Two affiliate program questions...

[JDebler]

One:

Is there a service out there (with an affiliate program) that provides an online escrow service for the transaction of goods between my site's members? I have a "For Sale" section on my automotive message board for people to sell their used or no longer needed parts. On occasion people are victims of fraud. I was hoping I could find an escrow service that can handle the completion of such transactions and could also generate revenue as an affiliate for sending business their way. Of course, this would be optional to the user but I still want to be able to offer a service such as this while also heling to generate revenue as a result. We suggest iescrow.com (now Tradenable) but to my knowledge, they do not have an affiliate program that actually pays out revenue.

Two:

I am considering running a contest where people have to sign up for a free online service in order to enter the contest to win free merchandise. We did this last year by having people sign up for a free Photopoint account (through their affiliate program) and forward us the account confirmation e-mail as an entry to the contest. Then we selected a random e-mail as the winner of the contest. It worked reasonably well, but many already had a Photopoint account and the payout wasn't all that great.

Is there a better way of doing this while not being very obtrusive to the potential contestant, providing a free service or product and sending a decent amount of revenue in our direction to pay for the merchandise we are giving away?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Jason

[Stallion]

Regarding number two, I believe that may be a TOS violation of some advertisters. It'd fall under incentivized (is that a word) clicks. I'd check it out with your advertister(s) before proceeding with it.

[JDebler]

Originally posted by Stallion
Regarding number two, I believe that may be a TOS violation of some advertisters.

It (almost) was. CJ gave us a very unwelcome e-mail and threatened to pretty much keep the revenue we had made from it so far. I was a little shoked and went a re-read their TOS. Thne I felt mighty stupid and called them to explain the situation. They told me to contact Photopoint and make sure it was cool with them. The rep at Photopoint that answered the e-mail seemed kind of apathetic to the whole situation, and gave the go ahead. It was a very unstable situation and we made it through the skin of our teeth, but everything worked out fine in the end...barely I don't know where my head was when I dreamed the idea up, but I don't want to head in that direction again. Hence, the reason for my first post in this thread.

[steb]

you might want to check out postmaster direct, or http://affiliates.nc.com (I think)

they rent out the emails list, you get paid a portion of it. its opt in, and targetted, so it isn't spamming..

not sure if they let you view the list of people who have signed up though..