This past weekend, I was introduced to a company called Aisle 19, and if you are like me, you probably went “Aisle who?” I never heard of them either, but after checking out the movie, it looked interesting. There really isn’t much out there concerning this company or concept so I figured a review was in order to help those of you who may have been invited, (the only way you can join by the way) to provide some information and answer some questions.

Aisle 19 is somewhat like the Discover credit card. You should know how that works. For every purchase you make; you earn a certain percentage as “cash back”.  The difference in Aisle 19 is it’s not a credit card, but a gateway you pass through in order to earn this “cash back” bonus with over 600 retailers. Percentages will range by retailer from 1% up to 20%, but by going through this gateway in Aisle 19 you are automatically qualify and are connected directly to the online stores you know and trust. Some names you may recognize are NFLshop.com, Barnes & Noble, Gap, Sam’s Club, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, K-Mart, Kohl’s, Macy’s, Staples, Sony….

You get the picture.

In addition, Aisle 19 is a good place to find those special deals, kind of like the Sunday paper, but every day. When I logged in this morning I found an exclusive Aisle 19 offer to receive 20% off the list price of any one item with Borders. The offer expires 1/31 and is good for everything from books and music to movies and kids. Another offer from Target includes free shipping with orders over $50.00. It’s a great place to start your shopping experience to save money.

What’s the cost for something like this? Nadda. There are no additional fees, no setup fees, and no activation fees. There are no inflated prices on shipping or product sales. Product prices and shipping costs through Aisle 19 are the same at the merchant’s web site and sometime even lower with Aisle 19’s Daily Deal specials.

All you need is to be invited by someone else.

So what’s the problem? I honestly couldn’t tell you. For someone like me who’s been buying online for a number of years, it’s really a no brainer. (Seriously) I mean, it doesn’t cost me a thing to join, I shop with retailers I already know (and trust) and I get “cash back” if I arrive at these stores sites via the Aisle 19 web site.

That being said, there are probably some questions, and I’ve seen some out there that I hope I might be able to answer for you here.

• Where is Aisle 19?

Aisle 19 is on the internet. I have seen questions out there believe it or not from people who physically went into the store and looked for an Aisle 19 in the store. (If you’d like to search for them, be my guest, but they will remain nameless here.) Aisle 19 is the online shopping portal or gateway that you can now use to save money and earn cash back.

• How do you make sure you get credit through Aisle 19?

Simply start shopping by going to Aisle 19 first, and then click the store of choice through Aisle 19. Stores will have no way of knowing how you got there without going through Aisle 19 first.

• How do they know it’s me?

Cookies, and we’re not talking Mrs. Fields here. Cookies are computer speak for tracking. It’s not spyware or any type of virus, just a way to make sure that the purchases you make all link back to you. Cookies used by Aisle 19 and it’s network of stores are completely safe and they are enabled by default with most browsers.

• Do all purchases qualify for cash back?

Virtually every “item” you purchase through Aisle 19 qualifies for cash back. Aisle 19 cannot, however, give cash back for taxes, shipping, or any portion of a purchase that is paid for with non-Aisle 19 provided coupons, gift certificates or a store credit. Specials and coupons CAN be combined to maximize your savings. (Unless otherwise stated by the retailer.)

• How do I know I’m saving as much as possible?

One way is to shop from the stores that offer the highest cash back incentives. Simply click on the ALL STORES tab in Aisle 19 and then select the Cash Back pull down. Aisle 19 will then show you which stores offer the highest cash back incentives from highest to lowest. Another way is to always start by checking out the Daily Deals on the main page. Aisle 19 does all the work for you by searching all the specials, deals and coupons that stores are currently offering. This saves you the time of clicking from store to store to find what deals are available. Many times these deals are not available when shopping from the stores directly so by coming through Aisle 19 you get discounts that are often not available to the general public. You can also word search for items in the daily deal section to see if what you are looking for happens to be on sale.

• How soon will I receive my cash back?

On or around the 20th of every month, your cash back check from the previous month’s purchases will be cut and mailed to you. There are special incentive stores that will provide instant cash back for you at the time of purchase. Kind of like an “instant rebate”, and simply take the cash back you receive off the total price.

• What are the shipping policies?

The same as the retailer’s web site. Because you will be shopping on the retailer’s site you will have to check their shipping policies. Some stores like Sam’s and Wal-Mart will allow you to order on-line and pick your merchandise up at the local store. (Cool huh?)

• How safe is my credit card information?

100% secure. When you check out at any of the merchants used, you are on the safest possible connection, a Secure Socket Layer (SSL). Credit card security is of the utmost importance to Aisle 19 and something they look for when partnering with a retailer.

If you’ve been introduced to Aisle 19, I hope this gives you a better idea of what this program is all about, and answer some of the questions you might have had. Personally, I like the idea and it fits in very well with what I’m already doing. It also gives me added incentive to shop for more products online for additional savings of both time and money.

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I was introduced to a book a couple of years ago by Chris Anderson entitled “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More “.  Mr. Anderson is the editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine. He wrote The Long Tail, which first appeared in Wired in October 2004 and then became a book in July, 2006.

While I usually find data and numbers extremely boring and it can make my head spin, Chris did an excellent job of injecting enough “layman’s speak” that kept my interest. I do enjoy reading about both business models and the men, (or woman in e-Bay’s case) who ran these successful businesses.

If your unfamiliar with just what The Long Tail is, and your in YTB, it’s best that you have a basic understanding of why this transition is important. In a nutshell, our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of mainstream products and markets at the “head” and toward a huge number of niches in the “tail”.

There are certainly examples of “heads” that are extremely successful, such as Wal-Mart for the mass appeal, or someone like a close friend of mine Nick McCulloch, who owns Link Your House, a specialty Home Automation and Security company. Here’s the rub concerning “real world” retailers. (Brick and Mortar) Due to exorbitant costs for space, you either need to select items that have a mass appeal, or scale back to reduce costs and attempt to focus on a niche market and hope there is enough of a local market to support your niche. 

An average movie theater will not show a film unless it can attract at least 1,500 people over a two-week run; that’s essentially the rent for a screen. An average record store needs to sell at least two copies of a CD per year to make it worth carrying; that’s the rent for a half inch of shelf space. And so on for DVD rental shops, videogame stores, booksellers, and newsstands.

In each case, retailers will carry only content that can generate sufficient demand to earn its keep. But each can pull only from a limited local population – perhaps a 10-mile radius for a typical movie theater, less than that for music and bookstores, and even less (just a mile or two) for video rental shops.

These costs however, drop dramatically in the digital world. Look at music stores like Rhapsody, a purely digital services with no manufacturing costs and minimal distribution fees. Because all music is stored in “bits and bytes”, The Who “Eminence Front“, a song or album that makes one sale per year has the same margins as a someone like Bruce Springsteen, “Working on a Dream” who will sell millions of copies after it’s debut at the end of the month. A hit and a miss are on equal economic footing because both are just entries in a database which are called up on demand. This make BOTH equally worthy of being offered due minimal or no cost, while increasing profits. In The Long Tail, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability. Unlike the Wal-Mart’s of the world with a little sliver of space to hold a CD that equals a cost associated with the space, and even that little CD needs to help pay the rent.

In “Brick and Mortar”, if you had to pick between a 1982 version of an old rock classic, and a new hit that’s already getting buzz due to President Elect Obama, which CD would you be stocking your shelves with?

Unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it in service after service, from DVDs at Netflix to music videos on Yahoo! Launch to songs in the iTunes Music Store and Rhapsody. People are going deep into the catalog, down the long, long list of available titles, far past what’s available at Blockbuster Video, Tower Records, and Barnes & Noble. And the more they find, the more they like. As they wander further from the beaten path, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they thought (or as they had been led to believe by marketing, a lack of alternatives, and a hit-driven culture).

Combine enough small, obscure sales on the Long Tail and you’ve got a market bigger than even “The Boss” can produce.

Likewise,  in the case of books, the average Barnes & Noble carries 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of Amazon’s book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. Personally, I can only find a book I’m looking for half the time in a book store. Sure, they can order it for me, but so can I through Amazon, AND have it delivered directly to my home without the need of getting a call to drive back down to the store to pick the book up. If the Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those that are.

In other words, the potential book market may be twice as big as it appears to be, if only we can get over the economics of scarcity. Venture capitalist and former music industry consultant Kevin Laws puts it this way: “The biggest money is in the smallest sales.”

At this point, your asking yourself, “What in the world does that have to do with YTB?”

Take a look at all the niche sites this company offers in it’s digital arena. I know Travel Store Owners who specialize in Weddings and Honeymoons, others who specialize in Golf Packages, and still others like me, who specialize in cruises. Specialization is great, and I highly recommend that you find a couple of areas to specialize in when it comes to travel. But there are times when I run into areas I have no interest or knowledge in, but a potential customer or client may have a passion for.

A perfect example for me would be hunting. Honestly, I’d rather watch paint dry, but my In-Laws who I spent part of the Christmas break with are avid hunters. They also live about an hour and a half away from the nearest Bass Pro Shop. Is it out of the realm of possibility that they might have an interest in a new Hunting and Fishing web site that has comparable prices, that saves them both time and money?

That’s The Long Tail at work. I’m certainly not going to get rich off camouflage sales, but what did it cost me to carry the line as an Travel Store Owner?

Not a penny more than it did before I started…to sell cruises.

Let’s go back to Amazon for a minute. We all know them for their books and probably DVD’s and CD these days. What do you suppose happened that caused them to start selling groceries on a site known for books and DVD’s?? While you’re at it, you can fix the pesky light switch in their lighting and electrical department on isle five.

Are you thinking they might have lost it? Are they getting out of books because they’re making a mint off coffee and light bulbs? Or are they beginning to get the concept of The Long Tail?

Like Amazon who branched out in it’s distribution to capture ancillary sales, YTB is now moving into Food and Gifts, Home Decor, Financial Services, and Apperal and Accessories. Does that mean my passion has changed from cruises to carrot cake? Do I now need to be an expert or even remotely care about thread counts on pillow cases?

Hell no. Besides, if I did care about something like wellness and beauty, I could have gone with a century old MLM called Avon. (Unlike my love for a good steak or carrot cake, I don’t do makeup.)

I realize there are some who could never accept this shift in distribution. You need to remember, they’ll still hanging on to their “brick and mortar” theories and beliefs. Others will attempt to outwit and outsmart an experienced economic mind like Chris with their own excuses as to why this model simply won’t work.

So be it, if that’s their case. Just smile, nod your head, and say “Thanks for sharing”.

On a completely different note, and simply a followup on a previous post concerning Joystar just after Christmas.

It appears that a number of Agents have filed an involuntary bankruptcy case against Joystar in US Bankruptcy Court on Friday. They are seeking more than $150,000 in unpaid commissions that the agents claim are owed to them.

PS - If you're involved with YTB, sign up for our FREE Newsletter. As a Website Owner or Website Seller, we'll keep you up to date with all the latest news, acquisitions, and developments with YTB.

PPS - Subscribe to the Just Picture It Now RSS feed, (including e-mail) for all the latest posts and updates found right here!

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