How gift guides drive value for publishers

It's not all about affiliate revenue...

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Is it me or has gift guide season gotten extremely overwhelming? Gift guides have always been a tentpole for both publishers and retailers—not only do they offer a clear service to consumers who are ready and willing to shop at this time of year, but they drive readership and revenue for those who produce them. The overwhelming parts, to me, are the sheer volume and promotion of them. Almost anyone who identifies as a content creator publishes a gift guide now, and they’re being sent to our inboxes, showing up in our feeds, and viciously competing for our attention on Google search. 

I don’t consume many gift guides for the usual reasons as I don’t come from a big gift giving family, but I do love to read and critique them. To consumers, they all serve the same general purpose of helping them find gifts to give to the important people in their lives, but their value to publishers varies widely, as do the ways they treat them. From a business perspective, many publishers are focused on driving affiliate revenue with their gift guides, while others are more concerned with finding advertising sponsorships. Some publishers really don’t think about the direct revenue gift guides can yield, and just want to engage and delight their readers, especially those who are paying subscribers. And some, the ones who really consider themselves tastemakers, simply approach gift guides as a vehicle to show off their taste as a brand marketing exercise. Retailers, for their part, curate gift guides of their own products to move users down the funnel at a time of year when competition is high. That’s all to say, everyone has their own “so what” for publishing a gift guide, and as long as it fits into your overall content and business strategy, is worth the time it takes to produce. 

When you think you’re getting a necklace but it’s really just a Joni Mitchell album…

In today’s newsletter, I’m sharing a few gift guides that caught my eye, and the reasons why. My goal isn’t to judge a gift guide by the quality or originality of its gifts, but to assess it from a business perspective. Think of me as the person editorial teams hate—the one who’s analyzing how a gift guide drives a publisher’s audience and revenue goals.

I admit that there are many gift guides I missed in my survey of the landscape, and many are still coming out this week and next. If one caught your eye, share it in the comments.

The best gift guide for driving affiliate revenue: The Strategist’s digital gift guide

The Strategist really excels at packaging gift recommendations that drive conversions. It always has clean and user-driven landing pages that are filled with products but aren’t clunky to navigate. Its main gift guide page this year excerpts its 60-plus thematic gift guides by including a few product picks from each guide as well as a link back. It’s an SEO editor’s dream, and the last I checked, was in the first (organic) spot on Google for the term “best holiday gifts.” The majority of the products link to Amazon, which is great for driving affiliate revenue, but it’s not the best if you’re looking for one-of-a-kind recommendations. That said, one of The Strategist’s strengths is its tasteful curation of Amazon, and that’s on full display in this year’s guide.

A notable feature this year is an experimental search tool that prompts you to put in the type of person you’re shopping for that, based on your search term, shows you a page of recommended gifts. I typed in “a friend who likes pilates” and it mostly showed me yoga mats. I also typed in “a friend I haven’t seen in a while” and it showed me some truly random products, like a scented candle and a postcard subscription service. I’m guessing the tool is using some AI mechanism to search the publisher’s product catalog and surface recommendations. Like all AI search products, I didn’t find it that helpful, but not that unhelpful either. It certainly has potential.

Note: The Strategist released a print gift guide this week that’s also viewable online as a PDF for subscribers. I haven’t read it that thoroughly because someone keeps stealing my New York Magazine from my apartment lobby, and the digital viewing experience isn’t very enjoyable. However, the PDF does have a neat commerce integration where users can click out to buy products at the retailer’s website.

The best Substack gift guide for attracting new readers: The Sweat Lookbook’s

Many of the gift guides I’ve seen on Substack feel too similar to each other, but the Sporty Gal’s gift guide from

The Sweat Lookbook

, a newsletter that explores the intersection of sport and style, stood out to me. I’ll acknowledge that I’m the target demo for this gift guide but that’s not the only reason why I love it. 

The author, Lee Glandorf, does a good job of introducing readers to new brands and recommending products that you typically won’t find in affiliate-driven gift guides from big publishers or most of those on Substack. Its real strength is how it gives prospective readers a taste of what to expect if they subscribe to the newsletter. Glandorf mentions brands whose founders she’s interviewed for previous posts and even hints at a future interview. It’s probably unintentional, but she’s marketing her overall product, proving how gift guides can be a subtle content acquisition tool for subscription-driven publications, a longer-term value than a one-off affiliate sale.

The best gift guide for engaging readers: T Magazine’s

I think a lot about T Magazine and the value it brings to The New York Times. It’s a beautiful print publication that I’m sure garners a decent amount of luxury advertising revenue, but I find its digital footprint confusing and old-fashioned, a surprise given its parent is a digital pioneer that every legacy media company is desperately trying to emulate. However, I was impressed by the format of T’s online gift guide this year, which began with a call to readers to submit questions about choosing gifts for hard-to-shop-for people. T published shopping suggestions in response to submissions in two installments in its main newsletter (the second installment comes out this week).

I love the concept because it pulls two important levers in audience development: engage and retain. New York Times readers LOVE to be heard, whether it’s in the comments section of… well, really anything… or writing in to long-standing advice columns like Social Q’s, so asking them to send in questions is a great way to engage them. Second, publishing the recommendations in a follow-up newsletter that people have to subscribe to read not only gets them to come back, but also moves them further down the funnel to eventually becoming a paid subscriber to The Times. The gift guide itself has very tasteful picks (I personally love splatterware), but it doesn’t have affiliate links, which doesn’t surprise me given T’s old-fashioned nature, even though that Brooklinen link could be generating some decent commissions.

The best retailer gift guide: Moda Operandi’s

I find that most interesting e-commerce gift guides are from multi-brand retailers where a thoughtful curation of products goes a long way in moving a customer along the path to purchase. It’s not that gift guides from single-brand retailers like J.Crew are bad, they just aren’t as useful, as the consumer has already narrowed their gift search considerably when they choose to shop from a specific brand. On the multi-retailer front, Moda Operandi’s gift guide has impressed me for its streamlined user experience. The homepage links to a landing page where gifts are organized by price, starting with those under $100. The simple layout is optimized to get shoppers to click, and many of the products—a baguette candle, tinned octopus, a fish-shaped jar, to name a few—are the eclectic sort that seem more appealing when marketed as stocking stuffers and hostess gifts. The thing I’m most fascinated with, however, is why a luxury retailer is pushing a gift guide organized around relatively affordable price points. I’m guessing it’s a way to attract new customers who will hopefully spend more in a future purchase.

And one more word on Goop…

If you missed my first newsletter on Goop’s gift guide, you can read it here. It deserved its own newsletter because there’s a lot going on at Goop right now (Puck recently suggested that most, if not all, of the editorial team no longer works there) but it’s still trying to make its gift guide *a thing.* Last week, it released a promo video seemingly sponsored by Cartier. I think the video’s overarching plot is that Goop has gifts for everyone, except for Gwyneth Paltrow, who prefers Cartier? Am I wrong?

I’m fixated on the Goop gift guide this year because it’s trying to do so many things: be a retailer gift guide but also get brand sponsorship dollars, feature out-there gifts that people don’t really buy as well as realistic ones that drive sales, all while marketing the aura of Gwyneth Paltrow. I’m sure it’s driving a decent amount of sales, but it’s giving mixed branding messages. Who is it for?! On the contrary, I think each of the gift guides mentioned above have distinct through lines that meet the publications’ audience and business needs, and that’s what makes them stand out.

Thanks for reading, here are a few industry headlines before you go:

• Perplexity, the AI-powered search engine, launched a shopping feature for paid customers this week. Users can shop directly from the recommendations surfaced, without going to a retailer’s website.

• Publishers who partner with third-party vendors to increase their SEO content volume in competitive spaces like finance and home improvement have seen huge declines in search traffic, reports Adweek. I’ve worked with these types of agencies in the past and find this article slightly misleading, as many publishers only outsource a small fraction of their content production to agencies.

• TikTok is now allowing some creators to add affiliate links to their posts. Affiliate links from LTK, Amazon, CJ, Target, Impact, and Rakuten can be included. TikTok is pushing shopping in a big way, which might be something to dig into in a later post.

If you want to talk about gift guide strategy or have suggestions for other content & commerce topics to cover, shoot me an email at elaheh.nozari@gmail.com.