Associate Programs Newsletter #5

This edition reviews Corey Rudl's Internet marketing course - the fastest selling marketing course on the Internet - and finds it raises a serious ethical dilemma.

CONTENTS:

1. CarPrices.com reacts fast to complaint
2. Switching between bookstores
3. URL 'Plates explains its policies
4. Corey Rudl gives me an ethical dilemma
5. Companies not recommended
6. You can recommend a few more companies
7. ARTUFRAME click-throughs
8. It's official. AssociatePrograms.com is Cool
9. Newsflash! Spree.com answers questions
10. Hacker controls Associate Programs Forum

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1. CarPrices.com reacts fast to complaint
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Betsy from The Kitchen Link - http://www.kitchenlink.com - wrote this week:

Hi Allan!

I have a question for you regarding CarPrices.com. I'm thinking of joining their associate program, but something in the contract has me concerned - this is the first time I've seen this in an affiliate agreement:

D. You shall be responsible for any and all misuse or apparent misuse of the AFI Internet Site by you or your referred visitors, including without limitation any information posted to the AFI Internet Site which is fraudulent or violates the privacy rights of others. Compensation payable to you on account of misuse or apparent misuse shall be refunded to AFI upon request and/or deducted from accrued commissions.

I can't control how a visitor will use their site. What do you think about this condition of the agreement?

Thanks,
Betsy.

Well, Betsy, I think the clause is utterly ludicrous. You shouldn't be held responsible for the actions of others. I passed the complaint on to Mike Benavides, Vice-President of Business and Strategic Development at AutoFusion, Inc.

Mike surprised me by saying that the clause was lifted from Amazon.com's contract. About a day later, CarPrices.com deleted the offending clause from its contract.

This week CarPrices.com also had excellent news for low-traffic sites. It lowered its minimum payout balance from $US100 to $US50.

This change goes into affect immediately, so all of the affiliates who have met the new limit will be paid their commissions, Mike says.

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2. Switching between bookstores
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Bill Rayment of the Conservative Bookstore has switched from Amazon.com to alt.bookstore and back again. I asked him why.

Dear Allan,

You are correct. I have switched from Amazon.com to alt.bookstore and back again.

When I happened across the Amazon.com affiliate program about a year ago it seemed a great opportunity to open a bookstore on-line. It promised a commission based on every referred customer who bought a recommended book. I combined my interest in conservative politics and my love of literature to create the Conservative Bookstore. Considerable work writing reviews and interviewing authors brought in a respectable amount of traffic, but the sales seemed minuscule considering the effort involved. I came to the conclusion that Amazon's site was so good that when I referred a customer via a book link I was losing that customer to their search engine or other recommendation or whatnot. My sale per click-through was as low as 1/200. It was appallingly low.

At this point I decided to make a change to alt.bookstore because they paid a commission on the sale of other books in their catalogue as long as you referred the customer. This also gave me a search engine I could place on-site. Alt.bookstore seemed to work out well until I discovered their statistics tracking was so poor that I never knew how many books I had sold or how much alt.bookstore owed me. I also discovered that they did not pay for every book sold, only certain ones. In the end, I could not even figure out such a simple stat as sales per click-through. To give alt.bookstore credit, they were revamping their stats programs throughout this period.

Finally, Amazon updated their program so that any sale from a referred customer netted a commission for the bookstore and also gave me a search engine capability. I already liked their stats and prompt customer service, so I switched back and found a marked increase in sales per click-through. The Conservative Bookstore is now achieving an income of .01 per hit on the site. Which I think is a pretty good ratio. I have always been impressed with Amazon's site and its potential for book sales. I am glad they finally decided to adequately reward their affiliates.

Actually, my account with alt.bookstore is still open. I do have a few links on-line left to them through some of my other sites (not the Conservative Bookstore).

WJ Rayment
Conservative Bookstore
http://www.conservativebookstore.com

I asked Michael Kelm at alt.bookstore.com to comment. Here's his vague, unsatisfactory reply:

Allan:

Almost 80% of all new associates come to us as disgruntled associates of other programs. I am not going to condemn any program or company.

In the same manner that clothing styles fit for some and not others, 'partner' programs (I prefer partner to 'associate' because of it's alignment with Amazon) fit for some and not others. I think you will see people 'try on' different programs to see which one fits them best. Because of Amazon's market presence, their fashions appear very much in vogue.

Michael Kelm
alt.bookstore.com

[UPDATE: alt.bookstore died.]

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3. URL'Plates explains its policies
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I like URL'Plates - shiny chrome things you plonk on your car to promote your web site - but the commission seems a little low and there is a minimum purchase of two required, which must have a negative impact on sales. I wrote to David Bowden of URL'Plates saying so.

Here's part of his reply:

With the commission structure, you must remember that I'm actually paying out on 5 levels, at US$1 per level plus I have to process the credit card which I get charged a fee on, plus create the pages, maintain the database and respond to all the email enquiries. I end up with US$4 per plate so I don't have anything really to play with.

Plus with the 4 level concept, everyone can be making something from the resellers they introduce which in reality should always work out to being far more than they'll ever earn from their own sales.

One of the reasons I did it this way, is that with all the other reseller programs that I have investigated, I have yet to meet anyone making reasonable money from them and the main reason is, that they make it too easy for a visitor that you've worked hard to get to your site, to simply join the referral program so that they can get the discount on their own purchase so the referrer misses out but the company still got the sale.

With my program, this doesn't happen ... I believe I am on the right track.

Why don't you pose the question on your site, asking: "Who's really making money from referral programs and if so, how much?"

I'd be interested in those results :)

Kind regards
David.
adspecs.co.nz/urlplates

(David has given himself even more work by making the minimum monthly payout an amazingly low $US5. That's wonderful for low-traffic sites, but I wonder how long it will be before he has to admit he went too low and gave himself too much paperwork.)

I've joined URL'Plates because even if the commission is low, I like the idea of having 100 or 200 sites earning those dollars for me, promoting a useful, innovative product.

[UPDATE: URL'Plates was taken over by ID IT.]

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4. Corey gives me an ethical dilemma
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I promised to review Corey Rudl's Internet marketing course The Insider Secrets to Marketing your Business on the Internet in this edition, and I guess I can't put it off any longer.

Before I had even finished reading the first 215-page book of the course, I had decided that it was by far the most useful, in-depth marketing info I had come across. But I didn't like what I found in the second book, so I'll discuss one book at a time.

In the first book, the five lessons include topics such as how to structure a web site so that it sells, creating killer copy, the power of e-mail and the right way to use autoresponders.

An extraordinary number of people offer marketing tips on the Internet. What Corey does is different from most. He describes in detail what he has done and tells you what worked for him, and what didn't. (Corey has four successful online businesses, including Car Secrets Revealed, the number one best selling car book on the Internet.) He gives you copies of sales letters he sends out, and explains which ones get the best results.

The marketing course is crammed with practical advice, not theories. For example, you probably already know that an autoresponder is a great marketing tool. But Corey goes further. He says that most people don't use them properly, and that all autoresponders aren't the same. He explains what to look for and how much to pay.

The second book in the course starts by discussing spam. Here's my ethical dilemma. As you probably know, I hate spam. I live in a tiny fishing village in sub-tropical Queensland and for my first year on the Internet every connection I made to the Internet was via a toll call. I quickly grew to hate spam as I watched it slowly download. So I was upset and angry to find that in the second book Corey Rudl discusses the spammers' techniques in all their gory detail. He describes which methods work and which don't and tells you what software they use and where to get it.

I was glad to see that he thinks you're a moron if you simply strip random e-mail addresses from newsgroups and send your marketing message to them.

Corey says, most unconvincingly, that he doesn't condone the spamming methods he describes in detail. He is simply telling you what some people do. I little later on, he admits that he has used some of the methods himself.

[UPDATE: In a newsletter to affiliates in July, 1998, Corey says: "We do not condone unsolicited bulk emailing or spamming of newsgroups with the MarketingTips.com URL that you were assigned. It is becoming less and less effective and we are not with an ISP that will tolerate this. If you send unsolicited bulk email to email addresses you have bought or harvested, your associate reseller status will be immediately terminated and all referral fees owing for that month will be forfeited." Great! I'm delighted to hear it.]

In the Associate Programs Directory, I do my best to refuse submissions from spammers. I don't usually preach about it. If you're an unethical, selfish jerk who uses unsolicited bulk email, I doubt if appealing to your better nature would do any good.

So now I ought to remove all mention of Corey Rudl from my site. But I'm not going to. I could try to dress up my arguments by saying that I'm offering an excellent service, I'm helping you by recommending by far the best marketing course on the Internet. I'm helping you identify spamming methods so that you can counter them. But when it comes down to it, I really just want to keep on receiving those amazingly generous commission checks from Corey Rudl. They're helping me save for an overseas holiday next year.

However, I promise I'll never use any of the spamming techniques described in the course. I hope that if you get the course you'll do the same.

The 12 lessons covered in the second book include telling you how to use newsletters as a marketing tool, how to use Internet classified ads, how to market to newsgroups, how to get free publicity, how to spy on your competitors, search engine secrets, the importance of backend and upsell products, hottest products and services, and how to set up a joint venture. That's fine. It's all excellent information in typical Rudl style, based on heaps of practical experience, telling you what works and what doesn't.

As I studied Corey's course, I kept getting a sinking feeling. Time and time again I would read a paragraph and think, "Oh no! THAT'S WHAT I'M DOING WRONG!" For example, I'm running a highly labor-intensive web site (well, I have four, if you count the neglected ones). In contrast, Corey believes in automating everything as much as possible, so that his four Internet business keep on ticking over, whether his hand is on the tiller or not. He tells you what software and what companies you can use and describes exactly how to do this.

He describes various little techniques he uses, and nonchalantly adds that this one or that added $2,500 or so to his monthly income.

I wish I'd read his marketing course before I started my business on the Internet. I would have done an awful lot of things differently.

After reading the latest newsletter Corey sends out to his associates, I followed his instructions and tinkered with a few words on my Top 10 associate programs.

Since then my average income from selling Corey's course has doubled from $50 a week to $100 a week. The sample is too small to be statistically significant - but it's very encouraging.

Interview with Corey Rudl

Corey's marketing info web site

[UPDATE, 2011: Corey Rudl died in a car crash at California Speedway when the Porsche in which he was passenger left the track, hit a barrier and burst into flames. He was 34. The driver, Benjamin Keaton, died in hospital. Corey, a true Internet marketing pioneer, passed the $40 million sales mark in November, 2004. His company, still well managed, is still doing very well.]

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5. Companies not recommended
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I've received a serious complaint about Body-bite, seen lots of complaints about CyberThrill, and suggest you be extremely wary about Books.com, which is having trouble reporting accurately, says Mark J. Welch.

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6. You can recommend a few more companies
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Some visitors to Associate Programs.com assume that all the associate programs on the Net must be listed there. Not yet! If you come across an unlisted one, remember that if you recommend it you can have your referring URL or ID number published - and your web site address, too, if you want.

I've changed the rules. You can now recommend up to *10* companies (If I'm not flooded with submissions, I'll probably increase that to 20.)

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7. ARTUFRAME click-throughs
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Phill Heyden of The Galleria Mall who listed ARTUFRAME in the Associate Programs Directory has sent me the click-through stats for June. According to BFast's tracking, impressions per day varied wildly, from 6 to 33 and clickthroughs varied from 0 to 5. One of these days, I'll make the time to install tracking throughout the site.

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8. It's official! AssociatePrograms.com is Cool
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NewHoo, a sort of volunteers' Yahoo!, has labelled AssociatePrograms.com and the Associate Programs Forum a Cool Site in the NewHoo directory.

[UPDATE: NewHoo grew into Dmoz.org.]

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9. Newsflash! Spree.com answers questions
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I sent three dozen queries, comments and complaints to Lew Fowler at Spree.com some time ago and received his replies today. They're fascinating but too long for this newsletter. You can read here: Spree.com's answers.

[UPDATE: This old page has been deleted.]

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10. Hacker controls Associate Programs Forum
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My friendly tech guy has just confirmed my fears.

The Associate Programs Forum is now controlled by a hacker. In case you're interested his username is "Hackers" but my friendly tech guy hasn't figured out the hacker's password. I'm investigating my options. In the meantime, I'm very sorry if any of the messages posted on the board offend you.

Looking on the bright side, I probably have the only Cool Site on the Net controlled by a hacker! Perhaps he could put that in his resume.

I could simply take down the page but that would upset a lot of people, so I'm hoping I don't have to do that.

[UPDATE: The new Associate Programs Message Board works well.]

All the best

Allan Gardyne