Associate Programs Newsletter #154
If you want to make money on the Net, you have to know how to sell. Right?
Well, maybe.
Today's main article is an interview with Daniel Rutter, who doesn't like selling but makes what he calls "a perfectly all right little living".
CONTENTS:
1. A man who doesn't like selling
2. Good advice from the man who doesn't like selling
3. How to find a copy of CompuBank's agreement
4. CyberRebate pays $461,498 commission
5. You don't need to worry about rejected cookies
6. Three web hosts merge and other affiliate program news
7. Yahoo! sells porn
8. Internet success stories
9. The "proper" affiliate marketing mindset
10. Useful articles you may have missed
11. Thought for today: Are you a friend?
__________________________________________SPONSOR__________
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(that's why you're reading Allan's newsletter, right?)
So when "Nothing But Net" author Michael Campbell says
"...read this before you buy anything else"...
...you may want to click... http://scamfree.com/isb2001/
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1. A man who doesn't like selling
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Daniel Rutter doesn't like marketing, doesn't like affiliate programs and his web site is plain. That doesn't stop him from earning about $1,750 a month from his site, which he runs part- time.
Dan lives in Australia and that US$1,750 converts to A$3,500 a month or A$42,000 a year, a very useful income. He's happy.
His site, Dan's Data - http://www.dansdata.com - is mainly a PC hardware review site. In his humorous, inimitable style, Daniel writes in-depth reviews of various consumer PC gadgets and occasional reviews of other gizmos.
You can tell at first glance that this is an enthusiast's site, rather than one owned by a large corporation. Dan comes across as a trusted friend imparting useful information.
The site's design is slightly unorthodox.
"It would have been nice if I'd thrown some more time into the site design in the first place, because the, um, decently plain look of dansdata.com is something I've been meaning to fix for ages," Dan says.
That's not all that is "wrong" with the site. The navigation is awful. If you like Dan's articles, you have to click back and forth trying to find the next one to read. Perhaps it's part of a plot to increase the number of banner ad impressions. All that clicking around results in about 250,000 to 300,000 page views a month.
"My general banner ad revenue's been sliding downward along with everyone else's, but I don't care. That's just pocket money."
Most of the site's income comes from a pay-per-click arrangement with one Australian company, Aus PC Market.
Dan, who is 27, has been writing for computer magazines since he was in high school, and was the assistant editor of a few smallish magazines in Australia for a few years - "until, thanks entirely to my unstinting efforts, the publishing company went bankrupt. From this I took the following lesson: Paper publishing is a lousy business to be in. Web publishing is SO much nicer."
Now, he writes freelance for a few Australian IT publications, and runs Dan's Data the rest of the time.
"I had a day job at News Interactive, the Murdoch online arm here in Australia, for a while, but then they did a Great Purge and I was one of those purged, as I mention in my absolutely 100% non-bitter article at http://www.dansdata.com/netmedia.htm ."
Challenges he has faced include "the unending grind of getting up only when I feel like it and wearing nothing but my underpants to the office, should I so desire...
"Really, the only serious challenge regarding doing a PC hardware site for a living (or for some large slice of your living) is actually finding a decent revenue stream. Fortunately, the kinds of people who read Dan's Data, and fancier sites like http://www.arstechnica.com and http://www.sharkyextreme.com , are generally not what you'd call canny bean-counting money-savers. PC enthusiasts buy lots of stuff, and are apt to do so from a link at the end of a product review."
How much time he spends running the site varies, depending on how much freelance work he has.
"If there's nothing happening in the freelance department in a given week and I've got a stack of stuff to review (which I usually do, except during the Great Christmas Drought here in Australia where the whole local IT industry pretty much goes into a coma for two months), maybe 30 hours a week. That includes answering e-mails and carting product around and doing photos, as well as the actual writing."
He earns around A$3,500 (about US$1,750) a month on average. "The graph fluctuates pretty wildly, but the trend is upwards."
As you might expect from a man who doesn't like selling, his promotional tactics are extremely simple:
"When I write a new review, I e-mail scads of relevant news sites about it. You are now privy to my entire promotional strategy."
I don't know if he knows this, but Dan has a lot of friends out there. I checked http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/ and found 8,590 links to http://www.dansdata.com .
He's not impressed with affiliate programs.
"I've never found one that didn't, to coin a phrase, suck. Yeah, yeah, that's all I can expect if I don't drive boldly onward and build synergistic paradigm-smashing leverage networks and generally act like someone with an invisible friend who acts just like Tony Robbins, I know, I know. But making affiliate programs pay big bucks requires marketing. I don't like marketing. Done properly, it always seems to look like fraud wearing a party hat.
"The only times I find Communism a really attractive prospect are when I'm trapped near someone who's telling people how they can sell, SELL, *SELL*!! It's like religious mania, without the slightest hint of niceness.
"My sponsorship by Aus PC Market - http://www.auspcmarket.com.au/ - could, I suppose, count as an affiliate program, but I don't get a cut of the sales, just a payment by click-through. The click-throughs are good value for Aus PC because they come from links that are very well qualified - 'Click here if you want to buy this product, and you're in Australia or New Zealand, and DON'T click here if you're not in both of those categories.'
"The marketing is kept to a minimum. Computer gear sells itself to enthusiasts who already know they want it (or decide they do, as soon as they read a review of it...) and I can get along just fine without having to persuade people to be faster-turning cogs in the global economy than they already are."
You can see Dan's profitable site here:
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2. Good advice from the man who doesn't like selling
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Dan Rutter of http://www.dansdata.com has some sound advice for owners of content-based sites:
"If your site's content based, you have to have good content. This is not exactly the Wisdom of Solomon, but it's surprising how many people start up dinky little hardware sites - or other writing-based sites that hope to make a buck - when it's obvious that they can't write worth a damn.
"OK, it's not as if they've rented three floors of a downtown office tower for their exciting new enterprise, and I dare say quite a lot of them are teenagers. But when you're publishing on the Web, you don't have excuses for lousy content.
"In paper publishing, there are deadlines and length limits. Paper-published articles can end up awful because the writer didn't have the time to write it properly, or because somebody miscounted the ad pages and the two-page review had to be squished down to one by an overworked sub-editor who didn't know anything much about the subject.
"But small Web sites don't generally have hard deadlines, and articles can be as long as you like, and you can go back afterwards and tweak them, too. So if a Web writer's work sucks, you pretty much know that the writer sucks.
"If your content is good, and there's some real connection to something for which people will pay, and you can hook yourself up with some vendor of that salable thing, you can make a perfectly all right little living from a one-man-band site like mine."
__________________________________________SPONSOR__________
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Check it out now: Taciton.com/affiliates.htm
[UPDATE: This site is closed.]
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3. How to find a copy of CompuBank's agreement
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CompuBank sold its bank accounts to NetBank on March 30 and the affiliate program - which CompuBank called "the affiliate program you can bank on" - was closed without warning.
Affiliates who contacted CompuBank have been told that CompuBank won't pay affiliates their March commissions.
This seems to be a very clear breach of the CompuBank affiliate agreement.
At least one affiliate is threatening legal action.
Although CompuBank has removed its affiliate agreement from its site, it's still possible to find a copy. Here's how:
Go to http://www.Google.com
Type affiliate.compubank.com/aoa.cfm in the search box.
Press "Google Search".
Click on "Google's cache".
CompuBank's action is yet another reminder that it's unwise to put all your affiliate eggs in one basket.
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4. CyberRebate pays $461,498 commission
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CyberRebate.com has paid out its highest commission to date , $461,498, says Affiliate Manager Jared Bloom.
CyberRebate.com offers hundreds of products that are free after mail-in rebate. It also offers free shipping.
"Our affiliate program is one of the largest on the net. Our public offer right now is 7% to 8% of the pre-rebate sale, which is a great deal being that our average sale is over $400 per customer per visit," Jared says.
You can join the program at LinkShare:
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/linkshare
[Update: This program went broke.]
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5. You don't need to worry about rejected cookies
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Affiliates often worry that sales won't be tracked because some buyers refuse to accept cookies.
However, in a sampling of over 1 billion page views, WebSideStory has found that cookies were rejected by Internet users only 0.68% of the time.
Full story:
nua.net/surveys/?f=VS&art_id=905356629&rel=true
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6. Three web hosts merge and other affiliate program news
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Virtualis says that its parent company, Allegiance Telecom, has merged with two other hosting companies, Adgrafix and HarvardNet. Product lines will be integrated and most commissions will be increased.
Barnes & Noble has increased its investment in online magazine retailer Enews and now owns a majority interest. In February Enews laid off half its 120 staffers. http://www.enews.com
[UPDATE: This site is now closed.]
PlugInGo affiliates and merchants can now access their PlugInGo account from cellular phones. The reports will be abbreviated versions of the reports on the PlugInGo site, including total commissions earned, details of their last 50 sales including the time the sale was made and the program or web page that generated the sale.
[UPDATE: PlugInGo disappeared.]
Wine.com Fall Symbol Of E-Comm Hangover
siliconvalley.com/docs/news/svfront/wine040601.htm
Fraud: An Affiliate Epidemic
clickz.com/article/cz.3713.html
KBKids.com Still In The Game
denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,33%257E17752,00.html
Egghead.com Reduces Work Force By 29%
news.excite.com/news/r/010406/14/net-tech-eggheaddotcom-dc
ISyndicate.com Fires 50% Of Staff
newsbytes.com/news/01/164336.html
Amazon's Loss Will Be Lower Than Expected
nytimes.com/2001/04/10/technology/10PLAC.html
Amazon, Adobe team on e-books
news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200-5554322.html
Borders Turns Over Its Online Book Sales to Amazon
nytimes.com/2001/04/11/technology/11CND-BOOK.html
Autobytel to acquire Autoweb
news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200-5573649.html
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7. Yahoo! sells porn
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My favorite online directory, Yahoo!, is going off the rails.
It has opened an online adult video store, stocked with thousands of hard-core DVDs and video tapes.
What the shallow-minded money-grubbers at Yahoo! don't seem to have taken into account is the fact that - whether it likes it or not - Yahoo! is in a position of influence in the global village.
Yahoo! has a HUGE audience. It attracts 185 million world-wide visitors a month. If it chose to, it could influence a lot of people in positive ways. Instead, it's selling porn.
Full details:
ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/8876.html
Have your say in this public opinion poll:
Startribune.com
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8. Internet success stories
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This isn't about affiliate programs, but it's a cheerful article - several success stories:
Thriving mom-and-pop shops keep the customers satisfied
www.msnbc.com/news/526501.asp
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9. The "proper" affiliate marketing mindset
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Hot topic on the message board... MyFree
Harvey Segal's complaint on the Associate Programs Message Board about MyFree prompted this tough-minded response:
"I think, perhaps you have not adopted a proper affiliate marketing mindset as of yet. I do not mean to insult you, as your mindset is the same as most, it just prepares you for failure that's all. I'll share with you some of my tactics..."
To find out more or join in the discussions, go to:
http://AssociatePrograms.com/discus/index.php
The easiest way to find the latest posts on the message board is to click on "Last Day" or "Last Week". You can also do searches.
[UPDATE: We've installed new forum software since that was written.]
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10. Useful articles you may have missed
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Previous articles:
Did you receive this? Congratulations, another sale!
http://www.associateprograms.com/search/newsletter153.shtml
Want traffic? Go out and get it
http://www.associateprograms.com/search/newsletter152.shtml
17 strategies from highly successful web sites
http://www.associateprograms.com/search/newsletter151.shtml
How fast learner Yanik Silver succeeds
http://www.associateprograms.com/search/newsletter150.shtml
15 ways to cope with GoTo.com's price rise
http://www.associateprograms.com/search/newsletter149.shtml
Seven tricks the search engines don't want you to know
http://www.associateprograms.com/search/newsletter132.shtml
At last! Practical Guide for affiliate program managers
http://www.associateprograms.com/search/newsletter145.shtml
15 things super affiliates do to achieve super results
http://www.associateprograms.com/search/newsletter128.shtml
Are you new to affiliate programs? I highly recommend the free "Affiliate Masters Course".
Download the free course here:
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/articles/302/1/Free-Affiliate-Masters-Course
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11. Thought for today: Are you a friend?
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"A very successful friend and mentor always reminds me that people like to do business with their friends. One of the reasons is trust. Trust enables you to do your job better because the customer listens to your advice. People trust their friends."
- Michael Barrett
Alldigitalsolutions.com
All the best
Allan Gardyne
