Russell Brunson's making some changes to his affiliate program. One in particular caught my eye: refer at least 100 leads, and in addition to the commissions you'll earn, he'll send you a free Kindle 2.

There are other prizes at different levels (everything from a fruit basket to a home theater package to a Segue to a car or boat), but that one in particular jumped out at me, motivated me, and taught me a lesson. I spent a little time this morning adding another P.S. to a bunch of my autoresponder emails, and adding email signatures to the emails sent by my blog and forum with links to Russell's "free + shipping and handling" Wealth Building Portfolio offer, all to get me to the level where I get the Kindle faster.

What's weird about this is that I probably would never spend the money to buy a Kindle myself. And if Russell had offered a monetary bonus equal to the price of the Kindle, I would have thought "that's nice, at some point I'll get a bonus", but probably wouldn't have taken action.

So why did it motivate me so much? I don't know exactly. But the fact is that it doesn't matter why -- it just matters that you recognize that if you want to motivate people, money isn't always the best thing to use. Cool gadgets might work better. I've heard this plenty of times before from people teaching internet marketing, but this is the first time it's really affected me.

When someone offers a prize in an product launch affiliate contest, that doesn't interest me so much, because it doesn't feel achievable -- some super affiliate is going to win it, right? But getting 100 leads to sign up for Russell's products is achievable (I'm already part way there).

So, offer gadgets for something that feels achievable. Got it.

Once I've got the Kindle, we'll see whether I get motivated to drive another 900 so I can get the home theater package. 52" LCD TV...I'm drooling a little already!