Surf the Mind

Posts Tagged ‘marketing’

I’ve recently been bombarded by links to Russell Brunson’s Affiliate Evolution offer from other marketers. For $10, the package certainly is a steal. I no more than glanced at what was offered for the price before I hit the buy now button.

And then I saw that the payment system was NOT Paypal.

Now, I don’t have anything particular against using my credit card for purchases like these. It’s just that I’ve noticed a lot of forced continuity offers popping up in the marketing arena recently, and if the marketer isn’t using Paypal, there’s no telling how insanely difficult it might be to unsubscribe from a costly subscription if you happen to get sucked in.

So as soon as I see a non-Paypal payment page, I take a second, or even third look, before entering my credit card.

Affiliate Evolution is actually ABOUT continuity offers so it’s obviously going to have one. To Brunson’s credit, the page does not have a FORCED continuity offer. It’s just a little sneaky.

When you get to the payment page, you’ll notice that the total on the shopping cart is not $10, but actually closer to $40 because of a shipping charge. The shipping fee is NOT for Affiliate Evolution, but rather for a “trial month” of a monthly newsletter plus a DVD. After the ‘free’ month (which you pay a huge shipping fee for), your credit card will be charged ANOTHER $40 a month until you unsubscribe. And remember, this isn’t a Paypal subscription, so you will have to do something that’s likely more onerous than going to Paypal and hitting the cancel button to ditch the extra fee.

I nearly stopped the purchase process right there, but I took another look, and below the cart, there is a checkmarked box where you can choose to select the bonuses.

If you deselect that checkbox, you can continue the payment process for only the $10 you wanted to pay for the products advertised.

Your shopping cart will immediately show only $10 once you do this. You’ll still be required to enter a shipping name and address, but since you’re not being shipped anything, you can just enter “NA” for the address, city and postal code.

Then all you’ve got to do is wade through the one time offers (yikes! are there really that many of them!?) and grab your files. For a mere $10 it is well worth the price, even if you’ve got to jump over a few minefields to get them.

After all, you can learn about continuity offers without getting sucked into them, can’t ya?

The state of New York just passed a bill that could cause no end of grief to marketers who use affiliates to promote products. Amazon is challenging the bill as unconstitutional, and New York based affiliate marketers should be on their knees praying Amazon wins.

In most states, a company only has to collect taxes if they have a physical presence in the state.

New York has passed legislation re-defining physical presence to mean a company has a physical presence if it has even a single affiliate based in the state, or if a New York based site “earns a referral fee for sending customers to an online retailer.” Think Google Adwords on the New York Times?

If Amazon.com fails to defeat the state, it isn’t far fetched to suggest that Amazon might cut off all New York affiliates rather than lose sales by effectively raising prices for all the customers in that well-populated state.

And if Amazon.com does lose, look to other states to follow with a tax grab of their own, making Affiliate programs a lot less appealing for a lot of larger companies that currently run them.

Related links on:

• Slashdot
• NY Times
• News.com
• Arstechnica.com
• ValleyWag
• Gothamist

While I prefer to take my Saturdays completely away from my computer, Sundays usually include a little bit of work and a little surfing for fun time.

This Sunday, my leisurely surfing time was done by clicking Entrecards, dropping as I went. (Ick, that sounds a little vulgar, doesn’t it!?)

Here are my favorite finds from my crawl:

1. Marketing Tools Review has this mother of all Adwords tips lists. If you can’t find even one tip in there to make your day, you’re a greater Adwords expert than I. (Well, that’s not saying much, really. But check it out anyway.)
2. Telecommuting Diva offers her list of 4 warning signs of a Work at Home scam. I’ve met more than a few people taken in by these sorts of scams over the years. Reading a warning list like this might have helped a few of them. The rest have never listened to any good advice before in their lives. It’s not likely they’ll start now.
3. Think Blogger experiments with Entrecard Chain Dropping with some interesting methodology and encouraging results. The carpal tunnel effect will slow him down before long, I’m sure, so the rest of us can catch up.
4. Justin Khoury interviews Digg user msaleem. While it’s not the most probing interview I’ve ever seen, there are a few tips to pick up by reading this interview with Digg’s second most successful user.
5. JTPratt discusses ways to track search engine rankings on your blog. I should take his advice. I am very bad at tracking my blogs, but heck, I’m still not even sure WHY I blog. I think you can tell from the Adsense placements here that it sure ain’t the revenue.
6. Canucklehead reminds Entrecard users to step away from the computer now and then. Not sure what he’d say to those folks who blog in order to get away from their families. That’s not me. I think.
7. And although I’m a godless heathen now, I was raised Christian enough to appreciate Church Jokes. “…the sermon topic will be “What is Hell?” Come early and listen to our choir practice.” See, I’m still laughing