US Deluxe — Access to all US record indexes and images, plus historical newspapers, family and local histories and more on Ancestry.com
  • World Deluxe — Unlimited access to the entire worldwide collection of records, information and images on Ancestry.com

New affiliate compensation:

World Deluxe – Annual $299.40

Orders per Month

Bounty

Revenue Share

1 to 6

$69.00

23%

7 to 16

$115.00

38%

17 +

$160.00

53%

World Deluxe – Monthly $34.95

Orders per Month

Bounty

Revenue Share

1 to 12

$15.00

43%

13 to 32

$23.00

66%

33 +

$31.00

89%

US Deluxe – Annual $179.40

Orders per Month

Bounty

Revenue Share

1 to 6

$40.00

22%

7 to 16

$67.00

37%

17 +

$94.00

52%

US Deluxe – Monthly $23.95

Orders per Month

Bounty

Revenue Share

1 to 12

$10.00

42%

13 to 32

$15.00

63%

33 +

$20.00

84%

Products, VitalCheck, Genealogy.com & MyFamily.com

Sales per Month

Bounty

Revenue Share

$0 – 499

n/a

15%

$500 – 2,000

n/a

25%

$2,000 +

n/a

35%

Note: This compensation structure will be activated the same time Ancestry.com launches the new pricing and packaging.

For the latest updates, details and program information be sure to check the affiliate blog (http://ancestryaffiliates.blogspot.com/) or www.reporting.net.

Feel free to email us with any questions you may have at affiliate@ancestry.com.