What is Amigo?
Lots of people have been e-mailing us and asking us the big question:”What is Amigo?”. Some of the more wiley amongst you have sniffed out the information by yourselves. But it’s a fair cop, Guv, so here we are to reveal all.
Amigo is an application that helps site owners find advertisers for their e-mail newsletters. It’s also an application that helps advertisers find new, unexploited advertising opportunities in e-mail newsletters. And that’s about it. Nice and simple.
Really, the app works like a matching service. If you are an advertiser you can register with Amigo and find hundreds of newsletters in which to advertise your product. If you are a newsletter owner, your small (but targeted) newsletter could be the perfect ad vehicle for one advertiser who is willing to pay a relatively high price per click to reach your subscribers. It’s a match made in heaven!
We’ll be inviting beta testers very soon so stay tuned!
Now that I did not expect! What a great idea, guys.
Comment by Mark — June 21, 2006 @ 2:26 pm
That’s a pretty good idea - the users of each newsletter should be very responsive to well-placed ads.
So why’d you let us in on the secret early?
Comment by Mark H. — June 21, 2006 @ 2:40 pm
Amigo - Werbung in Newslettern…
Wie ich schon berichtete, begleitet Ryan Carson ein neues, damals noch geheimes Projekt mit dem Blog Bar……
Trackback by poolieBlog — June 21, 2006 @ 2:40 pm
That’s such a good idea!
Comment by Richard Adams — June 21, 2006 @ 2:47 pm
Why did we let you in on the idea early? Well, some of you had figured it out already and we were just about ready to let you in on it anyway. So we thought - why not?
Comment by Gillian Carson — June 21, 2006 @ 2:54 pm
[…] […]
Pingback by BlueAce » De naakte waarheid van Amigo — June 21, 2006 @ 2:57 pm
Finally! Great idea guys!!!
Comment by Javier Cabrera (15tags) — June 21, 2006 @ 3:59 pm
Nice one, very clever :)
Comment by d4rr3ll — June 21, 2006 @ 4:06 pm
I see you went with the Need Hay/Have Hay approach. Very nice!
Comment by Wilson Miner — June 21, 2006 @ 4:07 pm
ha ha…that should be an official term in the design world. Will start to propogate it in all my design-related conversations from today!
Comment by Gillian Carson — June 21, 2006 @ 4:14 pm
Amigo: connecting advertisers & newsletter-publishers…
Carson Systems (makers of DropSend) finally unveiled the core-purpose of their soon-to-be-going-beta web-application Amigo. Amigo basically is a matching-service, connecting newsletter-publishers offering ad-space in their email-newsletters and advert…
Trackback by nonsmokingarea.com — June 21, 2006 @ 4:36 pm
Another great idea from the Carsons.
Comment by Kendall — June 21, 2006 @ 4:44 pm
How do we get the word out on our app?…
I’m posting this for two reasons:
Carson of carson systems just revealed the new app he has been working on and “laid bare” on one of his blogs. I find that blogging about the app you are building from start to finish does two things:…
Trackback by xackup — June 21, 2006 @ 4:52 pm
Disappointed. I was expecting so much more from Amigo.
Newsletters? What kind of marketshare can you honestly expect from newsletters?
Comment by frX — June 21, 2006 @ 6:18 pm
Is this for online/enewletters or the old fashion print-style newsletters?
Comment by LaptopHeaven — June 21, 2006 @ 7:06 pm
@laptopheaven: email-newletters :)
I’m not 100% sure if I like the idea… I’m personally more and more using RSS in favor of newsletters, but I’m aware that the mass of users (& content-creators) hasn’t embraced rss yet.
ps: why does my trackback not appear here? :(
Comment by Michael Kamleitner — June 21, 2006 @ 7:09 pm
I used to work for an ad company in Baltimore that still has a similar project (i even actually helped build it 6 years ago. I tink it the current incaranation of it lives at: http://www.advertising.com/chn_email.php. Good luck to guys, I’m sure you guys will make money off of it!
Comment by bryanl — June 21, 2006 @ 7:09 pm
[…] What is Amigo? - Carson Systems explains the idea behind their new website, Amigo. What a refreshing idea and I’m so so glad it’s not another silly app that no one will really ever use after a few days. Bravo to Carson Systems for an interesting angle in doing business online. […]
Pingback by Ryan Irelan » What is Amigo? — June 21, 2006 @ 7:23 pm
Very interesting!
Comment by Hal! — June 21, 2006 @ 7:29 pm
Sounds intereesting. Useful even. I wonder if a small design consulting business could use this for anything…
;0)
Comment by Keith — June 21, 2006 @ 8:15 pm
Off Topic - Are you gonna keep the CSS/XTHML links at the bottom? Seems kinda pointless.
Comment by Cooper Mor — June 21, 2006 @ 9:32 pm
I´m surprised, i thought of something bigger then newsletter-marketing.
By the way: Will the service be available in other countrys like germany, with german advertisers?
Comment by Christian — June 21, 2006 @ 9:46 pm
I suspect that a lot of commenters here are not aware of how massive the email newsletter marketing industry actually is. It is vastly bigger than rss readership at the current time, and there are still huge numbers of people who prefer email to even reading blogs.
It was pretty clear from the Carson Workshop podcasts that these guys crunch the numbers pretty well before starting out - do you think they have lost that skill suddenly?
Comment by Mathew — June 22, 2006 @ 12:13 am
Hit me up as both an advertiser and newsletter user when you open the beta. Great idea, btw!!
Comment by Brandon — June 22, 2006 @ 12:21 am
Very interesting, fantastic idea!
Comment by Tom McQuillen — June 22, 2006 @ 2:12 am
I think the issue is that people need to be made aware of amigo. if i had a newsletter, i would seek for advertisers directly in my industry because I would know my industry and who’s in it. I cut ou the middle man, the relationship is direct and personal. This way, involves allot of people knowing about amigo so I think marketing costs will need to be substantial..The other thing I guess is once they have found someone, depending on the payment system, that they could just avoid paying the amigo fee if it is a reoccurring one..Other than that, interesting idea and good luck!
Comment by Brett — June 22, 2006 @ 3:44 am
Not sure if i like the idea, was expecting more. Although if at the right price, we may use it ourselves :)
Comment by Robert — June 22, 2006 @ 6:05 am
If the newsletter industry is indeed as massive as some commenter suggest, this might be a very usefull tool.
But it seems to me, that hey amigo, could be used for a much broader area of matchmaking. Even generic matchmaking, for all kinds of services.
Anyway, I’ll take a look when it’s done to see if newsletters work for us. Is there data about each newsletter? Readership and other performance information?
Comment by Danny de Wit — June 22, 2006 @ 7:16 am
You bet.
Comment by Ryan Carson — June 22, 2006 @ 8:33 am
Ryan - I hope my email didn’t cause this! ;)
Comment by Matt Lee — June 22, 2006 @ 9:45 am
It did, you bastard. ;) No, just joking. Other people figured out how to find the trademark DB. No sweat.
Comment by Ryan Carson — June 22, 2006 @ 10:22 am
[…] Couple of interesting bits recently. First, looks like Google may be readying a CommissionJunction rival. I think that would be pretty cool. We haven’t had a lot of success with affiliate marketing on NetworthIQ (ok, actually zero success as in not a single conversion) through CJ. But, I don’t really blame that on them. It just hasn’t been a priority, so I haven’t done much research/tracking/experimenting, other than throwing a coupld LMB, ING, and Vonage ads up. However, it never hurts to have competition in the market. Then we finally learned what Amigo is all about. Adsense for newsletters. Pretty simple, but one of those ideas that strike you as “hey, that’s pretty cool, hasn’t somebody done that already?” I’ll try to give it shot, especially now that we have over 1000 subscribers to our newsletter. Maybe this will be the motivation I need to actually send a newsletter consistently. […]
Pingback by Web Things Considered » Monetization happenings — June 22, 2006 @ 5:33 pm
This is a fantastic idea! I can’t wait to try it out!
Comment by danae — June 23, 2006 @ 10:30 am
Thanks Danae :)
Comment by Ryan Carson — June 23, 2006 @ 10:33 am
So how do we get on the beta-tester invite list? I’d love to take her for a spin around the block.
Comment by James — June 23, 2006 @ 4:18 pm
[…] Em side-note, um blog que eu tenho acompanhado ocasionalmente é o Bare Naked App que vem trazendo passo por passo o desenvolvimento de um web app chamado Amigo, que soube-se hoje, sera um mecanismo para juntar anunciantes e boletins de notícias. A idéia é boa, falta saber se em época de RSS vai sobreviver aos feedburners da vida. […]
Pingback by London @media2006 at Hiper - Blog — June 24, 2006 @ 4:03 am
[…] We’ve just officially announced Amigo, our 2nd web app. Read the full report. […]
Pingback by Carson Systems News » Blog Archive » Amigo Unveiled — June 26, 2006 @ 2:07 pm
Hey Ryan,
Thanks for letting the cat out of the bag.
I like the fact that you’re tackling such an unsexy problem with a solid solution.
Can’t wait to see the finished product!
Eric
Comment by Eric Mattson — June 27, 2006 @ 9:30 am
My consulting practice works primarily with trade and membership associations and I can vouch for the fact that email newsletters are a BIG THING.
Many, many people have no idea what RSS or even a blog is, but they are doing targeted weekly+ email blasts to their core membership who has not only opted in, but is extremely interested in the content of each email.
I think this is an excellent idea and I’m going to start talking about it with my clients right away.
Comment by Chris Busse — July 1, 2006 @ 6:49 pm
Chris - thanks for the great feedback!
Comment by Ryan Carson — July 1, 2006 @ 8:08 pm
I noticed on one of your ‘in-house’ videocams that u were having with PayPal. Here’s a list of Paypal phone #’s http://www.paypalsucks.com/PayPalPhoneNumbers.shtml
Maybe it will help?
good luck - interesting in your 3i talk
Comment by Lal — July 11, 2006 @ 10:34 pm
two thumbs up for Amigo application! It rocks. Thanks a bunch :-)
Scott
Comment by Scott — December 12, 2006 @ 3:07 am
Thanks Scott! :)
Comment by Ryan Carson — December 12, 2006 @ 7:04 am