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Couple Questions on Affiliate Programs (In: Members Lounge)
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jjofriends
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 52
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Posted: 2003-Aug-10 05:58
Long time since I've posted around here (even had to reregister)...
Just to pass along a couple of tips I've tried and have worked, and also to ask if anyone else has other ideas...
A couple of the tips on this forum I can vouch for as being great tips. One was writing articles for a site. I wrote a few articles a couple of years back for a fairly large site in the area of web design, which I've done for awhile. They did give me a minor boost, and they sometimes stay up for a long time.
One of the pieces to my site was an advice column, so I pulled up Google and tried some different searches. I stumbled across a couple of advice message boards that had people posting almost daily, but no one was home to answer them. I posted responses, and used the ability to include a link in my reply. (Nothing obtrusive - just a small link at the end of the post, and that was allowed under the board's TOS.)
The idea of adding games to the site is one I've used with every incarnation of this site. I did another Google search for affiliate programs relating to games and was surprised at the number of quality, high-profile games sites that offer the ability to add their games in return for small concessions. The games have been a nice little boost and then get people looking around the site towards other offerings I have.
Finally, I used a bit of word of mouth - told friends, posted a link in my AIM profile (oddly, it works, since a lot of college students get bored and start checking their friends' AIM profiles), etc. Overall, the traffic's been ahead of what I was expecting for this point in the game (~5 weeks since relaunch), although I am planning on doing more of the above to try to continue the momentum.
Now that I've practically written a novel, are there other techniques that people find for sites that target one or a couple of niches? The site's geared primarily towards college students, but about 25% of my traffic is falling outside that range right now, and I think the content's diverse enough to reach other age groups. Still, it's a fairly new site, so I'm not expecting to be competing with Yahoo! or anything 
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thejenn
Joined: Aug 08, 2001
# Posts: 9196
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Posted: 2003-Aug-14 21:36
For the college crowd, viral marketing always seems to be a good hit. That age range doesn't really like being "marketed to" but they do like to check out what their friends like.
Perhaps some type of game, or humerous item that people are inspired to pass on. Let them do the marketing for you. Add a tell a friend option to your page so that people can quickly and easily send an email. Or, try adding some really funny postcards that they can send via email.
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jjofriends
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 52
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Posted: 2003-Aug-26 01:06
The "Tell a Friend" option is one I've thought about before, but for some reason have a memory blackout before actually implementing it. Time to get to work on that! Thanks for the reminder.
The games idea is one I've been working with too - I don't have the resources to have games developed exclusively for the site yet, but I do have a couple of ideas that when the resources become available I'll have developed for the site... some exclusives should help.
Viral marketing does seem to be working too, and I've thrown something in my AIM profile that my friends are checking out and passing along. One of my bosses heard from one of my co-workers about the site, so I know people have been checking it out
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thejenn
Joined: Aug 08, 2001
# Posts: 9196
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Posted: 2003-Sep-05 18:45
I've always thought that it was interesting to see how word gets passed around. A friend of mine started one of those e-mail chains in college just to see how long it would take for it to go full circle and come back around to him. (I think it was three or four months...)
I hope you'll come back and share some thoughts wiht us after you've tried a few things. Let us know if your tell a friend feature was successful, or if you came up with something else to try instead...
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jjofriends
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 52
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Posted: 2003-Sep-08 01:23
Thanks again for the tips - I've been taking advantage of the tips I've gotten from you and some other friends of mine, and all seem to be working in their own way.
Surprisingly, Search Engine traffic has suddenly made a difference in my traffic, thanks to the recent crawls done after a friend of mine linked to my site (despite shutting down his site for the most part, he still gets a ton of traffic, and my PageRank recently spiked to 4 in Google).
I'm going through the Tell a Friend options right now, but here's a question about that: does it make more sense to have the form on the same page as the article itself, or is making people click through OK? I searched through a good number at one of the big CGI script indexes, and most require you to click a link before you can enter the names.
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thejenn
Joined: Aug 08, 2001
# Posts: 9196
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Posted: 2003-Sep-08 13:56
I would put the tell a friend form on the same page as the article. The more work someone has to do to send that link, the less likely they are to do it.
Another option, test it both ways and see what the difference in action is.
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lazerdesigns
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 3
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Posted: 2003-Sep-09 22:26
I'd put the Refer a Friend link on every page - in the same place, so people get used to it being there. Maybe with the navigation.
[ Message was edited by: lazerdesigns 09/09/2003 02:31 pm ]
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jjofriends
Joined: Eons Ago
# Posts: 52
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Posted: 2003-Sep-11 04:25
lazer, funny you should mention that...
I have redone certain areas of my links to do just that - I only installed it two days ago, so I'll have to see how that goes. Incidentally, once I changed those links around, I started seeing an increase in mailing list signups. So that's a nice side note from that suggestion.
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