Associate Programs Newsletter #69

Back in December I "quit my day job" to concentrate on AssociatePrograms.com. Now, instead of being bossed I'm learning to be a boss.

I've just hired my first full-time assistant, a gangly geek called Nathan Power. It's scary how much like me he is. He concentrates so hard he doesn't want to stop to eat.

Having someone new to help me and to bounce ideas off is like a breath of fresh air. If you're thinking of hiring help, here's my advice. Don't hesitate. Do it now.

CONTENTS:

1. Make your own music CD
2. Yes. You can sell cars
3. $100 RealNames investment generates $8,710
4. Four ways to choose a RealName
5. Why "Net Detective" name works so well
6. How RealNames has changed its policy
7. Short names are best
8. Large payouts for Net Detective affiliates
9. Infoscoot wants to do searches for you
10. NutriCounter commissions vary from rotund to hefty
11. Combined buying power
12. Direct Hit lives up to its name
13. Snippets
14. Dump those pesky web mailboxes

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1. Make your own music CD
=========================

Almost everyone likes music, so a CD is a wonderful gift. A customized CD specially compiled with the recipient in mind ought to be even more popular.

Here's a new affiliate program which should appeal to music lovers and to owners of gift websites.

You can compile your own music CD on the Net, quickly and easily, with the help of CustomDisc.com, a well established company.

You can select a ready-to-order compilation created by the site's music editors or make your own custom CD by choosing the songs, the title and the cover art.

The songs available to choose from span every popular musical genre – alternative, blues, classical, children’s, country, folk, jazz, oldies, pop/rock, urban and world music.

CustomDisc.com has licensed more than 250,000 songs, including over 4,000 official Billboard Top 100 hits.

To help you make up your mind, the site has lists of free music, top sellers, editors' picks, billboard hits and gift selections. To add a song to your CD, you simply click the "+add" button next to the song.

As well as the affiliate program, for strategic partners the company will design and maintain a "completely turnkey and branded mini-store", so customers can make a custom CD right on your site.

An average custom CD costs about $20 US and the affiliate program pays a 15% commission. The company says the price is determined by adding the cost of each song plus shipping and handling to the base manufacturing cost of $5.99.

However, "there are almost always free songs, specials or promotions".

A 100% money-back guarantee is offered.

One caution:

The affiliate agreement contains a sentence which is all too familiar:

"We may modify any of the terms and conditions contained in this agreement, at any time and in our sole discretion, by posting a change notice or a new agreement on our site."

That clause doesn't really bother me, but it would if I owned a music site and was planning a large investment of my time on this program.

Over all, it looks a good one.

[UPDATE: CustomDisc.com closed.]

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2. Yes. You can sell cars
=========================

If you like classic sports cars, you'll drool over these.

Chesil Motors, which makes high quality replica sports cars in the UK, has launched a two-tier Chesil Speedster affiliate program. It's looking for high quality medium traffic websites, not necessarily auto related.

Associates earn 2% (£500 to £700 - about $US800 to $1,000) per sale and £100 on all of your sub-associates' sales. Real-time third party affiliate tracking is provided.

Even if you don't sell any Speedsters, you can give your visitors pleasant daydreams.

[UPDATE: This program has closed.]

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3. $100 RealNames investment generates $8,710
=============================================

I'm writing about RealNames again because it's an "undiscovered gem" - but ONLY if you know what you are doing when you choose a RealName.

Getting a RealName can be far more lucrative than I imagined.

For example, choosing the RealName "Penny Gold" has been HUGELY successful for Ken Evoy.

Ken bought the RealName "Penny Gold" for PennyGold, the site which taught him about selling on the web.

That $100 investment sends him 50 visitors a week. If that doesn't sound much, consider the revenue Ken earns from those visitors:

"That means that it sends us 2600 visitors in a year," Ken says. Since we pay $100 per year, that works out to 3.8 cents per visitor. Remember, every visitor is highly targeted," he says.

"Another way to look at it?

"At the current price of CAD$1,000 (US$670) and with a current conversion rate of about 0.5% at this price, that $100 investment in RealNames generates 13 orders = US$8,710 (I suspect that we convert a higher percentage of RealName visitors since the "spillover" traffic from MYSS! (Ken's second site, http://makemy.sitesell.com ) reduces our conversion rate somewhat)," Ken says.

"RealNames is a great undiscovered gem... at least it was until you wrote about it!" (If you didn't read last week's article and don't know how RealNames work, go to AltaVista or InfoSeek and type "Penny Gold" into the search box. Or type those words into an Internet Explorer 5 browser. RealNames help you find sites quickly.)

If you think paying only 3.8 cents per visitor is good, consider "Net Detective."

That ONE RealName attracts SEVERAL THOUSAND visitors a month - for a cost of only $100 a year.

"We track the source of our hits very carefully and RealNames has been very effective for us," says John Stanley of Net Detective. We have only one RealName (although I am going to expand on that after reading your article) ... It has been an excellent investment."

[UPDATE: RealNames died.]

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4. Four ways to choose a RealName
==================================

There are at least FOUR techniques to choosing a RealName.

The first - and most important - approach is to select a short, simple, appropriate name which is the same as, or very similar to, your URL and aim for a direct match.

For example: "Net Detective".

Wait a bit! That's not right. Type "Net Detective" into the search engine at AltaVista or InfoSeek and when the search results come up click on the top link. Look at the URL of the page. It says nothing like "Net Detective".

So there's another gem. You can choose the name of your PRODUCT instead of your URL when you choose your RealName.

Consider the possibilities...

The third technique is to aim for near-matches, the technique I described last week.

A fourth technique is to deliberately buy a domain name which would be a good RealName.

For all these techniques, it helps a LOT if you own a RealName which includes popular search terms - the more popular the better. Good places to find out what search terms are popular are:

GoTo.com
Wordspot.com

Here's a handy tool to search for available domain names:
Virtualisys.com/vr/agardyne/domain_search.html

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5. Why "Net Detective" name works so well
=========================================

Ken Evoy did some research to investigate why the RealName "Net Detective" is so hugely successful in attracting traffic.

"They are the only one listed by RealNames for Net Detective and they also get traffic for keyword requests for 'net' and 'detective', Ken says.

"Still, I was surprised that they get that much traffic. You would not think 'detective' or 'net detective' would be that heavily asked, and they have to share 'net' with an awful lot of other RealName listings..."

So Ken did a search on GoTo.com. [Now Yahoo! Search Marketing]

"Amazing! 'Net detective' is the 9th most requested word/phrase with 'net' in it."

The GoTo.com search results:

6771 thehun.net
6161 usa.net
4286 man on the net
2063 headhunter.net
2054 net
1787 book-mark.net
1563 net zero
1426 net meeting
1323 net detective

It's also the most requested word/phrase with "detective" in it, even more requested than detective.

"And look at how little 'web detective' is asked," Ken says. "Boy, did they name themselves correctly!"

1323 net detective
1170 personal detective
626 detective
281 private detective
254 fake detective
182 netbus detective
165 internet detective
134 net detective 2000
97 detective software
96 detective conan
71 cyber detective
69 web detective

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6. How RealNames has changed its policy
=======================================

In the past, RealNames approved very long RealNames. Those won't be allowed when they come up for renewal, Customer Service and Support Supervisor Bill Tuck told me.

You're now allowed only two "search terms" per keyword.

If you're planning to add a phrase to a RealName and aim for near matches, it's not easy predicting if the name you choose will be allowed.

One of my RealNames, "AssociatePrograms.com - affiliate programs directory" was at first rejected and then accepted when I queried the decision.

Keitch Teicher says both of these have been approved:

"Onlineorders.net - Guide To Shopping Cart Programs"
"Onlineorders.net - Guide To Credit Card Merchant Accounts"

Michael Wong of eboz.com owns the RealName
"eBoz! Search Engine".

He adds a caution:

"I've had only 449 'resolutions' (I assume that means click-throughs) since May, for 'search engine'. I suppose it's not bad, as it works out at just over $0.13 per visitor. But since it's one of the most frequently searched terms, (#32 in Goto's top 100), and the fact that it's at #2 in the RealNames listing, I expected more.

"I suspect that for less popular search terms and a lower ranking in RealNames, the results would be worse," Michael says.

Here's another RealNames tip from Michael:

If no one has bought a link with the two keywords you searched for, the results will be a list of all the links with one of the keywords, then the other.

For example: Allan Gardyne.

It will show all links with "Allan" in the title, then all links with "Gardyne". So, in effect you're purchasing two keywords.

John Vorwerk of http://www.4OfficeAutomation.com points out that I made a slight mistake in last week's article. I said Corey Rudl owned the RealName "Marketing Tips". In fact, he owns the RealName "Internet Marketing Tips". So a search for "marketing tips" at AltaVista finds a NEAR-MATCH, which is placed at the top of the search results. I saw that and assumed it was a RealName. Sorry about that.

A search for "internet marketing hints" will give you a direct hit.

=======================
7. Short names are best
=======================

Here's the best advice:

Pin your main hopes on one-word or two-word RealNames.

I've now bought 10 RealNames, most of them very recently, and it's already clear that using RealNames as the company intended - aiming for a 100% match - is the most effective strategy.

If the RealName is short people are much more likely to type in your RealName exactly - and therefore much more likely to visit your site.

Also, Alta Vista places direct matches and two or fewer keyword search results at the TOP of the page. For three or more word searches that don't match a keyword, the RealNames result is placed at the BOTTOM - in effect in 11th place.

[UPDATE: RealNames died.]

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8. Large payouts for Net Detective affiliates
=============================================

John Stanley of NetDetective says August was a record breaking month for Net Detective. The top three affiliates for August were:

#1 Karoline W. $6,950
#2 Jim C. $5,990
#3 Al M. $5,520

As well, 15 affiliates made at least $1,000 (many earned several thousand), John says.

Net Detective is "an amazing new tool that allows you to find out EVERYTHING you ever wanted to know about your friends, family, neighbors, employees, even your boss!" John says.

More details:

http://www.jeanharris.com

Perhaps if we're lucky, John will tell us what those top affiliates are doing to earn that money.

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=========================================
9. Infoscoot wants to do searches for you
=========================================

Sick of not finding what you're looking for on the Internet?

Infoscoot.com says it has a skilled team available 24 hours a day to search the Internet for you and find sites and information which are 100% relevant.

For $9.95 a month you can request as many searches as you like. The affiliate program pays 50% of all sales and recurring billing. Checks will be sent out weekly and real-time stats are provided.

Sounds good so far.

Infoscoot adds: "Try this other FINE webmaster program.
Allclicks.com."

AllClicks? Ah yes, I remember. That's the company which encourages you to put up any sort of link, even one saying "Continue" - and when people click on it they find they've been whisked off to AllClicks.

A fine site?

I didn't sign up.

[UPDATE: Infoscoot seems to have died]

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======================================================
10. NutriCounter commissions vary from rotund to hefty
======================================================

Menlowpark Laboratories, which has launched an affiliate program for its NutriCounter, has an intriguing way of rewarding associates.

Commissions will vary from $11 up to $22, depending on how prominently you are prepared to promote the product.

The NutriCounter is hand-held device used to track and store nutritional information - a way of monitoring your diet.

"It has over 2000 pre-programmed food items (and restaurants) in memory that can easily be looked up, tracked and stored to provide an accurate account of an individual's daily, weekly or monthly food intake," says Jim Heyden of Menlowpark Laboratories.

"Better yet, it has an additional 400 "open locations" for individuals to easily program in their own favorite foods. The NutriCounter will also alert you if you are about to exceed your goals in any nutritional category!"

There seems to be an insatiable appetite for anything which helps people lose weight, so I expect this will be popular.

menlowpark.com/reseller.htm

[UPDATE: This program has vanished.]

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11. Combined buying power
=========================

Shop2gether.com's new technology gives your business buying power by grouping orders from different businesses for the same products and services.

"This gives your business access to large volume prices for smaller orders by grouping purchase orders and having vendors bid for the larger combined order," says Kerri Cazzolla Jaye of Shop2gether.

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12. Direct Hit lives up to its name
===================================

When I started reading about Direct Hit, I was surprised to find how many search engines and major companies are using the search engine technology it has developed.

"Direct Hit's technology is used by HotBot, Lycos, MSN, Infoseek, LookSmart, ZDNet, Apple, Go2Net, ICQ, and a bunch of other companies," says Dave Krupinski of Direct Hit Technologies.

"C|Net recently selected HotBot as the best search engine mainly do to the fact that HotBot search results come from Direct Hit."

The Direct Hit search engine works based on popularity. When you enter a search term, the results you receive are the most popular sites based on the search behavior of other users.

After licensing our search engine technology to other sites for the past year and a half, Direct Hit is now offering this technology on its own site.

You can add value to your site by adding a Direct Hit search box and collect 3 cents (US) per search. The program is administered by Be Free.

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============
13. Snippets
============

NEXTCARD, which pays affiliates quarterly, is making plans to pay affiliates monthly if they make at least three sales in a month. "We have an even more ambitious payment plan in the works which will leverage our status as a bank (use your imagination!)," Mike Angiletta of NextCard told the Associate Programs Message Board.

PRICELINE sets sales record despite mounting pressures
ecommercetimes.com/news/articles/990910-9.shtml

PETS.COM is opening a 140,000 square-foot distribution center in Union City, California.
ecommercetimes.com/news/articles/990908-10.shtml

SOCIALNET.COM is a new free membership site with four services; Relationships for finding romance, JustPlay for finding a sports/activities partner, WorkingNetwork for business networking, and Roommates for finding someone to share living space. SocialNet.com pays $1 bounty for each new member.

MAGMALL has made lots of improvements since I last looked. You can check out the Affiliate Guide (by choosing the Affiliate Guide selection in the "Browse our Site" pop-up box at the top of the page) and look specifically at the 7 online, real-time reports MagMall generates for affiliates.

==================================
14. Dump those pesky web mailboxes
==================================

CJ.com should get rid of those darn web mailboxes for affiliates, says Andrew Starr of http://www.amherst.edu/~atstarr .

"Why should I go log into LinkShare or CJ.com every so often to read mail from whomever? Trust me, it's not that hard to send the things to the regular e-mail address."

All the best

Allan Gardyne