Associate Programs Newsletter #38
CONTENTS:
1. Books.com overcomes growing pains
2. Earn commissions from job seekers
3. The thief has few friends
4. One small way you could help
5. Speeding up those $2 payments
6. Hot words: Are you where people are looking?
7. Snippets
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1. Books.com overcomes growing pains
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For several months I had a note under the Books.com listing in the AssociatePrograms.com directory, warning people about problems it had tracking sales.
Books.com's marketing director, Bryan Combs, complained, saying there was a tracking problem in one month in 1998. “I can send you hundreds of people who love our site,” Bryan said.
Just about every company on the Net has tracking problems and growing pains, so I'm prepared to listen. I asked Bryan to name a few of these satisfied associates, and I also appealed in this newsletter for comments about Books.com.
Judging by the favourable response I've received, Books.com does have satisfied associates and is well worth another look.
Why would you bother? Because it pays 12% commission on ALL referred sales, and tells its customers it will beat the prices of Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
Books.com, originally called Book Stacks, says it carries about 4 million titles, most of which are discounted 20% to 40%. It also has free electronic books, but the music store and movies store, also owned by Cedant Corporation, don't have an associate program.
BizRate – https://www.bizrate.com – has given Books.com four out of a possible five stars, exactly the same as Amazon.com. When I visited today, 1,067 booklovers were browsing the online store.
As well as paying 12% commission on all referred sales, if a visitor saves a title in his or her Bookbag but buys it later, Books.com will pay you for that sale too. Every title is eligible for commission. Payment is monthly when the commission is $20 or more.
You can link to specific titles; to works by a specific author; to new releases; to all titles in a specific subject; by using a search engine embedded into your site; with banners, logos, ordering buttons, and/or text.
To find the sign up form at Books.com, click on Help and then click on Links Program.
I've created a new page containing reviews of Books.com – four favourable ones and an unfavorable one:
AssociatePrograms.com/search/books-com.shtml [Link nolonger works.]
[UPDATE: Books.com was swallowed by Barnes & Noble.]
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2. Earn commissions from job seekers
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Adguide has a great associate program which until this week contained one major flaw – its site is visited mainly by job seekers but its associate program is aimed at employers.
Adguide's College Recruiter Employment Site pays an average of about $US125 on each sale. It pays 33% on any sale of a help wanted ad made within 90 days.
Steven Rothberg says that associates can now earn commissions on sales of a resume-preparing service paying a $11.67 commission.
A second service is targeted at job seekers who already have a resume. “For $75, not only do we send their cover letter and resume to thousands of recruiters who have requested to receive such resumes, we will also post it on hundreds of employment newsgroups, which are used by employers to find employees,” Steven says. The commission is $25.
I'm impressed by the quality of the site, by Steven Rothberg's marketing ability, and by the latest improvements.
Now there is even more good reason to set up a new page, new section, or new site aimed at job seekers.
Go to Commission Junction – https://www.associateprograms.com/cj to sign up.
[UPDATE: In April 2001, College Recruiter changed its payout to $100, and extended the life of its cookie to one year.]============================
3. The thief has few friends
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Your response to my Open letter to a thief last week was utterly astounding, and heart-warming. Between 1am (my time) when the newsletter went out and 8am I received 100 emails, and they kept pouring in all day.
Like me, you were disgusted that someone would steal large chunks from someone else's web site.
Many of you said I should prosecute the thief, some said I should name him (yes, it was a man – as far as I know, no woman has ever stolen from me), and several said I shouldn't “sweat the small stuff” – or words to that effect. A common opinion was that the thief would have no friends and no links to his site, so he wasn't worth wasting time thinking about. Two webmasters named him in an e-mail discussion list.
Some readers just simply said: “Let me know if you ever need anything.”
Most amazing of all was the practical help you offered. A web design company offered $2500 worth of web designing free, an Internet magazine editor offered free help, an author sent me the warning letter which he sends Net thieves, and several people offered to be my assistant (one offered to wear a blonde wig, if necessary).
The most eloquent letter came from Robert J. Holtz CEO/President – Zeros & Ones, Inc. https://www.zerosones.com . Here's a small part of it:
“Newcomers look at the Internet as a vast resource of stuff
that is free for the taking. Yours with the click of the
mouse. The same marketing we all use to entice customers
backfires on us to breed this ‘grab all you want' kind of
webmaster. Those of us who have earned our keep in this
challenging industry know that the Internet is like an
ecosystem. It's fragile. We're all in kind of a fish-bowl.
Our actions have potential ripple effects on others.”
So true, and so beautifully said, Robert. Thank you. You're good with words as well as web design.
Today, I was still receiving friendly letters and support. For me, it has been a truly amazing and humbling experience. I'm a shy guy who lives in a quiet little fishing village without a shop. I had no idea I had so many friends.
Thank you, everyone.
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4. One small way you could help
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Mattie writes:
Hi Allan,
…I really like this newsletter and you obviously spend a lot of time writing it… I am totally impressed! I would like to do you a favor of putting some code on my site (page about associate programs) to sign up for your newsletter. Maybe if you published the code then more people would add it.
Mattie
Mattie's World
mattiesworld.freeserve.co.uk
Wow! Thanks, Mattie. What a great idea. If, like Mattie, you would like to make it easy for people to subscribe to this newsletter, please cut and paste this code into your page…
[UPDATE: I've deleted the code because it no longer works. I've switched to another newsletter distributor, Dundee.net.]Thank you!
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5. Speeding up those $2 payments
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I've mentioned the Commission Junction network in this newsletter and have been surprised that I don't seem to be earning many $2 fees for referring new affiliates. The problem is that, as an anti-fraud measure, the $2 fees aren't earned until the affiliate earns his or her first commission. (Lex Sisney has indicated that the system could be changed.)
Gary Lang of MegaBanners.com has suggested a way of getting those $2 payments earlier. He says you should not only tell people to sign up with Commission Junction, but after they have done that, they should sign up with MegaBanners.com.
If they do that, they will earn 2 cents the first time someone clicks on the MegaBanners link – and you will qualify for the $2 fee from Commission Junction. MegaBanners also pays 15% commission for paid sign-ups.
“Generally banners alone are not such a great way to promote affiliate programs, because of low traffic generated on many, but with MegaBanners you can get many thousands of banner displays daily, much more than you can display on just one web site,” Gary says. “Plus the click-through rates are about 2-1/2 to 3 times higher than on the banner exchanges.”
It costs nothing to join the Commission Junction network of revenue-sharing programs. Once you have joined one program there, joining others is very simple.
Commission Junction
https://www.associateprograms.com/cj
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6. Hot words: Are you where people are looking?
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Victoria's Secret, maker of lingerie, had a web party. About a million and a half people tried to come. If you think that has nothing to do with you, read on.
In E-Tailer's Digest #0148 there's a fascinating, detailed article on the increase in search engine queries related to victoria, secret, lingerie, and related terms as a result of the Victoria's Secret party. It wasn't only sex-starved teenagers who were involved.
If you want your site to be found, the article suggests, you should identify a mindset and the latest words that market segment uses to find what it wants.
The discussion begins at
gapent.com/etailer/archives/0146.html
and continues to
gapent.com/etailer/archives/0148.html
Once you get a taste for the E-Tailer's Digest archives, you'll find many more useful articles to explore, especially if you're a retailer.
[UPDATE: The newsletter's archives are no longer online.]===========
7. Snippets
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Site goes nuts
Highly excited and “sweating caffeine”, Merv Scoble told me this week that his site had just “gone nuts” after a glossy soccer mag in England wrote the feature article on his site. I asked for more details. “Bingo. I have made more in the last 20 hours on clicks etc than in the rest of the month!” It was great example of how offline exposure can boost traffic. Merv was still so excited he didn't think to tell me which site he was talking about. I went to Google.com, typed in “Mervo soccer” (without the quotes) and found:
mervo.com/soccer/newindex.html
https://www.mervo.com/gulls ]
Better than banners?
CC Names has an eye-catching, brightly colored banner… Whoops! No, it's not a banner at all. It's pure HTML, which makes it beautifully fast loading. And what's more the inbuilt form isn't fake – it really works. You may not want to buy a cc domain name (unless you run a secretarial service or sell photocopiers) but the “banner” is well worth a look.
Corey's cute form
Corey Rudl has some cute – and not so cute – marketing methods. There's a clever one in his latest newsletter, in which he says he's getting a very good response from a neat little drop-down list and button you can paste into your site. I've put one on the main page at AssociatePrograms.com.
50% commission
Can anyone beat a 50% commission? That's what the Online Business Network is paying on sales of a lifetime membership for $US24.95 to a site that provides “a lot of information, tools and resources on online money-making and business starting”. If anyone is paying more than 50% please tell me and I'll give you a free mention.
obnetwork.com
What it costs
Art.com determined that its cost of acquiring each customer was $US100 with broadcast advertising, $30 with banners and only $15 with affiliate programs, Jacob Ward reported in the Industry Standard.
industrystandard.net/articles/display/0,1449,3486,00.html
How to find an idea
Here's how Gary Morrison found the idea for his new web site. “My wife and I like to golf when we are on vacation. At Christmas we went down to Florida, and before I left I spent a lot of time looking for golf courses… I found some, but it took some looking. Well, as I am lying on the beach it dawns on me, make a search site of all the courses in the US. I finally got the site launched… I have 9100+ public, 2100+ private, and 1900 miniature golf courses listed.”
https://www.usagolflinks.com
Help for an optimist?
Ray Adams of opc-online.com/tryit/ is seeking an affiliate tracking program, two or three tier, that is freeware or shareware. Anyone want to recommend such a script?
Here are three places where you can find free affiliate tracking scripts: Good luck!
hotscripts.com/Perl/Scripts_and_Programs/Affiliate_Programs/
cgi.resourceindex.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Perl/Website_Promotion/Affiliate_Programs/ scriptsearch.com/Perl/Scripts_and_Programs/Affiliate_Programs/ ]
Another little milestone
My wife, Joanna, and I are celebrating this weekend. The Associate Programs Newsletter passed the 7,000 subscriber mark today. I've pushed up my classified ad price to $70 (US), about 1 cent per subscriber. Please read the ads. These guys have something to offer.
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CLASSIFIED ADS (I charge $US70. Subscribers: over 7000.
No more than 5 ads in each edition.
The circulation is verifiable by a trusted third party.)
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card-number-and-you-can-cancel-after-three-issues-if-you-don't-
like-it.” Just three FREE issues — period. Payout is monthly if
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All the best
Allan Gardyne
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