117 Christmas Gift Benefits
In the run up to Christmas 2004 a lot of marketers were heavily promoting 117 gifts of ebooks and software you could download. And so it is again in 2005, I have been receiving lots of email from marketers telling me about this years free Christmas gift bonanza.
Is this merely a repeat of 2004 well it would seem so. In 2004 it was called 117 Christmas Gifts and in 2005 they called it, yes, 117 Christmas Gifts.
I can understand calling it Christmas Gifts, but what’s with the 117 ?
Is it someone’s lucky number ?
Was it launched 117 days before Christmas ?
Are there 117 free gifts ?
Well none of the above is actually true, just as it wasn’t true in 2004. There were not 117 gifts in 2004 and there are not 117 Gifts in 2005 either.
Looking at what’s on offer they are mostly tired worn out products. Some never worked in the first place and others that have been overtaken by advances in technology and changes in search engine rules of engagement in the past 12 months.
Last year you could download many products without having to give your name and email address for every item download. This year every product I clicked on required you to complete another signup form. So, I did not bother with any of them.
What they are using to direct you to signup and download are “squeeze pages” which redirect you to the product website and another form to complete.
There was only one product that I found did not require me to supply my name and email address again and that was from Terry Gibbs. I know that not because I downloaded the product, but because Terry emailed me to tell me about it.
In his email, Terry tells me about the 117 Christmas Gift Offer from the point of view of it being Viral Marketing. He also points out Viral marketing is not the simple and easy process other marketers would have you believe.
Now isn’t that the hard truth about almost anything on the Internet for 99% of website owners – “It’s not the simple and easy process other marketers would have you believe.”
But why would marketers want to offer you these gifts ?
Because it's the season of goodwill ?
But there is also another good reason as it say’s on the web page where you sign up for these gifts:
"It's been a lot of work for us, but we know that our true intention of making these products available for free is to help you enhance your success in Internet business."
Hmm! So this is to help me enhance my success.
Well maybe, but as they say you don’t usually get something for nothing in this life and in this case as I’ve already said, you must give your name and email address and do it for virtually every product you want to download.
So who benefits from these Gifts ?
Well the individual marketers who offer products for download benefit, because they get your name and email address to send you follow-ups. They also benefit from traffic referred to their website when you click through to sign-up and download their product.
The marketers who are hosting the 117 Christmas Gift Package benefit from getting your name and email address and traffic to their website. Here’s the Alexa traffic ranking for this gift site for 2004 and 2005. Note the traffic peaks in December.
They also get the chance to present you with another product offering during the sign-up process to gain access to this gift site.
In addition to gain access to the full package of “Gifts” you need to refer this download offer to at least 3 friends who must also supply their names and email addresses.
From a web marketing point of view the 117 Christmas Gift scheme is both Viral Marketing and List Building.
It’s viral marketing because of the need for you to refer 3 friends to get access to the main part of the gift package and it’s list building for all parties because you need to sign-up to get each and almost every gift.
So do these gifts enhance your success or theirs ?
Well I’ve already said how the marketers involved benefit from these gifts.
How do you benefit ?
You get to download lots of ebooks and software that you think from what you have read and with your experience right now, will help you succeed.
You get to download lots of ebooks full of advice and links that may have been useful when the book was only 6-12 months old, but is now out of date.
You get to download lots of software that’s full of promise to do this or that, but actually most of it will do nothing to help you and never did, but you don’t know that right now.
You get to download lots of software that use to be effective but no longer is because the technology, search engines or marketing has changed, but you don’t know that right now.
You get to download lots of stuff that you’ll never read or use and will just take up disk space on your hard drive.
You get to download 1 or 2 really good products, but among all the other crap you downloaded you don’t know which ones they are.
But if you do find a free ebook or software download among your Christmas Gifts that really does enhance your success, as these marketers claim was the purpose of this offer, perhaps you could add a comment to this blog to let us all know about it.
Tony Simpson
Webpage addons
Making Your Website Work for You