Associate Programs Newsletter #79

CONTENTS:

1. ToysRus too greedy
2. Dirty Tricks Department (2)
3. Rick Beneteau uses Synergyx to sell e-book
4. Books.com swallowed up
5. How to prepare your pages for search engines

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1. ToysRus too greedy
=======================

ToysRUs, which had sales of $6.8 billion in the first nine months of 1999, has launched an associate program with LinkShare in time for the Christmas rush.

The company's website Toysrus.com is processing thousands of orders an hour and has received millions of visitors in the past few days, the company says. In fact the site is so busy that it couldn't cope this week when I visited - all I saw was an apology - but I managed to get through to the site the next day.

The Toysrus.com program pays 5% to 12.5% commission, "along with a 5 return day feature, or period for visitors to buy for which you will still be compensated!" LinkShare says.

Note the exclamation mark. Toysrus and LinkShare expect you to be excited because cookies have been set to expire after FIVE days.

Excited? I'm disgusted.

How often do YOU buy something the FIRST time you visit a website? How often do you return to that site within five days?

Imagine sending a potential customer to Toysrus.com.

She looks at all the wonderful toys and it delighted. She's going to be a lifetime customer. However, she can't make up her mind what to buy young Johnnie for Christmas. So she phones Aunt Mildred for advice. A week later she returns to Toysrus.com with her shopping list and spends $200.

Whoops! The cookie has expired.

You don't earn a dime.

Companies which respect their associates - and really see them as ASSOCIATES - don't set cookies to expire after only five days.

Corey Rudl's are set for three years.
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/coreys

The guys at Internet Marketing Challenge set theirs for 10 years.
[UPDATE: Internet Marketing Challenge has disappeared.]

Ken Evoy has lifetime cookies and lifetime customers.
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/affiliates

Mark Joyner offers lifetime customers
[UPDATE: Mark sold this business to http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/nitro ]

Toysrus.com: 5 days.

Some companies either don't understand, or they're too greedy.

Here are some of the latest LinkShare offerings - and their
"return day feature":

flower.com 70 days
office2share.com 60 days
mcafee.com 30 days
yakpak.com 30 days
revenger.com 30 days
merlite.com 10 days
illuminations.com 10 days
enutrition.com 10 days
cookexpress.com 10 days
beadroom.com 10 days
cyberrebate.com 7 days
laparfumerie.com 7 days
citystuff.com 7 days
brooksbrothers.com 7 days
brainstorms.com 7 days
llbean.com 5 days
kideo.com 3 days
estamp.com 0 days (That's not a misprint.)
landsend.com 0 days (That's not a misprint.)
atwatch.com 0 days (That's not a misprint.)

It's great to see that LinkShare is attracting some big name merchants with interesting products, such as McAfee's anti-virus software and E-Stamp, which lets you buy and print postage right from your computer, but it would be nice if all the merchants demonstrated clearly that they understand the lifetime value of those customers you're sending them.

Setting cookies for at least 30 days would be a good start in that direction.

You can join all these programs at LinkShare.

http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/linkshare

These comments aren't directed only at the merchants I've named. They apply to all greedy merchants everywhere.

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2. Dirty Tricks Department (2)
==============================

Last week Dirty Tricks Department - Part 1 (See item 9) I described a dirty trick played on me.

Here's another one:

Take a look at this page:
associatemall.com/index79.html

Doesn't it look just a little too much like an AssociatePrograms.com page? You're right. It does.

About the only things which have been altered are "AssociatePrograms.com" to "AssociateMall.com" and the copyright notice.

However, the amateur at AssociateMall.com overlooked one thing.

Have a look at the TeknoSurf button:

The URL still says:
teknosurf3.com/cgi-bin/refer.cgi?gardyne

Hey! That's MY referral URL. No wonder the page looks familiar. The blighter stole my page.

(I suppose it was all a dreadful mistake. He accidentally copied it, and accidentally replaced AssociatePrograms.com with AssociateMall.com and accidentally uploaded it to the server... Believe it or not, I've heard similar tales.)

You may like to do a search in search engines to see if people are accidentally copying any of YOUR pages.)

NEXT WEEK: More dirty tricks.

[UPDATE, January 2006: After years of "beta testing", the AssociateMall domain name is for sale.]

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3. Rick Beneteau uses Synergyx to sell ebook
=============================================

Want to sell your new ebook and don't want too many people to get free copies? Here's one way.

Paul Galloway, who created the successful Your Own Affiliate Program software - http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/yoap - has now come up with Synergyx, an integrated shopping cart, associate program and digital product delivery system.

Synergyx allows you to send your customer a download URL and download code. They can't download their newly purchased product without the code - and it expires in a specified number of hours (you decide how long). Or if you'd rather, you can configure the software so it sends your customer a username/password for a "member-only" web site.

Paul says the Synergyx package should be especially appealing to people who sell downloadable products - "and there are more of those every day".

Synergyx is the software which Rick Beneteau is using for his popular Ezine Marketing Machine promotion. Rick says his EZineMoney program has been a tremendous success. "I've written several commission checks over $1,000 to ezine publishers this month," he says.

[UPDATE: Ezine Marketing Machine is no longer available.]

Synergyx costs $1,200 installed and the one-tier associate program pays $200 commission.

I've never heard anything but praise for Paul's ability and for his outstanding customer service.

Find out more here:

http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/synergyx

If you're thinking of joining the associate program, Paul warns you right up front that the support will be minimal. He won't provide you with banners, advertisements, classifieds etc.

"Besides," he says, "we all know that an endorsement is better than any of those things, right?"

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4. Books.com swallowed up
=========================

The Books.com domain name has been bought by Barnes & Noble and traffic to Books.com is being redirected to B&N.

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5. How to prepare your pages for search engines
===============================================

Here are two interesting articles by Robert Woodhead:

http://selfpromotion.com/pageprep.t - a new article on preparing your pages for the search engines so they rank better. It goes into issues such as key phrase selection.

Robert advocates using L-O-N-G titles on your pages, and explains why. I suspect this advice belongs in the category: "Tricks which the search engines will eventually penalize if they aren't already."

http://selfpromotion.com/yahootips.t - Robert's "How to get into Yahoo" article. It also includes tips on About.com and Open Directory.

All the best

Allan Gardyne