Threadloom Blog

Curating community content.

Announcing an agreement to be acquired by VerticalScope

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I’m happy to share that we’ve entered into an agreement to be acquired by VerticalScope Holdings, Inc. (TSX: FORA). VerticalScope is a longtime customer and well-known industry leader who is committed to investing in and advancing forums. Our team is excited to work with VerticalScope even more closely to develop solutions that help people find the best forum content.

For our customers, this won’t change how you access your Threadloom account, manage your Threadloom services, or (for customers on paid plans) how you are billed. Your account stays the same and our services continue to operate as before. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop us a line.

Announcing the Primary plug-in for XenForo 1.5.x

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Last month, we announced the Primary plug-in for XenForo 2.  Primary helps admins increase their affiliate revenue by showcasing products members are discussing.  With the plug-in, admins can easily add product widgets and lists to their site with just a few clicks.

Today, I’m happy to announce that the XenForo 1 version of the Primary plug-in is available.  Admins can download the plug-in at The Admin Zone or XenForo Community.

As with the XenForo 2 plug-in, the plug-in is free, and admins can use their own affiliate IDs and keep 100% of revenue generated from the embeds.

To learn more about Primary or to get started, click here, or feel free to drop us a line.

Announcing Primary Search

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For the past several months, we’ve been sharing about our new shopping platform, Primary.  Today, I’m happy to share our latest feature – Primary Search, a new interest-based product search engine.  Whereas existing product search engines focus on the product catalog and associated metadata, Primary Search combines the catalog with a new product interest graph.

Primary Search uses this combination to show non-forum users how helpful forums can be during the shopping journey. Rather than searching for the best dog toys, furniture pads, or air conditioners, shoppers can easily find the best toys for their beloved golden retriever, furniture pads for their home theater subwoofer, and air conditioners for their Ford Transit camper van.  Each of these searches leads shoppers to a product page with product metadata, as well as snippets and links to relevant forum discussions about the product.

These product pages, along with additional interactive widgets and lists, can now also be hosted directly on your forum and monetized with your own affiliate IDs.  To learn more about increasing your affiliate revenue with Primary, visit the Primary information page, or our Getting Started Guide.

I hope you’ll give Primary a try and let us know what you think.

Primary now support Skimlinks

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Primary is our new platform that helps shoppers find products by interest, and helps forum admins increase their affiliate revenue. Admins can embed product widgets that are automatically tagged with their own affiliate IDs, allowing them to capture 100% of the affiliate revenue generated on their sites.

Today, we’re happy to share that Primary now supports Skimlinks. This comes in addition to other affiliate platforms Primary already supports, including Amazon (all locales), eBay, Reverb, Sovrn (Viglink), and Sweetwater. We also now support the subId1 parameter for Sweetwater, so admins with multiple sites can break out their commission reports by site.

To add your Skimlinks affiliate ID, once a forum is activated for Primary, all the admin has to do is submit their Skimlinks ID, and we’ll automatically attach it to all Primary Embed widgets and lists.

To learn more about Primary, visit our webpage, or to get started, check out our Help Center article.

Announcing the new Primary for Forums plug-in

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For the past several months, we’ve shared about our latest product, Primary, a new tool that helps forums monetize their product discussions.  Primary finds products forum members are discussing and enables admins to insert them into Threadloom Newsletter and embed product widgets on their forum.  Forums like Long Range Hunting have successfully used Primary to increase their affiliate revenue by over 50% (check out the case study).

Today, we’re excited to announce three significant updates to Primary:

1. New plug-in with Primary Embed

A new version of the Primary plug-in for XenForo 2 now enables admins to automatically insert product widgets on their forum (available for download on XenForo Community and The Admin Zone). You can choose any or all of the following features:

  • Primary Explorer: A carousel of products that varies which products are shown depending on which node the visitor is browsing.
  • Primary List: An auto-updating list of top products across your entire forum.
  • Primary Product Pages: Product details for any product in Explorer or List.

We call this feature Primary Embed, and the plug-in includes multiple ways that admins can customize their embeds.  Admins who want even more control can customize their embeds using one of our pre-configured templates.  Here’s a video overview of the plug-in:

2. Option to keep all clicks on your site

Admins can now direct clicks on Primary products in Threadloom Newsletter or Primary Embed, to the embedded product page on their forum.  This means visitors stay on your forum, and no longer have to go back and forth between your forum and https://primary.org.

3. Bring your own affiliate IDs and keep 100% of revenue

Instead of using Threadloom’s affiliate IDs, Primary now automatically loads your affiliate IDs on all Primary retail links in Threadloom Newsletter or Primary Embed.  You no longer need to wait for an aggregate report from Threadloom – you can optimize your placements as soon as your affiliate platforms report the data.  In addition, Primary no longer includes revenue sharing – you keep 100% of the revenue you generate on your site through Primary.  All we ask for is a single instance of attribution for each type of Primary Embed content.

Learn more about Primary, and how to get started.

We’re excited to help forums make the most of their rich product discussions.

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