How shopping at theYshop helps your local YMCA?
TheYshop provides a completely FREE entry point to your favourite online stores where you can browse their latest products and online-only special offers. But the best part of connecting to theYshop is that as well as buying as normal from all your regular online retailers and services, you raise funds for your local YMCA at absolutely no extra cost to yourself.
How does this work? Well the secret is explained by the concept of affiliate marketing and the paying of ‘affiliate fees’. All the major online retailers have affiliate marketing schemes whereby they pay fees to ‘aggregators’ or major entry points for community inspired consumers such as you guys that buy via theYshop. An online retailer such as Tesco.com or Waterstones.co.uk is grateful for traffic (i.e. consumers) to be pushed through to their website. The more traffic they get, the more likely they are to increase their sales – simple. For this affiliate marketing service that theYshop provides, i.e. funnelling traffic to Tesco or waterstones for example, the retailers pay an ‘affiliate fee’. This fee varies between 3-15% of the ex-VAT price, depending on product types and profit margins. Thus if you bought a £1000 Plasma TV from Amazon, you can create £100 of funds for your charity at absolutely no extra cost to yourself.
According to 2007 USwitch research, 8 million UK households spend on average two hours a day shopping online, with the average household spending £980 a year on online goods and services. This represents 10% of their £9,630 total annual shopping bill. The most popular products bought online by over half of adult internet users are holidays, music and films.
And how can these retailers afford to ‘give away’ this money you ask? Well, it’s quite simple really. Online retailers, unlike physical high street stores, have no expensive shop to pay rent on (typically £30 per square foot or more rent per year), no expensive high street business rates, no shop fittings, no staff uniforms and the list goes on. Online retailers generally only spend money on online marketing - in two forms. One is to pay for clicks on Google or similar search engines and the other is affiliate marketing.
Further articles on affiliate marketing are at:
http://www.12manage.com/methods_affiliate_marketing.html
http://www.wnim.com/archive/issue3404/emarketing.htm
http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=22927
How the YMCA helps and supports your local community?
The Young Men's Christian Association was founded in London, England, on June 6, 1844, by George Williams, in response to unhealthy social conditions arising in the big cities at the end of the Industrial Revolution (roughly 1750 to 1850). Growth of the railroads and centralization of commerce and industry brought many rural young men who needed jobs into cities like London. They worked 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week. Far from home and family, these young men often lived at the workplace. They slept crowded into rooms over the company's shop, a location thought to be safer than London's tenements and streets. Outside the shop things were bad—open sewers, pickpockets, thugs, beggars, drunks, lovers for hire and abandoned children running wild by the thousands.
So George Williams and a group of fellow drapers organized the first YMCA to substitute Bible study and prayer for life on the streets. By 1851 there were 24 YMCAs in Great Britain, with a combined membership of 2,700. In 2007 there are now 140 YMCAs supporting many vital schemes for the target age group of 16-35.
The new vision for the YMCA is to offer young people opportunities to develop in mind, body and spirit. This 'whole person' approach to young people's well-being and development takes physical health seriously - and so many YMCAs around the country offer fitness programmes and encourage participants to choose healthy lifestyles. But development of the mind and the spirit are just as important - which is why YMCAs offer such a wide range activities and services to young people including accommodation, vocational training, spiritual guidance and friendship.
Housing and Homelessness - the YMCA is the largest voluntary sector provider of safe, supported accommodation in England for single men and women between the ages of 16 and 35
Sport, Health, Exercise and Fitness - the YMCA is the largest voluntary sector provider of health and fitness services that promote physical activity and healthy living
Crime and Safety - the YMCA led groundbreaking work with young people in prisons and ex-offenders and continues to work vigorously to help reduce the risk of young people either turning to crime or becoming victims of crime
Education and Skills - the YMCA offer a variety of vocational, formal and informal school- and work-based learning opportunities for young people to develop skills and achieve recognition
Money and Work - the YMCA offer a range of services designed to help increase the employability and financial awareness of young people, helping them to find and keep meaningful jobs
Citizenship and Personal Development - the YMCA empower young people by involving them in activities that stimulate, challenge and enable them to realise their potential and participate fully in their communities
Parenting and Family - the YMCA offer a variety of services that help promote positive family relationships and is one of the largest providers of childcare and school-based initiatives
Every YMCA association in England is autonomously managed and works to meet the specific needs of young people in their local communities.
So shopping via they shop helps generate vital funds, at NO COST TO YOURSELF, to carry out the support work so necessary in today’s complex society
About Trading with TheYshop
TheYshop’s sole purpose is to raise funds for your local YMCA, by offering that community, friends and family an un-paralleled range of online retailers and their products to choose from. In working with these Internet retailers we want to portray and market their products in the very best possible formats of design and functionality that make purchasing both a true pleasure and inherently simple.
If you are a retailer who wants to trade with us and have access to a community of several hundred thousand consumers, then please contact the company at the address below
mikep@purepagesgroup.com or telephone Mike Phillips on 01204 375500 for an exploratory discussion