Originally published on thisweekinblogging.com on February 23rd, 2024.
There has been no company that has changed the affiliate marketing game for travel bloggers more in recent years than Stay22.
From their access to many brand partners on one single platform to unique products like Optimized Redirect and Nova, it is easy to see why this one is quickly becoming an industry leader in all things travel affiliates.
But as Stay22 is still a somewhat young company, you may not be too familiar with what they're all about and some fun features you have at your disposal when joining. So in this one, we thought we'd share some facts about Stay22 you may not know about!
Note: This article has been sponsored by Stay22. As always, all opinions are our own.
We all love a good origin story, and Stay22's is a shining example of “taking matters into your own hands” when faced with a problem.
This company began in 2016 when the founder was attending an e-sports tournament in Germany and couldn't get a good handle of where to stay. He created a map, incorporated API pricing, shared it on Reddit of all places, and it blew up. That is when the lightbulb went off that this was a needed asset in the community (one we had wanted for many years, if we are to be honest), and Stay22 was born.
For a while, Stay22 focused primarily as being a tech solution for events. Companies that hosted events like the e-sports tournament would turn to Stay22 to incorporate their maps with API pricing as an offering to attendees while making some commissions on the back end.
But when there is a good idea that can make money, bloggers find it and adopt it.
We have to admit we do not know who the first blogger was that decided to adopt Stay22's maps on their sites, but after that happened word quickly got out that this solution that many of us had wanted exists, adoption exploded, and Stay22 began to create more travel-oriented products with bloggers in mind.
The rest, as they say, is history.
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One interesting element of Stay22 that we love is that the company is, by and large, a tech company that happened to find its home in travel blogging- not the other way around.
This interests us because travel companies that offer affiliate services tend to provide the conventional tools we are used to seeing- deep links, banner ads, and, at most, a slow-loading widget that chases conversions on volume over a targeted approach. Legacy companies often think their services sell themselves, and we, as affiliates, often are left wanting more.
In being a tech company first, Stay22 decided to look at some of the pain points affiliate marketers have and address those head-on while applying the solution across their many brand partners on the network (with more added every year).
This is how solutions like the Nova tool and Optimized Redirect options in their Let Me Allez umbrella came to be. These were made to identify ways where affiliate marketing could be more focused, increasing conversions with great success.
That said, as Stay22 is relatively new in the industry and got involved with the blogging community almost by chance, they are also learning the needs, pain points, and frustrations of bloggers as time goes on. But having a tech company interested in learning, working to make our lives easier, and converting sales is a breath of fresh air and is an approach we wish all other affiliate 3rd parties would take.
Business as usual just won't cut it anymore.
The Let Me Allez is an all-in-one product solution that is turned on by installing a simple script file on your site.
Once you do, tools like the Nova, Optimized Redirect, and broken link fixes are turned on in just a few clicks.
Optimized Redirect is an interesting one as it does two key things. First, it can move over your existing links to Stay22 automatically without you having to change a single link yourself. Second, on select programs (like Booking.com), it can use smart detection to pick up a homepage link to the booking platform and re-route users to a destination landing page based on the topic of your post.
So let's say you link to Booking.com in a site-wide prompt on your sidebar or footer, and a reader clicks it when on a page about Oslo. Instead of going to Booking.com's homepage, Optimized Redirect will forward them to the Oslo landing page with more focused recommendations. Give it a try for car rental and airfare landing pages, too!
Nova is the optimized pop-up feature and is one that we absolutely love. This one detects if a user is likely to make a sale and sends a pop-up to a recommended booking company on their screen. The tool limits pop-ups to just once every 40 days, and has done wonders to increase conversions for many bloggers thanks to how seamless it is integrated.
Finally, Let Me Allez also has a link audit component that can automatically detect and correct broken links found on your site. Full service indeed!
Beyond the product-based solutions on Stay22, they also have a deep link generator that allows you to create Stay22 affiliate links for all partnered networks in just a few moments.
While this is pretty conventional in most affiliate programs, the Link Generator tool goes just a bit further and also generates QR codes in addition to deep links!
For those who create visual media, like video, prints, or something else entirely, this could also be a novel way to incorporate affiliate links into content that is not otherwise clickable. The best part? These QR codes are generated automatically when you create a deep link, so no extra work is required on your part.
A major issue with some affiliate programs is that they have odd terms and conditions that creators need to work around. Some review your site for approval with unlisted terms for entry (e.g. traffic requirements, a niche “fit,” etc.). Others have questionable payment terms such that you never truly know when money will hit your account after completing a sale.
Stay22's policies, on the other hand, are straightforward.
First up, everyone can get on Stay22. There are no minimum traffic levels and no brand-specific approvals to integrate a company's links. Once you sign up, all of Stay22's partnered providers are open to you to use with no booking thresholds, niche fits, or traffic targets. So if you have a new site, want to start getting into affiliate marketing, but are worried your account may not be approved or, worse, canceled if you don't make a sale, do not fear- Stay22 doesn't do any of that.
Second, Stay22's payment terms are just as straightforward. They lock commission in your account seven days after checkout. This is much faster than other providers as Stay22 locks commissions often well before their partner pays them directly. So while other brands may hold that commission in perpetuity if a partner is slow to pay them, Stay22 takes the risk and locks your commission right away. That said, Stay22 does have a minimum withdrawal amount and only allows for payments once every 30 days; however, this is inline with many other programs as well.
Okay, fine, you may know this one because we published it in a separate article. But if you haven't read that yet, you may be surprised that the Stay22's Nova tool increased Jeremy's annual hotel affiliate revenue by $6,600!
As mentioned above, the Nova feature is one of our favorite tools in Stay22's arsenal because it is incredibly straightforward, easy to turn on, and, most importantly, converts for us like crazy.
Beyond its basic functionality (that we previously described), one of the reasons we love this tool is because it takes out a lot of the A/B affiliate testing we're used to performing behind the scenes. Does Expedia or Booking perform better on our USA content? Are Europe audiences different? Putting together a test of deep links would take months to dive into this data. Stay22's Nova tool does all of this behind the scenes and uses their proprietary technology to determine the right company for the right user every single time.
I have to admit that I was incredibly nervous about turning this one on for potential complaints from readers (it is a pop-up after all), but after 3,000,000 page views across all of my sites, I still have yet to receive a single message about it.
More money for us, better recommendations for our readers, and no complaints? I can't really argue here!
One point of confusion we often see with 3rd party affiliate networks is around what kind of commissions they offer compared to direct programs.
If bloggers can only get 25% commission in a direct program, how can a 3rd party take their cut and still offer competitive payouts? Wouldn't affiliate commissions diminish with more 3rd parties having their hand in the proverbial pot on a fixed base commission for any booking?
The honest answer is yes, someone is taking the hit, but it is not necessarily us as bloggers.
While Stay22 keeps their commission splits private, likely due to contractual requirements with each brand, the simplest explanation is that they convert such huge volumes that they likely receive better commissions from booking companies than we do individually.
By having their own commission rates with respective brands, 3rd parties like Stay22 can be profitable while extending favorable commissions to bloggers. This is likely why Stay22 can start their base commission at 30%, and when you throw on an increase in bookings from their unique products like POP, it can really amount to a lot more money for us all around!
Power by numbers at work!
If you are not signed up with Stay22 and want to boost your earnings, sign up with our link!
Want a Map Alternative? Stay22 Also Has a List View Option
If your hotel affiliate performance is like ours, odds are good that you may find that deep links to specific properties tend to perform much better than generic “click here” style listings. The first works by being targeted, and the latter works on volume- if you have it, at least.
One of the reasons we do not like generic booking widgets as much is that they do not take a targeted approach to sales. A user must be explicitly interested in booking, take a moment to inquire into the form, click submit, and then be taken off-site to hopefully find a hotel they want to book at that moment. That is a lot of steps that have to happen to convert a sale.
Stay22's map tool was designed to help remove a step in this process by showing hotels and prices on a map while users are still on your site, so they can then select the hotel they may want to book and then be taken to the hotel's booking page directly.
But did you know they have a List View alternative?
This widget option creates hotel recommendation panels that can be embedded on your site for any given destination of your choice. Instead of displaying a map with pricing, it can display a set number of hotels complete with reviews, prices, date and guest selection, and more. So instead of throwing spaghetti at the wall in hopes that users will find a hotel they want with a deeper search, this one makes some suggestions for them strategically!
As of publishing, there are a few downsides to the List View option that we hope will be addressed in the future.
First, this one is not something that can be generated directly on the dashboard. There is a slightly convoluted tutorial on generating the code in Excel that your account rep can provide for you (more details can be found here). Second, much like the maps, these must be created manually from city to city. This is a great one to test out for those who may run destination sites (like my city blog), but, much like maps, it would require a bit of work to generate city after city after city for those in the global market.
As Stay22 is predominantly a tech company that operates in the travel space, you will likely not be surprised that they are working fast to incorporate AI-based solutions into their products.
While the AI industry is still emerging, with companies trying to figure out what artificial intelligence is in addition to how to use it, Stay22's initial adoption is quite bright.
One tool, Optimized Redirect, utilizes artificial intelligence to correctly identify what destination any given article is about and then redirect generic product links (e.g., Booking.com's homepage) to point to the destination landing page the article is selected to be about. As mentioned above, if you click on a homepage link to Booking.com on an article about Oslo, you'll be redirected to the Oslo landing page instead of the site homepage.
These smart-detection style solutions are something we think can become the future of affiliate marketing as it helps remove one step from the sales process that users must take (that is to say, searching for the destination on a generic landing page). Even better, it also allows us as bloggers to simply create a link once and then have the smart detection work its magic site-wide. A win-win!
Although we do not know where the future of AI-driven products will head, with Stay22 or other companies, we are excited at the prospects of where solutions like smart detection could take us. Can it be used to minimize the work needed to make maps on a city-to-city basis, when AI could just detect and load the appropriate map based on article content? Could List View hotels be picked up in similar fashion? Could the POP tool evolve to land users on even better targeted pages as well?
The answer for all these could be a resounding yes, and the application of artificial intelligence in this regard could be near endless.
Do we personally know what AI-backed solutions Stay22 is working on beyond this? No. But knowing that they are a tech company and are working on incorporating AI solutions into their products makes us excited for the future all the same.
One hesitation we see from bloggers who are looking to move to Stay22 is that they often want to try out the novel products, but don't want to have all of their links from a converting program moved over to the network.
As the Optimized Redirect feature within Let Me Allez will find and replace other programs' affiliate links with the Stay22 equivalent link automatically, we can get the hesitation. If Booking.com converts well for you, changing the links to a Stay22 branded link may (albeit unlikely) influence performance.
The good news here is you can opt-out of specific programs.
Although full control over the Let Me Allez script is not presently programmed into the dashboard, your Stay22 account rep can make custom modifications based on your needs. Want to stop Booking.com deep links from being redirected to Stay22? They can do that. Want to exclude Expedia links from being picked up? They can do that too. This can help preserve links from existing programs if you are hesitant on moving them to Stay22 via Optimized Redirect.
While you can control what specific companies are featured in link-based solutions, others, like Nova are not impacted- Booking, Expedia, etc. will still be recommended via this tool.
Even better? The Let Me Allez script does not make permanent changes to your links. Features like Optimized Redirect only operate while the script is installed, so you also have control over testing these tools out that way as well. This is just one additional level of control provided to bloggers by Stay22!
Overall, while Stay22 is still a young company, their future is bright and we are very excited to see what the developers at this company come out with in the future- their unique approach to affiliate marketing really is changing the industry one product at a time!
This article was sponsored by Stay22. For those who wish to sign up, click here.