All the fuss over Netflix yesterday started me thinking about what a great day it is to be an affiliate marketer with a nice opt in email list of people who may be (or until recently were) Netflix customers.  In case you are making the universal monkey face that signals confusion I’ll explain.

Netflix apparently decided that one big blunder in 2011 was less than it could aspire to and ambitiously set out to anger its shrinking customer population a second time yesterday.

Netflix made news this summer with a price hike than was not received well by its subscribers to put it euphemistically.  The company justified the relatively large increase in monthly costs for subscribers by pointing out its own rising costs in securing content rights.  The hike in price from $9.99 to $15.98 came without much consolation from Netflix though customers were also offered the option of paying $7.99 for one or the other of the two services depending on their preference for streaming video or DVD rentals.  I’m guessing like many companies seeing growth in their acquisition of new customers Netflix thought that customers would grumble a bit and then accept the new cost of enjoying commercial free streaming content and reasonably easy access to the DVDs they want via mail.  Shocking as it probably was to the leadership at Netflix, customers responded much differently and current projections have the net customer loss at around 1 million.  This comes not long after Starz announcement that it will not renew its contract that expires this year to supply content to Netflix.  In accordance with the law of threes Netflix is also getting a fair lashing in the stock market just when it claims it needs to raise more cash.

Now if you were in charge at Netflix you might build a bunker in your office and demand silence of everyone in your organization until the dust settles.  Netflix instead issued yet another change in its service yesterday, this one very likely to rattle even the most loyal among their customers.  DVD rentals will now be made available under an entirely separate, new brand called Qwikster while streaming video will remain under the Netflix badge.  So the customers willing to shell out more money each month to keep their options of streaming video and DVD rentals will be forced to accept the requirement to manage separate log ins and billing accounts for the two services.  Oh but the CEO of Netflix did pad the news this time with a personal “oops, my bad” regarding the way the first change was made public.  Apparently it’s not the changes that were a bad idea but the way they were announced.  If you do much reading around social circles online you will likely find few who agree with that by the way.

All of this flaunting of power and halfway apologizing will likely cost Netflix big time and anytime there’s a mass exodus of customers from one company there’s a close competitor waiting to catch the landslide of new business.  Though analysts don’t point to a clear benefactor in those terms you can bet that someone is gearing up to send out a lot of emails today.  Will it be you or your company that guides these customers to a friendlier (and more tuned-in) DVD and streaming video provider or providers?  This is certainly the sort of thing that qualifies as an event and no doubt affiliate marketers will want to act on it while there are still customers walking out of Netflix.

From Press Release: Today, Datran Media announced the expansion of its social media capabilities for its digital marketing platform, StormPost. In addition to the platform’s ShareThis and Facebook sharing toolsets, StormPost now makes it easy for marketers to share their email content across Google+. With StormPost’s Google +1 button, recipients can share the full email or article-level content to the appropriate Circle, ensuring higher engagement and relevance. StormPost users can accurately optimize, track and measure engagement and performance across the largest social media networks, including Facebook, Twitter and now Google+.

With over 25 million users and noted as one of the fastest-growing social networks, Google+ simplifies the way people share content. The new Google +1 feature complements and rounds out a robust suite of social sharing capabilities StormPost provides to its users, which includes:

        
        --  Sharing email content across the major social networks, including
            Google+, Facebook and Twitter
        --  Facebook "Like" and "Send"
        --  Social sharing reporting and analytics tools
        --  Re-targeting capabilities specifically designed to target social
            influencers
        --  A/B split auto-optimization of content, from and subject line
            combinations using social sharing data
        --  Facebook email registration forms
        --  Social buzz: social listening and sentiment tracking

“The share-to-social feature has been a great way to integrate social media into our emails,” said Steve Werkmeister, director of email and social media marketing for Salem Web Network, a StormPost customer. “The addition of a Google +1 button will enable us to ensure we are part of the conversation on the rapidly growing Google+ social network, and it will provide yet another way for our customers to engage and share our content with their social circles.”

“Email and social media are complementary channels, and as consumer content sharing across digital media continues to explode, we expect tools like the Google +1 button to be among the most heavily adopted by marketers,” said Tony D’Anna, executive vice president and GM of Datran Media’s StormPost. “Features like the Google +1 tool help brands make it as easy as possible for subscribers to share email content, allowing marketers to reach new prospects by tapping into the massive reach of users’ personal networks. Access to StormPost reports further benefit marketers by providing them with immediately actionable insights into how consumer campaign engagement is impacting marketing results.”

About StormPost StormPost is a digital marketing platform that helps companies manage the customer lifecycle through the delivery of highly relevant messaging across multi-channel touch points, including email, social and mobile. With a full suite of features, including revolutionary audience reporting, StormPost offers brand marketers, retailers and media companies highly specialized capabilities for defining and engaging with their ideal customers. StormPost has been cited by customers and analysts for its flexible architecture and scalability and was named the 2009 Best Email Marketing Platform by the members of the Digital Publishing and Advertising Conference (DPAC).

About Datran Media Datran Media is an award-winning technology and marketing company that leading brands, agencies and publishers depend on to discover, reach and retain their ideal audiences across all digital media channels. Datran Media’s top-ranked solutions for digital audience measurement, advertising, CRM, commerce and monetization have allowed thousands of companies to execute unparalleled advertising and communications campaigns across social, mobile, the Web and email.

Enhance your sender reputation, increase your inbox placement rates and maximize your ROI with LeadSpend’s active email validation.  LeadSpend’s real-time email validation determines if an email account is valid and deliverable, when you want to use it.  If you’re in the lead generation, email marketing or email services business then you know that keeping your file free of invalid addresses is critical to maintaining a good reputation, high inbox placement rates and the revenues that follow. Advanced real-time email validation from LeadSpend helps you avoid bounces, spam traps and other invalid email addresses, improving results and your bottom line.

Content unlocking has received a lot of press of late. Not only because it is the new kid on the block in monetizing the web, but because it yields real results. Content locking is now considered the best way of giving returns to webmasters, bloggers, forum administrators as well as owners of any type of digital content from photos and pictures to mp3s, videos, PDFs. No other method is as simple nor as effective as the content lock. Wewould go so far as to say, it is as a new wave of advertising that threatens to eclipse the “obsolete” methods others use to create revenue from web and mobile assets.

One of the first questions we get asked by almost every publisher in the Leadbolt network is – what kind of content should I be locking? The answer is simply – any kind of digital content.

A product’s success is typically achieved through being the centerpiece in a situation of high demand and low alternatives – success with content locking stems from that very same idea. If you’re providing content that is valuable to the user, and enough users know this content exists (enter SEO, social media, etc. strategies here), that is theroot of a winning content unlocking campaign.

For example, you may be a gifted writer and illustrator authoring your own digital comic books. Instead of selling these comic books at a flat rate or adopting a subscription service, why not monetize each download without charging the user a dime?

This is where content unlocking is at its prime. Once the user is engaged with the comic and has made the decision to download, they are prompted with the content unlocker that will ask them to complete one of three targeted offers prior to downloading. As an offer is completed, the user now has access to your comic book and the advertiser will pay you anywhere from$0.40-$12, for that lead.

You’re also provided the opportunity to customize your unlocker, giving this intelligent monetization layer a professional look that accurately reflects that aesthetic of your content. Insert one of yourcolorful illustrations as a background skin and draw up some appealing copysuch as, “Please complete ones of these offers in order to receive the latest edition of [insert title here] and help support the author!”. Marketing at its finest.

Here are some great ideas on how you can join the content locking revolution.

E-book
Say you are very knowledgeable about auto repairs, computer programming, bird watching, or just about any other hobbythat you could easily blog about. Now, draw out some thoughtful topics thatprovide valuable insight of the hobby. Populate those topics with some helpful tips, interesting trivia, and additional content other aficionados would find interesting.

Once you have yourself a comprehensive document on this hobby, turn into a PDF and upload to any file sharing service that provides a download link to the file. Create a simple WordPress blog that gives a brief overview of the e-book; basically selling the valuable content the e-book provides. Place the link on a sub-page of the blog and provide an attractive call-to-action.

On the sub-page of which the download link toyour e-book is placed, this is where you will embed the content unlocker script. Before the user has access to the download link, the will unlocker will prompt and require the completion of one out of three targeted offers. Once the user has completed this offer, they will have access to your valuable e-book and the advertiser will pay you for this lead.

Old Documents

Take some of those old documents from your university days and turn them into potential goldmines. Students are alwayshunting for documents they can reference for their own essays, so why not provide them a valuable resource that you can monetize?

For example, that stellar overview you wrote for your exam on Of Mice And Men could serve as quite a benefit for students studying for their exam on the same topic. Convert that overview into a PDFfile, create a promotional blog, incorporate some effective SEO strategies, and rank for the relevant keywords.

Following the same strategy as the e-book example, make sure you lock the sub-page of the blog containing your download link and clear call-to-action. Now those old documents clogging up your hard drive can generate passive income for you!

Video Collections

Let’s assume you and your friends are aspiring filmmakers and have a collection of short films featured on your own Youtube channel. Let’s also assume that you create one every three weeks and upload it to your channel as soon as it’s complete. Now you’re at the point where you have quite a number of fans and receive thousands of views for each video but generate little to no revenue as a result.

Let’s create a blog that will act as your “showcase theatre”, where all the current and future fans of your films come to view your latest installment. Before the user is able to view the video (uploaded by a third-party video upload service that locks the video), theymust complete one of three targeted offers provided on the content unlocker. In return, each view will result in dollars as the advertiser will pay out anywhere from $0.40-$12 for each offer completion.

Not only have you monetized no-cost products, you have increased the potential for download numbers based on your attractive price tag (or lack thereof). Content locking is so easy, the skys the limit. Go ahead, try these strategies and witness the awesome monetization potential that only content locking provides.

Check out LeadBolt

The Largest B2B Specific Lead Generation Network on the Web. RevResponse empowers B2B web publishers with contextually relevant offers like free magazines, white papers, and eBooks from industry leading advertisers and content creators. Quite simply, RevResponse pays you to provide your visitors with a free resources that will keep them coming back again and again.

Scrubkit is an extremely powerful fraud analytical system with a proven track record of identifying fraud in real time. It’s a living breathing system that is constantly envolving with new trends that emerge – the outcome is a product that allows you sleep better at night knowing you have complete control of your network. ScrubKit is a solution that is self-managed by the customer yet backed by our highly-knowledgeable, and intensely-dedicated staff. We provide everything you need to get started. We can even pull historical data right from the start so you can get immediate results of possible fraudulent activity. We literally eat, breathe, and sleep fraud. It’s what we do, it’s what we know, and it’s what we feel is necessary to rid the industry of dirty traffic. At any time if you have questions about a fraudulent scenario, know full-well that we’re there to assist you by providing our in-depth knowledge.

Marsha J. Pechman, Federal Judge out of the Western District Court of Seattle has ordered all the assets of Marketing Millionaire and accused scammer Jesse Willms to be frozen. Additionally, according to news reports, the judge also banned Willms from continuing his business practices specifically negative option selling (ie, continuity marketing).

Willms is currently charged by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of scamming consumers for almost half-a-billion of questionable “risk-free” products. According to the FTC, these products were often sold as being free, or just paying shipping and handling, but consumers would then be billed for months and months of charges on their credit card without any easy means of canceling the bills. Many consumers complained that they would often get the product after the free trial period, and have no means of returning it.

The FTC will be speaking to authorities in Canada where Willms lives in order to enforce the asset freeze there. Currently, according to news reports, there is a both a consumer and criminal investigation against Mr. Willms in Canada.

While Jesse Willms has not responded much to these accusations, he has hired many firms to engage in a positive PR and SEO campaign and consistently sends out news releases claiming that he has been assisting charities with financial donations. Additionally, there are at least a dozen “blogs” setup by Mr. Willms to counteract the negative press with positive SERPS.