Fee Based Awards: Part 3

by Wally Gross, Webmaster
Surfers Choice Internet Awards
15 January 2002

Print Version

This article is a sequel to Fee Based Awards: Part 1 and Part 2. If you have not already read Part 1 and Part 2, may I boldly suggest you take a minute and do so now.

The New Paradigm

In just 30 minutes on 9/11 the world changed and each and every freedom-loving citizen the world over thinks and acts differently as a result. It's a dilemma that is without reconciliation; no normal mind can come to grips with this insanity. However, it's a reality that bites deeply and will affect each of us for years to come.

With this, the Internet will change as well. Email usage will become more important than ever and the use of the Internet as a tool of commerce and communication will increase rapidly, but with a new paradigm that is based on traditional concepts and values.

Perhaps, and for the better, the day of the corporate giant is coming to an end. The boss and all those subservient may just be something that can't survive. Control of the way we think, act and purchase things will change. Bigger might not be better for too much longer.

The terrorist act of 9/11 has embedded a new thinking in our minds. Maybe people are starting to think that titles aren't so important anymore. Hey, "pay attention I am the president of this huge and important company and I will control your life, your software and what and when you buy things," doesn't impress people too much these days. As I have said on my Surfers Choice Internet Awards site, "From the deepest dark the brightest light will emerge."

I believe "Peer-to-Peer" business philosophies will be the new buzz — the order of the day. I think it's absolutely about time. Treating people like peers can only add up to more prolific results for all who decide that people, not technology, is really what makes things work well.

Internet Awards

It seems to me that awards have been an integral part of our society for many, many centuries. We can all come up with examples: The Academy Awards, The Pulitzer Prize, The Emmys, The Golden Globes. There is a definite fascination of some sort with the recognition and other benefits that seem to come with receiving any prestigious award.

There is also, of course, a certain "good feeling" that belongs to the act of giving awards. I am certain many Internet award sites are there for that worthy purpose alone.

Are These Awards Free?

I worked as a real estate broker for 25 years and along the way earned many awards. I did not receive an invoice for any of them, but does that mean they were free? I hardly think so!

The ceremonies carried a ticket price of about $100 for dinner and the chance to receive your award from the company president. The sales people receiving the awards would not be getting them unless they had earned a decent dollar for themselves and the company. I just could not imagine an awards celebration if all the sales people were behind with their office expenses.

Are any awards free? How is the granddaddy of them all, The Academy Awards, funded. Sponsors, members, submission fees and donations, that's how. Even trophies given to Little Leaguers are paid for by somebody — usually local taxes. And if they're donated, somebody still pays for the hardware.

However, there is one type of award that does seem to come free. The Internet Award, of course. Hundreds, if not thousands, of award givers work endless hours to provide their services for free. Most do it as a hobby, and most love doing it. Kudos to all of them.

Personally, I think all awards should be free. Heck why not! I also think my house should be free. My car, my food, my high speed Internet connection and my clothes, as well. If we could just find enough sponsors to get that done, wouldn't life be grand!

Speaking of Reality

The reality of it is another story. While it may be idealistic to give away one's time to provide free awards, it is a poor business model in just about all respects. And that, don't forget, is what this article is all about: a business model for a fee based award.

In fact the good people who give away their precious time in running free award sites on the Net may well be the only people on the planet who provide a truly free service. I don't think too many others exist.

As most of you who are reading this know, and as I often say, I have served my tenure and now I would rather spend my time helping the elderly than waste it on award collectors. This is in no way intended to disparage those who run free award sites. As I have said, I respect these huge efforts that have without doubt added a great deal to the Internet.

In general, I am very suspicious of anything free, but I don't look a gift horse in the mouth either. I can tell the difference between "good free" and "bad free." I haven't taken any of the spammers up on the free holidays or the free miracle ebooks that will make me rich in 90 days. I don't buy into the loss leaders that so many hosting companies and others use to draw people in.

The tragedy is that all too many people do get sucked in. I, for one, have little compassion left for these individuals who feed the crooks their money. Most of them are driven by their own greed and when you put two parties together who have dubious motives, only bad things can result.

Of course, there are some good free services and products available out there, but I don't have the time or desire to get into this right now. A free award from a classy Internet Awards site certainly qualifies. Free begets free, however, and that does not feed the family or pay the mortgage, nor will it build and propagate a business.

Charging a Fee Means It's a Business

Surfers Choice is a business in every sense of the word. It's fun and really of very little consequence, in the larger picture, but it does come with an ocean full of responsibility.

If you are running an award sites for fun, as a hobby or to make a contribution to society, and you decide to do so for free, that is your right. However, the responsibility to do it well is still there. If you run an award site and provide services only on a certain day or when the temperature is over 70, this leads to poor quality and hurts the reputation of the Awards Community as a whole. One rotten apple really does provide the perception that the whole bushel is bad.

Once a site, whether an awards site or any commercial endeavor, decides to charge a fee for its services, then the whole concept is much different. When people pay for a service they expect, and rightly so, something of value in return.

Providing a high level of service is a constant task and one that I happily accept. What this means changes as often as the diapers in a day care center. I am really never 100% certain that what I did last month still works. Is somebody else doing it differently? Or better? What needs to be changed? What should I add to provide a service that applicants want for their site?

Who is my competition? What are they doing? Is my payment processing secure enough? What's the best way of processing orders? What does my accountant want me to do? Shall I use PHP, JS, SSI or IFRAME to update the site? Shall I sell banners? Do I need Rich Media? Shall I run a contest? Shall I try pop-unders? How do I get better and more traffic? What services do I need this month? Can I implement them myself or should I hook up with an ASP? What content do I need? How do I deliver it? So you see, the list goes on and on.

Most free awards services have little to do with the items listed above. Charging a fee means you're running a business and that carries with it a whole different set of responsibilities.

The Litmus Test

Remember, the three articles in this series were written specifically for those interested in finding out the details, or at least my point of view, of running a fee based award site.

In my opinion, there are certain factors that must be present for any award site to charge a fee. However, be aware that charging a fee for a submission is not yet well accepted on the Net, and this applies doubly for awards. Unfortunately, the Awards Community has really created this image all by itself just by the shear volume of sites that provide free services. Yahoo, which charges $300 US without the hope of a refund if your site is not accepted, seems to be much better accepted than award sites that charge $50, 60 or 75 for their services.

What are these factors?

1) Your site needs total credibility. This means many things:

2) Your own domain.

Is there a fee based award site out there that does not have it's own TLD? I have yet to see one. You most certainly need a dedicated TLD that is 100% awards. You can have other content, but it must relate to the interest of your visitors.

A domain is essential for credibility, branding, search engine positioning and other factors.

3) An order processing system.

If you're going to charge a fee then a secure payment gateway is an absolute must. Proper merchant accounts do not come cheap. I searched and researched for a month before I finally made a decision about selecting a merchant account partner. It cost me $1000 US to set up (not too mention my own time in developing the forms needed) and carries a monthly payment of $25 US, plus other costs. However, it has worked extremely well for me.

There are other services like Pay Pal, which you may want to check out. I prefer to have total control over this type of sensitive service, but you may have a different opinion and feel safe using one of these other services.

If your award site does not meet most of the above requirements, then you are not ready to start a fee based awards program.

How Much Will It Cost?

How much will all this cost you? Like some, you could opt for free services for just about all of it, but you'll never convince me that they are the answer to running a successful online business. If you want to throw your site to the wolves, then free hosting is one way to start. You simply will not get the functionality and performance needed for scalable solutions.

What kind of functionality and performance do you need and what are they going to cost?

Domain Registration

These days you can register a domain for about $10-20 per year with an ICANN approved registrar.

Domain Hosting

There are many hosting services out there — most are crap. They use the loss leaders, unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage space, to suck in clients who don't know any better. Unlimited bandwidth simply does not exist.

Translated into simple English it means, "We'll give you all the bandwidth you need, but we will throttle the living crap out of it." In other words, "We'll give you a 300 HP engine but we'll only let you use 10 HP during critical peak times." Can you really afford to present your potential clients with garbage Web hosting?

I know Web hosting all too well and have had many very frightening experiences. Once my server was down for 8 days because the hosting company decided to turn off the phones and email services while they went off and hid somewhere. Just for the sake of embarrassing the idiots, I uploaded 3GB of information (mostly database files) and hosted a search engine called the Search Tower. It received 100,000 page views a day from 10,000 uniques, and it only took them about a week to shut me down. So much for unlimited disk space and bandwidth.

For the past two years I have had my own server. I now have two. I bought the most recent one last January and it runs like a dream.

You can expect to pay about $25-30 a month for decent Web hosting services.

Order Processing System

See above. Ongoing fees of about $50 a month.

Accounting Services

About $1000 annually.

Trademark Registrations

About $500.

Software

You'll probably need a links or portal script in MySQL with PHP or Perl. The cost varies but I would allow about $500. Once again, you can get portal services free on the Net. Personally, I prefer having my own software. For one reason, I really do not want any third party having access to the names of my clients. Would you?

Some sort of automated or partially automated CRM is a good idea. I use a ticket system that costs me $200.

I also have automated article submission software and a newsletter delivery system. The latter costs about $150 and the former was a free OSS. If you are going to use Open Source, then you definitely need Perl, PHP and MySQL skills. Otherwise, buy scripts and have them installed for you.

In the next 12 months I plan to spend some $10,000 to provide new services that I feel are a must to take my site to the next level.

Search Engine Marketing

These days you can't count on getting on the major portals and search engines free of charge. You can expect to pay about $300 or so for Yahoo and Looksmart. The latter gets you into a host of other search sites. Including other important search sites, expect to pay a minimum of $600-1000.

Other Marketing

You can, of course, try all the free link exchanges out there but don't hold your breath waiting for results. Most of them are of the "free begets free" variety and really don't work. Go ahead and try though. I did and I know what the likely result will be. But hey, who knows, maybe you'll be the one to break all the records.

What's worked for me is email ads. I spend about $100 a month placing announcements in small but good publications.

Many of my hits come from either Yahoo or Google (about 40%). Another 40% or so come from external links to my site and the balance from other sources. All of them are important and add up to about 800-1000 uniques a day on the average. Far from where it should be, but not too bad.

Other Considerations

You need to attract visitors and there are methods that have proven successful for me in the past, besides the ones mentioned above. Surveys have also provided me with some invaluable information about the habits, thoughts and expectations of my visitors.

Contests usually draw new visitors but not necessarily those who are looking for the services you provide. It's the "free begets free" thing again. Although low on the pecking order, contests are probably worth a try for they can produce some positive results. They will cost you time and money though.

Site Sponsors

This is the mainstay (or at least I believe it is) of the very powerful Webby Awards site. Let's face it and give them credit. They really are miles ahead of just about all the other award sites out there.

Getting site sponsors is hard, and I don't mean the kind that rotates banners at $2 CPM. I mean those that provide funding for your site in return for various forms of exposure. Probably not something you should even attempt to accomplish for several years, unless you have some powerful contacts in this arena.

Newsletter

If you are a capable writer and can produce some interesting content, then a newsletter can be a great vehicle to both market your site and earn income, if you can sell impressions in it.

This will require some software that does a good job of handling subscribe and unsubscribe requests, double opt-in, and both HTML and text versions of the newsletter. Whatever you do, do not send out emails to a list with each one showing all the other recipients in the CC field! This looks terrible and just might upset some of your subscribers. Do it right, or don't do it at all.

Is Your Head Spinning?

If your head isn't spinning by now and if you aren't saying, "Mmmm, thanks anyway, but I think I'll stick to my little ol' free award site and leave all this hassle to someone else," then maybe, just maybe, you're a candidate for the next great fee based award site.

I don't know whether these three articles have encouraged you, helped in any way, or just made you think I'm a big putz. I can only hope that somehow you're a little better for it.

I know how hard you work to please those who are looking for awards on the Net. I'm not sure you get the thanks and gratitude you deserve from those who benefit from what you do, but I know and I thank you for all your efforts.

All Is Not Lost

The Internet Awards Community (if indeed there is such an entity) is very fragmented. At least that's how I see it. Yes, there are many fine efforts underway that in different ways help to unify the Awards Community, but I have not seen any that answer the needs of award givers who want to turn their sites into a business.

There are hundreds of small award sites out that are operated by those who have fine motivations, but only a few have a business model that one could study.

The Webby Awards is, at least in my opinion, the far-and-away leader in fee based Internet Awards. They have set themselves apart from most other sites and have developed an excellent business model. The site is a collection of people working together and getting results. For most of us emulating them would be impossible simply based on finances.

If your goal is to turn your award site into a business, then you probably can't do it without substantial funds and a good amount of people power. For those of you who are willing to release some individual control, but really don't have the money to start a fee based program, then I may be able to help.

Setting Sail for New Horizons

To provide services that site owners are willing to part with a few dollars to receive, you must show them a convincing reason. This includes more than one item, but I think at the head of the list is sending visitors to them. Long after the thrill of the award is gone, site owners want to know that hits are coming their way for the fee they paid.

What's needed is a Yahoo-like site where visitors can find top quality Web sites all under one user interface. They don't want to make endless mouse clicks going from one award site to the next seeking information.

This site will also allow award applicants to submit one form and apply for several top awards. So the result is that the successful applicant gets several top awards, a presence at the individual award site, and a presence at the main searchable directory. Simple, but effective, I believe.

To provide this service, I have registered a domain called "awardreviews.com." By the time you read this it should be online and available for anyone who wants to investigate the terms of membership. It will, of course, be a fee based system with all members sharing collectively in the income produced.

This is a new horizon of sorts for those with high quality award sites who want to convert to a fee based model. It will not cost you thousands of dollars to start, and the directory will provide one interface for visitors to find awards and content. This offer will expire 25 January 2002 and will not be re-issued.

What the Future Holds

I will be adding many features to Surfers Choice in the near future. Perhaps the most notable will be the opportunity for Webmasters to host their own country specific or regional site. This will be done through a new site called "surferschoiceglobal.com." I suppose only the future will provide the answers to how it will all work out.

Best of the New Year to all. To each of you may the New Year bring you love, joy, good health and peace. I'll be praying for each and every one of you.

A special thanks to Don (the real Don of the Awards Community) for hosting this great site.