View Full Version : Raffle Bonanza
Did everyone get loads of sales from the Raffle Bonanza for week 1, for the 4 featured merchants?
Personally I never got a single sale for any of the 4 merchants and now after 7 days of doing the work I did to put in to try and get a sale is now out the window because I need to start over with 4 different merchants. I put huge amounts of effort into getting sales by legitimate and morally correct methods, what this kind of crap is encouraging me to do is be underhanded and use whatever dodgy immorale methods I know to forcefully boost my sales, in otherwords, I have to comprimise my own integrity, just to compete, which is not fair at all.
This in my opinion is the single biggest rip of and waste of time i've come across yet from Affiliate Windows. I'm not even going to bother for the rest of it, what's the point if i'm lucky enough to get a couple of entries, it means nothing compared to the forced sales that all these voucher sites and multi-million hits per day sites get, so it's a complete waste of time and it's doing nothing other than playing into the hands of those people that use dodgy methods of stealing sales from the rest of us as it is, and even if you disagree with that bit, it's 100% definately playing into the hands of the those that continually get the most sales in the first place, giving those of us who trickle along on a modest amount of sales absolutely no chance in hell of winning anything.
WTF was wrong with the system from last year, it was fun and at least if you visited AWs regularly it gave you a decent chance of getting what was considered to be a little Christmas bonus for our efforts.
Thanks AW, really chuffed to bits.
Confuscius
27-10-08, 20:51
The raffle is, in my opinion, weighted towards the big boys not SW sites. If you have the adult filter on then no sales to certain merchants!
I have spent zero minutes on this raffle as there is no lead time to so anything from a SEO perspective but if you are a membership site or you use PPC then you can have a go. If you have SW then forget it.
I had some tickets for week one! :)
What is the point of looking at what I could have won?
WTF was wrong with the system from last year, it was fun and at least if you visited AWs regularly it gave you a decent chance of getting what was considered to be a little Christmas bonus for our efforts.
It was too fair.
We're talking backslaps and hj's.
This is a professional atmosphere mate, that's how business works.
The more money a business can make for another business, the more tax deductable HJ's they get in exchange.
Dry sacks all round for the big boys, knee bumbling balls for the rest, that's the modern way.
It's no different from the other incentives that go around all year long on each and every network. They always go to the big guys.
It's got nothing to do with ingenuity or creativity, it's all about the expo hand shakes and the trips abroad. All about the first class travel lounge bar and the wider seat.
All about the closed gr
oups of affiliates and the BS to get rid of the rest.
It's all about wasting YOUR time, so the big boys don't have to compete so hard.
Because in all honesty, they couldn't compete in a fair world. All they've got is their 10 yr old domain name and a pot full of cash to throw around at hired hands. Look around, there really aren't that many Rags to Riches stories in affiliate marketing, not anymore. There's a few Rags to a reasonable living (me included) but that's about it.
There are however, many many, riches to obscene riches stories as well as some Obscene riches to "I want every penny I can get out of everyone even though I own half the British media" stories
All Affiliate Networks want that pot full of cash spending on their campaigns, so they can have a pot full of cash too.
That way, when google starts charging for everything and all the ISP's start charging webmasters for bandwidth (already happening), then the networks can afford to carry on winning.
So incentives are created to make it more lucrative for the big boys to spend their cash on that network's campaign, instead of going to another network for the same retailer and same commission.
Notice that in the 2 weeks of the Raffle Bonaza, half the retailers involved are available through OTHER networks too.
Just accept that we're all being squeezed out to pay for some rich tw@'s daughter's pony lessons.
God Bless British Business!
*edit*
To answer the original question: 3 tickets have I
lol, 100+ views of the thread, yet only 4 people have done the poll. Dear me.
Confuscius
10-11-08, 15:49
I have a new metric to monitor - Sales value per raffle ticket!
My current value is approximately £10,100 worth of sales per raffle ticket!
I must be a crap affiliate given those numbers or is it just the pointlessness of the raffle to provide any incentive to anyone running SW?
I will let you decide!
Paul
I thought last year's competition was great (although I'm probably biased because I won an iPod Nano) but I mainly liked it because it created a level playing field and the prize allocation was mostly down to luck and a bit of persistance in collecting the coins. In stark contrast to most of the affiliate competitions I see which involve 100+ sales or % increase this week from last week which for me is usually 0 on 0.
I'm not even gonna bother trying to market these merchants specifically for the raffle. As someone else said by the time my rejigged site and blog posts get picked up by Google the moment will have long gone.
I usually just go for the free stuff like the free perfume from FragranceDirect in exchange for a month long banner. Although I fully expect them to leave AW the day before the qualifying period ends, like all the other "incentives" I've foolishly taken part in. Free merch for banner impressions anyone?
I thought last year's competition was great (although I'm probably biased because I won an iPod Nano) but I mainly liked it because it created a level playing field
Last year, I got a pair of mini remote controlled helicopters from Firefox as my prize, not huge as far as prize value goes, but as an unexpected bonus gift it was amazing and probably the most used gift I got. I was really looking forward to something similar this year, but as always, the little guy gets sh*t on.
This years stupid raffle thing, I can't seem to get a single sale for any of the "featured" merchants and it's driving me bloody insane, considering i've given what is turning out to be some seriously crazy amount of free product and banner placement. Not that i'm bothering with the raffle any more anyway, what's the point when it's a 1 person team vrs multi-million pound companies, as already said, hardly a level playing field.
I've asked my community and in the last 6 months alone i've lost over 500 sales, because virtually every single answer from my community members is... "Oh, I go get a discount voucher before I buy", in other words... Bye bye sales, bye bye commission and most recently bye bye raffle entries... I dread to think what these voucher site sales levels are like, but I feel bloody robbed and it appears that nobody gives a damn so long as they keep on getting sales. I think they need to realise, that sooner or later people will walk away and go find better money making solutions and that all that will be left will be the vultures who use every scam technique possible to get their money's worth.
I got 3 tickets in the first week by sheer luck - my commissions are sporadic to say the least - and without any particular effort on my part. Nothing since. I'm just hoping come the big day my luck holds out for those flukey 3 tickets.