Associate Programs Newsletter #4
CONTENTS:
1. Newsletter is now published weekly
2. Complaints about Spree.com
3. A happy SIP
4. MUST: subscribe to affiliate-l mailing list
5. AssociateProgram.com’s new sponsor
6. Free-Banners pays for sign-ups
7. Quick review of Corey Rudl’s marketing course
8. Cheaper web hosts
9. Internet Scambusters
10. Designer Dick
11. More reliable tracking
12. Spree.com’s new Movie Store
13. No spam, says TitanicPosters.com
14. This month’s winner: Merle’s World
15. New articles at AssociatePrograms.com
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1. Newsletter is now published weekly
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Thank you to all the wonderful people submitting listings to the Associate Programs Directory, and sending me material and feedback. I’m receiving so much now that I’ve decided to switch from monthly to weekly publication of this newsletter.
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2. Complaints about Spree.com
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I take a close interest in Spree.com because I’ve persuaded about 150 people to join its program.
The Associate Programs Forum message board has been busy with posts complaining about Spree.com recently. Some SIPS (Spree.com independent partners) are confused by Spree.com’s new points system and many are unhappy about the low returns – or no returns – they have received.
At least two of us are unhappy because Spree.com was regularly sending us e-mails advising that new partners had signed up, but these messages came to an unexplained sudden halt. After complaints were made, we both received a little rush of new sign-ups, without any explanation.
I complained to Spree.com and was told that the SIP Account Manager, Lew Fowler, was interested in hearing any complaints.
So I compiled a list of 36 complaints and questions.
Lew wrote back quickly on June 25:
Hello Allan,
I did receive your list of questions and concerns. I appreciate the opportunity to respond to these concerns. I would like to clear up any misunderstandings. We have recently assigned a new project manager to the SIP Program. The project manager is currently assessing the situation of the program. She will be attaching your list of concerns to her report to the President of spree.com later this week. We will answer your list of questions as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience and understanding. You will see a large improvement to the SIP Program.
Thank you again,
Lew Fowler.
I’ll withhold comment until Lew’s detailed response arrives.
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3. A happy SIP
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Among all the complaints about Spree.com were posts from Bill Barshinger who says he has been paid by Spree.com and is “rather happy” with the way his Spree.com business has been growing.
“Yes . . . they do send out checks . . . last week I received my fourth consecutive check in four months.”
Bill says large organizations such as the National Hockey League and the PGA Tour seem to have a good relationship with Spree.com.
Spree.com, says Bill, is doing things in a way totally different from both other network marketing companies and other partnership programs. “They have eliminated many of the negative aspects of both and are still in the process of presenting their opportunity in a more understandable form. Innovation is not always easy. But they do pay, and they do represent an excellent way for webmasters to increase content and earnings.”
So what is Bill doing right? You’ll gain a few ideas at his well designed site Lonehart.com
[UPDATE, May 2001: Spree was an utter disaster for me. I signed up 200 sub-affiliates and earned $2.]==============================================
4. MUST: subscribe to affiliate-l mailing list
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You can read some extremely tough talk on Spree.com, CyberThrill and other associate programs in the archives of the affiliate-l mailing list. https://groups.yahoo.com/group/affiliate-l/
I strongly recommend that everyone interested in associate programs subscribe to the free affiliate-l mailing list. I also suggest you lurk for a while before posting to it, and learn how it operates. It is tightly moderated by attorney Mark J. Welch, who does not suffer fools gladly.
It is designed for useful information, not free advertising.
I’ve spent some time studying libel laws – and tutoring on them for the University of Southern Queensland – and I’m not game to say some of the things Mark does. To benefit from his outspokenness, subscribe to affiliate-l by sending an e-mail to:
affiliate-l-subscribe AT MakeList.com
See the affiliate-l archives at https://groups.yahoo.com/group/affiliate-l/
[UPDATE: The affiliate-l mailing list was terminated in August 1999.]=====================================
5. AssociateProgram.com’s new sponsor
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AssociatePrograms.com has a new sponsor, CarPrices.com. Button ads will start appearing on the top right of the main page at AssociatePrograms.com soon.
I’m delighted to have CarPrices.com as a sponsor because, like Web Cards, its program enables webmasters to earn commissions without actually selling anything. All you have to do is persuade people to ask for a free report from CarPrices.com.
Investigate CarPrices.com now.
CarPrices.com is on my top 10 list of associate programs. That ranking has nothing to do with any advertising arrangement.
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6. Free-Banners pays for sign-ups . . . and there’s more
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Free-Banners.com is now the official banner exchange of AssociatePrograms.com. Free-Banners isn’t quite perfect but the combination of features offered makes it very attractive.
Like LinkExchange.com, Free-Banners will display your banner advertisement on other sites – free. For every 1000 times you display ads on your site, your ad will be displayed 500 times on other sites.
However, Free-Banners also pays you 10 cents for each new person you persuade to sign up.
The bright, breezy site with its easy-to-follow instructions should encourage a good percentage of sign-ups. You can probably expect a 10% sign-up rate, or $1 from every 100 people you send to Free-Banners.
You also receive 10% of all banner ads displayed by members who have signed up under your account. Imagine you persuaded 100 people to sign up. Say, for example, they all had low-traffic web sites, and put Free-Banners only on their main page, which attracted 100 visitors a week. To keep it in round figures, that would be half a million ad banners displayed. Your 10% of that would be 50,000 free banner displays a year.
Free-Banners has six more advantages:
Free-Banners has an excellent eye-catching button graphic you can use separately on as many pages as you like to gain attention to the program. As I update pages, you’ll see it scattered on more and more pages throughout www.AssociatePrograms.com.
Each time someone clicks on a Free-Banners button on your site, you earn 5 credits – more free advertising, even if the person doesn’t sign up.
Unlike other banner exchanges, Free-Banners allows you to promote Free-Banners in articles and in newsletters, greatly increasing your opportunities of signing up partners.
If you want to, you can convert your commissions to advertising credits. (You have to get 1000 sign-ups before you receive the far-too-high minimum payout of $US100. I suspect many people will click on the option which turns their commission into advertising credits. I suggest the minimum payout should be lowered.)
Free-Banners provides targeting so you can choose the types of sites where your banner will be displayed.
Each month, you get a chance to win 1,000,000 displays of your banner. Wouldn’t it be nice . . .
One way of using a banner exchange I’ve seen advocated is to notch up as many impressions as possible by placing a banner ad on every page of your site.
For use with Free-Banners, I’m testing a new banner ad which prominently displays the name www.AssociatePrograms.com . Even if the banner attracts an average clickthrough of only 1% it will get the name AssociatePrograms.com seen by a lot of people.
My guess is that, like me, you’ll be tempted by a banner exchange that actually pays you for signing up partners.
Do you know any high-traffic sites you can persuade to join Free-Banners? Imagine getting 10% of, say, 10,000 or 20,000 a day . . .
[UPDATE: We don’t promote this banner exchange system any more.]================================================
7. Quick review of Corey Rudl’s marketing course
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I promised to review Corey Rudl’s marketing course in this edition, but as usual I have far more material than I have space for, so I’ll keep my review brief. His course is excellent – by far the best Internet marketing information I’ve found and well worth the high price Corey asks for it. The fact that you can sell it is a wonderful bonus. I’ll tell you more about the course next week.
You have my personal guarantee that you will be delighted with Corey Rudl’s marketing course.
An amazing bonus is Corey’s Monthly Associates Newsletter. The latest edition, just received, describes techniques used by his most successful associates – ones earning morning than $US5,000 a month in referral fees. The #1 associate for the month ending June 15 earned $US8,775.
Even if you don’t want to buy the course, you can find lots of useful marketing information at Corey’s site.
[UPDATE: Corey died in a car crash but the company is still doing very well.]====================
8. Cheaper web hosts
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Jim Reardon writes:
I don’t know if you want to allow conversation on this issue, but the following post made me say ‘Hey . . .’
“If you still have a free web site it’s time to think big.
Take the plunge and sign up with a
reliable web host: Virtualisys.com “
I’ve heard a lot of talk on the issue of free homepages and whether or not they personally reflect on a site, and I don’t believe they do. I know of a lot of successful sites that have grown off free providers, my own included – https://www.freecenter.com/ . The problem is there are millions upon millions of sites hosted by free providers – so you get a lot of inferior sites mixed in with the quality sites. A lot of them won’t make money, either, for the simple reason that about 3 of every 4 I’ve visited plonk 12 different referral programs next to 15 different link exchange banners. Just because there are a lot of those sites doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of good ones.
If you really want people to get up and move – refer them to a decent host. Just because you get a couple bucks out of the deal is no reason to ask them to pay almost double or triple what a person who actually shops around gets. Two I’ve found are Digiweb (my current host that I’m quite happy with), which offers full-featured hosting for $20 a month, and IperWeb at https://www.iperweb.com/eng/ whom I haven’t used but has astounding prices for the features they offer.
Jim Reardon
Free Center
https://www.freecenter.com/
(I asked Jim for examples of people doing well while using free web sites, and all the people he named have, like Jim, switched to having their own domain, but they got a good start on free sites.)
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9. Internet Scambusters
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“Internet Scambusters” is an excellent newsletter published by Audri and Jim Lanford, of NETrageous Inc. A recent article discussed ways to cope to credit card fraud.
To subscribe to Internet ScamBusters, send an email to:
scambusters AT scambusters.org
and write SUBSCRIBE in the subject field.
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10. Designer Dick
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Kathleen Lambrecht of Designer Dick writes:
Will you be mentioning us in your Associate Programs Newsletter? If so, I’d like to give you some details. We are working with some health and medical professionals and will be donating money to safe sex education and AIDS research. We also have a new line of items coming up that are theme related. If you know about the “Over the Hill” products then you’ll recognize our new branded concept of Designer Dick parties with items such as party hats, paper napkins, coasters, plates and a complete instruction book on How to Give A Designer Dick Party are sold. Great items for every member of the family, your boss or Dick of the Week.
Keep up the good work. We’re quite excited about our site and proud to be a part of your referral system. We support you 100% on your splendid efforts.
Kathleen Lambrecht
Designer Dick International, Inc.
https://www.designerdick.com/associate.htm
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11. More reliable tracking
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Jim Reardon offers more good info:
(Jim is commenting on my statement that I use Extreme Tracking and that I presume that people who have graphics switched off aren’t counted.)
You may want to ask your ISP if they offer access to your domain’s access log — this would give you 100% accurate stats, instead of relying on (1) images being loaded and (2) the uptime of someone else’s server. Even if they don’t offer the access log, if you have CGI access on your system (and preferably server side includes) you can install a grand variety of trackers on your site that would not involve images (making them more reliable, and reducing the size of your pages) and give you more reliable statistics (no javascript). My favorite is AXS Tracker, available at https://www.xav.com/scripts/ (this can also track exiting visitors, meaning you can see how your visitors leave your site, or track your advertisements, etc).
Jim Reardon
Free Center
https://www.freecenter.com
(I like giving Jim free publicity. He has an excellent site.)
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12. Spree.com’s new movie store
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Mark Mangano writes:
Hi Allan, enjoy your site. I thought you might like to see this article I found today about Spree.com’s new movie store. I found the article at businesswire.com. (snipped)
(No signature. Mark’s site is at the still-on-paper stage.)
The article, “Spree.com Moves into the Movie Business — Internet Retailer Opens New Store with More Movies than CDNow and Better VHS Prices than Reel.com” was too hard to find at Businesswire.com so I went to the News section at Yahoo! and entered “Spree.com” in the search engine. I found the article at https://biz.yahoo.com/bw/980629/spree_com_1.html.
It says Spree.com is offering 65,000 titles.
Spree Movies says it has better prices and more titles than its biggest competitors, also offers videos, DVDs, soundtracks and books for some of the summer’s biggest blockbusters such as Godzilla – https://www.godzillamovies.com – and Dark Horizons: The X-Files Movie – https://www.xfilesmovies.com .
Mike Devers of Spree.com says that Spree now has 25,000 affiliates. Amazon.com has jumped from 30,000 to 60,000 in four months.
[UPDATE: Spree was an utter disaster for me. I signed up 200 sub-affiliates and earned $2.]====================================
13. No spam, says TitanicPosters.com
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I received a complaint that TitanicPosters.com was sending out bulk unsolicited e-mail. Unfortunately, the person complaining had trashed the e-mail and so I haven’t seen it.
I asked TitanicPosters.com to comment. Here’s the reply:
Allan,
I have never sent any unsolicited bulk mail out whatsoever, and certainly not any to promote TitanicPosters.com. There is a site that is claiming to be “offically licensed”, and is most likely illegally violating 20th Century Fox’s copyrights on their titanicmovie.com site by copying a vast majority of their site. It is called titaniccollectibles.com, and I actually was spammed by them as well (the person who complained to you is obviously confused). Here’s what they sent me:
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Official products from the blockbuster motion picture TITANIC are now on the Web, at https://www.titaniccollectibles.com . Not yet widely available in stores, licensed products include: (snipped)
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I really resent being accused of sending unsolicited bulk mail. I would never use that method to promote any of my sites. Instead, if I did want to advertise via mail, I would purchase voluntary opt-in lists such as those found at PostMasterDirect.com.
Regards,
Scott Wainner
System Optimization – https://www.sysopt.com
& TitanicPosters.com – https://www.TitanicPosters.com/
(Thanks, Scott. It’s nice to hear that TitanicPosters.com is one of the good guys.)
[UPDATE: Good guy or not, TitanicPosters eventually closed.]=======================
14. This month’s winner
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The winner for June of free banner advertising for *a year* on the AssociatePrograms.com site is Merle’s World – https://www.arrowweb.com/msmerle/ .
You, too, could win free banner advertising on AssociatePrograms.com for a whole year.
No, you don’t have to post my banner. Just post the following link anywhere on your site. (Of course I would like it prominently on your main page or a high-traffic page, but how generous you are is entirely up to you.)
<B><A HREF=”https://www.associateprograms.com/”>Associate
Programs Directory</A></B><BR> You can earn commissions by
referring customers to other web sites. This directory
gives you hundreds of programs to choose from.
<BR>
Tell me the URL of the page where you posted the link . . . and you will go in the monthly draw for a chance to win free banner advertising for a whole year!
If can’t find the link I’ll draw another name.
Yes, I’ll leave your names in the hat, month after month, so you get lots of chances to win.
Remember to tell me the URL where you posted the link.
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15. NEW articles in the Archives
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LinkShare – third party tracking of associate programs
Worried about whether you are being fairly paid for all those referrals? One option is to use third party tracking, for example by LinkShare.
AssociatePrograms.com/search/linkshare.shtml
Corey Rudl: successful Internet marketer
Marty Foley interviews the author of the Internet’s #1 top selling Internet marketing course.
AssociatePrograms.com/search/corey-rudl.shtml
Top 10 associate programs
AssociatePrograms.com/search/favourite.shtml
How to set up an associate program
AssociatePrograms.com/search/howto.shtml
OTHER ARTICLES:
Beware of scammers using ClickTrade
AssociatePrograms.com/search/clicktrade.shtml
A free way to understand web site visitors
AssociatePrograms.com/search/tracking.shtml
Building lasting affiliate networks
AssociatePrograms.com/search/building.shtml
All the best,
Allan Gardyne
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