There was quite a bit of controversy at the end of last week on the continuity program that Joel Comm was offering with his $9.95 deal for his newly updated AdSense Secrets 4.

Mark of 45N5.com pointed out that there was a continuity program that he felt buyers were being opted in for without sufficient mention up front.

I took a look at the sales page and the continuity program was mentioned in plain text. I think there could have been a little more highlighting of this, but compared to some continuity programs I have seen in the past where there is no mention or tiny print mention after the fact.

I got on Skype with Joel and we spoke about how things worked. He indicated that he was working to make some changes to make the process more transparent and to give the user a choice of whether to buy the ebook alone or the bundled ebook with the continuity program with his 1% Report. He pointed out that the 1% Report is actually a physical product that the user would get a free month of, accompanied by a letter with instructions on unsubscribing if they were interested so a recurring charge would most likely not be billed.

Well - yesterday, Joel posted an apology on his site that I think is worth mentioning and reading. He’s now tweaked the shopping cart to allow for easy selection of the solo ebook or bundled package. He’s also pledged to give 2 weeks of the revenue from direct sales of the AdSense Secrets ebook to a charity .

I think the apology is sincere and I commend Joel for stepping back and admitting he’d made a mistake. I think there are many marketers who wouldn’t have reared their head at all, and definitely wouldn’t have apologized, corrected the issue, and made any kind of move to make something good of the situation by donating proceeds to charity.

One request for Joel, or anyone else who is going to make an offer like this to affiliates where there is a really aggressively priced “lead offer” to get people on a continuity program (other than to be as clear as possible with consumers) PLEASE TELL YOUR AFFILIATES WHAT’S UP.

The affiliates can then make a call as to how they promote the product.

Would I have still promoted the ebook offer? YES

I think the content is good stuff and I like to promote offers from fellow believers.

I would however, have made mention in my copy of the continuity program so my referrals were educated and would go into the deal knowing what is up. The benefit would have been mutual.

God Bless,

Wade

I just got off of Skype with Joel - recorded a podcast that I will post here shortly where he talks about Adsense Secrets 4 and the controversy that seems to have sprung up around it.

At issue is the bonus item mentioned in this paragraph on Joel’s sales page:

Fast Action Bonus #3 ($59 Value - Yours Free!)

FREE Trial Membership - You’ll receive a free copy of the information packed newsletter on Internet marketing in the world, “The Top 1% Report”! You won’t find any of this information on the Internet…it’s too powerful. We’ll ship it right to your door along with an additional bonus CD exclusive to my readers.

If after the free report you decide it’s not worth ten times the subscription cost (which won’t happen because you will be blown away by the content in this report!), simply contact us and cancel your subscription at any time! Otherwise, you may continue to be in the Top 1% for the discount rate of just $29.95 every 30 days. Wait until you see the bonus that comes with your first edition! (Italics mine - WT)

I chatted with Joel on this and he is adamant that they not only will make it possible to opt out of this in the sale process, but also will prominently display the link to cancel the report subscription and kill the monthly billing on the credit card in the reports that are delivered.

Joel has corrected me on this - the “Top 1% Report” is a physical product . The initial copy of which will come with a cover letter that re-emphasizes the subscription details and provides details on how to terminate the subscription and re-bill if the subscriber desires.

I have asked Joel to kick me over as copy of the report/newsletter that will be sent to subscribers so I can see how the unsubscription process is handled.

More to come

God Bless,

Wade

Google announced yesterday that their acquisition of DoubleClick/Performics had wrapped up this week.

There had been a ton of concern in the affiliate industry on what the implications of this could be.   How could Google operate both an SEO business, a Search Engine and an affiliate network.   That is a lot of information being controlled by one company and a lot of potential for inpropriety and potential damage to affiliates, especially affiliates who use paid search.

One of the concerns I have heard voiced from affiliates on working with Performics in the past was that they operated as both affiliate network and affiliate program management company while at the same time making money on Paid Search arbitrage.   Essentially, affiliates were concerned that this allowed Performics to identify profitable keywords and phrases from the efforts of their affiliates then use that information for their own profit.   I don’t know that they ever did this, but many paid search affiliates had this fear in the back of their heads.

Now, Google has announced that it will be looking to sell Performics Search to a third party as they want to avoid the appearance of or actual conflict of interest.

I think this is great for affiliates as this concern should now fade away.

Any thoughts?

God Bless,

Wade

Christian marketers and retailers have a lot to learn from their secular counterparts in my opinion. I look at Christian retail and service related sites daily and in most cases, their marketing methods and strategies just don’t match up? Why is this?

I think that a “Greed Gap” exists that puts Christian retailers behind the 8 ball.

Secular sites are in the game for the money - pure and simple. They embrace that and work to get every possible penny out of their marketing efforts. It’s pretty commonly accepted that most of the innovation in online marketing (that doesn’t come from Amazon) comes from 2 areas - Adult (porn) and Gambling. Why these two verticals? Because the money is HUGE… mind bloggling infact.

Because of this, players in these spaces focus on conversion… they want to convert every visitor into a subscriber, buyer, or player. Each half a percent of their visitor base that buys additionally or doesn’t buy, means a swing of thousands or millions of dollars of revenue. So they watch their metrics, and tweak, and tweak, and tweak constantly to get it right.

We tend to focus more on the ministry aspect of “retail ministry” and miss out on being as aggressive as we possibly can at converting visitors to buyers. A buyer or a member for a Christian retail site, or dating site, etc is a person who can be ministered to by your team, or that you can minister to others as well.

We’re in the “Conversion” business as well… but our conversion has a higher reward.

So let’s all ramp up our efforts and take some inspiration from the “World” here and really look at our sites and our affiliate efforts in 2008 and see where people are falling through the cracks on our sites. And let’s learn from the secular retail world and use that knowledge to impact more people for Christ.

Find some of the leading secular sites in your space and compare how they treat visitors to the way you do. Learn what they do better, make the changes and see what happens.

The payoff will be amazing… and eternal.

God Bless,

Wade Tonkin