OFFICIAL What Can Affiliate Networks Do Better? Thread

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I'd like to see networks that offer better payment plans than net 15/30 for smaller affiliates. We all don't make $1,000 a week and we all don't have the capital to produce $1,000 a week for 2 weeks like most require. In the long run it would probably help the network.
Getting started in AM is the hardest part and this would definitely help.
 


texic said:
I'd like to see networks that offer better payment plans than net 15/30 for smaller affiliates. We all don't make $1,000 a week and we all don't have the capital to produce $1,000 a week for 2 weeks like most require. In the long run it would probably help the network.
Getting started in AM is the hardest part and this would definitely help.
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I believe Copeac offers a bi-monthly setup. Not sure about other networks as Copeac was pretty much the only one I worked with as an affiliate. For us it's a logistics thing which is being built into our backend software. We'll offer it at some point. But that's a great point you make I really can see an inbetween beneficial price point for that bi-monthly threshold as well.

With that said I think there's a few networks that will work with you if you're being limited by cash flow. We're one but I think there's some others out there as well like c2m. If you have a campaign that's doing well and just are being prohibited by cash flow always talk with your AM for whoever you're working with and ask if there is anything they can do. Because at the end of the day if you're successful and can grow your campaign they are going to make more money as a network. Keep in mind if you're going to ask for exceptions you might need to share some campaign details just so the network doesn't feel like you're doing something shady if they don't know your traffic that well.
 
Some things I hear about a lot as a network that we hear is requested a lot. Granted I could keep these to myself and improve our network. But honestly I want to raise the bar across the board. These are all things that improve transparency and ease of use for affiliates.

1. EPC's of offers and number of leads that have been run to it. Or at least some sort of indicator how popular it is and how it's been performing network wide.

2. Cap listed with offer info, transparent to publishers and % of the days the campaign has run that it's hit cap.

3. Affiliate Self pixel placement.

4. Full contact info for AM's ( aim, cell, direct line, email, anything else )

5. Offer pinger in the network that checks if an offer is down and auto-redirects and alerts affiliates that the offer is down without a human having to check it.

6. Auto email and/or SMS notification when the cap is hit on an offer the pub has been running and what it has been redirected to.

7. Graph for epc through out the day for an offer for the network and for your specific account broken up by subid if you wanted. This would make dayparting for offers much easier for pubs.

I've got more but we'll start with those for now to get the creative juices flowing. :D

There are networks that have some of these things and hitpath has been fantastic to work with and are building in my ideas as quickly as they can. All this stuff should improve our opportunities to be successful as affiliates.

Hit us with what your dream suggestions are. Think outside of the box. Peeps :D
 
1# We need the networks to give the publishers the ability to choose the offer when a international traffic redirect happens. How many times you see a Diet offer being redirect to "SMILEYS" for a NON-US traffic? Sometimes this traffic is from Canada which have a similar offer, but eventhough it still gets redirected to a totally non-related offer. Would be nice if I could choose what offer gets redirected for each type or block of international traffic.
 
icomunik said:
1# We need the networks to give the publishers the ability to choose the offer when a international traffic redirect happens. How many times you see a Diet offer being redirect to "SMILEYS" for a NON-US traffic? Sometimes this traffic is from Canada which have a similar offer, but eventhough it still gets redirected to a totally non-related offer. Would be nice if I could choose what offer gets redirected for each type or block of international traffic.
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Very true. Not only that, but make sure the traffic redirects actually work. Half the time they haven't worked for me and no matter where in the US I am with a US offer I get the "offer not available in your area". I'm not going to point fingers, but dont worry it wasn't any of you guy's networks.

It's also nice as smaxor said alternate means of communication. Phone is great but honestly becoming old school. New and multiple forms of communication would benefit alot. There are many instances where IRC or Gtalk on my blackberry would help in a location where phone is not an option, or you just want a straight talk/answer and no BS "Hey how are you".
 
Definitely agree with this:
Your manager should be your ally, not some person you hide shit from. If you're afraid you're going to get your campaign details shared, you're wasting your time. They share it through EPC. Doing big numbers pushes offers into the "best performing" emails that get sent out. They do it to increase their bottom line.
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But with a very large disclaimer: Make sure you trust their ass isn't gonna share sites, media buys or any other specific info with all the other affiliates they're managing. I've seen affiliate managers do this way too often.

Affiliate networks should also know the products they're promoting inside and out. Too many times I see people who simply look at EPC's and promote deals as if that's all that matters. The more AM's know about the offer, how the back-end works, what kind of scrubs are in place (certain states not accepted etc), the better they can help make you more money.

Share more conversion data: Partial conversion rates, upsell rates etc.

Automatic Geo redirects would be nice. As long as it could be presented intuitively on the back-end once traffic starts rolling in.
 
texic said:
I'd like to see networks that offer better payment plans than net 15/30 for smaller affiliates. We all don't make $1,000 a week and we all don't have the capital to produce $1,000 a week for 2 weeks like most require. In the long run it would probably help the network.
Getting started in AM is the hardest part and this would definitely help.
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Problem solved :)
 
If you don't like my traffic, don't start scrubbing, especially if you're not going to tell me about it.

Instead, tell me that my traffic isn't converting well for you. Then I'll work to improve my traffic and determine which traffic sources are working well for you and which aren't, etc. Give me useful information like what demographic generally converts well on the back end for the advertiser. Until my traffic quality improves, put a cap on the number of leads I can send per day if you want. Do anything, but don't start scrubbing without telling me!
 
Stop hiding the EPC's and just put them on the damn interface. Will save your aff managers alot of time, and make it alot easier for pubs to find good offers (especially on the weekends!)
 
I would also want to point out the fact that they don't copy our campaigns. This is the fuckin shit ever happened in my life when my top converting ads were copied and i saw the advertiser himself on Adwords with same keywords which are so hidden that anyone can only find them after doing research for 7 days. But, I saw the same competitior within 20 days, hence allowing me to make monies just for 13 days.
 
narsticle said:
Its usually not the network scrubbing, its usually the advertiser.
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What he said.

There's also a lot of things that go into conversions as well on something like a Free Trial CC offer. There's a bunch of different settings on the CC side of things to reduce fraud. Depending on how liberal or tight those filters are set can have a lot to do with how well the offer converts. Also, if someone uses onshore or offshore processing can have and effect as well. So for example if an advertiser was getting some crap free trials and the rebills weren't working that well for them they might tighten up their rules for fraud prevention. Things like block gift cards, make sure the address matches with the card, etc etc. There's about 6-7 different settings that are offered by gateways. So it may look like scrubbing but might not necessarily be intentional scrubbing just to take your leads.

Also with regards to email submits I made a thread on this forum how those work you can search for it. Scrubbing is built into that model to make them back out properly for the advertiser. Your best bet it to work with the advertisers directly on those then you can at least ask what your traffic is worth to them rather then being scrubbed. On a network level you're going to get scrubbed because you're just a number being passed. A couple of the networks that own their own email submit offers are hsmleads.com and addrive.com
 
1. No more just "network wide EPCs".. it's very frustrating for me to be told a hot new offer is only performing .50 epc because "a lot of our shittier advertiser's are bringing the offer epc down". I want a realistic epc for email marketers, and high end PPC players, if that's possible. Separate the two, because email marketers produce diff't results than PPC. Don't lump the two together, because the EPCs become useless as a gauge. And get the shitty pubs out of the equation, they shouldn't count.

2. I would love the option for my daily revenues to be able to be dumped to my cellphone. Are any affiliates doing this? Would be cool to be able to customize it for a specific offer ID, so you can get real time profit results in a text msg.
 
marksus8 said:
AM's that have actually been affiliates.

I'm confident that for a lot of my networks (the ones I don't use) I'm more experienced then the AM, and many times, there's little the AM can do to help me.
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Yeah, that's the best. share all your campaign info with affiliates that are ams.
 
Roundabout said:
1. No more just "network wide EPCs".. it's very frustrating for me to be told a hot new offer is only performing .50 epc because "a lot of our shittier advertiser's are bringing the offer epc down". I want a realistic epc for email marketers, and high end PPC players, if that's possible. Separate the two, because email marketers produce diff't results than PPC. Don't lump the two together, because the EPCs become useless as a gauge. And get the shitty pubs out of the equation, they shouldn't count.
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think advaliant already does this? maybe not, not sure, but thought so
 
I think he means like "lobby" as in the verb for "do the political lobby" thing and push these ideas.

He's indeed a man of few words. I can think of 2 more to add right now actually.
 
  1. Pay Attention to Merchants - I know it's been mentioned before. But I'm still sour over true.com. Scrubs are understandable, but they need to be justifiable, and the network needs to know when they go up. A network wide 70% scrub should be unacceptable(especially for quality traffic). Although I was running it with a proper/popular network, I'd be lying if I said it didn't really impact whether or not I'd run things with them in the future. And this was one of my favorite companies.
  2. Limited Legal Info - Especially with the recent AG questions, it'd be nice to at least get some legal guidelines to work with. Though I'm aware it would put networks out on more of a limb, it'd really be nice to have some realistic information to go by.
  3. Give Us Actual Product Information - It'd be nice to not have to write reviews based off their terms of service. The *big* products over the past bit have had one thing in common aside from the "free trial" thing...we had something to work with. Anyone remember grants? There were some where you couldn't even figure out what the "recurring" part was for (knowledgebase vs support vs how-tos, etc)
 
narsticle said:
what does this mean?...or are you just inflating your post count.
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Ya I'm just working on my post count because that's what matters.

Affiliates have no shot at getting some sort of group/association together that would function, but affiliate networks can. There's a lot less of them a lot more resources. It's obvious with the FTC nonsense, rampant lawsuits, and acai being all over the news that there is no one at bat for the industry.

If the government wants their hand in the internet cookie jar, and they obviously do, then there needs to be someone in DC working for affiliates.
 
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