December 29th, 2009 // comments (3)

MOVE YOUR MONEY

Viral video suggests a New Year’s Resolution: Move your money from big banks to smaller, community banks. Update: Is this a money-making scheme?

Honestly, I find the whole ‘big banks evil, small banks good’ argument a bit simplistic. But this video is a well-executed version of that simple argument and people will latch on to the ideals it contains.

The site behind this, moveyourmoney.info, was created less than a week ago. The domain registration was done by proxy, a fact that makes me wonder who’s behind this whole movement. In fact, the service they use to help people find a community bank, Institutional Risk Analytics, seemed to be wrapped in some sort of affiliate program.

More to follow…

BINGO: Here’s what you won’t find in that viral video:

Single reports are $50.00 which gives the user a one-year key to view IRA reports on that institutiuon. That’s four quarters of analytical distillations of FDIC Call Report updates. Industrial users such as CFA’s typically purchase multiple reports.

The Survey Tool costs $500.00 per year for each user key to the search system.

New for 2009! The Corporate Monitor costs $500.00 per year for each user key to use the service. An amount to pay the fundamental data supply company uses to power the Corporate Monitor is subtracted as a Cost of Goods Sold from this amount prior to computing affiliate credits.

IRA is paying 20% net of PayPal fees and COGS content license costs, where applicable, in 2009 on affiliate sales credited to your code.

So, whoever is behind this video and the website attached to it isn’t hoping for a ‘movement’ so much as they’re hoping for a paycheck.

BIG QUESTION: This is getting front-page, banner love on the Huffington Post. Arianna Huffington herself wrote the piece pushing it. I’ve got emails out to both HuffPo and the affiliate company to get some questions answered. Could HuffingtonPost.com be behind this website and profiting from it without informing their readers?

Confirmed: Arianna Huffington and her staff created this video with the help of some friends. Yet they don’t reveal anywhere that they could be profiting off of this. No word yet from the affiliate program.

Update: Arianna made it clear in her piece that she was instrumental in the creation of Move Your Money and I take no issue with that. What I take issue with is if she’s raking in affiliate bucks and not disclosing that fact to her readers.

Update: Gawker.com links in with a quote from the IRA affiliate website: “”The Huffington investigative fund runs the site. We do not pay them any commissions for any sales that may occur.”

I’ve got a line of questions out to the HuffingtonPost.com’s PR flack and I’ll update this post with responses when I hear back.

Update: The Huffington Post responds to my queries:

Of course, neither The Huffington Post nor The Huffington Post Investigative Fund is in any way profiting from the Move Your Money campaign. As for IRA, they are also not profiting from it. As IRA’s Chris Whalen explains, they “donated the list of banks and the screening tool used to search by zip code to support this effort.”

So why the affiliate codes? Maybe just to keep track of clicks?

And, really, how is the IRA not profiting from this? If someone (and millions will in the coming days) clicks the prominent link on moveyourmoney.info, they’re sent over to a website that sells them a service. How could they not profit off of this traffic stream? It just doesn’t make sense.

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