My failed attempt at ringtones and Youtube
Before I even get into this post, I wanted to make it very clear to anyone reading that a lot of the methods I post here at The Bucks Report are not original to me. In fact, by the time I see them and try them they’ve often been so abused as to be of no use to newbies like myself.
But I want to post them anyway to share my experience and thoughts so that they might help you guys out. Who knows, I might find something over at DP or BHW and give it a try only to fail (such as this method I’ll talk about) but you might be able to tweak it in a way to make a few bucks for yourself.
So this method was being kicked around at BHW and I’m sure numerous other forums and blogs. I actually first saw it over at Cash Tactics. A very cool blog that has some great tips. What it involves is using Youtube to generate traffic to your ringtone affiliate offer. Basically here’s how this tactic works: You find a handful of current videos from major music artists. Let’s say Timbaland, Daughtry, Foo Fighters, Snoop..whomever you chose.
Your next step is to download these videos onto your own computer. There are numerous ways to do this but I purchased a cool piece of software called Ultraget Video Downloader . This allows you to download Youtube (or other) videos that you normally wouldn’t be able to.
Okay, so now you have your videos. Your next step is to watermark them using something like Video Watermark Factory . What you want to do is watermark the video of (for instance) Alicia Keyes with something along the lines of “Get This Ringtone at http://www.youraffiliatecodehere.com”
Of course, the url is actually to your ringtone offer landing page that you have. I used a redirect so my CPA network would not know where my traffic was coming from. Your final step is to upload your new, watermarked video to numerous video sites. There are many to chose from. Again, to make matters easy, I purchased Video Post Robot which allows me to post any number of videos to a large number of video sites quickly.
Once you accomplish all of this, the goal is for someone to see your video that has your ringtone url and think to themselves, “Oh, hey, cool…I’ll go there and grab the Alicia Keys ringtone.” They sign up and you get your cut.
My results? Utterly pathetic. A total failure. Every single time I tried to upload the video to one of the sites using Video Post Robot, my watermarked video was deleted, almost immediately, due to copyright infringement. I made a grand total of ZERO dollars.
So what lesson did I learn if any? I imagine part of the problem was that I was using newly created accounts on all the video services. I believe that since it was an account just created and my first upload was of this type, it was caught immediately. Maybe if I’d used my old Youtube account that I’ve had for a couple of years I might have had the videos stay online for a longer period.
Second, I’m thinking I could have grabbed any number of videos of these same artists that were merely someone elses. In other words, rather than use the official Daughtry video, I could have found a video that some Daughtry groupie/lover made for their friends and watermarked that one. Who knows.
At any rate, it might be worth trying again but I have more than enough on my plate as it is with other…ahem….sneaky tactics in other areas that keep me more than busy and more than enough cash coming in. But if any of this works for anyone else, then it’s all good. Even if you don’t use it for this purpose, those three video links are great things to have. None of them are using any kind of affiliate link on my part.
Is Affiliate Marketing with CPA’s Legitimate?
So I was running some thoughts around my head, which is always dangerous, and I kept wondering if my one big money-maker is something I should be losing sleep over. It’s not spamming or phishing or anything of that nature but it does involve a bit of, shall we say, creativity.
And while this venture has been making me some nice money, I’ve always felt that if I could get a site with enough traffic I would sleep easier if I was making money with something more “legitimate”. Like with some affiliate sales via a CPA Network.
So after trying my hand with some CPA offers and making a few bucks here and there, it really dawned on me: So much of this stuff is total shit. I mean, “free” iPhones, “free” ringtones, “free” Xbox. Has anyone actually ever tried to go through the process to get any of thes freebies? It is a maze of crap that nobody is willing to go through.
So I concluded that even if you have a totally white hat site, say a Myspace resource site, and you’re making your change with CPA offers, it’s still a nasty, blackhattish way to make money. YOU get your bucks for the referral, the network gets their money and the vendor gets their lead. But the poor shmuck who clicked on the ad gets nothing. Or worse, gets bombed with future offers or charged for ringtones he didn’t want.
So I’m sleeping better, ya know? It’s all a game. It’s marketing in the 21st century I guess