Ryan and Gillian Carson (producers of DropSend, Vitamin, and Carson Workshops) launched their latest product yesterday, Amigo. Amigo servers a very simple, but powerful purpose — to match e-newsletter publishers with advertisers and advertisers with targeted e-newsletter subscribers. It is a win-win for everyone and it's free. Here's how it works.
Amigo is similar to any other cost-per-click advertising solution (i.e. AdWords) only it isn't a robot reading text to contextually placing the ad next to search results, it is humans searching a database of information to match ads to subscribers.
Note: at this time it is only for text-based e-newsletters, or ones who will only show text ads, no graphical based ones (yet...not sure if they will add that feature).
As an advertiser you want to reach a select target market. It doesn't matter if it is 10 qualified recipients or 10,000, we know that targeting your ads is better than a shotgun approach. So Amigo makes getting your ad in front of that target audience easier. After creating a free account you will want to add a new ad to the Amigo database. Simply add a title for the ad, a headline, body text, and a link back to your Web site (though you will want the link to go to a targeted page, not your homepage). Then choose the target audience you wish to receive this type of ad. Set a price per click you are willing to pay for someone who clicks on the ad. Once the ad is submitted you can check out the statistics of the ad through a dashboard feature. This then lets you see if your text is working for your ad or if you need to change it. Plus you can also track to see if those who do click through are purchasing from you to see if you are getting the ROI you were looking for.
As an e-newsletter owner you can add your publication to the Amigo database and identify the topic(s) it covers and the audience it is sent to. Then you can search the Amigo database for advertisements that match your criteria. Select which ones you want to display in your e-newsletter, follow the instructions and add the text to your next issue. When the clicks start rolling in from your subscribers to the ad, you make money. It's that easy.
If you want to see the progression of how Amigo was thought of, developed, and launched you can check out their Barenaked App blog which recorded the entire experience.