Product and Affiliate Review

Without a doubt, one of the best ways to launch a product (free or paid) is to offer a referral contest.  Recently, Jonathan Volk ran a month long contest for 3 iPads; the top two refers and one person at random would get iPads.

After a couple of weeks, John Chow was so far ahead of everyone else that Jony issued a specific contest to see if anyone could challenge John Chow for the most referrals.  John Chow proceeded to beat himself with no one else even close.  The second place guy was Shoemoney just for the record.

There are a couple of very specific reasons John Chow will always win referral contests. In no particular order:

1. John Chow has followers that convert and take actions

Many people have tons of followers.  Some have e-mail lists several times larger than John, but John’s readers convert.  In order to win these contests, you need a following that listens to you and trusts you.  About half a year back, John unfollowed everyone on his twitter account (nearly 60,000 people).  In the process he lost about 10,000 followers, but now the people who are following him are legit followers who click and convert.

2. John Chow bribes his readers (and his bribes are usually pretty sick)

John can go buy an iPad with what he makes in an hour; it isn’t about the prize, it’s about the pride of winning.  Instead of keeping the prizes for himself he offers to give the prize to one of his readers if he wins.

Even when there isn’t a contest, John offers another ridiculously huge perk to buying from him: free review/ad space.  On more than one occasion, as an incentive for buying from him, John will give the buyer a free review or ad space on his site.  From a CPC standpoint, many of the products are worth buying just for the “free” review.  Furthermore, John’s traffic converts, so it’s better than random AdSense traffic even if the CPC is the same.

3. John is blunt about his motives and disclosure

The top to referrers in Jony Volk’s contest had one very similar trait: they don’t pull punches, and they tell you what they are doing.  They don’t care if they offend you or make you mad (that weeds out the bad leads and freeloaders).  Both John Chow and Shoemoney tell you to leave if you’re offended being asked to things for them.  Just another reason John Chow’s traffic converts.

4. The sites with a big enough reader base don’t participate

In order to beat John Chow, you would need a massive traffic advantage over him.  Blogs like Problogger (which still might not have enough traffic), Mashable, Lifehacker, Tech Crunch, MakeUseOf, Smashing, etc.. don’t tend to make their money from affiliate referral programs like John Chow.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying they don’t sell things or make money from affiliate deals, but I couldn’t imagine seeing any of those sites participating in a referral contests.

Also, most of those sites have multiple contributors.  I don’t think splitting an iPad six ways would work very well.  Maybe each author could use it every 6th week?

John Chow Owns Referral Period

When it comes down to it, John Chow has readers that convert and more to bribe readers with.  If I can get a $500+ value (a review on JC’s webpage plus a JC tweet promoting the article) for buying a $500 product that kicks ass anyway, guess whose referral link I’m clicking?

The biggest downside for the contest host to this is many people may be discouraged by John’s tight grip on the referral competition.  One way to make it more fair is to offer multiple winners and/or random winners.  Another good option is to give John Chow a handicap.  Maybe if John had to send over 4 times as many referrals, others might have a chance at winning.

Is anyone up to the challenge to beating John Chow?

Image Credit: Image was taken from JC’s About page.

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