Wall Street Journal Becomes Affiliate Marketing Publisher with the “Buy Side”

By Alex Cramer

In news first reported by Axios, The Wall Street Journal, one of America’s most trusted sources for news, has officially launched its own affiliate marketing website, called “Buy Side from WSJ”. The new site will feature product reviews, recommendations and gift guides from a panel of writers and experts and it will operate independently from the Journals newsroom.

Buy Side currently features verticals covering wellness, gifts, style, home and money and will also offer consumer financial advice meant to help readers save money and understand different financial products such as credit cards and insurance.

Close readers of this blog (hi Mom!) will know that publishing non-affiliate content is a smart move that should help improve their Google ranking.

The Journal is well-positioned to capitalize on its new e-commerce channel. In addition to being a trusted news source that carries a high level of credibility with its readers, the newspaper’s website receives over 42 million unique visitors a month and its readers have an average household income of $242,000, which makes them a perfect partner if your brand is targeting high-end and money-savvy customers.

Josh Stinchcomb, the Journal’s chief revenue officer, will run Buy Side and he told Axios, “We see this as a logical step for us to take. It’s an extension and expansion of our mission, which is to provide the most trusted source of journalism, data and analysis to help people make decisions.”

In addition to the site itself, Buy Side will also launch a newsletter as well as separate branded social media channels to promote their content and offers. 

Of course, it’s far too early to know what kind of success the Journal will have with its new affiliate site, but it’s likely that they were spurred on by the success they saw their rival, The New York Times, having with their affiliate marketing site WireCutter. The Times purchased WireCutter for $30 million in 2016, and according to reporting by NeimanLabs, the site was making over $20 million a year by 2018.

One key difference between the two sites is that WireCutter is now available on a subscription-only model, whereas Buy Side will be free and available to everyone, even if they don’t subscribe to the Journal.

In a press release, Almar Latour, the CEO of Dow Jones and the publisher of the Wall Street Journal stated, “The launch of ‘Buy Side from WSJ’ offers our customers, readers and users trusted analysis and information to help with their purchasing decisions. It’s a natural extension of our mission—to provide the world’s most trusted source of journalism, data and analysis to help people make decisions. This mission extends to decisions in business, finance, policy, the workplace and life in general.”

Which is really just a fancy way of saying what we tell brands in much simpler terms. Affiliate marketing is a valuable way to reach your customers, educate them about your brand and convert sales and the fact that a publisher as prominent as the Wall Street Journal is making a big move into the space should tell you everything you need to know about people who try to tell you that affiliate marketing is “so 2016”.