The relaunch of our ProofPass.com site has taught and reinforced a number of business lessons and principles for me over the last month. The new ProofPass.com is an enhanced and improved version of the original product/service. In other words, we built a better mousetrap and it’s getting noticed. One way it’s getting noticed is the affiliate marketing program I’ve offered to set up for a select few business associates. These folks believe enough in the new ProofPass.com that they want to begin recommending it to their clients and associates.
I’ve observed the same behavior in myself. You may have noticed that I’ve changed around the right hand sidebar on this site a bit over the last couple of weeks. I decided to stop promoting some of my affiliate relationships with that prime real estate because they were not generating revenue to justify the exposure. The question became how to find programs that I was willing to promote.
Finding needles in the haystack
One area I’ve done pretty well with is promoting replacement batteries for the htc EVO phone I carry. I decided to search the ShareASale merchant directory for a mobile phone battery provider I could promote. It ended up taking the better part of a few hours. I took the time to visit each site and search for ‘htc EVO battery.’ I settled on Batteries.com after I rated each site on these three factors:
1. The ease with which I was able to initiate that search.
2. The pertinence of the results that search generated.
3. The overall look and feel of the website.
Similarly, I’ve decided to finally get a professional logo done for this site. I once again searched the ShareASale merchant directory. This evaluation was a bit different. I ran a few of the better looking sites all the way through the process up to the point where I needed to purchase. At the end of that evaluation process, I was happiest with LogoMojo.com and willingly entered by credit card information. Soon, you’ll see the new logo and a post sharing the process in greater detail.
People evaluate you every day
Prior to our re-release of ProofPass.com on June 1, the site and service had become kind of stale. While still a useful offering, nothing had changed visually in almost two years. Folks are constantly looking at and evaluating your product and service offering. There is no resting on your laurels in the modern business world. Once you get to the top, you have to keep innovating and improving. If you do, your audience will continue to notice you and promote you. If you don’t, you’ll die a not so slow death.