According to a survey run on the SIPA site for the past 70 days, the 81 respondents mainly broke into two distinctive clumps. 30% of respondents work for a publishing company that’s mainly virtual with 75-100% of staff working outside formal offices. 55% of respondents said their company is not virtual with 0-24% of staff working outside the main offices. The vast majority – nearly 100% – of SIPA members have a primarily subscription-based business model.
In my experience, virtual team success depends on experience. I usually only hire people for virtual work who already have experience of virtual work — because I’ve been burned by too many “I’m sure I’d love it” newbies in the past. Also, only experienced-in-their-craft teams tend to work well. If you are strategically building an organization that will have significant future growth with high profit margins, you may decide to staff up with a bunch of cheap inexperienced workers who your fewer, experienced staff train and manage. That business model, with a flock of cheap newbies surrounding each experienced expensive worker, pretty much requires in-house staff.
When American Express’s merchant account client service rep called to “welcome” us yesterday, he asked, “Do you go to your clients’ offices or do they come to you?”
I was stumped. In all my years in the publishing industry, I don’t think I’ve ever done either. “I’m in publishing; we publish reports and then people buy them and read them. Why would they come to my office?” I asked. “Oh, the rep answered, “It says here you’re in Advertising Services.” I am dumbfounded, “Well, change it please!” Turns out he can’t. In his database Publishing is the same thing as Advertising Services.
Because I guess there’s just that one business model, right? Yeah, that’s gotta be it.
Data from Shawn Collins 2009 AffStat Affiliate Marketing Study (available as a free 40 page report here) shows most affiliates don’t care about your super-duper-365-day-cookie. They know cookies get wiped or overwritten. 55% are fine with a 30-day cookie or less. The vast majority of the remainder are cool with a 90-day cookie.
So what do affiliates really want?
- direct deposit – 62% of them really want it, not a check please!
- landing pages that convert better, 80% watch their earnings per click and reject sites that don’t do well
- well copywritten text links that get clicks. Text links can be better than banners.
- the flexibility to be an affiliate for a wide variety of products. Only 3% chose new merchants to work with based on “relevancy to my current web sites” and 30% have more than 10 domains.
Recent Comments