Web Marketing HowTo

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This new marketing scheme is really burnin’ up the net these days. People are falling over themselves to promote it, but will it last?

What Is Pay-Per-Play?

In a nutshell, when a visitor arrives at your website, a 5 second audio clip will start playing automatically. You get paid on 100% of the page views that have the NetAudioAds javascript loaded. Their search engine will crawl your site and make sure that you are only getting contextually-relevant ads.

What’s the Catch?

First off, it’s self playing audio. Audio that starts playing automatically when you enter a site can be startling if you don’t expect it. It’s annoying to the users in most cases, just like popups and blinking banner ads. Speaking of that, per their FAQ: (http://www.sellingppp.com/faq.html)

QUESTION: Since website owners are PAID PER PLAY, will there ever come a time (like pop-ups or spam) that this too will be overwhelmed and overexposed and end up having more than one play per page (since more plays = more $)?

ANSWER: Only one audio ad can be played per page, per visitor, If someone wants to display a pop-up that plays another audio ad then they will need to understand that annoying their visitors will drive them away.

I agree 100%. When I get to a site that’s going to play it’s own audio or music, I close that tab / browser window. I am suddenly not interested in what that site has to offer.

The major issue I see with the whole program is that it’s designed to irritate and intrude into the user’s web experience. I’m not sure how you turn that into a strength. To quote the sellingppp.com website itself: “The truth is, people hate commercials.”

Another issue I have is the whole “selling technique”, not to mention the necessity of having one. The sellingppp.com website is a simple 1-column sales pitch that reminds me of a bad “get rich quick” scheme, using all the same techniques. They claim “no hype intended or implied!” but that’s EXACTLY what they’re doing:

• money to be paid to you!
• “backed by one of the top 5 major search engines” But who exactly, well, that’s still secret. Are there search engines other than Google? I don’t know.
  

  “Due to a “strategic” confidentiality agreement we cannot reveal who the search engine partner is yet. It doesn’t matter anyways, what matters is the fact that this partnership will allow NetAudioAds™ to increase their audio ad impressions from mere millions to billions on a monthly basis.”

  So, it’s both a big deal worthy of promotion, AND at the same time irrelevant. That’s interesting.

• “no clicks necessary!” and other sales phrases bolded so you can see just how easy it is.

The NetAudioAds PPP network has supposedly been running already for 2 1/2 years with 66,000 advertisers and over 550,000 websites serving their ads. This leads, according to the website, to up to 43 million ad impressions per month.

They have gone with a tiered system of affiliates to help expand. You can get paid 25% of ad income generated by your site, 5% of what the advertisor spent to have the ad played on your referrals’ websites, and 5% off the people signed up under them. Now I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear about these tiered arrangements, I think MLM scam. Call me skeptical by nature.

The sales technique continues, telling you it’s such a limited opportunity and you need to do this NOW NOW NOW before they close the doors. The whole technique to me is such a turn off, as they wind up sounding like the same old snake-oil salesmen and AMWAY marketers we’ve all heard before.

The Agenda?

I think the new hosting offer for affiliates they came out with just underlines my low opinion of this operation. For $59.95 they’ll register a domain, and create pages for you to hide your affiliate links with, so you can promote your “business”. Tsk tsk…you’re not in business with them, you ARE their business. They’re making money off of your desire to make money, offering hosting for those who don’t understand it at rates easily beatable, while still retaining control. It’s an old story. I’m not going to link it, but the page is here: http://www.sellingppp.com/hosting.html

I notice also that their blog has a link where you can go sign up for training. Any bets that there’s a free package and an upgraded package of training that will help you be more successful, for just a few dollars more?

Well, it’s not just me that’s unimpressed or concerned — take a look at some other links from folks:

I Won’t Be PaidPerPlay by Ben Cook over at The Blogging Experiment

Pay-Per-Play Advertising for Affiliates By Shawn Collins

Net Audio Ads - PayPerPlay by Kevin Lam

PayPerPlay: The Next Generation of Intrusive Internet Marketing on IMScamAlert.com

These next two sites may be this same gentleman as above, who may be a bit disgruntled. I’m always the skeptic, and always looking for the angle, but the information seems sound.

NetAudioAds Voice2Page and Pay Per Play Affiliate Abuses and Pay Per Play a Spammers Delight

What are your thoughts? Does it seem on the level to you? Have you signed up, with or without doubts?

Tags: Affiliate Programs, NetAudioAds, Pay-Per-Play, PayPerPlay, voice2page, voice2page and payperplay abuses

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