Making money on the Internet isn’t easy. It just SEEMS easy after you’ve done a lot of hard work. Colin Fabig, the guy I interviewed for this week’s main article, has been doing a lot a hard work – and it’s starting to pay off.
If you know you really ought to be using viral marketing but haven’t figured out how, this article should spark some ideas.
CONTENTS:
1. Wotch.com combines affiliate and viral marketing
2. Internet Business Forum boosts commission by 50%
3. Most companies’ strategies “don’t make sense”
4. Amazon.com pays new-customer bounties
5. Learn how to avoid scams
6. Top 10 best-selling associate programs
7. Thought for today: The key to failure
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1. Wotch.com combines affiliate and viral marketing
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Wotch.com is a software company which uses viral marketing to earn affiliate commissions and also has its own affiliate program.
In its best month, wotch earned $100,000 (US) in affiliate commissions.
Its free Mini-cards, Mini-books and Mini-browsers are brightly colored, self-installing desktop programs with cheerful animations and silly sounds.
Users are persuaded to send them to friends, who send them to friends…
*The technique is attracting a lot of action.
*Wotch has 200,000 to 700,000 visitors a week.
*Its newsletters have 1 million subscribers.
*More than 250,000 Mini-browsers have been downloaded.
*More than 250,000 Mini-books have been downloaded.
*More than 1 million Mini-cards have been distributed.
Wotch, which has 12 employees, is not yet making a profit but it’s “not losing a lot”, says the company’s CEO, Colin Fabig.
Colin, 36, who has a business degree and a background in new media, has faced interesting challenges at wotch.
“Because we’re based in Australia with predominantly US visitors to the website, we’ve had time and credibility hassles with reaching potential direct advertisers and so have relied totally on affiliate merchants for our revenues,” Colin says.
“We also have time hassles reaching them as well, to discuss how we can optimize our affiliate relationship. We now target only merchants who have high CPA (cost per action) with easy sign-ups or high CPC (cost per click) merchants for our website. That has narrowed the field down to fairly few which we concentrate on.”
Here are the things Colin looks for in an affiliate program: “Easy to get to, sign up and/or understand, FREE, and real product (free chocolates/cash) offerings.”
In his experience, good affiliate programs are iwin.com, MailBits.com, DealTime.com, LeisurePlanet.com and ClubMom.com.
https://www.iwin.com
https://www.MailBits.com
https://www.DealTime.com
https://www.LeisurePlanet.com
https://www.ClubMom.com
Wotch has earned about $75,000 (US) from the ClubMom program.
“I’m hoping for more free real world products – seeds, lipstick, perfume, free film, cheap jewelry and the like would be good.”
Affiliate earnings vary from about US$20,000 in the worst months to the best so far of about US$100,000.
As well as promoting affiliate programs in its newsletters and mini-browsers, wotch promotes them on the “last” pages of the site before users leave the site.
The company also generates revenue from sales of custom software.
It raised $A500,000 in venture capital in March – and has already spent it.
“We’ve just got a second round of about twice that amount,” says Colin.
He urges affiliates to demand higher cost-per-click payouts from merchants.
“Why should they get free traffic and branding?” he says.
“Affiliates are like shopping malls. We send traffic to see their shops – we can’t force them to buy the stock if they don’t like it or the way it’s presented, but they should still pay rent!
“Besides which, the effective CPC on banner advertising is around $1 to $2, so it’s time the merchants stopped spending so much on banner and sponsorship advertising and pushed up their CPCs and CPAs! At $0.15 to $0.30 per click (dependent on the boredom and difficulty quotients of the site – i.e banking, billing, price comparisons, e-tailers and search engines are BORING/DIFFICULT /EVERYWHERE and should pay more) we could all make a decent living and e-traffic would increase tremendously.
“Come on all you top 100 Internet companies, stop wasting money advertising offline and using useless banners – support the little guy and grow your own online economy! Small business is what makes America great – give them half a chance and you’ll see amazing results as they flourish and the money starts to circulate around the new economy, rather in the old economy. Excuse the virtual podium – but I’m passionate about this issue,” Colin says.
“For instance, a client of ours recently spent US$50,000 in a banner advertising campaign and paid an effective $10 per click and $1,000 per acquisition for sign-ups to a really good high interest rate online savings account offer. Now affiliates would go mad to send them traffic at even a $0.30 CPC!”
Colin says the wotch affiliate program, which is run by Be Free, is going very well.
“As a top affiliate on the web ourselves, we have structured something that we would go for. We offer $0.25 for any visitor who sends or signs up for any of five different offers on our site.
“According to our statistics, on average 60% of people who come to our site sign up for something, so that’s effectively $0.15 CPC.
“Note: Wotch offers of Free Fun Stuff are NOT BORING. We have over 15,000 affiliates and would love to get more – and we will work individually to tailor whatever package a committed affiliate needs, to make them more money and us more traffic!”
[UPDATE: Wotch.com disappeared.]For more research on viral marketing see:
Seven classes of marketing virus
senyak.com/taxonomy.html
New and virulent strains
senyak.com/viralmarketing.html
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2. Internet Business Forum boosts commission by 50%
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Internet Business Forum (IBF) has boosted its newsletter subscription commission from 40 cents to 60 cents.
“Because of information gathered from AssociatePrograms.com readers, the Internet Business Forum is raising its payout rate by 50%,” says Edwin Hayward of IBF.
Edwin says he’s grateful to Associate Programs Newsletter readers who helped IBF debug its stalled program.
The Internet Business Forum provides free info, tips, insights and advice to help you work the web.
https://www.ibizhome.com/1904.htm
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3. Most companies’ strategies “don’t make sense”
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Marketing guru Al Ries, who has written such seminal books on marketing and branding as “The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Marketing” and “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind”, says few companies have an Internet strategy that makes any sense.
The most widespread misunderstanding of the Internet, according to Ries, is the idea that advertising can be used to establish online brands.
The thought-provoking interview is well worth studying:
webreview.com/pub/2000/07/28/feature/index03.html
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4. Amazon.com pays new-customer bounties
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If you’re one of Amazon.com’s 500,000 associates, you’ll already know this…
To celebrate reaching the half-million mark, Amazon.com is rewarding associates with a bounty on new customers for the last two quarters of this year.
You need 10 or more new customers to qualify. Considering the lifetime value of a customer, the bounties aren’t terribly exciting, but could add up nicely if you already have a busy site with a busy bookshop.
Quarterly bonuses will be calculated according to the following new customer threshold levels:
New Customers Bonus Payment
0-9 $0
10-19 $20
20-49 $50
50-99 $150
100-199 $350
200-499 $800
500-999 $2,250
1,000 + $5,000 + $5 for each new customer over 1,000
“For example, earn $20 for generating 15 new customers – generate just 5 more new customers and jump to the $50 bonus level,” Amazon says.
Amazon.com associates earn “up to” 15% of the sale price on individually linked books that you feature on your site and 5% on anything else that is bought through your links, including CDs, videos, DVDs, toys, consumer electronics, software, lawn and patio equipment, tools and hardware, and kitchenware.
If Amazon wants to get really serious about adding to its customer base, I reckon it ought to improve its affiliate agreement. Then affiliates would promote the company more enthusiastically.
Restrictions on what you’ll earn include:
If the would-be customer can’t decide whether to buy, leaves and returns the next day and purchases the product… sorry, you don’t earn a commission.
Referral fees for products other than books, music, and videos are limited to a maximum of $10 per item.
You’re not allowed to buy products through your own referral links.
More details:
https://associates.amazon.com
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5. Learn how to avoid scams
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Online scam expert Neil Shearing has written a free “anti-scam” report called “Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Online Scams and How to Avoid Them!”
The report explains different online scams, gives examples and explains how not to get caught. Topics covered include Chain Letters, Envelope Stuffing, Multi-Level Marketing (MLM), Pyramid Schemes, Internet Auctions, Investment Scams, Credit Repair Cons and Online Job Opportunities.
Neil is asking readers of the free report to pass the file on to their friends, relatives and family members. He’s hoping for a viral marketing effect – “the first educational virus”.
The report is available as a professionally produced Adobe Acrobat file. You can download it here:
https://www.associateprograms.com/scamfree
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6. Top 10 best-selling associate programs
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Here are the top 10 best-sellers – the associate programs which are earning the most income for AssociatePrograms.com:
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7. Thought for today: The key to failure
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“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” – Bill Cosby.
All the best
Allan Gardyne