Associate Programs Newsletter #37
CONTENTS:
1. Open letter to a thief
2. How ScubaSource lured 200,000 visitors a day
3. Bangkok.com loves Anaconda
4. I really like Amazon.com but . . .
5. Time for a fresh look at Books.com
6. “Winning the Affiliate Game” a sure best-seller
7. Where do I find that $16 per trial download?
8. Snippets
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1. Open letter to a thief
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I’m angry and bitter. I’ve just been told that yet another web pirate has stolen huge chunks of my site and used them as his own.
The webmaster who alerted me today said: “He stole your entire site, even most of the referral links…”
Well, actually, the thief has made quite a few changes. He has switched my list of categories from the left side of the page to the right, and added a couple of spelling mistakes, for example. Like similar thieves in the past, he was even silly enough to copy my meaningless “Accessories” category, which I set up one day in a moment of temporary madness. (I must make time to fix that.)
He’s such a sloppy thief that on one page he has overlooked my name – Allan Gardyne – which he has cut and pasted into one of his pages.
Perhaps he’s just an ignorant schoolkid who doesn’t understand the laws of copyright. Perhaps he needs to read the excellent articles on copyright in I-Sales HelpDesk #176. (One of the first things to do in a case of theft is to copy the offending site.) Perhaps he doesn’t understand that he isn’t just cutting and pasting words on a screen. That’s my work, my livelihood, my business, he’s stealing.
Perhaps he thinks I’m Mr Nice Guy, and I won’t mind if he takes the words I wrote. Believe me, I do. It hurts.
Making a living on the Net hasn’t come easy for me. You think I’m the guy who lives by the beach in sub-tropical Queensland and has it easy, right? Well, that’s true only in my daydreams.
In reality it’s not like that. I’ll turn 50 next month and I don’t learn new things as fast as I used to. I’m a journalist, not a computer geek, and I’ve had to struggle to get the hang of this new technology. Because I live in a tiny village without a shop, for my first year on the Net every access cost me a toll call. A fluctuating power supply kept making my old computer crash. I got wiped out by a virus. I built a site and nobody came – well, almost nobody. A hacker froze my first message board, my main page disappeared from the server a couple of times . . . You get the picture.
But I’m persistent. I was in a job that I was determined to leave, so each time I was knocked down I climbed back up again and learned a little bit more. Every chunk of every page the thief stole was written on a plain text editor in raw HTML.
As anyone who has worked for a living on the Net knows, it takes an awful lot of time and effort to build a directory of 800 or so links on a niche theme. I know there are things wrong with my site and I’m frustrated because there never seems to be enough time to put everything right.
For the past year I’ve worked just about every hour I can, usually 16 hours or more, seven days a week. I didn’t care. I was building a business ready for the day when I could “quit my day job” and be my own boss.
The only day I’ve had off in more than a year was Christmas Day. That’s what it took to succeed, to build a business which my wife, Joanna, and I can live on.
Right now Joanna is away at an aunt’s funeral in another city. I should have gone with her, but I was scared of arriving back to find another 300 emails in my in-box. I know I’ve got my priorities seriously out of whack. (Fortunately, I have an understanding wife who shares my dreams.) I’m striving desperately to find shortcuts, trying to automate things, and I understand that I need an assistant if I want to stay sane.
I haven’t quite sweated blood and tears, but sometimes it feels like it.
So, thief, when you copy chunks of my site, that’s what you’re stealing. It feels as though you’re trying to rip my heart out. I hope you’ll be decent enough to reconsider and find a more honorable way of making a living.
No, I’m not going to name you. As I said, you could be just an ignorant schoolkid who doesn’t know any better. I hope now you understand.
OK, so now you’re all feeling sorry for me and just aching to do something to help, right? : – ) Well, if you really insist, here’s one small thing you could do that won’t cost you anything. The Associate Programs Newsletter has climbed to number two at Scott Owen’s BestEzines.com. If you find my newsletter useful and if, like me, you think Scott has an excellent site, how about giving BestEzines.com a prominent link somewhere? Everyone wants to save time by subscribing only to the best newsletters. You’ll be doing your visitors a favor if you show them how. Thanks. Here’s the URL: https://www.BestEzines.com
[UPDATE: This site has changed.]That’s not enough? Want to do something more? OK. Scott has built a great site at BestEzines.com, but he hasn’t really got the hang of getting good publicity for it. He needs your help. Next time you’re visiting a web site and see a list of web resources, have a look to see if BestEzines.com is there. If it isn’t, how about e-mailing the webmaster and telling him BestEzines.com deserves to be listed? Thank you. You’re a true friend.
Feel free to copy this article. In fact, I’d appreciate it if you did.
Allan Gardyne
https://www.associateprograms.com
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2. How ScubaSource lured 200,000 visitors a day
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If you want some SERIOUS exposure, it pays to mention your site to some key players online, says Thomas Jennings, whose Scuba Source Network soared to 200,000 visitors a day this week.
If you live in the United States, perhaps you watched a CBS/Eyemark show, “Wild Wild Web”, which airs in 88% of the United States. The show’s web site is GetWild.com, owned and run by Alta Vista.
“Guess who was the main feature?” says Thomas. “That’s right! All my scuba sites, The Scuba Source Network. Not to mention I got some major FREE exposure all over Alta Vista’s search engine and you know how big that is.”
The show mentioned other diving sites but all the underwater videography was done by Thomas and his partner for the show. If you go to the featured article about the show online at GetWild.com/theshow/214/scuba/index.html you will see a paragraph mentioning the Scuba Source Network, and near it is a Real Video clip of the producer, Beth, which Thomas filmed underwater.
“On average my site gets between 15,000 and 20,000 hits per day,” Thomas says. “During this last week that the show has been airing I have watched my stats jump to 120,000+ per day! It maxed out at 200,000. That’s IPs! Not just ‘requests’. I have also been flooded with advertising requests and sponsorship offers to the tune of 50 to 100 of them every day. I run some of the sites off my own T-1 and servers and the main others off a local ISP. The ISP had to move my site over to one of their empty 10mbps because the shared 10mbps line I was on was getting to overloaded!
“The best news of all was there was no real secret,” Thomas says. “All we did was continue to send them press releases and suggest a show be done on our site topic.
“Believe me, it was the smartest move we ever made for this site. True, I do this for a living and have for a couple of years but this site was my own. Not for a client. The Scuba Source Network has over 20 domain names and they actually mentioned three of them and BOOM things took off.”
Thomas’s advice: “Just don’t give up! It will pay off. We now have had three calls from other producers wanting to interview us and one news station! Once you get one break the others don’t want to be left behind. They want in on the action and its a win/win/win situation for you! Give it a try! Good luck!”
The Scuba Source Network can be found at Scubasource.com
Here’s another example of how getting a mention in the right place can draw traffic. Jim Reardon told me today that his site https://www.freecenter.com was mentioned on ZDNet in an article on free things on the Net: zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_3080.html
The result: “It’s a little after 10pm,” said Jim, “and I just broke 20,000 page views. At this rate I may very well end up with triple my regular traffic today.”
Know anyone at ZDNet? Maybe it’s time you did.
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3. Bangkok.com loves Anaconda
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Still wondering if you ought to try the Anaconda Perl script which aims to help you get more 15% commissions instead of 5% commissions from Amazon.com?
Bangkok.com has been using Anaconda for the past month at https://www.bangkok.com/books – which serves up more than 1.6 million page views monthly.
“It has been working great for us – I love it,” says Adam Stanhope, President of Bangkok.com, “Thailand’s #1 Web Destination”.
“I just received my summary report from Amazon for the fourth quarter of 98 – the period prior to our implementing Anaconda on Bangkok.com. Most titles that were purchased during Q498 through Bangkok.com were purchased through the search interface and paid only 5% commission. I am excited by the prospect that we should be able to turn all of those types of sales into 15% commission now that Anaconda is being used.
“Additionally, since Anaconda returns the search results on a Bangkok.com served page (as opposed to an Amazon page) we are serving more ads and retaining more visitors to the site.”
I hope Adam will give us some statistics when the next results come in – they should be fascinating.
Amazon.com is fairly cool about the script and doesn’t endorse any such third-party tools – but doesn’t forbid its use either. Amazon.com won’t offer you any support or technical advice on it, but I’m told that Kevin Patch, who sells Anaconda for only $US20, is very helpful.
You can find full details on Anaconda at qwallet.com/anaconda
If you try it, I’m eager to hear before and after sales figures.
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4. I really like Amazon.com but . . .
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Oh dear, another little complaint about Amazon.com I received this week.
Gert Gremmen writes:
Hello Allan,
I really like Amazon.com’s program and it generates a lot of money for a little effort. However, if I look at the stats I rarely find any 15% item in it. Amazon states that it pays 15% to books that are sold based on a direct link. Once I put a tremendous effort in promoting one title only and I managed to sell one piece in a controlled manner, I knew who bought it and when the Amazon statistics came up, I found this book to be listed at 5% ALTHOUGH it was mentioned as a direct link. I reclaimed at Amazon.
Their answer: “We only pay 15% on direct links books that are ALSO sold at 10-30%.”
I think this is not well explained on their site, and it makes it hard to recommend books that are related to one’s site content. The books one likes to recommend are rarely discounted. I thought of this when I read your Anaconda story last week. The usefulness of this program is much less then one thinks because of this 10-30% discount restriction. Amazon did not reply to my letter saying that this makes it hard to motivate associates to recommend books they know, have read, or are enthusiastic about.
Conclusion: one might as well use a search box as recommending specific books (seen from the point of revenue).
Gert Gremmen
ce-test, qualified testing
https://www.cetest.nl
Hey, go easy on Amazon.com, folks. You can’t expect too much generosity from a company that’s still making a loss. I’m sure your conclusion is wrong, Gert. Recommending specific books draws attention to them and adds value to a site much more than a search box.
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5. Time for a fresh look at Books.com
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I was planning to write about Books.com this week but it’s been a stressful day so I’ll wait until next week. If you have some recent experience with Books.com to share, I’m keen to hear about it.
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6. “Winning the Affiliate Game” a sure best-seller
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The latest book by affiliate programs consultant Declan Dunn, “Winning the Affiliate Game”, is going to be a runaway best-seller. I’ve sold more copies in three days than I usually sell of all the other marketing books and courses combined.
It took only two days for Declan’s book to topple Corey Rudl from my Top 10.
“That’s all right for YOUR site,” you may be thinking. “Will it sell on mine?”
Yes. It probably will. Here’s why. According to Netcraft there are 4 million websites – and 235,000 new ones being added each month. An awful lot of those people are scratching around, trying to make money with affiliate programs – and not doing well. They have a desperate need for the excellent, concrete examples that Declan gives on how to make money with affiliate programs.
Need more proof? OK. My website is a special case, so let’s ignore the frenetic sales I had in the first three days.
Remember that this is a two-tier commission program, paying 25% to you and 10% to your sub-associates. After my first three days selling, the second tier sales kicked in, as webmasters who had bought the book now started selling it. My own sales have now slowed down but the second tier sales are increasing. I’ve just checked my online stats. On Wednesday I sold 16 copies and 11 of them (way over half) were second-tier sales – made by other people.
I know I’m breaking my own rules here. I should be telling you about the book’s contents and about the free marketing course you get with it, instead of telling you how much money you can make. Declan modestly says the marketing course he is giving away is worth $197. I gulped when I read that last week – it reminded me of Corey Rudl’s pricing – and decided not to mention it. However, now I can see that the people who bought the book have started using Declan’s advice to boost their sales.
How do put a value on a marketing course? This one is obviously worth a heck of a lot more than $197 because it gets results. And it comes FREE with the book.
Just one more thing. Declan knows that simply pasting in the code for a banner ad is about the least effective way of trying to succeed with affiliate programs. He has a lot of much better ideas – and you can use them to sell his book. You can see one clever way of marketing the book, combining text and an eye-catching graphic, on the main page at https://www.associateprograms.com . It’s easy to do – Declan provides the HTML code ready for you to paste in.
To find out more, buy the book. You’ll be glad you did.
[UPDATE: This product is no longer available.]===============================================
7. Where do I find that $16 per trial download?
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Kalman Kaminer writes:
Hi Allan
I discovered your website last week and I love it . . . I saw on your home page . . . $16 every time someone downloads TurboTax software, if you are an affiliate of
WebSponsors . . . but nowhere on their site do they mention it.
Kalman Kaminer.
You have to join first. After you have joined WebSponsors you will be shown a list of more than 80 offers – pay per click, pay per sale but most of them pay per lead – which you can advertise on your site. One of them is for TurboTax. WebSponsors has a new referral program, so you will earn 10% of the earnings of any sub-associates you persuade to join.
Good luck.
[UPDATE: This affiliate program has closed.]===========
8. Snippets
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Spam from WHERE?
Like a lot of other people, I was amazed this week when I received spam using a fake email header from a good company, Web Cards. I joined the throng writing in disgust to Joe Haedrich. “You can’t imagine what wrath you incur from the Internet community when you are involved in spam – inadvertently or otherwise,” Joe said. One of Web Cards’ new marketing guys hired an outside firm using what was described as an “opt-in” marketing list. Joe apologizes sincerely for the error. I’m keeping Web Cards in my Top 10.
Best affiliate programs
Fair way to pay associates
My article “Don’t put your trust in cookies” continues to attract fascinating and useful responses. Adding his say this week is Greg Hudson of Hudson Software, who says there is only one logical and fair method of paying associates.
Tracking affiliate commissions
Cookies last 3 years
Hudson Software, which specializes in unique niche market office productivity tools for Windows, has a program paying a generous 40% commission – an average $120 (Australian) per sale. There’s a three-year expiry on the cookies; and associate ID tracking in the client database.
hudsoft.com/associate-program/index.html
Chasing high commissions?
Webmasters chasing high commissions may like to try Gwen’s Fine Jewelry and Gifts – https://www.gwensjewelry.com/ . Gary Iverson of Gwen’s says the average sale is about $US30 to $40 and 1 out of 10 will be a sale exceeding $100 and 1 out of 20-25 will exceed $300. “Our traffic around the holidays exceeds 50,000 views per day; about 4000-12000 on off days,” Gary says. “Our visitors come and go a fair amount and are just looking; but they come back when something is needed for holidays, birthdays, weddings, etc.”
Not found – but it’s there
I mentioned last week that I searched for Jaclyn Easton’s “Striking It Rich.com” using the Acses.com search form and the book was reported to be cheapest at Shopping.com. Aalize of https://www.Aalize.com says that Shopping.com doesn’t even sell the book. I checked. I couldn’t find it either, using title, author or ISBN number. I complained to Acses. They found the book at Shopping.com, and it costs only $12.47 plus postage. The system isn’t perfect, it seems.
CyberThrill Casino
I’ve received another complaint about CyberThrill Casino, this one from Mattie Woollard, who says he didn’t get paid. The “Not recommended” note remains beside CyberThrill in the AssociatePrograms.com directory.
Interviewed
I’ve just been interviewed as an “expert” on affiliate programs. As you probably know, an expert is a drip under pressure. Seems very appropriate today.
netpreneur.org/connect/am/expertQA_gardyne.html
Advertisers get a bargain
I visited one opt-in mailing company this week where the price was 20 cents per person for people interested in marketing. For my tightly targeted list of newsletter subscribers, I charge just under 1 cent per person. I don’t have more than 5 ads in a newsletter. Watch the ads. See how many of the advertisers return for more. You’ll be impressed.
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No more than 5 ads in each edition.
The circulation is verifiable by a trusted third party.)
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HAVE YOU BEEN RIPPED OFF?
If you’ve been on the ‘net for any length of time, chances are
good that you’ve been taken. While there are tons of great
(and reliable) sites – others are outright SCAMS! And, if you
have used affiliate or associate programs – there are some who
just won’t pay. To help deal with this problem, a new site
is being launched – ripoffsites.com
( ripoffsites.com/ ) the end of February. You
can list your complaint on our site. We will then notify
the site in question, and give them an opportunity to respond.
If they don’t (or not satisfactorily) – they will be added to
our “Stay Away” list! Before the site is launched, we will
still help resolve issues. If you feel you have been ripped
off, send an email to ripoffsites AT royal-den.com . (The service
is free). Stop being ripped off – and help make the Internet
a great (and safe) place to spend – and make – money!
All the best
Allan Gardyne
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