Re: ONLINE-ADS>> NEW FORM OF ADVERTISING?

Leonid Delitsin (silent_at_netcom.com)
Mon, 21 Oct 1996 06:23:19 -0700 (PDT)

• Messages sorted by: [ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]
• Archive Home Page
• Search
• Next message: Peter Hartley: "Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Why it is a *HUGE* mistake to try and trick search engines..."
• Previous message: Larry Dooley: "Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Position your site with the major search engines!"
• Maybe in reply to: Shawn Seabrook: "ONLINE-ADS>> NEW FORM OF ADVERTISING?"

Rob Frankel writes:

> Leonid, is this really projectable? Moreover, is it trackable? And finally,
> is it COLLECTABLE? It sounds plausible in theory, but still not viable in
> practice.

Below is an example of the message that I am getting at the end of
each letter when somebody uses my cute russia_at_usa.net forwading
address:

> | 14kt yellow gold Noah's Ark Bracelet * $175.00 |
> | http://www.purchase.net/cgi/order.exe?LocationID=na17 |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The underlined words illustrate the tracking process.

Le me list some few examples that I have seen recently. Some of them
appear in this mailing list. I will use "ID" instead real ID's and/or
URL's.

1.

FREE PAGER*(800) 956-2846*Certificate #987-607-730*Also Sell Pagers
Become a Representative for a Company, Pay Nothing and earn money by doing
nothing. <A HREF=http://freedomstarr.com/?ID> Click here </A>
~~~

This .sig belongs to a PhD in Internet Security who got several people
almost fired by filing false complaints to their administration. Quite
a celebrity. FreedomStarr is an MLM phone company.

2.

Win Cash and prizes filling out surveys! ->
http://www.greenfieldgroup.com/cgi-bin/websignup?ID
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Belongs to a teenager whose "bikini" page was shut down due to
extraordinary traffic. Greenfield Group collects surveys.

3.

http://goodusa.com/?ID
~~~~
For LOW International long distance calling
and a greate business opportunity.

Belongs... to our own Sputnik's user. It's quite an experience to get
spammed by your own user, who wishes you to build his downline.
Goodusa is another long-distance venture. This author carries 4 URL's
per sig.

I am sure that there are many more. Note that all these .sigs
advertise products or services, not corporate pages.

My point: there is no sense for P&G to sponsor one individual Joe's
signature. However, many companies welcome Joe Happyrep to resell their
services. This "bizop" becomes a part of Joe's identity and a part of
his signature.

I also have seen such signature of an Amazon.com affiliate. Does she
really promote her own business? She is paid 8% comissions on sales.
I believe, she promotes both her "own bookstore" and Amazon.com

The number of of the prospective reps is enormous. Of 4,000+
Commonwealth Network members (http://www.simweb.com), many already are
reps, dists, and resellers. They serve a million of impressions a day
all together.

They all want to be paid, and all explore whatever opportunity the Net
provides. If P&G can rich them all -- it can sponsor their .sigs

I would be very interested to compare how much money are currently spent on:

* banners, per-view model (probably, the companies, represented by SOFTBank,
WebRep, Ad-Venture, etc.)

* banners and links, per-click payments (some networks, like eAds, BannerMania,
etc. Most of the adult networks.
I also heard that P&G was going to pay Yahoo! per click.)

Most of the famous $71MM revenues probably belong to two groups
above.

But how much of these are barter $$?

* comissions
- Amazon.com affiliates, memberweb.com affiliates, and others.
Today Amazon.com has 1,500 affiliates
(my old post, http://sharat.co.il/teneta/marketing/1/0229.html)
I don't remember Amazon.com projected sales, but the affiliates
should earn 3%

MLM reps - some of them do not sell anything themselves. Their
primary job is to promote their pages and build downlines.

There are not less than 1000 such sites.
See Appendix I

- 1,000 "adult" sites work on comission (sort of subscription-based
co-op or monopoly)

Their total revenues should be not less than a million of dollars
per month
See Appendix II

* reselling
Many MLM's
Curiously, recently somebody inquired if I am going to resell
his banner design on my Banner Olympics page. No, I am not ;)
But this convinces me, that such reselling has an element
of advertising.
* mailing lists
* e-mails

As to P&G in your example - they already do not want to pay per view.
They want to pay per click. Perhaps, some day they will only pay
comissions (as soon as some advertising network will find enough
members, who agree to work on comissions).

P&G will not pay some particular Joe per views or per clicks.
The "bizop" for Joe is to become Joe Happyrep and get a new nice signature:

Joe Happyrep
http://www.bizop1.com/?happyrep
<A HREF=http://www.bizop2.com/?happyrep> Click here! </A>
<A HREF=http://www.bizop3.com/?happyrep> Business Opportunity! NOW! </A>

We can note that some of these companies like to send unsolicited e-mails.
Well, not only them.
Guess who sent this nice message to some 705 addresses some few days ago:
----------------------
Hi, everybody!

Webmasters and administrators!
Sorry if this message is duplicate for you.

Microsoft now is organizing the Best East and Central European Active
Web site competition, wehere everybody can take part.

[...some contest follows...]
----------------------

At least now I know an approximate number of East and Central European
web servers, counted by big guys ;)

Appendix I

Business Opportunity. Multilevel Marketing.

How many .sig's ending up with .com/?ID should we expect in
a nearest future?

Not less than a thousand.

Here are Yahoo! data on MLM's:

Health: 539 sites including:
Cell Tech 108
Life Plus 106
Herbalife 48
USANA 24
NewVision 17
FreeLife 15

Telecommunications: 194 sites including:
Excel 34
Destiny Telecomm 22
Peoples Network 17
FreedomStarr 13
Strategic Telecom 13
WealthCom 13

Travel Agencies: 12 sites including:
InteleTravel 3
Newsletters: 7 sites including:
Debt Free 5
Software 11 sites

Other 268 sites
Total: 1032 sites listed by Yahoo

Note: this doesn't really say, how many reps MLM's have.
Freedomstarr, for example, certainly has many more than 13.

I also searched SurfPoint (http://www.surfpoint.com/) for "business
opportunity" and found 102 entries.
At least 102 reps promote their business with LinkExchange banners.

Many of these sites distribute both health and telecom products, as well
as lotteries, and also show Commonwealth and IBN banners.

Appendix II. Comission-based age verification services.

My guess: the total ad revenues are not less than $100,000, and more
likely make a million per month.

(I am not talking about subscription to individual adult sites. Some
information on these can be found at Interactive Publishing Alert
http://www.netcreations.com/ipa/order.htm)

The advertisers in our case are the age verification services. The
readers subscribe to all adult sites that use such service at once.
The webmaster gets $3-5 per each subscriber, meaning 40-75%
comissions.

The individual revenues I heard of range from $200/month (private
conversation with Pavel Afonin) to $460/month (Bill Bain's article at
http://home.earhtlink.net/~billbain/web.html)

Advertiser Sites# Date Bill Bain's Subscribers/
Oct monthly revenues month (calculated)
AVS
Adult Check 570 5
Adult Sights 208 21 $127.12 25
Adult Pass 207 5 $331.80 83
Pornopass 208 21
Validate 172 5
NetShield 161 21
ClubLink 141 21
18plus 132 5
AVS 126 21

The ads are not exlusive, and this is up to webmaster to decide, which
of them to use. Most webmasters use 3-5. In any case the number of
the sites is not less than 570, but probably more than 1,000.

Some services claim that a site can make few thousand dollars a month.
The comissions for the webmasters range from 40% to 75%

Bill Bain gets 500 hits a day on a page. His site is clearly not among
the top sites.

When I just started to count these, I was curious, whether any Russian
site earns revenues this way.

I quickly found an adult site maintained by a famous Russian writer
Pavel Afonin, who was very confused first. I succeeded to convince
him, that I am just going to describe his site for a business article.
Pavel lost a lot of revenues due to piracy and copyright violation -
1,500,000 copies of his novel has been printed and sold by pirats. The
novel has no adult content.

However, each of the adult validation services at his adult photos
page earns him $30-70 per month.

I conclude that the total comissions earned by the websites should be
not less than $100,000 in any case, but probably $500,000-1,000,000.

Now guess what? The same kid who uses GreenField in his .sig signed with
adult validations and started to earn revenues!

Many of the adult and pic-sites owners are MLM reps.

Some Bill Bain is Excel distributor. Perhaps, the one whom I cited.

Sincerely yours Russian On-Line Literary Society
Leonid Delitsin TENETA \Te-'nyo-ta\ [Russ. 1.web 2.net]
http://sharat.co.il/teneta/

• Archive Home Page
• Search
• Next message: Peter Hartley: "Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Why it is a *HUGE* mistake to try and trick search engines..."
• Previous message: Larry Dooley: "Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Position your site with the major search engines!"
• Maybe in reply to: Shawn Seabrook: "ONLINE-ADS>> NEW FORM OF ADVERTISING?"

With an archive of more than 14,000 postings, since 1996 the Online Advertising Discussion List has been the Internet's leading forum focused on professional discussion of online advertising and online media buying and selling strategies, results, studies, tools, and media coverage. If you wish to join the discussion list, please use this link to sign up on the home page of the Online Advertising Discussion List.