Disqus Launches Promoted Discovery In Its Effort to Monetize
In an email sent out to Disqus users, the company announced its first real effort to begin monetizing the service. The new Disqus service is called Promoted Discovery and it benefits both Disqus and the publishers who use its commenting system. Promoted Discovery has been very slowly rolling out since early August and its now officially launched for everyone.
According to Disqus, Promoted Discovery is a new way for your site to increase engagement in relevant content while making money at the same time. The all-new Promoted Discovery works by recommending quality content, through the Discovery box, that your readers may find interesting. The content is personalized for readers based on the current story and discussion on the page, as well as any other factors that Disqus thinks are most relevant to the reader.
Promoted Discovery is the first opportunity for publishers to make money through Disqus. Publishers can earn money when any of the promoted recommendations are clicked on by readers. With Promoted Discovery, Disqus will also make available all of the important tools for you to control your site experience, such as blacklisting certain types of content.
If you want to learn more about Promoted Discovery, check out the FAQ on it. If for some reason you do not want to use this feature, you can turn it off.
The second feature Disqus is introducing is essentially a way to monetize your site through affiliate sales. Disqus has partnered with Viglink to allow publishers to earn money on all sales that occur on e-commerce sites such as Amazon. If you already do some form of affiliate linking — don’t worry, Disqus will not touch those existing links.
You can learn more about earning money with Disqus’ affiliate links by reading the Disqus Affiliate Guide. As with the other feature introduced, if you do not want to use it, you can always turn it off in your settings. The affiliate link feature is slowly being rolled out to all communities over the course of the next few days.
What do you think about this announcement coming out of Disqus?