Wayne Robinson

Well, it appears that after my little discussion with Ryan this morning JotSpot has decided to update their FAQ (not yet present on their website).

 The new FAQ for anyone looking at using JotSpot's affiliate program is:

Q:  Where can I run your ads?

A:

You can run our ads on websites or emails that you own and control. We recommend that you put our ads on blogs and other websites you own.

You are NOT permitted to purchase advertising that competes with JotSpot in an effort to drive traffic to your affiliate pages. In other words, do not buy ads on Google or Yahoo if JotSpot also bids on those same ads.

If you wish to purchase an ad when the ad does not compete with JotSpot's ad, you may NOT use JotSpot in the ad copy, and you may NOT send traffic directly to our landing page.

Of course, after my experience, I wouldn't suggest using JotSpot until they come up with a real affiliate agreement written by real lawyers with real specifics. 

 

Every six months or so I usually come across a product that has an affiliate program and decide to have a go at trying to monetize it via online advertising media. Usually, this flutter ends up costing me more money than I ever earn but I end up learning more and more about online marketing and advertising in the process.

This year I came across JotSpot and, with an affiliate program paying $1.00 per lead and the first month's sign-up value (up to $199.95) per sale and after spending some time playing with their products I thought I found a product worth marketing again.

 After reading through their, admittedly, rather limited FAQs (listed below in case they change sometime in the future) I thought I was on a winner:

 Affiliate Program Help

Q:      How do I log into my account?
A:      Just click here.
 
Q:      How much can I earn through the affiliate program?
A:      There's no set limit on what you can earn through the program. We'll pay you $25 for the first person you get to try JotSpot, and after that our standard compensation is to pay $1 per lead. Also, every time you refer someone who becomes a paying customer for JotSpot we pay a commission equal to the monthly rate for the referred subscriber. If your referral pays for the company plan, we pay you $199.95. If your referral pays for the Mini plan, we pay you $9.95.
 
Q:      How often will I be paid?
A:      You can request payment after you have earned $50 through the program. You may request payment again for each $25 earned. We make payments during the first week of each month.
 
Q:      How will I be paid?
A:      At this time the only payment method is Paypal.
 
Q:      Where can I run your ads?
A:      Wherever you like. We recommend that you put our ads on blogs and other websites.
 
Q:      How do I contact someone about the affiliate program?
A:      Contact us via email.

So, after signing up for JotSpot's affiliate program, I went on my merry way creating advertising campaigns on Google, Adbrite and FeedBurner. Out of all the advertising campaigns I've done in the past, this one was definitely shaping up to be the most effective and the amount of clickthroughs sent within 24 hours outranked anything I've done in the past. Until I received the following emails from their adveritsing manager

Hi, Wayne.  I see that you just sent us a number of leads -- how are you
promoting JotSpot?

I just want to make sure everything is legit before awarding credit to your
account.

Thanks,
Ryan

--
Ryan Pollock
Product Manager, Customer Acquisition
JotSpot, Inc.
(650) 323-3225 x 128
email: ryan@jot.com
blog: www.ryanpollock.com

I thought this was nice of Ryan to introduce himself and responsible of JotSpot to ensure that the clickthrough/leads generated are indeed legit (a lot of online affiliate programs suffer from click/signup robots). So I sent this response:

Hi Ryan

I am promoting JotSpot through a series of online advertising campaigns with a number of sites including Google Adwords and some sites on Adbrite (although these ads are yet to start running).

I look forward to a long-lasting relationship with JotSpot.

Kind regards

Wayne Robinson

Exactly what ads are you buying?

We don’t allow you to buy ads that compete with anything that we purchase.

Thanks,
Ryan

-------------------

Are you buying words like “wiki software” and sending them to your affiliate link?

I’m sorry – but this is not permitted and please stop immediately.

Thanks,
Ryan

-------------------

Wayne,

I will approve all leads up til this point, but I can’t approve anymore.

Thanks,
Ryan

Now, I was both worried and a little bit pissed off - especially with how panicy Ryan seems in these emails. After all, the FAQs say you can advertise wherever you want and I just booked a number of advertising spots with other providers (OK, so I decided to have a significant flutter on advertising). This is the first time an affiliate has ever asked me not to spend money marketing on their behalf!

 

Also too, I'm now concerned about the stats in my affiliate account as I've sent through 425 clicks (from targetted advertising describing the product) and there are only 2 leads showing (free trial signups). Quite frankly  a 0.24% conversion of clicks to free-trial signups is abysmal for untargetted advertising, let alone targetted advertising so I'm starting to wonder how legit JotSpot actually is themselves.

I've corresponded a little more with Ryan but, while he responds almost instantly (and frequently) to me sending clicks to JotSpot, he has chosen to ignore my most important question, "is the stats on the affiliate page an accurate representation of the leads I've sent to JotSpot, or have you put my targetted advertising leads on-hold and for what purpose?"

Normally I would decide to just leave this issue alone at this point. It is their business, they can run it how they like and piss off who they like, but their website didn't tell me I wasn't allowed to do what I am doing and I've already spent over AU$850 on advertising with another US$400 in the pipelines waiting on approvals and availability (did I mention big flutter).

I will keep you all posted with how JotSpot decides to handle this one. 

 Oh, and by the way, there are no other terms and conditions. The FAQ is as specific as it gets.

Well, it seems that if you wait... just long enough, you may just get what you wished for.

I was just finishing my implementation of a scalable push solution for real-time web-based applications when I was asked to review an implementation for a reader of my blog.

The project isn't officially launched yet, but it is to be called Juggernaut (http://juggernaut.rubyforge.org) and it looks really promising. Juggernaut uses Flash and it's sockets implementation to push data from subscribed channels directly into your application.

I will post the review when I've finished doing the load-testing of the server (as much as possible on my limited hardware) and, of course, get the author's permission to do so.