Laptop skins and affiliate marketing by Garskin
Feb 22nd, 2007 by mark
Valve Cover
What the heck are laptop skins?
For the uninitiated, laptop skins are specially designed stickers for your laptop.
They are also known as laptop decals and laptop stickers.
Why would someone get laptop skins?
Well, aren’t you bored of the black IBM or white DELL notebook or laptop look? These laptop skins can really change the look and feel of your notebook or laptop, giving it an identity which you can identify with.
Pirates of the Carribean |
Disney |
Disney |
Fashion |
Valentine |
Valentine |
Artsy |
Protection
I’m a laptop user, a Dell Inspiron 6400 that I got last October. Within 2 months of using my laptop and bringing it around in 3 different countries, it has encountered its fair share of wear and tear. I’ve found tons of scratches, paint peeling at areas that are constantly in contact with other surfaces.
One good example is that I wear my watch on the left wrist. The watch constantly rubs against the left panel of my Dell and now, the silver finish has been “rubbed” off my laptop, leaving behind the white base paint. So where do laptop skins come in? Laptop skins are made of vinyl film. It is strong enough to act as a buffer against scratches and the general working environment, thus protecting the precious laptop. That means, if I had a laptop skin, my laptop would have its paint rubbed off!
I guess by now, you’d be wondering why I’m talking about this. I predict this to be the next big thing in town. Laptops are generally, not as easily discarded, misplaced or changed like handphones and they tend to stay in ownership much longer. Many handphone users protect their handphones and PDAs with rubber protectors and other sorts of covers.
However for laptops, rubber can’t be used as it traps heat a lot and might possibly melt. Vinyl doesn’t! It can withstand heat up to 90 degrees Celcius. At that temperature, your laptop would have died before the vinyl melted! Another advantage is that vinyl is thin and doesn’t bulk up the look of the laptop.
Also, many students nowadays carry and use laptops everyday in their lives. Many practically live with it. As you know, kids nowadays like to stand out from one another and that also includes the look of their laptops. I’m sure once they get their hands on the designs made available by Garskin, they are going to be spoiled for choice! Garskin has listed about 70 beautiful designs ranging from Walt Disney designs to avant-garde and designer looks.
Oh I’ve mentioned Garskin before introducing them, my bad. Well Garskin is a Singapore company and they have brought in these wonderfully designed laptop skins into Singapore and South East Asia. They even had a party at Zouk in October 2006 to unveil their laptop skin designs. What impresses me about Garskin is not just that the designs and concept of laptop skins are great, it is their way of promotion.
Their preferred method of marketing is affiliate marketing. I think Garskin could be the first Singapore company to promote a physical product via affiliate marketing. This is a very practical idea since affiliate/Internet marketing is growing at a rapid pace in Singapore and the costs of affiliate marketing is much lower than traditional advertising. Thus this is one of the ways to go and leverage on the power of the Internet.
Well Garskin is a young company with a brilliant idea. I wish them success in this new year of the pig!
You can find out more about Garskin at their website, Garskin.com
To find out more about their affiliate program, Partners in Profit, please visit Garskin Partners in Profit.
*UPDATE* The above program has been discontinued.
I carry one of those boring black laptops and would love to get a funky laptop skin, but at US$30-40/S$48-65 a pop… Gee whiz.
If I’m desperate enough, I’ll go get a sheet of car vinyl decal/sticker and DIY. Lucky for me, the Thinkpad has a lasting-albeit-boring finish.
Well I guess they would have to adjust their pricing to attract more buyers
I used to use a Thinkpad as well, got tons of scratches. It could be me. I’m a “rough” user :p
For the Mac laptop users, can take a look at http://www.shuffle-art.com, damn swee for its skins on the ibook and powerbook. Got ourselves a few on the white ibook.
Hi Paddy,
*chuckles* Advertising for deviljiru? Anyway besides Shuffle Art, there’s also GMask. But what stands out for Garskin is the incorporation of affiliate marketing in their business, while GMask and Shuffle Art are more “traditional”
I thought Apple users bought their rigs because it looked simple and cool in the first place, not cover the chassis in bright colours.
If you’re a Dell, Toshiba or HP laptop user, otoh, you’d love to get one of these. Or ten.
Honestly, S$80-100 is not that expensive for customisation. Look at how folks pay tens of thousands to pimp their rides.
Sorry man… I can only afford a Dell
If Garskin can do custom graphics, I would be even more interested. Hmm maybe I should get in contact with them…
I don’t know about you, but I prefer the laptop skins at istyles much better. I think istyles is a singapore based company too and they’ve got more than 200 really cool laptop skins, all at half the price of garskin’s.
Hi Asturias. It is definitely good to have competitors. I hope the Garskin guys get to read this and your comment. If they become more competitive, it is better for us consumers
Why I talked about Garskin is because of the way they market. I first came across Garskin through a forwarded email from a friend, which I thought was the run-of-the-mill internet marketing email. On further inspection I realised that these guys are promoting their physical product via internet marketing. I think we don\’t see that happening often as it is much harder to promote a physical product via internet marketing.
It is much easier to promote and sell digital products. So again I highlighted them as they have put 2 things together forming something which I think is quite unique
p.s. Garskin pays 30% commission while iStyles pays 8%
30%! Wow, that’s where the margins go! I didn’t know istyles had an affiliate program. Oh wait, they do. They should publicize that better. istyles looks more established and has more designs at a lower price. The designs look more cool too. Economics of range and price will ensure a much higher sales volume and that 8% will probably earn you more than 30% from a company where no one buys from. I’m not into whatever affiliate stuff but I bought some stuff from istyles in the past and am very happy with what I got. I’ll still go back to them if I ever want to cover my laptop.
Hi Asturias,
Well your point is debatable actually. In business, whoever has the highest exposure, who advertises more, wins. If people know about you first and more people know about you, most probably customers will choose you over an unknown. What affiliate marketing does is it encourages affiliates to spread your name. This is of course encouraged by the commission. For the same amount of effort, a marketer would market for someone who is giving more. So multiply that by as many marketers as you want and in time, people will know more about the one who gave a higher commission and tend to buy from that.
The downside of this is that some cost, if not all, is passed to the customer. Anyway, this happens everywhere. Companies spend millions in advertising and marketing campaigns. Who pays for it? Yes us the consumers.
So affiliate marketing is just one engine that can be used.
It’s also not about who has the lowest price wins. It depends on market conditions and market size, and the product you’re offering.
Apple iPods are not the cheapest in the market, but why do they sell more than Creative?
(Sorry Mr. Sim, I can’t resist.)
Hi Daniel
Yep I agree. Apple spent lots of money on branding of Ipod. Much much more than Creative initially. To the point that the Ipod became an identifier to a lifestyle product.
Nice comments by everyone but I was not talking just about pricing. I don’t care who wins as there are tonnes of skin companies out there but based on a direct comparison between istyles and garskin, as a normal paying consumer, I will obviously choose istyles as they are 50% cheaper, have a much more attractive range, looks very established and their website looks awesome. Plus, they sell skins for practically everything! I can get matching stuff for my ipod, laptop, xbox360 and so on. That’s just my pov as a customer and I’m sure that many others will share my sentiments. Besides, I knew about istyles way before garskin and I know they work well. Goodness knows whether garskin will eat my money and take forever to send me my skin.
garskin is probably attractive just for the affiliates at 30% of commissions. Don’t get me started on affiliate programs as I never believe in them. I used to run a pretty nice website when I was younger and practically tried all sorts of money making ideas, ranging from affiliate programs to adsense. Affiliate programs sucks. How much do you guys actually earn from it? Don’t believe me? Go try either of the two affiliate programs above. I have not tried these two but they’re probably similar to all the rest of them. Sure, you can earn more than US$10 monthly if you do extremely well but does that make a difference? For other affiliate stuff, go try amazon which is supposed to be the best affiliate program in the world and they did give pretty decent performance, or pick up a range of them from CJ, linkshare, affiliate bot or whatever.
You find however that you get more mileage out of google’s adsense if done properly. Adsense generated a nicer pay packet of at least US$100 a month, or even a couple of hundred USD on a good month but for the amount of work I put into that site, I started to realize after a few years that that effort is better spent elsewhere. These few hundred is not going to pay for the house, it’s not going to feed my kids and dog, it’s not even going to pay for our basic groceries. That’s why I closed the site after a few years and moved on to stuff that actually pays.
I am a business consultant and my honest opinion is that it is hard to sustain a business where 30% of revenue goes to affiliates unless the product is damn good, really special, really unique and very importantly, nobody else has it. If every other company is making skin, you should compete on price, range and designs. I can write you an entire report on why it wouldn’t work but basically if the company adds on the research cost, production cost and other baseline operational cost, and then look at their sales figures based on the other factors listed above, they will find the profits unsustainable for any proper growth. I do wish I’m wrong and I sincerely wish garskin all the best. It’s not easy to run any company. Strategy and cashflow are most important.
IMHO the market size is big enough for both companies, affiliate marketing or no.
Chill out, Asturias, I don’t read anywhere on this thread that says “affiliate marketing pwns all” or “do affiliate marketing or be a loser”. You are right to point out that the impact of affiliate marketing on businesses is debatable.
I guess what Mark is highlighting to us is that Garskin is trying to set itself apart from its competitors by adopting an affiliate marketing program. Whether it contributes to the long term success of the company is unknown.
Personally I’m not a fan of affiliate marketing. Its the Internet version of a pimp i.e selling someone else’s product/service. If I have to give someone else 30% of my margins means there’s something seriously wrong with my business.
Hi all,
Thank to both of you, Asturias and Daniel. It is good that there is a healthy discussion going on. Well as life is, there is always two sides to a coin. We can argue until we die but those two sides will still remain. Thus the best measure is time. Time would determine the so called winner.
Did you guys actually legally acquire the Disney and Pirates of the Carribean licenses?
Hi Eddie,
I think you should direct that question to Garskin.
You mean you’re promoting a product which possibly infringes on international copyright laws? And from Disney no less?
Hi Eddie,
Good point there. I’ll check this out for you and if they are indeed infringing any laws, I will not promote them.
Thank you for the heads up.
Hi Eddie,
Here’s a reply from William, Garskin:
——-
Hi Mark,
We have rights From Disney Skins To sell Disney Characters…
Warmly,
WInston
——–
So if there is any more doubt, please email support@garskin.com
whew - thank goodness.
They paid heaps of money to get the rights to Disney.