Forum Moderators: skibum
There's a bunch of email offers for different free giveaways, etc.
The per-lead payouts seem quite good.
I asked my affiliate manager if I was allowed to purchase a bulk email list and try marketing one of the free offers. He said it was "more than fine".
So I decided to try it out. I went with one of the only bulk-email sites that actually seemed to offer some sort of control over the targeting/demographic, and their claim was that all addresses were double opt-in and CAN-SPAM compliant.
I tried not to spend too much, so I spent about $100 on a list of 500,000 emails, targeted to a USA "freebie" and "deal seeking" target. It's also targeted to the niche for which the free offer applies.
The offer I'm broadcasting pays about 0.75 per lead, which constitutes only an email address submission (you get paid at this point, before they have to fill in their address, join offers, etc.).
I'm hoping that at least 10% of them open the email (about 50,000). And from there, I really don't know but it would be a nice thought to think that I get a 2% or 3% conversion rate from the opened emails, as it is supposedly a well-converting offer.
This would put my revenue at about $1000, minus $100 for the list.
Is $900 a realistic return from something like this?
Am I out of my mind?
Or is this a valid consideration for AM?
Please let me know. I fear that I did this out of impulse, and it's going to be a $100 reason not to try it again.
Your thoughts?
-Chris
You just spammed. Don't think there are half a million people who *knowingly double opted in to receive spam from anybody willing to fork over $100.
You can only send applicable messages to the recipient targets, and the "From" line is from the newsletter/mail list that they've subscribed to.
I'm not even sure if my submitted campaign will be approved or not. They heavily audit each mailing before broadcast.
The company claims that the last spam complaint they had was over 2 years ago.
This was something that I was concerned about, for both legal and mostly ethical reasons.
If I did spam, I was told to believe otherwise by both my affiliate manager and the bulk email rep.
It certainly wasn't intentional.
If this still fits the category of spamming, then I won't do it again.
I do admit that I did know it was a "shade of gray".
But the way they made it sound was similar to advertising on a newsletter.
Has anyone else done this?
I can't get ahold of the site anymore.
I can't even activate my account; they said it would be delivered last night.
Looks like I have just been "had", as they say.
"If it's too good to be true..."
Regretfully,
-Chris
Legitimate email marketing costs a lot more that $100 to send a half million emails.
The whole theme of their site was "non-spam", "spam-free", etc.
I really think that they just produce fake campaigns as it is.
Apparently they were able to track 81,000 opened emails.
My live affiliate tracking through Azoogle currently reads as "0 clicks", let alone leads.
So it's pretty safe to say that this service was bogus, that I just lost $100, and that no emails were actually sent out whatsoever.
I'm sure that out of 81,000 opened emails, there would've had to have been ONE tracked click.
But thanks for your feedback.
I'll stick to my own newsletters from this point on.
Cheers,
-CR
