Evangelizing Your Affiliate Network - Give Them The Cream

Some time ago, when I was an affiliate marketer selling online hosted (ASP) solutions and information products. I recall a number of instances, where new products were rolled out to the affiliate network, prior to them being made available to Internal mailing lists and indeed existing customers.

This conveyed a clear message to me... That the affiliate merchant was prepared to put the affiliate publisher first!

They removed the dominant competition of the merchant, enabling the small, agile affliliate (like myself, to quickly benefit)

As a result, I become more and more evangelical!

Today, Superbreak will launch a brand new airport hotels section with 2 new micro niche products. Providing their affiliates with the following benefits.

1) Better conversion - addition of airport specific landing pages.
2) New product 1 - airport lounges
3) New Product 2 - airport rail tickets

Here's the best part!

They're NOT providing specific pages for airport lounges!! or airport rail tickets!

So… The smart affiliates who quickly optimise pages for these terms will benefit from the micro-niche products WITHOUT competition from the merchant - Superbreak.com

Looking at the Overture keyword suggestion results for Airport Lounges in particular, this means easy money for the agile affiliate marketers (providing they can rank well for airport lounge variations.)

Searches done in March 2007
Count Search Term
2106 airport lounge
237 airport lounge at newcastle
205 manchester airport lounge
174 heathrow airport lounge
148 usa airport lounge
147 newark airport lounge
141 gatwick airport lounge
100 edinburgh airport lounge
98 airport lounge at glasgow
85 aberdeen airport lounge
80 stansted airport lounge
76 airport cardiff lounge
72 bristol airport lounge
72 airport lounge luton
70 airport lounge access
69 airport liverpool lounge
65 airport bradford leeds lounge
62 executive lounge at manchester airport
60 airport executive lounge
53 birmingham airport lounge
39 airport humberside lounge
38 vip lounge manchester airport
33 east midlands airport lounge
32 airport lounge pass
29 airport executive lounge pass priority
22 airport lounge norwich
21 access airport edinburgh lounge
21 airport area gatwick lounge
21 dubai airport lounge
21 airport lounge leeds
20 airport harbour island kermits lounge
18 escape lounge manchester airport
18 airport executive gatwick lounge
18 airport glasgow lounge sky
17 aberdeen airport executive lounge
17 uk airport lounge
17 airport vip lounge
16 airport lounge offer
15 airport knoxville lounge
14 airport boca lounge raton
14 lounge sanford airport
12 airport akron lounge
12 airport albuquerque lounge
12 airport beach daytona lounge
12 airport belfast lounge
12 book airport lounge
12 cheap airport lounge
12 airport el lounge paso
11 airport lounge terminal 3 heathrow
11 airport lounge heathrow terminal 4
11 airport executive lounge newcastle
11 airport lounge worldwide
10 airport and business and lounge
10 credit card airport lounge
10 airport lounge card
10 airport doha lounge
10 glasgow airport executive lounge
10 airport fresno lounge
10 airport harrisburg lounge
10 airport lounge priority pass
9 airport executive lounge access
9 executive lounge birmingham airport
9 airport city lounge oklahoma
9 airport free lounge
9 airport lounge membership
8 1 airport lounge manchester terminal
8 free airport lounge access
8 airport lounge manchester airport
8 airport aviance lounge
8 bcp airport lounge
8 airport cairo lounge
8 heathrow airport executive lounge
8 vip lounge at gatwick airport
8 airport lounge nassau
8 sydney airport lounge
7 2 airport lounge manchester terminal
7 airport arrival lounge
7 athens airport lounge
7 diner club airport lounge
7 discount airport lounge
7 airport dominican lounge republic
7 dublin airport lounge
7 all executive airport lounge at stansted
7 airport free heathrow lounge
7 airport gatwick lounge viewing
7 heathrow airport vip lounge
6 access airport card credit lounge
6 airport ba lounge
6 bangkok airport lounge
6 airport book dominican lounge
6 manchester airport business lounge
6 cheap airport lounge at heathrow
6 hong kong airport lounge
6 airport lounge moi
6 airport lounge orlando sanford
6 airport lounge schiphol
6 airport lounge tucson
6 airport lounge wilmington
5 airport amsterdam lounge
5 airport book lounge schiphol

It looks like quite a gold mine

Analogous Relationships Viral Applications & Nuclear Weapons; Business & War

Viral widgetization isn’t exactly nuclear physics but it does obey the same rules.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_chain_reaction#Effective_neutron_multiplication_factor

I’ve put together a simple excel model. Feel free to play with the figures. (click here to download)

The model doesn’t take into consideration saturation effects or secondary user acquisition from clicks generated by a distributed widget.

Viral benefits of widgets..

1. They’re persistent... ie once in place equal effort is required to remove it leading to stability over time.
2. They’re centralized enabling version control and forward compatibility.
3. Unlike a distributed viral email, a widget is non-memetic and cannot evolve or mutate and won’t blow up in your face. :)
   

If we also recognise the analogous relationships between business and war as well as the analogous relationship between nuclear physics and viral distribution, then a super-viral business application is analogous to a nuclear weapon…


Within the Travel industry, TripAdvisor & WAYN.com are both major nuclear superpowers…

…if you're interested in joining the nuclear arms race you'll need a laboratory

Oh… and it’s probably going to take a number of attempts before you get it right.

Thresher's Viral Voucher Could Cost Big Money this Christmas

UK wine merchant Thresher allowed their vouchers to go “wild”. The 40% discount voucher, which was seeded on the website of South African wine company Stormhoek and was downloaded more than 800,000 times prior to it hitting the mainstream news.

The offer was originally intended for Thresher’s suppliers and staff, according to one BBC report but proliferated virally by email, and blogging.

The influx of visitors brought their server crashing to its knees and the story was immediately covered by mainstream UK media. The media coverage appears to have been a disaster recovery strategy as they appear to be in fear of their bottom line profitability. While the raised brand awareness will be most welcome, its uncertain how much this will cost Thresher’s in lost revenue, due to the seasonal offer of 40% discounted drinks.

Ah well…. millions of pounds worth of free media publicity, just before Christmas is quite a result, especially given it all appears to have happened without the help of a viral advertising agency.

Let this be a reminder of the power of really simple viral marketing.

Viral Marketing Expert Paul Reilly (according to Google)

I was doing a little ego-surfing and noticed that I was ranking #2 on Google for ‘UK Viral Marketing Expert’ and #10 for ‘Viral Marketing Expert’ it lead my to question Google’s algorithm, since this is a relatively new site, I started to wonder whether Google associated my name “Paul Reilly” with the term “Viral Marketing Expert”

Historically, my old site “www.SystemsInPlace.co.uk” ranked #1 for “Viral Marketing”, and there are many references to my name “Paul Reilly” in the context of being a “Viral Marketing Expert”

See here

.... until I torched it, and got blocked as a spammer, since those days I’ve cleaned up my act, and practice only, white hat, spam free techniques ;)

As I was saying… I wonder if Google is somehow associating my ‘Paul Reilly’ with the proximity text UK Viral Marketing Expert….

Any Ideas.. comment below.