Associate Programs Newsletter #9
CONTENTS:
1. Bad experience with cheats
2. MyPoints reveals global plans
3. ClickTrade – not a scam just a glitch
. . . and WebSponsors a big earner
4. Thought-provoking newsletter
5. Earning credits and $2 per sign-up with Click-Thru
6. E-mail discussion list for Amazon.com associates
7. AssociatePrograms.com wins another award
8. Free banner advertising for a year – another winner
9. What bugs you most about AssociatePrograms.com?
. . . you could win free banner advertising
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1. Bad experience with cheats
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Which is the better way to run an associate program? Paying by the click or paying by results? Richard Hauf of AShoppingGuide has revamped his associate program after a bad experience with a few cheats who wasted a lot of his time.
Here’s what Richard says:
We spent half of our administrative time tracking sites that were fraudulently clicking on our banner just to generate revenue. Case in point . . . we had an affiliate site that signed up and started running our banners. We noticed that their website was generating a click-through rate (CTR) of almost 5% (we cap our payout at 5%). What was very strange is the same banner they were running on their site had generated just a 0.5% CTR on hundreds of other sites on which we were running it. We even test ran a blank banner on their site and it still maintained a 5% CTR! Seemed fishy to us.
We then talked to the site and explained that we had review server logs and determined that we were receiving 10-20 hits from their site in a 5 minute period (out of 40 total visitors they were sending us in an entire day). We told them that we were considering dropping them from the program and reduced their payout cap rate to 3.5%. Lo and behold, the next two weeks their CTR dropped to exactly 3.5%. Pretty amazing huh?
What we have found is that a few (and I do mean few) websites are trying to make a living by clicking on banners that pay a fee per click-thru. If this is the only way they can make money, I truly feel sorry for them.
Richard Hauf
AShoppingGuide
(The revamped AShoppingGuide associate program pays commissions from $US7.50 to $US150 – or higher if they use a banner you design. Looks good. I’ve signed up to try it.)
[UPDATE: This site has vanished.]================================
2. MyPoints reveals global plans
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I praised the MyPoints program last week, but didn’t like the fact that the affiliate program is only for North Americans. Here’s an update:
Steve Parker writes:
Allan,
Hi, I’m Steve Parker, VP Marketing for MotivationNet and the MyPoints program. Thank you for your write-up . . . we are expanding the program internationally, starting with Australia, Scandinavia and the UK during the fourth quarter of this year.
While we agree with the Global Village conceptually, we are rapidly learning there are a number of practical barriers that must be addressed. Individual country regulations and restrictions, multiple language versions of our site, the ability/inability of our rewards providers to ship and/or service each individual country, and marketer interest (and a quality sales force to service their needs) all provide significant challenges to global expansion. We’re firmly committed to global expansion and we’re firmly committed to being a responsible corporate citizen as we grow. Unfortunately, this takes a great deal of time.
Also, I noted that you are publishing an article on pay-per-click models next week. One application of the MyPoints program is for a marketer to buy points that are given to MyPoints members for visiting their site. Cost is US$0.40 per unique visitor and includes a summary report of the aggregate demographics of all visitors (minimum order US$3,000). Fairly simple on the front end but we’ve put in place a tremendous amount of software to manage the back end to avoid the fraud & scams that compromise many of these programs. If you’re interested in seeing our approach, click on motivationnet.com/products/targeted.html
Thanks again for the mention and keep up the great work!
Steve Parker
https://www.mypoints.com
Your global expansion plans sound good, Steve, but all I was really suggesting was that you change your online sign-up form so that people outside North America can be associates.
MyPoints pays $1 for every sign-up and has an amazing success rate. More than 30% of visitors sign up for its rewards scheme. I would like to be allowed to join that one. If you live in North America you can join via LinkShare, which does the tracking.
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3. ClickTrade – not a scam just a glitch
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Jim Reardon writes:
ClickTrade has scammed me . . . you may want to put a warning up about them. (I had already, thanks, Jim.) Typically I sent about 100 clicks a day to advertisers, one day it was down to zero (all the same advertisers still had the same payout rate and were active).
Their system has stopped tracking click-throughs from my website completely, losing about $5 a day – not much, but fraud is fraud. This is the only advertisment/affiliate program I’ve ever experienced problems with.
(See my comments at the end of Jim’s letter.)
TRAFFIC-X
Traffic-X, under banner exchanges, now gives 10 click-throughs per referral instead of the old 4.
WEBSPONSORS
Also, under pay per click, I suggested WebSponsors – I’ve been dealing with them for almost 3 months now, and am quite satisified. I’ve received a couple checks already, and it’s the biggest money maker on my site, hands down. https://www.associateprograms.com/webs
WEB CARDS
Finally, about Web Cards – I joined off your site because of your great recommendations – wow! The offer is doing GREAT on my site! Thanks for the recommendation!
Web Cards WAS good – until it started spamming. Not recommended.]
Jim Reardon
Free Center
https://www.freecenter.com
Thanks for all the updates, Jim. Quite a few people have been having trouble with ClickTrade. I don’t think it’s a scam but a company whose program is still in beta testing.
Paul Coebergh of LinkExchange, which recently took over ClickTrade, says it is constantly looking for ways to enhance and improve the ClickTrade system.
Paul told the click-l mailing list that on August 3 “we slightly turned up our click filtering method by modifying the tracking system to more stringently check where clicks are coming from. As a result of this change, some clicks were filtered out. On Wednesday, August 5, we removed the modification.”
Paul says ClickTrade has a record of all the clicks that were processed in that time and on August 6 webmasters were credited the click balance and money earned for all affected accounts.
For more details – and other people’s complaints – see this week’s archives of the click-l mailing list FindMail.com/listsaver/click-l/
For a serious warning about the Electronic Newsstand see the this week’s affiliate-l archives at FindMail.com/listsaver/affiliate-l/
ClickTrade requires very careful, frequent monitoring. Next week I’ll have an article on a better option.
If you want anything free, a good place to look first is Jim’s Free Center https://www.freecenter.com . I don’t have any affiliation with Jim – I just like his site.
[UPDATE: Microsoft bought and abandoned ClickTrade. The affiliate-l list stopped operating in August, 1999.]===============================
4. Thought-provoking newsletter
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In I-Sales mailing list recently one post stood out because it made a lot more sense than many of the others. In the signature at the end was a link to Terry Robert’s free e-mail newsletter, NetNurturing Letter.
Just as I expected, it’s a great newsletter. The two issues I’ve seen so far, 114 and 115, speculated on the future of the Net, and gave 10 rules to make your company successful. It’s good, thought-provoking stuff.
[UPDATE: The troberts.com site and I-Sales both died.]=====================================================
5. Earning credits and $2 per sign-up with Click-Thru
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Hello Allan,
I just found out that I had the most sign-ups for the Click-Thru Network during July! I won 100 free credits. I am sure that is due to the listing at AssociatePrograms.com !
Dominica Anderson
webservant.com
Click-Thru Network is a banner exchange that guarantees click-throughs. They pay $2 for each person who signs up under you.
I had a look at it when Dominica listed Click-Thru in the Associate Programs Directory and wasn’t attracted enough to sign up, but since then I’ve seen Click-Thru buttons appearing on quite a few sites, so I think it’s time to reconsider.
You add your site to the directory at Click-Thru and members can earn credits by visiting sites from a list, and in other ways. (You have to choose five sites to visit after you sign.) If you like, you can join their banner exchange.
It’s an attractive, well designed site. Somehow, it doesn’t quite seem right for serious marketing, but probably a lot of people will be like me and join up for a free month’s trial to see if those $2 commissions start rolling in. It might work well on a site for teenagers or one giving advice to young webmasters.
Those strange people who try to make money cheating ClickTrade or AShoppingGuide should love Click-Thru. They can legally earn credits by visiting sites and clicking on Click-Thru buttons.
The first month is free. After that it costs $1 a month to be a member. You have to put a small, fast-loading graphic on your main page. You may also post banners on your site and ordinary links. At $2 a sign-up, it certainly looks worth trying.
It seems harmless enough. You’ve just earned another $2, Dominica. I signed up.
Click-Thru encourages you to e-mail a friend about the program with a message such as this:
Link here and I will earn ClickThrus:
click-thru.net/referral?ref=100344
If that friend signs up, your earn $2.
[UPDATE: Don’t waste your time with this kids’ stuff.]==================================================
6. Email discussion list for Amazon.com associates
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Christopher Knight of SparkList has launched Amazon-Associates, a non-moderated email discussion list “by, for, and about Amazon associates”.
The purpose is to “strategize” with associates on key issues such as marketing, presentation, promotion, and “learn from each other how to optimize our profit relationship”.
To subscribe: send an email to: join-amazon-associates AT sparklist.com
or for the digest: join-amazon-associates-digest AT sparklist.com
An unmoderated list with a potential membership of more than 60,000 associates? Can’t say I like the sound of that! I’ve signed up, but I don’t know for how long. Perhaps someone will volunteer to moderate it?
Amazon.com has just made two major acquisitions which seem to suggest it is planning to be a portal, says Matthew Broersma of ZDNN.
zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/zdnn_smgraph_display/0%2C3441%2C2125311%2C00.html
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7. AssociatePrograms.com wins another award
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Hi Allan,
Just wanted to drop you a note to let you know that I’ve just started giving out awards, and you won one. The About Women: Award Winners This is a real award, with no request for a reciprocal link (unless you want to, in which case you’re welcome to). So you can be proud of the award.
Ciao,
Cos.
https://members.tripod.com/thewomenof/
(It certainly does look like a real award, with the winners well displayed on the site. Thank you. Maybe one day I’ll start an awards page.)
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8. Free banner advertising for a year – another winner
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The latest winner of free advertising for a year on the AssociatePrograms.com site is Jodie McPhee of https://www.TrekPlanet.com
I’ve given Jodie a little surprise and put the banner on the main page at https://www.associateprograms.com . It’s a nice banner – looks good. I think I’ll leave it on the main page for a while. Don’t you wish it was your banner?
A new winner is drawn every month. You could win. It’s easy.
[UPDATE: This offer has closed.]==================================================
9. What bugs you most about AssociatePrograms.com?
. . . you could win free banner advertising
==================================================
The Associate Programs Directory is growing so fast that I’m going to have to make a few changes to the way the site is organized.
When I do it, I want to make sure I don’t remove features you like. So please tell me:
What do you like most about AssociatePrograms.com?
What bugs you most about AssociatePrograms.com?
How can I organize the site better?
Can you show me examples of better organized directories?
The three most useful answers will win FREE banner ads on AssociatePrograms.com for a whole year.
(If one of your answers is finding the server down, sorry about that. Two merged ISPs here have had a parting of the ways and I had sites with both of them!)
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All the best
Allan Gardyne