File-sharing troubles. What’s now?

Could you believe last week that most file-sharing services would be closed in 7 days? Personally I would never take this as a serious and reasonable prediction. SOPA and PIPA were dangerous preconditions; however nothing which could make file-sharing world turn upside down.

MegaUpload’s shutdown caused ‘Megapanic’. FileSonic and Fileserve were first to react. If you open those websites now, you’ll see that it is possible to download only those files which you uploaded yourself. All file-sharing activities are banned. Moreover, FileSonic didn’t give back last payoffs. All possible variants to get in touch with Hish are vain. Later it was said that Uploadstation also stopped its sharing options, however I’ve checked up it today and everything worked accurately. SOPA and PIPA had been already withdrawn, when FileSonic and Fileserve decided to finish their work, so the reason for their decision is rather obscure for me.

Leaving all those sorrow events behind, we should think about the future of file-sharing. I mean when there is a demand for something, supply will always appear. So, after those file-sharing services are closed, new ones will appear. New file-sharing giants could also emerge from the existing smaller variants. At one of the biggest forums – Digitalpoint, a few members offered Oron as a solution to problem of making money online. From my personal experince, I must say that payoff ratings of this service are low and the allowed size of the files for free uploading is also small (up to 400 MB, 5 files max), so more convenient variants must appear or maybe they already exist. I once wrote about FileTram as a prosperous file-sharing project and I still think so. High payoffs which are regularly paid, huge database of files for sharing – are the main advantages of this service.

To be sure about my predictions, I wrote to FileTram support service yesterday. They answered that they didn’t have any intentions to close the service and are going to work as well as it was before. Hope, everything will be as they promise. I have just assured my files to their service.

Stay safe,
Norman

About creativity and experiments in online money making

Some people say that creativity in online money making is not necessary. You just need to work hard as at any other job and make your money. However, the variety of recent online marketing start-ups shows that experimenting and originality attract people to you.

Recent Groupon activities were those events which encouraged me to write this post. The last one was a release of the “win wheel”. “Bizarre project” as one of websites called it. Yeah… I’d also say so. Groupon project itself launched in 2008 as “The Point” and in 3 years has grown up to one of the most popular. Last thing which seemed to me really creative and which I hope will get success is called “Clicky”. Clicky is kind of an online lottery – you spin the wheel in order to win. However, only 1 among 1000 can win something. This online lottery experiment, launched almost on the day of birth of lottery itself, is just one of the issues which Groupon as a project makes stadily. What’s the most important in all this story is that permanent experimenting brings success, which is approved by Groupon.

The other creative project, which I mentioned as really cool and interesting is the “Information is beautiful”. They visualize different stats, create popular info graphics. The first thing I’ve seen was Rosling’s “Gapminder”. However, these creative projects are still less profitable than Groupon, for example.

As for the creative project in file-sharing money-making I’d name filetram.com. Why?
It is just at the dawn of its development, but has already presents itself very catchy and its team does not afraid to experiment with unusual ideas.

First of all, being creative and innovative is the main purpose of FileTram. This service is officially called file-sharing search engine and you can search for files at different file-sharing services. So, it could be called – “Google” of file-sharing!

Moreover, you can not only search for files with FileTram, but also upload them to it. So, it preserves the file-sharing option.

Secondly, it has profitable affiliate program, which is rather experimental to my mind, ‘cause provides users with payoffs which, to my mind, are among the highest ones.

So, creativity can inspire to make interesting experiments. And the best ending of this post is a quote by T.J. Watson – “While to find good ideas you should produce a lot of ideas, to find success you should do a lot of experiments”.

Stay experimental,
Norman

Depositfiles vs. Hotfile

Finally I decided to compare these two file-sharing giants – Depositfiles.com and Hotfile.com. They both are very popular and high-rated by the users. So, let’s begin the comparison with the information from their websites.

Depositfiles.com offers you $30 for 1000 downloads (they say that’s high… hmm… I totally disagree with this info, however there are some advantages too), payoffs are from $10 (this is a real advantage, ‘cause i knew less services with such low sums for payoffs, 20% for referrals are rather stable rate)

Hotfile.com offers you rating system of money making. What does it mean? You’ve got higher rates (and more money) in affiliate program. For that you should be a good Hotfile user. As some time passes all users are moving from the lowest rate (Cooper) to the highest (the highest is Platinium). On the beginning (when you are a “cooper” user), you are offered to earn just $4 for 100-400 MB files (which is terribly low as for me), after you’ve become a Platinium user that rate becomes higher, but $15 for 1000 100-400MB downloads is too low price, don’t you think so? The payoff sum is $15 which is an average one. Hotfile also offers 20% referral system.

Speaking about specialities of the both services – they don’t allow to earn much for the beginners. You should be affiliated for a long time to start making much money. For Depositfiles it takes really much time to start (for Hotfile less), however if you are a long-time user you became really successful. Both services have different country tariffs and bonuses, so be careful. With Depositfiles the situation is easier, because unpopular countries are making money too.

With Depositfiles it’s easier to make money when you’re sharing smaller files then few huge ones. Depositfiles also offer coupon system for those who need Premium statuses for a short period of time, but if you just need to work with them for some period of time, I found better way.

I often mentioned on forums that users are looking for coupons for free downloading from Depositfiles or different ways for free downloading from Hotfile. I found one simple way, which, by the way, brings me money as an affiliate too. I bought Premium account at FileTram and download everything from Depositfiles and Hotfile with it. FileTram is smth kinda search engine, but for file-sharing websites and it gives access to plenty of them (to Depositfiles and Hotfile too), so I buy FileTram Premium and download everything I need through this service.

One important thing to mention while comparing those two services is that they are stable. There would not be such surprises as with Wupload, for example. Users are making money with them for more then 3-4 years. However, I am for trying something new. That makes life more interesting and often brings better results!

Keep experimenting,
Norman

Wupload.com closed its affiliate program. Why?

Just I wanted to write about Wupload and my success with their affiliate program, as it appeared that they had closed it due to “its no longer financial viability”. Hmm… But this program seemed to me very prosperous one, how could it become "no longer financially viable"

Willy Wupload on the official news blog says “… we were able to surpass our growth expectations in terms of traffic, but as anybody in the file hosting business can tell you, traffic does not always mean profitability.”

Wupload promises to pay all earnings gained till November 28th, that means that I’ll get back my money. That’s cool, but I’ve decided to collect some reasons why services close their affiliate programs. I remember that even Dropbox once had affiliate program, but had closed. So, I have found just two which seemed to me really important.

Reason #1
Taxes or law restrictions

One of the reasons why Amazon.com closed its affiliate programs in some of US states (e.g. California) was the state tax policy. For such large companies as Amazon.com it was inconvenient to pay state sales tax on income of small affiliates.

Reason #2
Hosting problems or non-stable traffic

The main reason why many affiliate programs close their affiliate programs and I think it was also Wupload’s reason is non-stable traffic. What does that mean? Do you remember old rule – “quality – not quantity”. The same is here.
Just beginning your e-business the main goal is to attract traffic to your site, but after that you should turn first-time users into stable subscribers and buyers. This will bring success to your business.

But! Wupload’s Affiliate Program was really great one. Large variety of offers, ability to earn much ($40 for 1000 downloads), 20% on referrals, interest on sales done through your website. More attractive to me among young file-sharing affiliate programs seems just FileTram.com. This service offers up to 100$ per 1000 downloads and I must say that it is rather easy to work with it.
About my earnings with FileTram I’d write later.

Be stable,
Norman

File sharing Affiliate programs: how to earn more?

There are a lot of file sharing services which offer you money making options (just check FileTram Wupload, Oron, FileSonic, etc.) Of course, all of them have different options of participating in Affiliate programs, but there are some rules which allow getting better results within any of them. Let’s look how to earn more with file-sharing affiliate programs?!

The first and one of the most important points of profitable file-sharing is your material – files you want to share. At first you need at least to know what are you sharing? The better you know your files, the better you’ll promote them. The better you promote, the more you earn. What’s also important about sharing materials is their necessity. If you share a needed file, but there are much other people who share it for a long time, you’ll hardly get any income. Your files should be urgent and necessary, but rather rare in the index of available for downloading files.

However, for the beginners, sometimes that’s even better to take a file which is popular. Though even having a great number of competitors, they will get some income and experience, then if they upload totally new file and will have no idea what to do with it.

The second is where you share them and how to get the biggest feedback from file-sharing. The audience research is especially important if you have a specific kind of files and to make some money from them, you should share information about them with this specific audience. The other important way of sharing data is forums, full of different topics where you also can share info about rare files, but now available due to you.

The third important thing in profitable file-sharing is your personal resource. It could be your own blog or website. If you have such a thing, you’ll be able to get a lot of advantages. One of them is that you offer other users writing guest posts in your blog while you’ll be able to write in theirs. With this possibility you’ll be able to get higher ratings. After your blog gains much popularity (so higher rating), it is easier to promote your affiliate links with it.

The fourth important point is your creativity in presentation of your materials. We all like visualized, catchy and interesting things which seem to be unique and do not be as others, so don’t forget to attach to your links something similar to what was already mentioned.

The fifth point is the program you choose. I’ve already written that the most important are those four points which I’ve already mentioned, but not the program. However, the better program (with higher payoffs rate) you choose, the more you’ll get due to your persistence. Be attentive and choose the most profitable and the most respectful affiliate program.

I’ll try to compare some affiliate file-sharing programs in my next posts. Now I’m running to my friend’s birthday…

Sincerely,
Norman