Last update: 6/9/01; 19:42:38.
Thoughts and ideas as they occur to me.
Tuesday, November 21, 2000
Affiliate Program Management Software. Do you want to start an affiliate program of your own? Can you afford the thousands of dollars it takes just to get started.
eCommerceControl offers the software that will help you manage such an affiliate program.
I have not used this software, other than to sign up for a couple of affiliate programs, but it offers lots of features -- not for thousands of dollars, but for only $25 per month.
If you click on the title, it will take you to the company's splash page. Click anywhere on the graphic and you'll go to the page that tells about their service. You can also join their affiliate program, which may help pay for your use of their service.
Now, if their software does what it claims, and I have no reason to believe it doesn't (old habit of a consultant), even small businesses can have hard-working entrepreneurs promoting your business for you. You have the option of setting the payments based on many different criteria including a flat fee, percentage of sales, single-tier, two-tier, and others.
This service provides a shopping cart and checkout feature, credit card processing (only $.25 per transaction, no additional monthly fees, and they say you can process other credit card transactions through them as well, even if you don't have a merchant account), the service is web-based so you don't have to install anything on your website. It provides up to 150 customizable reports. More information is available in their overview section.
As with any service, be careful. I'm seriously considering this service for promoting my business. I'm already an affiliate, and I'll be doing some research on them in the near future.
If you're wanting to market your products at a very reasonable cost (remember, except for the $25 per month fee, you only have to pay when you actually sell something), have hundreds or thousands of affiliates promoting your business, and hopefully increase your profits, you may want to consider this service.
From their sign-up page, "There is a one time set up fee of $150. And the monthly fee is $25. The $25 monthly fee includes 5,000 System Hits and will be more than enough for most sites. After you reach 5,000 System Hits in any given month, you will be billed just $1 per 1000 extra System Hits.
"Let's Put This All In Perspective: Suppose you ran a growing but reasonably successful site. And let us say your site was visited by a total of 10,000 unique visitors, you ran 25,000 pop up ads throughout your affiliate network and signed up 2000 new subscribers over the course of a month.
"Your entire cost for the month would only be $57!"
Note in the above projected monthly costs that unless you get more than 5,000 unique and original visitors (or other things defined as system hits) you won't go over the basic $25.00 monthly fee. Also notice the one-time setup fee of $150.00
I've learned to be skeptical of things that sound too good to be true, so I've emailed them asking for more information, such as a physical location, professional organization membership, bank references, and such. I'll let you know what I learn. 2:00:48 PMMagnets and Decals to Advertise Your Business. Web-Magnets offers a line of removable magnetic signs for your vehicles that advertise your business, including your website URL. They are reasonably priced and appear to be of good quality. If your vehicle isn't magnetic, they offer decals, which aren't removable.
Web-Magnets has just announced a new two-tier affiliate program, and I urge you to take advantage of it. Just click the title of this article to go sign up and start making money promoting their advertising magnets and decals. They pay 20% on the first tier and 5% on the second.
Nathan Cain also produces a good newsletter with marketing ideas that you might find to be useful. I enjoy reading it. 1:11:17 PMBootstrapping the Two-Way-Web. On yesterday's ScriptingNews, Dave Winer posts a link to a new white paper he's written about the "two way web." If you're interested in the new wave of web content management tools, I suggest you check out the article linked to the title of this item.
In that article, Dave says, "We already know that editing a website in a browser is fantastic.
"Late last year UserLand shipped Manila which is a browser-based content management system. Now there are approximately 15,000 Manila sites. That's a good-sized installed base of people getting the benefit of easy browser-based editing. And the growth is not just happening at UserLand. Pyra Labs, a San Francisco company that makes the Blogger browser-based weblog editor, has started 50,000 new websites in roughly the same time period. Zope, a Python-based content management system, has experienced comparable growth in the open source development community. All the growth is happening around a single key idea -- editing the Web in a browser makes it easy.
"Here's how it works in Manila, Blogger and Zope. To create a new story or news item, click a button in the browser. Enter the information. Click on Submit. To edit some errant content, click on the Edit button, make the change, click on Submit, and you're done. "
There's more in the white paper, including links to more information, and an invitation to start your own free site using Manila on one of UserLand's servers. 12:17:51 PM
© Copyright 2001 John L. Dilbeck, jd@johndilbeck.com.