RE: An important message for all Serious Bloggers

After taking the time to download the plugin and review it’s functions it does appear that it does not offer anything that is not already available other than the tied in affiliate links to their back end upsell. Having logged in to the site a number of times users are presented with different OTO’s. (One time offers) Pushing a variety of Internet Marketing Products.

A couple of issues that have already been expressed by others considering it is that it only works with wordpress. It has no other functionality. If you wish to pipe your blog post to your twiter account you can already do that by using www.twitterfeed.com and manage an unlimited number of feeds from blogs or other value added subscriptions you have that you may want to share with others, following you on twitter not just limited to a wordpress blog.

As far as adding your twitter feed to you blog you can add it via rss feed or a multitude of other applications available that do not require you to opt-in to a marketing list to take advantage of. All blogging systems will allow you to pull in a rss feed in your sidebar. Seeing the application in use it does not appear to do more than include an affiliate link back to “feed my blog”, thus effectively bleeding PR and link juice back to their sales page.

Soren has even stated that the USP (unique selling proposition) is the fact that people can earn commissions by referring people back to their site based on the OTO’s that users are subjected to.

This plugin may be acceptable for use if your blog caters to the “Make Money Niche” of online marketing which I have seen few successful in doing. Most blogs are tied around niches outside of that over hyped segment. If that is your cup of tea by all means jump in and get placed on another marketing list and push others in that direction.

A “Serious Blogger” outside of that niche would never dream of placing a leak like this on their site, especially with the products being offered in the OTO. It will just be another way to alienate your readership and subject them to daily emails for products they may not need. Blogging for most is a passion with the income being a secondary facet.

Soren has had some very good stuff in the past but in my opinion this was not a well thought out offering. I may be wrong please leave your opinion.

For those those that don’t know a Micro Site is a landing page used by car dealers as an extension of their main website to capture leads. It can be completley generic, model specific or even very niche targeted, but it is a separate branding message and lead generation source for the dealer. If used properly it can provide huges SEO benefit or used in PPC marketing.

What I am finding from the Micro Site providers is that they charge exorbitant fees for dealers to use a landing page that they do not own. At prices ranging from $200 to $600 a month for the vendor to maintain control of the property. At those kinds of fees you would expect to own the property outright at the cost of a one month payment for design work alone and minimal hosting cost should be less than $10 per month.

It is amazing that dealers do not understand that they are basically renting a property that these vendors try to tie them into a contract for a year or longer pushing the real cost up to at a minimum of $2400 to a more realistic industry norm of around $3600 a year. As someone who markets many different products online using small 3 page landers (Micro Sites) it is amazing that dealers do not see through this.

While some of the technology that these providers do use meets the industry norm such as XML form captures and inventory integration it is amazing that dealers willing pay the fees for these properties, that they do not own, just for these reasons alone. Inventory integration on a micro site is really not needed to capture leads for specific models and even then if the page is designed properly the inventory could be framed in or linked out to the dealers main site. The XML form integration is used by the Internet Lead Management software to process leads in an automated fashion which still could be accomplished by a person responsible for managing Internet leads at the dealership if a suitable alternative can not be found to push the leads in an XML format.

Let’s face it an Internet Lead for a car dealer is worth considerable more than one for a small ticket item and deserves human interaction immediately and not placed in some automated system to handle the whole process if the dealership is serious about using the net to sell more cars. That does not mean that you do not use automated follow up on unsold leads, to think differently than that would be insane. However actually having a human place that lead in the follow up system, the ILM, would encourage that individual to consider the lead as a valuable asset to the business and take the necessary steps to convert them to income for the business and the individual.

Don’t get me wrong, micro sites are the future for online automotive marketing but to tie yourself into a contract for thousands of dollars per year for a property you do not own is a poor investment of your advertising dollars…

There are many different URL shortening services available on the Internet. What made me take note of this one is the sales pitch they use to recruit you to their service.

Go2-URL.Com PREVENTS the #1 reason
affiliate marketers lose sales commissions

All affiliate programs provide you with a ’special’ web address (URL) to give prospects to buy their product or service. These URL’s are often very long, and always very confusing, but more importantly they are avoided by many who would click on them. You see, some people will not click on an affiliate URL because they do not want other people making money on their purchases. This reluctance to click affiliate URL’s results is lost commissions, and that is money out of YOUR pocket!

Don’t let this ‘commission theft‘ occur to your marketing efforts. The Go2-URL.Com system will take those long, confusing affiliate URL’s and make them very short and not distiguishable (sic)as an affiliate web address.

They are claiming that their service will protect your affiliate commissions, while at the same time stealing commissions from marketers by overwriting their cookies.

I first became aware of this when I was sent unsolicited email from a well know Internet Marketer promoting another service. I saw that Amazon cookies were being placed on my machine when I clicked on his link and decided to investigate further. While I was not able to capture those cookies I decided to do an independent test.

I created a tracking link for www.imscamalert.com and captured the Ebay cookie being planted on my machine. Nowhere in the terms of service at go2-url.com do they tell users that they will be placing their affiliate cookies when using their service.

The problem I have with this is they are touting that using their service will stop “Commission Theft” while at the same time they are potentially stealing from their users.

For those that do not know, cookies are how your affiliate commissions are tracked and credited through various affiliate networks. The Ebay.com cookie last for 30 days if you are recruiting new sellers and 7 days if you are promoting and auction through the CJ.com network. If you are actively using this service and promoting Ebay.com online, the service that claims to protect you may actually be taking your income.

The law of the land in affiliate marketing says the last cookie wins. Imagine you send a surfer to Ebay.com from one of your sites and they place an auction bid, which will end in three days. Now if that surfer clicks on any go2-url link and and goes back to Ebay.com to bid on any other auction or to increase their bid on the auction that your referred them to you have lost several commissions. Even worse is if they sign up top become a seller!! All of your prior work promoting Ebay.com goes down the drain because they clicked a link from them.

This may or not be a violation of the Ebay.com affiliate program. I have asked for their feedback and will post a follow up when Ebay.com gives their feedback. Good luck in your online marketing effort just make sure to do due diligence before taking any sales page for granted. Make sure you test services before using them in your marketing efforts if not you may be poorer for the process.

<<Update>> I have asked at the Ebay.com forum and this practice of “Cookie Stuffing” appears to be a violation of Ebay.com TOS.  Still waiting for official word from Ebay.com.