contest prizes

[gonzo]

Originally Posted by TheEnforcer

To those who say "fuck the prizes" or "raise the payouts" you just don't get it. Not even close as a matter of fact. Whether a company offers a prize or not most certainly DOES NOT affect the size, in any substanial way, of their payouts UNLESS it is consistently giving out cars and other high ticket items on a regular basis or their payouts over the course of a year are so low no person in their right mind would ever use them. And by regular I mean once a month or something like that. Whip out a calculator and do some basic math folks. We're talking PENNIES AT MOST here.


Giving away prizes is a MARKETING TOOL and gives the program another avenue in which to promote their program. If prorams don't grow and bring in new webmaters they can stagnate and die and having multiple marketing methods helps bring in new customers. I would point out that any company that solely relies on one aspect of their program to market on and doesn't do other things to get noticed isn't getting the best out of their marketing team that they can get.

Staci, don't listen to these guys. Inudstry related stuff gives the best chance of keeping jaded old timers from whining too much and still attract newbies though yuo certainly aren't limited to it.

I disagree. And could be a "active" affiliate with a solid payout increase.
Prizes are pure bullshit in my book. If I want something - I go buy it! . . .
because of sponsors that pay me consistantly and well.

[TheEnforcer]

Contests with prizes are about as old school marketing as one can get. There's a reason it's been around since the dawn of doing business. And I'm not just talking adult either. It's been around forever as a marketing tool because it works and it generally costs very little in the grand scheme of things and brings more benefits to a company than it does cost to them.

Lets do some basic math. What do you think a pretty good sized company in the industry pays out to webmasters over the course of a year and how much is each signup of that paid out in dollars? IE- A decent company pays out X amount of dollars over the course of a year and it averages out to x amount of dollars per signup. Throw me out some numbers for several different sized companies and lets run the numbers on how much payouts are affected by a contest. I guarantee you the affect is minimal at best.

[Jace]

is this better for you

instead of a prize, just give me the cash value of said prize, that is basically what I mean when I say fuck prizes, give me money

if sponsor a is giving away a laptop valued at $1200 for x number of sales
and sponsor b is giving away $1200 extra in your payout for x number of sales

I would go with sponsor b

[Nymph]

I won't join a new sponsor, or push one of my existing ones harder because they are giving away a laptop, or any other prize for so many sales in whatever amount of time.

On the other hand, if they increase the payout for those sales, or maybe even offer special made promo material to the winner (something that is not over seen on every other site promoting them) I would push more to them.