The team at Forbes Marketplace, a subsidiary of Forbes, began launching a slew of affiliate-driven listicles. “Best Crypto Exchanges,” “Top Credit Cards,” you name it. Armed with strong SEO chops and the trust of a household name, they churned out shopping guides that acquired millions of clicks.
The pages were thin and low-value, but ranking at the top spot and driving serious revenue. It didn’t last. Google took manual action to penalize Forbes Marketplace for reputation abuse. Their pages were pushed down the rankings, and the brand’s reputation took a hit.
This isn’t unique. Sports Illustrated recently trimmed its roster of freelance writers, and plenty of publishers have seen their commercial content falling off.
Some saw this as the end of the business strategy of affiliate-driven content.
But the issue wasn’t the e-commerce links. The content was of low value, but was propped up by the reputation of the editorial content created by these publishers.
But this doesn’t mean e-commerce as a strategy is dead in the dirt. It means a different strategy, where storytelling and shopping live side by side, not siloed off.
How Editorial and Commercial work together.
Your flagship journalism, investigations, and long-reads, pull in millions of readers every month. Many of those visitors come with latent buying intent.
Users with latent buying intent are not the people typing “best hiking boots to buy” into Google.
It’s the users reading blog posts about trail safety, browsing general product categories without drilling into specifics, and watching “how to choose hiking gear” videos.
They come to your sites because they are researching, looking for truth & information, and they trust your brand voice and expertise.
When you weave e-commerce into your content, those latent visitors can turn into buyers, and the benefits become clear:
- Diversifying Your Revenue
Things change fast. Look at cookieless tracking, AI-generated summaries, and algorithm updates. It’s risky to lean on just one income source. Integrating affiliate links into your editorial content spreads that risk. - Maintaining a Smooth User Experience
When offers genuinely align with what someone is reading, it feels helpful rather than intrusive. Readers do not feel overtly sold to because product recommendations flow naturally. Well-placed recommendations can even build trust, because you’re providing a useful service to the reader. - Boosting Your SEO Resilience
Google rewards comprehensive, value-driven articles. By embedding commerce into in-depth explainers, you preserve your search rankings and keep users engaged longer. - Gaining Actionable Audience Insights
Metrics like page views and time on page tell you how visitors interact with your content. But when you track clicks on affiliate links or product embeds, you learn what your audience truly cares about buying. Those insights can help you refine future engagement and revenue.
“Many publishers still treat e-commerce as a side project, tucked away behind banner ads or siloed into niche product roundups. But the gap between content and commerce is closing fast. Embedding purchase opportunities directly into articles is no longer disruptive to reader experience; it’s a value-added layer that drives revenue while serving audience intent.”
- Vahe Arabian, Founder State Of Digital Publishing
How to Blend Editorial and Commercial to Create Shoppable Content
Effective shoppable content requires collaboration and planning. Just tacking on offers at the end of an article won't drive the effective funnels you are looking to create.
- Intent‑First Storytelling
Embed product recommendations at narrative inflection points, answering reader questions rather than adding lists at the end. - Editorial Integrity
Maintain your brand voice. Recommend only products that enhance the reader’s journey and align naturally. - Integrated Planning
Commerce and editorial teams should be involved in briefs: from headlines to CTAs. Early alignment prevents last‑minute shoe‑horning.
Voyage Tips is an example of how a content-first publisher can turn editorial assets into a reliable revenue engine. With millions of monthly readers across seven languages, their primary offering is in-depth travel itineraries, step-by-step guides on what to see, where to eat and how to spend your time in each destination.
By weaving hotel recommendations directly into those itineraries via affiliate links, Voyage Tips capitalizes on the reader’s natural journey from “what should I do?” to “where should I stay?” Because these links appear at exactly the moment a traveler is considering lodging, conversion rates are very high compared to other affiliate offers. Using this model, every recommendation feels authentic. Readers don’t see the affiliate links as ads. They’re getting precisely the hotel suggestions they need to complete their trip planning.
Affiliate links (in orange) are alongside helpful content
Shoppable content isn’t just a play for niche-specific sites like Wirecutter or Conde Nast Traveler. General newsrooms can weave product links into their evergreen explainers or seasonal gift guides without ever feeling pushy.
The trick is to let the editorial content remain front and center, and offers are introduced as natural extensions of the narrative rather than interruptions.
This same principle applies even when the core topic seems purely informational.
Take WeatherBug: on the surface, it’s all about forecasts, and sunset times. Yet by identifying their users with latent buying intent, they are able to generate substantial e-commerce revenue.
If you’re in New York, glancing at Miami’s weekend outlook, they’ve identified that you are likely planning to visit there, and maybe need a hotel, thus making an affiliate offer for accommodation in Miami.
A contextually relevant Booking.com offer is presented in a tab (highlighted in red)
But if you’re in New York, just curious about tomorrow’s high and checking the local weather, the offer never appears. In both cases, the reader’s experience remains focused, and only those with genuine travel buying intent see the offer, delivering perfectly timed, highly relevant shoppable content.
Leveraging technology to optimize your shoppable content
With the right suite of tools, creating shoppable content is easy and lucrative. You can track every click, uncover reader behavior insights, and use AI to optimize conversions at scale. Here are three tools to help you add the layer of commerce.
Affilimate
Affilimate scans your content for affiliate links and automatically tracks performance across your entire site. It finds your top revenue-driving article and recommends which pages to prioritize for shoppable enhancements. Instead of manually hunting down every link, Affilimate gives you a clear dashboard of where your commerce is already working and where you can do more.
Hotjar
Understanding reader behavior is essential for placing product recommendations in context. Hotjar’s heatmaps and session recordings reveal exactly where readers pause, scroll deep, and click. Use these insights to identify high-intent hotspots and embed your shoppable links where they’ll get noticed without interrupting the narrative.
Stay22
Stay22 goes beyond link tracking and behavior analysis with AI-driven, automated commerce integration.
- Nova detects readers who show high purchase intent, based on browsing patterns and engagement signals, and surfaces contextually relevant offers only to them, all without disrupting their reading flow.
- Spark scans your entire archive, identifies content best fit for commerce opportunities, and seamlessly adds affiliate recommendations where they blend in perfectly.
Ready to turn your editorial into a revenue engine? Explore Stay22 today and see how our AI-powered tools can automate shoppable content at scale, boost conversions, and keep readers engaged longer.