Associate Programs Newsletter #47
CONTENTS:
1. Good news spreads like wildfire
2. Exponential/wildfire/domino/organic marketing
3. Hey Wayne, the commission is too low
4. Pay a little now – or a LOT later
5. New program designed to succeed
6. New FREE way to promote your web site
7. Craig Belcher rescues The Hormone Shop
8. That impossibly long URL
9. Joe Haedrich says he's sorry – again
10. Getting the message through without spam
11. Snippets
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1. Good news spreads like wildfire
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In real estate, I'm sure you know, the three rules are: location, location, location. In marketing on the Net, I reckon the three rules are: make friends, make friends, make friends.
I really need an assistant – or two – because for months I've been too busy to do anything but minimal marketing of AssociatePrograms.com.
However, wonderful new friends keep spreading the word about AssociatePrograms.com and my newsletter.
I'm not sure if I can truly call the following people “friends”, but they are certainly acting as though they are. Thanks, guys.
Scott Owen has put the Associate Programs Newsletter at the top of his list at BestEzines.com.
Larry Swanson of BannerWorkz.com – the firm which makes banners which really do work – has put me on his front page. So has Patrick Anderson at ADNet International.
I was reading Corey Rudl's latest newsletter and was surprised to see a favorable mention of AssociatePrograms.
The other day George Matyjewicz, “The Rainmaker”, of GAP Enterprises – gapent.com – told the Marketing-L: “Allan does a terrific job from his pole house on the beach down under. http://www.associateprograms.com/ Say hello for me.”
Then I received a delightful surprise when Jim Reardon of https://www.freecenter.com and https://www.humorplanet.com told adnet-l mailing list about AssociatePrograms.com: “It's the only site I make sure I visit every day.”
Today I received a double treat.
Robert Wilkens of Homebusinessaward.com told me that I had won the Home Business of the Month award. This one is a REAL award. A full description of AssociatePrograms.com will remain on Robert's site for a year.
Next came word that I had won a USA Today Hotsite award. “You should get about 1500 visitors from it over the next 3 days,” says Matt Mickiewicz of Webmaster-resources.com . (Matt should know – he won in June, 1998.)
I checked my stats. Wow! 12 out of my last 20 visitors had come from USA Today – https://www.usatoday.com/tech/hotsites/front.htm . I topped the 1,000 visitor mark today.
How does all this apply to YOU and your web site? Hey, I'm not going to write the rules for you. Have fun making them up as you go along.
Want to start a wonderful new friendship? Or a loose, informal win-win business partnership? You don't need anyone's permission to give praise in a mailing list, in your newsletter or on a message board – or even on the main page of your site.
You don't even need to tell the person you've done it. Do it well enough, and your little favors will show up in their traffic reports. You won't remain a secret admirer for long.
If you find a really GOOD company which has a complementary business, you can even have a bit of fun competing to see who can do the most to promote the other one.
I just checked my stats. That banner they made for me at BannerWorkz.com is now averaging a click-through of 2.8% – a heck of a lot better than the 0.5% I used to average.
Remember that name: BannerWorkz.com.
(They didn't pay me to say that. They just just designed a banner that worked.)
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2. Exponential/wildfire/domino/organic marketing
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You probably already subscribe to John Audette's excellent I-Sales Digest discussion list, so you'll know that members are voting on alternatives to the term “viral marketing”.
“Viral marketing” is a great concept but has bad connotations so the I-Sales community (everyone has a community these days) is voting on a more positive term. I suggested “wildfire marketing” because wildfire – a form of silent lightning – is amazingly fast, awesome to watch and pops up in unexpected places.
Sometimes my wife Joanna and I sit out on the deck of our pole house watching a sub-tropical storm, and saying “Wowwww!” to each other. It's more fun than watching American sit-coms.
My “wildfire marketing” suggestion made it into the top five, but it looks as though it will be thrashed by “exponential marketing”. The five finalists are: exponential, wildfire, referral, domino and organic.
Once the winner has been decided, John wants to use his marketing brilliance to get the term widely accepted.
Exponential? Reminds me of algebra. Yuk! Where's the zing? Where's the imagery?
Thousands voted to choose the five finalists, but so far only a few hundred have voted to decide the winner. Wouldn't it be fun if a guy who lives in a pole house among gum trees in a little fishing village in Queensland, Australia, came up with the winning word? Well, I think it would be anyway :-)
At least John would have a story to tell, instead of being trapped into trying to sell “exponential marketing”.
Only existing I-Sales members are allowed to vote, so if you haven't already followed my advice to be part of the I-Sales community, you don't qualify to vote.
However, if you're not a member, I strongly recommend that you subscribe to I-Sales. Then you'll be able to join in the next marketing wizardry which John and his community dream up.
[UPDATE: John sold I-Sales and the discussion list faded and died.=======================================
3. Hey Wayne, the commission is too low
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I'm been promoting Wayne Yeager's Unclaimed Domains on my main page. It's a brilliant idea – a list of 260,000 names which can give you ideas for a new site, or a name for the topic in which you are passionately interested.
It was easy to think of a way of writing a heading to catch webmasters' attention – I ended up with “Grab a good name before it's too late”. On my site Wayne's list of ungrabbed names sells readily, giving a better return than most people get from a banner ad. In 14 days I earned $59.50. Unfortunately, I can't give you exact stats on my traffic. (I messed up my tracking code by using TextPad with “Save with hard breaks” switched on. Before that, I'd been getting about 700 or 800 visitors a day.)
Sorry, Wayne, but I've dumped your program from my main page because I think it doesn't pay enough – only $3.50 a sale. I reckon Wayne ought to increase the price from $20 to $30 – the product is worth it – and boost the commission to $15.
If he did that, I'd put it back in a prominent spot. At $15 commission per sale, I would have made $255 instead of $59.50.
In the meantime, I'll experiment with other programs. If I had a Webmaster Resources page, UnclaimedDomains.com would be useful there.
[UPDATE: Wayne sold Unclaimed Domains to internet.com, which later dumped it.]====================================
4. Pay a little now – or a LOT later
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If you STILL haven't bought a domain name, I suggest you rush over to UnclaimedDomains.com and grab a good name before it's too late. A good domain name really IS an excellent investment.
Rick Popowitz told Ad-Marketing mailing list this week that he paid a domain-name broker $1,750 eight months ago for two names: e-vitamin.com and e-vitamins.com.
John Ferber paid $10,000 for joke.com six months ago, and says he made his money back on it in four months from ads on the site.
“I consider it a good investment,” John said. “The person I bought it from told me he was offered $17,000 for it the day after we did the formal exchange/sale.”
What will the name YOU haven't bought yet be worth tomorrow?
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5. New program designed to succeed
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Here's a new program I've just joined.
Kathleen DesMaisons, author of the best-selling book, “Potatoes Not Prozac,” has just released a new program to help you lose weight and stay thin – “Your Last Diet!”
Unlike traditional “diets”, Kathleen's program is ongoing and dynamic – you can receive daily information, support and feedback to help you with your own unique challenges. You even have access to Kathleen's personal consultation via the Internet.
This program was highly recommended to me by Kathie Verrette, who recently joined ADNet International. The marketing side is well planned. The web site is highly professional, designed to sell, and after you sign up, you'll receive a marketing course to help you succeed in selling the program.
It is two-tier program, paying a generous 25% commission on your sales and 10% on the sales of your sub-associates.
[UPDATE: This affiliate program is no longer available.]=======================================
6. New FREE way to promote your website
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The Acses guys have launched a new free service called MailSwap. Similar to banner exchanges or link exchanges, MailSwap lets you exchange e-mail ads.
“This way you can get free promotion for your web site – just by sending e-mails,” says Christoph Janz of Acses.
If you join MailSwap, e-mail ads – usually 2 or 3 lines of text – will be included in the emails you send, and your ad will be included in other members' mails. For every 3 email ads you send, you will get 2 email ads in return. The remaining 1 email ad is used to keep MailSwap free.
To prevent spam, the number of emails that a user can send a day is limited to “a certain number”. Spamming is forbidden.
If you try MailSwap, it makes sense to use it to promote your web site or newsletter, not revenue sharing programs. That way, you have a chance of getting repeat business.
I won't join – I don't like the thought of other people's ads being attached to my e-mail. However, if you don't mind that, this free service seems to make sense – it means your ads will go to people who wouldn't normally see them.
[UPDATE: MailSwap has vanished.]=========================================
7. Craig Belcher rescues The Hormone Shop
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Norman Rose of The Hormone Shop https://www.thehormoneshop.com/ says they advertised that their affiliate program would start in February. Unfortunately, the company hired “was not able to perform”, Norman says. “We received promises and no action.”
Then Norman saw a recommendation I wrote in this newsletter about Craig Belcher and his AffiliateLink, and “we were soon up and running”.
The Hormone Shop has a two-tier program, paying 5% on first and second levels – for at least a year.
I've been recommending Craig Belcher for about a year now. His service has always been very good and just keeps getting better and better.
If your one-tier or two-tier revenue sharing program needs rescuing, try Craig Belcher at AffiliateZone.com.
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8. That impossibly long URL
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Cheryl Ho of LinkShare.com says the l-o-n-g Outpost.com link is indeed the code for an email link.
“However, it is meant for use within HTML e-mail,” Cheryl says.
“The merchant name is hyperlinked to the merchant site, and a 1×1 pixel is added so that we can record the impression activity of all links embedded within an email. This allows us to report back to the merchant with conversion ratios that distinguish between regular textual links, email links, banners, search boxes, storefronts, etc.
“If the email is not in HTML, then the affiliate would simply use the URL per the HREF. I realize that even this code may be a bit long, and we are currently working on ways to shorten the code.”
I'm pleased to hear it. Most newsletters I receive use plain text, not HTML.
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9. Joe Haedrich says he's sorry – again
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“I'd like to apologize to members of the Associate Programs community (Hey! I've got a community, too) for our feeble attempt at unsolicited e-mail,” Joe Haedrich has told the Associate Programs Message Board.
“Web Cards has not made spam a part of its marketing program and will never do so,” Joe says.
Joe has an excellent product – colorful postcards with a picture of your web site on them – and he has always worked hard to keep customers and associates happy. Maybe I'm a bit soft and in an unusually good mood today, but I've decided to give Joe another chance. Reformed spammers are welcome in the AssociatePrograms.com directory (whoops, sorry, community).
[UPDATE: Unfortunately, Web Cards continued spamming.]============================================
10. Getting the message through without spam
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Michael Harris of FishSearch.com says he hates receiving spam and it's hard to know when you are violating someone else's space.
“If I find interesting fishing sites that I would like to send personal invitations to be affiliates to, is that considered spam? Is it only the automated programs that are distasteful, or is it all unsolicited emails?”
James Bickers of Bidshop.com , who is starting a certification program for online shopping sites, has a similar dilemma. “I want to invite online stores to apply for this program,” he says.
They obviously already know they they are going to have to tread VERY carefully. Here's one way I've used to initiate contact with a few web sites. I've found a typing mistake or a dead link and told the webmaster about it – and nothing else.
The news I really want to tell is included in my signature. No one has ever complained about that. And it's pretty easy to find typing mistakes and wonky links on most sites – including mine.
Feel free to give these guys advice on the message board.
http://www.associateprograms.com/discus/index.php
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11. Snippets
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No ad filtering, thanks
I've thought of a new category of revenue-sharing programs which I don't list: Adult, multi-level marketing, and now ad filtering. (Ad filtering software is designed to detect the presence of banner ads and not show them on your screen.) One ad filtering company told me: “We are getting close to 8,000 downloads a day now.” Sorry, that's not my field.
eToys.com grows
The expansion continues: eToys.com, which bought Toys.com a year ago, has bought BabyCenter.com.
“Not worth it”
The Perfect Presence program has been discontinued. “It was decided that the time and money it was taking to keep the program running was not worth it and we have decided to concentrate our efforts elswhere,” Brian Welch says. “All commissions that have been earned will still be paid each and every month.”
Never more than 5 ads . . .
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All the best
Allan Gardyne
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