Heard of Play-Asia.com?

[JGray]

I received an email from Play-Asia.com. I'll just reproduce it here. I wanted to get people's opinions on it.

Sender:  Robert

Email:  robert@play-asia.com

Message:  Hi MoTA,

Great site! Want to affiliate with us and earn some cash? At
Play-Asia.com we offer affiliates up to 12% commission per sale and have a
vast library of products and trusted service.

We're so confident about our service that if you're willing to place a
Play-Asia.com banner/button on your site, we will send you a standard
full
priced game of your choice as a gift so you can experience how easy it is
to shop at Play-Asia.com. Many are earning more through our affiliate
links than cpc programs.

Interested? Just let me know. I'm sure the affiliation program will be a
good source of income for you. Some more information about us:

Play-Asia.com is a highly popular and trusted online store delivering the
latest video games, gadgets, toys, DVD’s and figurines and more directly
to your doorstep. You can earn up to 12% commission for sales as an
affiliate of our site.

All you need to do is sign up for an affiliate account and place a text
link or banner on your website. When a user clicks the link and completes
a sale, you will get a percentage of the sale. You can be paid directly
via paypal or use the earnings for instore credit (bonus 5%!).

Best Regards

Robert
Promotions
www.Play-Asia.com

[Gibson]

Well, when the deposed king of an African country emails you with a personal appeal for help, what can you do but help?

Seriously, this sounds like a great way to get screwed over. I'm not sure how, but any time I see or hear of a form-email (there is nothing at all about your site or why they think yours would be a good affiliate for them) that promises you big cash, it always smells like swindle. This is no different to me. I might be wrong, but it looks fishy.

[amanda]

I've seen the banner on a couple of webcomic sites in the past (forgive me, I can't recall which ones), but otherwise, I've heard nothing about it.

[Dr. BlkKnight]

I've bought stuff from there before. As long as you don't mind slow-boat shipping (they're based in Hong Kong), it's a really good source for imported goods.

[Knara]

Gamers that like non-mainstream systems or games from genres that don't get populated well in the US use play-asia to import their preferred items.  I have a couple friends that do a quarterly batch order of stuff.

Dunno anything about their affiliate program, though.

[Miluette]

I've ordered a few things from them before. Keeping my eye on some stuff now... They actually shipped to me pretty fast. I bought a DS game and got it within a week.

I think I may have gotten an email like that once (or from someone else) and ignored it, since my sites actually have nothing much to offer advertising-wise. I think J-list does it too (not so sure about emailing, but it has programs). I'd be willing to advertise P-A but I have no idea how it actually works.

[Hurlshot]

I got the same email last night.  How many people click on an ad link and then buy something right away through that?  It sounds like an odd way to make purchases online.   

[lastres0rt]

How affiliate links (usually) work:

• First, set up an affiliate account and post a link from your site.
• Second, people click the link and buy stuff.
• Third, through the magic of the internet, they figure out the link came from you and provide you a percentage of the funds.

i.e. it's not a scam, even if it's a bit sketchy.

Most people coming off a cold link will not buy right away. In order to maximize your odds of actually making money, you need to actually talk about the products and such on the site itself first -- so if you do a book review, you post an amazon affiliate link of the book, and people are already predisposed to wanting to buy the book then, so it works.

'course, it also helps if your site is predisposed to that sorta thing in the first place... if your comic is Megatokyo, perfect. Gaming comic, possibly. My comic? Probably not.