I’ve spent a lot of hours and quite a bit of money working my way through the internet marketing and online business maze and this gave me the idea and motivation for the netSuccess Partners concept. We just launched our new site this week and I think we have come up with something very special.
Firstly, my main priority was only to present visitors with the best of the best online programs, tools and opportunities so everything that appears on the site has been extensively researched and tested. The next challenge was how to present the information. We decided on a review based format and broke things down into four categories – search engine marketing, traffic generation, internet marketing education and online business opportunities.
Within each category there are six programs or tools reviewed. We have tried to strike a balance between free or low cost options and affordable professional solutions. It needed to be general enough to appeal to a broad audience but specific enough for people to find what they need for their business and budget. We have also tried to make our reviews straightforward and to the point by providing an explanation of what the program offers along with an indication of cost.
The next challenge was how best to market the site. I am a big fan of viral marketing when it is done well. So we decided on a membership based format. Given that most of the products reviewed on the site have an affiliate program attached to them, it was fairly easy to conclude that members could earn money by inserting their own affiliate codes into the site and the more they promoted, the more they earned. But have you any idea what happens if you just offer a free affiliate program like this? People just seem to sign up because they see the word free and then never put any effort into promoting their site.
Now that just wastes everyone’s time and effort. So I wanted to make sure that if we were giving people a ready made website with a bunch of opportunities to earn affiliate commissions, they were motivated to actually promote the site. I figured a small one-off fee would probably do the trick so we set this as our pro membership level. The problem with this of course is that so many people are (rightly) skeptical about investing money in a membership program that we had to find a way to put their mind at rest. This led to us offering a free option where they get an affiliate link but only earn money by introducing other members. What they don’t get is the chance to load the site with their own affiliate links until they upgrade to pro. The reality is if people are serious about promoting the site, they will likely earn enough in a few weeks to be able to cover the pro membership fee.
Heck, if I see a free member actively promoting the site for a couple of weeks, I’ll probably give them a free upgrade to pro membership anyway. The pro membership is not our primary way of making money out of the site and it is mainly there to give people the motivation to promote the affiliate site we give them. It does beg the question though, how do we make money out of the site?
We could have just put up the site, offered the program reviews with our affiliate links and promoted it ourselves without an affiliate program. In fact, this is exactly what we did when we were testing the site and the quality of the programs on offer. But by adding in a membership base we have a bunch of motivated people promoting the site with us. This gives us a chance to multiply site visits and grow the program exponentially. Ah yes, how do we make our money?
Primarily we sell advertising space on the site. A well targeted, high traffic site attracts a decent advertising premium. We also run affiliate power ads on every page which helps us to earn some affiliate commissions ourselves as well as providing some nice visuals that complement the site’s look and feel and unlike Google’s sponsored ads, every click opens in a new window, keeping visitors at our site.
Of course, we will also be earning money from the pro membership upgrades as well as promoting a couple of our own programs on the site. But then, I think we have come up with a unique formula where everyone wins.
Our visitors win because they are presented with an honest review of the best internet marketing tools and online business opportunities. Our pro members win because they are able to earn affiliate commissions from the programs and tools being recommended on the site. Our free members win because they can earn enough money to upgrade to pro membership beforehand rather than having to commit ‘risk money’ upfront. And we win, because we have a high traffic website that earns us money through advertising revenues, memberships and affiliate commissions.
In fact, in all my time surfing the internet and reviewing online marketing and business opportunities, I have never come across a site quite like the one we have created. Am I proud of it? For sure but I’m also looking forward to our next project…
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Simon Cooper is the owner of netSuccess Partners
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