Geeks Toy Affiliate Program

 

Geeks Toy Affiliate Program

Geeks Toy Affiliate Program is a cheeky little title that I’ve chosen in response to the decision by The Geek to start charging for his wonderful toy.

Currently there’s not an affiliate program connected to the sales of The Geeks Toy, as until yesterday, The Geeks Toy was a free Betfair trading platform that blew other paid versions offered by various companies completely out of the water.

The Geeks Toy was free, now it isn’t. The Geeks Toy was probably the best Betfair trading platform even though it was free, now it is still probably the best even though it’s gone to a paid business model.

But there’s ‘trouble at mill’ over the whole way that the transition of The Geek’s Toy has gone from a free ‘I’m doing this out of the kindness of my heart’ business model, to a ‘you ungrateful scumbags can’t even be bothered to donate a penny, so I’m gonna start charging…’ paid business model.

Now that The Geeks Toy has moved from wonderful free piece of Betfair Trading software magic, to just another paid Betfair trading software; I imagine it won’t be long before The Geek has to add an affiliate program to the wonderful piece of programming that is The Geek’s Toy.

The decision to start charging for the Geeks Toy has got many users and forum members hot under the collar – there’s mixed reaction ranging from the sycophantic, ‘I’d happily give the geek my left testicle, as well as pay for using the toy…’; to the outraged from the home counties view, ‘disgusted, my wife has decided to stop using the internet altogether in protest over this…’!

The problem being with it (and I’m not usually bothered by conspiracy theories), is that over the last couple of weeks The Geek has been muting the fact that he’s been feeling unloved and taken forgranted by users of The Geek’s Toy. Due to this, The Geek set users of the Geek’s Toy and members of The Geek’s Toy forum a task of publicising his fabulous Betfair Trading Software on The Geek’s behalf a couple of weeks back.

Basically users of The Geek’s Toy had a list of targets The Geek had chosen; for mentions of The Geeks Toy on Twitter and Facebook Likes of The Geeks Toy’s Facebook page – as well as getting links and spreading the word about The Geeks Toy by any other means.

The inference was that unless users of The Geek’s Toy started supporting The Geek and his Betfair trading software (hit the targets that The Geek had set for mentions of his toy on these various social media platforms), he would start charging for use of the Betfair trading software at some point in the future.

Now here’s how the conspiracy theory then took potential credence – either The Geek is completely clueless of how the internet works; that by getting all of these likes, links and Twitter followers and mentions on other websites all pointing back to The Geeks Toy, the ‘unfortunate’ and ‘unexpected’ knock on effect, is that The Geek’s Toy will ‘suffer’ a nice little rise in search engine rankings around the keywords that he instructed users of The Geeks Toy to use; or he did know this and that was the plan all along…

Either way, the manner in which it has been managed has upset many users. Many users of The Geeks Toy are feeling duped into helping promote a product on the belief that by doing so it would remain free, that then went paid anyway.

I myself posted a question in The Geeks Toy forum asking whether now the Geeks Toy was a paid Betfair trading platform, consideration had been given about launching an affiliate program. The image accompanying this post about Geeks Toy Affiliate Program is a cut and paste from Google of it’s index, recording the existence of the short life of this forum post – unfortunately it was deleted for some reason from The Geeks Toy forum, after receiving a reply from The Geek that they currently aren’t considering an affiliate program for The Geeks Toy.

I don’t think my forum post asking whether an affiliate program for the Geeks Toy was being considered was offensive. But unfortunately my forum post asking about an affiliate program for The Geeks Toy was removed. It did I think start some decent discussion about the prospect of adding an affiliate program to the Geeks Toy. Although a few of the posts highlighted in my opinion the vast gulf between people who use the internet for ‘fun’ and those who earn a living from the internet… I shall explain;

You see, whilst I may not have much experience with trading sports on Betfair, online marketing is what I do and have been doing for over ten years. I work from home, my job description could be that of ‘online marketer’. The reason I am able to work from home is that in 2004, I along with three other mates launched a now fairly well known online dating site.

This online dating site – like The Geeks Toy, initially and intentionally was operated around a ‘free’ business model. We built up a huge member list, then after about a year went from being a free dating site, to being a paid dating site. I eventually sold my share interest in this online dating site in 2007, which has allowed me to ‘work’ from home ever since.

I have done similar to the above with several other sites that I either own or have / had a share interest in over the last ten years. I currently have a ‘stable’ (that seems about the right word as we are talking about sports trading and horse racing is a big part of that for some users of The Geeks Toy) of over 100 websites operating in a variety of niches. None of these sites apart from this one are in the sports trading niche.

My Football Trading website / blog is just a hobby site for me. Whilst I suppose for someone working in the field that I do, no site can really be described as a hobby site. So admittedly I do SEO it, I do consider the titles of the posts I use, I consider the wording of those posts, and the keywords used… So yes in effect my football trading site is a little more than a usual hobby site that someone without my online experience would create - but actually football trading is what I do in my down time, not what I do for a living.

The problem that The Geeks Toy now faces going from the free business model to the paid business model is that it is completely different. The two cannot be compared. Free means that people cut you some slack, they are grateful. They can’t understand why you’ve done it, so they are extremely grateful! They are in some cases completely sychopantic and ooze love for you in their forum posts and defend you to the hilt if anyone (not me I love the Geeks Toy) should ever say a bad word about it.

They will give you their time and become forum moderators; they may donate some money. They will definitely tell their friends, they may well jump in and help you promote the site in some way, they will be open to the suggestion of adding a Twitter post and liking your Facebook page. They may even (as I have done) include a link to your site in every Football Trading post they have made since discovering your wonderful toy!

But when a product goes from being free to paid, the main difference that users demand is SERVICE. If there’s no service, then you don’t earn any money, or you stop making sales. The other difference is that you will probably now need to employ staff to cope with the hundreds of enquiries you will now get… Stupid questions that could be ignored when you offered a free service, now have to be answered because people have trumped up a few quid and demand service!

As I mentioned on my forum post about the suggestion of launching an affiliate program for the Geeks Toy; once you become a paid service site, no matter what that service is, and no matter how good your service / product is, webmasters who earn a living from their website will expect to receive a revenue share from any referrals / sales made to the site in question directly from their own site. If you charge for something, you have to share the revenue in some way in order to get website traffic.

Now here’s the rub… As a free piece of software, The Geeks Toy beat all competitors hands down. It was as least as good as the paid alternatives and it was free. Webmasters who earn a living from their websites will promote a product that is free and is good, as it adds ‘value’ to their site and their site visitors. As soon as something goes from free to paid, that partnership finishes. Human nature and good business sense (for those managing websites for a living) dictates that any link from their site to another must provide value / revenue in some way to them and their site visitors.

As soon as a free product goes to the paid business model, that goodwill from professional webmaster finishes. The product now has to stand up alongside others in it’s niche that charge in some manner. If you are a webmaster operating a site for profit in the sports trading niche, it therefore stands to reason that you will only link to sites that pay you a revenue share or add value for your site users.

It matters not to the webmaster of the sports trading website whether one product is better than another in the ‘paid environment’. Of course they will measure conversion rates on a profit to click through basis, but that’s about it. Generally they don’t care which is ‘best’. Best to them means the one that has the higher conversion rate and earns them the most money.

This unfortunately is lost on some of the sycophantic members of The Geeks Toy forum. One responded to my forum post along the lines of; ‘…forum members aren’t in this for profit and how could you decide to not tell someone about The Geeks Toy just because you don’t get a financial reward?’ DUH! Now that The Geek himself is in this for profit (and who can blame him, his product is excellent!) it changes everything.

Look at this from a real world analogy if you have trouble understanding it in the online world;

You own a shop, you stock products, you sell those products to customers, you make a profit. But in order to get the customers in some way you have to advertise and therefore in some way you ‘share’ some of the profit you make with the people / companies that you advertise your shop with. Radio, newspapers, tv etc.

Now from an online perspective;

You own a website, you sell a product / provide a service that you charge for, you make a profit. In order to get customers / website visitors you have to advertise your website in some way. Affiliate programs through which you encourage owners of websites in related niches to join and link to your site is just one way that online advertising works. You share a percentage of the profit from sales of your product / service with the owners of the sites that send you visitors who then convert in to paying customers.

Conversely, this is why most sites have a ‘tell a friend’ function or have a forum that tries to build a helpful community around the product in question, or in fact use any other method to drum up site visitors for free; facebook pages, twitter, link building etc. Website owners don’t have to pay for traffic generated using these mediums.

The tell a friend function allows people to auto email their friend list to tell them about the product in question. Of course owners of the sites want you to use this function, they get more users for nothing and a personal recommendation is much better than being sent to a site from another site – the conversion from personal recommendation far out strips that of any other means of advertising both on and off line.

From a forum perspective; a site has forum members, those members post comments / questions and create new threads in the forums. Forum posts in effect build massive amounts of search-able content on the site in question – forums are a great easy way to add content to your site whatever the niche.

Forum posts get indexed by the search engines, users of the search engines search on a specific term / keyword, the search engines deliver result listings that include these forum posts - because they are keyword specific to the search engine users search. The search engine user clicks the link and finds the forum, the search engine user joins the forum, likes the community and then buys the product.

I’m sorry if the above has completely blown away your feelings and belief about the internet being a lovey-dovey community of people wanting to help and do good… Get real and smell the coffee! Something is usually only free as part of a long term goal.

The long term goal could be a variety of things, build a big community and then charge advertisers to advertise to that community in some manner, or advertise affiliate programs and make money from products existing in the niche already, or once it’s reached the predetermined level, sell the site as a going concern to some other business, or once the site has reached a predetermined level (we call it critical mass in the heady world of online marketing) you make the product in question a PAID product!

But as an example, at the beginning of the year, knowing nothing about sports trading, I really had to dig deep in the search results to find The Geeks Toy. Even though it is probably the best and easiest to use Betfair trading platform out there.

Most of the main trafficked sites in the sports trading niche already weren’t linking to the toy as there wasn’t a financial reward. These sites of course linked to other Betfair trading platforms because they got a revenue share from the trading platform in question. This problem will now continue and in fact get worse unless an affiliate program for The Geeks Toy is added. Mark my words…

The internet is all about visitors to sites. A site selling a product in any niche only has two options (apart from Tell A Friend and having a forum) to get traffic to their site; one do it all the SEO online marketing themselves and / or pay for search engine listings and advertise on related sites, or two do the above and run an affiliate program alongside it.

Affiliate programs are good because the owner of the site only pays on results. The other main methods of advertising a site all cost money /or time if doing SEO yourself and cost up front – no matter what the result. The owner of the site therefore has to measure the value of any advertising that they are doing and keep a close eye on their advertising spend’s return of investment.

With an affiliate program, you don’t really have to keep an eye on anything. You usually pay the affiliate a month in arrears and only once a specified payment threshold has been met. The deck is stacked in favour of the site that operates the affiliate program, not in favour of the affiliate. The affiliate has to work hard for their money and often the affiliate program owner in time comes to resent paying these dastardly affiliates… Even though they are actually getting a much better return from them than from any other advertising medium.

No matter how well intentioned current users of The Geeks Toy are and how happy they are with the product, even if they introduce every one they know to The Geeks Toy, the traffic won’t be enough and The Geek will have to consider adding an affiliate program to the Geeks Toy, or advertising the product in some other manner and ‘sharing the profit’ now it has gone to the paid business model.

To be honest though I don’t particularly care either way. The Geeks Toy is a great trading platform and at the price that it’s been set at, it is completely affordable by most people – there’s still a free trial for users who are new to The Geek’s Toy. Use the Geeks Toy and find out for yourself.

However… I’m not stupid and have a fairly huge monthly hosting bill for my various web sites; so as soon as The Geeks Toy launches an affiliate program, I will join it and happily continue to recommend it to people, whilst taking a revenue share (which is rightfully mine now the service is a paid one) for my introductions of new members to the Geeks Toy… I am after all only human!

Geeks Toy Affiliate Program