Personal Shoppers & Affiliate Marketing
Recently I overheard one co-worker telling another about what she considered to be a unique business model. The concept was web portal of sorts which has a relationship with a variety of well-known e-commerce sites and offers a free personalized shopping service for customers. It is free to customers because the money for providing the service is made from a percentage of every purchase being paid from the respective partner. Some of the Merchant Partners for this portal are Cooking.com, Red Envelope, Baby Universe, Hickory Farms, Blue Nile, Omaha Steaks, Sharper Image, etc.
This co-worker breathlessly described the virtues of this site, shared the web address, and encouraged the other to check it out.
Sound familiar?
Despite what you might be thinking, my co-worker is not an IBO, and the web address does not begin with 'Q'. And my co-worker, like most people, was doing for free what most companies are now paying good money for: word-of-mouth or affiliate advertising.
My co-worker is right in a sense-- the website, PersonalShopper.com, does have some innovative aspects to it. However, most of the innovation has to do with the technology on the backend. The company has secured an arrangement with their various merchant partners to be provided a feed of product and pricing data, which they then use as the database of products against which the preferences of their customers are filtered. The site will also store birthdays and events for which it will send email reminders (for gift shopping, naturally!) The automation is impressive. And I'm sure it's a good money-maker for the company's founder.
Essentially, however, the business model is an affiliate marketer website with a useful, highly personalized value-added service which it uses to incentivize customers to purchase through them (i.e. the customized filter through which it offers product suggestions.)
Interestingly, in my research of Personal Shopper Inc., I discovered that an earlier iteration of the business model (then doing business under the name AvenueMe) included an incentive program in which Members could refer other customers and receive a kickback for the referal purchases in the form of an "in-store" credit. The program appears to be absent on the current website. (Unless the company was able to negotiate a larger percentage than the average 5-7% that the same merchant partners offer in their affilate programs, I'm guessing the margins would be too thin to turn around and offer essentially their own affiliate program.)
It may be understandable why I was intrigued upon overhearing my co-worker's description of the business model. The similarities are obvious-- web portal, affiliate marketing, personalized service, kickbacks from merchant partners. There's a significant advantage, of course, in the margins Quixtar is able to secure with their partners due to the subscriber base they bring to the bargaining table, and consequently the payout percentages merely start in the single-digit range in which most affiliate programs are capped.
As an IBO using the private franchise model, you are providing free (or better!) highly-personalized shopping services for your clients. Granted, it's not automated to the level of the comparison... but smart IBOs can take advantage of many tools in behalf of their clients and prosumers: Ditto Delivery for automated personalized delivery service, using the information collected from a 10x10x10 session to sequentially offer samples of products they've indicated interest in, even collect birthdates of loved ones and use the Shop.com event reminder service (to help in their gift shopping, naturally!) And of course, there's the personalizing of gifts & incentives when loyal clients and prosumers reach their point goals.
And who knows? There's one more highly personalized service they just may want you to provide in time: mentoring them in the pursuit of their own dreams and life goals... No affilate marketer website in the world can provide that.
Technorati Tags: Home Based Business, Internet Marketing, Internet Business, Quixtar, Affiliate Marketing, private franchise
This co-worker breathlessly described the virtues of this site, shared the web address, and encouraged the other to check it out.
Sound familiar?
Despite what you might be thinking, my co-worker is not an IBO, and the web address does not begin with 'Q'. And my co-worker, like most people, was doing for free what most companies are now paying good money for: word-of-mouth or affiliate advertising.
My co-worker is right in a sense-- the website, PersonalShopper.com, does have some innovative aspects to it. However, most of the innovation has to do with the technology on the backend. The company has secured an arrangement with their various merchant partners to be provided a feed of product and pricing data, which they then use as the database of products against which the preferences of their customers are filtered. The site will also store birthdays and events for which it will send email reminders (for gift shopping, naturally!) The automation is impressive. And I'm sure it's a good money-maker for the company's founder.
Essentially, however, the business model is an affiliate marketer website with a useful, highly personalized value-added service which it uses to incentivize customers to purchase through them (i.e. the customized filter through which it offers product suggestions.)
Interestingly, in my research of Personal Shopper Inc., I discovered that an earlier iteration of the business model (then doing business under the name AvenueMe) included an incentive program in which Members could refer other customers and receive a kickback for the referal purchases in the form of an "in-store" credit. The program appears to be absent on the current website. (Unless the company was able to negotiate a larger percentage than the average 5-7% that the same merchant partners offer in their affilate programs, I'm guessing the margins would be too thin to turn around and offer essentially their own affiliate program.)
It may be understandable why I was intrigued upon overhearing my co-worker's description of the business model. The similarities are obvious-- web portal, affiliate marketing, personalized service, kickbacks from merchant partners. There's a significant advantage, of course, in the margins Quixtar is able to secure with their partners due to the subscriber base they bring to the bargaining table, and consequently the payout percentages merely start in the single-digit range in which most affiliate programs are capped.
As an IBO using the private franchise model, you are providing free (or better!) highly-personalized shopping services for your clients. Granted, it's not automated to the level of the comparison... but smart IBOs can take advantage of many tools in behalf of their clients and prosumers: Ditto Delivery for automated personalized delivery service, using the information collected from a 10x10x10 session to sequentially offer samples of products they've indicated interest in, even collect birthdates of loved ones and use the Shop.com event reminder service (to help in their gift shopping, naturally!) And of course, there's the personalizing of gifts & incentives when loyal clients and prosumers reach their point goals.
And who knows? There's one more highly personalized service they just may want you to provide in time: mentoring them in the pursuit of their own dreams and life goals... No affilate marketer website in the world can provide that.
Technorati Tags: Home Based Business, Internet Marketing, Internet Business, Quixtar, Affiliate Marketing, private franchise
posted by anonibo at 12:25
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home