my first scrubbing experience. not happy, but hey.. what can you do?
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miketpowell, thanks for the encouragement. you and a couple of the first posters had some good things to say. the rest of you are basically an eyesore 
especially ianshnagger or whatever your name is, get off my thread please.
after doing some more tests, i now believe that it's the network. for it to not even show up as a page impression on the report means it's the network not counting the click to my link, no?
i think they don't like my method. i am open to other offers/networks as to anyone who wants tons of emails. the traffic is very high and yes, many of the emails may not be great, but i can GUARANTEE traffic and target it VERY easily. such as, if the user is doing a search for "hot chicks", i can show a specific ad. and it'll get you like 100-200 emails a day at least, which i guess is pretty good in my mind, maybe not for someone else..
the ad will pop up before they get their results. if that is an incentive, then i guess i was under the impression that an incentive was like "get a membership if you sign up" or "get tons of money if you sign up" or something. all this is doing is doing is an interstitial ad offering a gas card or whatever the offer is before the user gets the search results.
i'm not sure if i should bring it up to the network yet. maybe they're reading this. i most likely will bring it up cuz it does irk me. advice?
especially ianshnagger or whatever your name is, get off my thread please.after doing some more tests, i now believe that it's the network. for it to not even show up as a page impression on the report means it's the network not counting the click to my link, no?
i think they don't like my method. i am open to other offers/networks as to anyone who wants tons of emails. the traffic is very high and yes, many of the emails may not be great, but i can GUARANTEE traffic and target it VERY easily. such as, if the user is doing a search for "hot chicks", i can show a specific ad. and it'll get you like 100-200 emails a day at least, which i guess is pretty good in my mind, maybe not for someone else..
the ad will pop up before they get their results. if that is an incentive, then i guess i was under the impression that an incentive was like "get a membership if you sign up" or "get tons of money if you sign up" or something. all this is doing is doing is an interstitial ad offering a gas card or whatever the offer is before the user gets the search results.
i'm not sure if i should bring it up to the network yet. maybe they're reading this. i most likely will bring it up cuz it does irk me. advice?
Just move on.
Whether you're right or wrong, lots of people read this forum and something as small as this, you'll be burning some bridges at the start of your IM career over something that's totally not worth anything. You never know if you'll want to work with this network again in the future. And even other people and/or networks you may want to work with may be hesitant to work with you if you go around screaming foul over something small that everyone knows is a necessary evil of the industry (albeit a growing one and a pain in the ass).
Sometimes being a professional means taking it on the chin a time or two, biting your tongue, and learning from the experience.
this is incent. people are just filling the offer with garbage to get to the results...
Hey Transient,miketpowell, thanks for the encouragement. you and a couple of the first posters had some good things to say. the rest of you are basically an eyesore
after doing some more tests, i now believe that it's the network. for it to not even show up as a page impression on the report means it's the network not counting the click to my link, no?
i think they don't like my method. i am open to other offers/networks as to anyone who wants tons of emails. the traffic is very high and yes, many of the emails may not be great, but i can GUARANTEE traffic and target it VERY easily. such as, if the user is doing a search for "hot chicks", i can show a specific ad. and it'll get you like 100-200 emails a day at least, which i guess is pretty good in my mind, maybe not for someone else..
the ad will pop up before they get their results. if that is an incentive, then i guess i was under the impression that an incentive was like "get a membership if you sign up" or "get tons of money if you sign up" or something. all this is doing is doing is an interstitial ad offering a gas card or whatever the offer is before the user gets the search results.
i'm not sure if i should bring it up to the network yet. maybe they're reading this. i most likely will bring it up cuz it does irk me. advice?
You keep repeating how much volume you can generate and how bulletproof your flawless method is. I've heard this type of stuff before, plenty of times. Usually, it's been on BlackHatWorld, and been posted by people who've just discovered CakeSlice or some other tool that lets them iframe just the submit area of an offer's landing page. That, or it's some other method that deceives the user into giving their e-mail address.
E-mail submit merchants don't want "tons of e-mails". As discussed earlier in the thread, they want surfers who will get through the regpath and get to the offer wall. It's that regpath and offerwall that generates 90% of the revenue for the merchant, so they don't want just the e-mails because they aren't going to make enough on it through follow-up mail drops.
So while I don't know what you are doing to create this traffic, the results you are seeing makes me believe you are using a blackhat method and delivering zero quality leads to the merchant. You've stated you are new to internet marketing - did you buy this method from someone? If so, it's too bad you had to learn the hard way that "bulletproof" methods are usually little more than scams.
Don't be surprised if you are pulled from the offer on Tuesday when your AM is back in the office. Or worse, don't be surprised if your account at the network is terminated. Iframing just the submit area (assuming that's your method) is against all networks' terms and conditions.
First, yes you are correct that's certainly not incentive. Incentive is usually something like getting people to do submits to unlock content or a the GPT sites that pay you with points and or cash to do something.
Also the network is likely no longer recording the click because the tracking systems many networks use only record 1-2 clicks from a single IP. So you can click on your affiliate link all day long but only see 2 clicks to the offer. I'm guessing this is so they can brag about how high their EPCs are and to confuse some people that are split testing into thinking they convert better because from just looking at the network reported EPC it will appear that way.
I've never done huge volume on submits but I've heard there are two main ways people do it.
1. Rotate the offers around so you don't send much volume to any one offer on a single network. This way they don't ever have time to scrub you even. With how many networks and submit offers there are out there this certainly seems doable to some extent.
2. Change the offers until you find a promotional method that gets you the ROI you want. As I said before it's a balance between misleading ads that get attention and ones that are ignored but don't get scrubbed. Once you find the sweet spot that works you can just stick with one offer much easier. You gotta change offers at the start because if you have a promotional method that makes quality bad and brings on the scrub it usually stays that way, you can't switch to higher quality traffic and see the scrub go down. Once the submits' system decides your traffic blows you gotta go at it with a different pub ID to avoid the scrub it's set for you.
Method 2 seems the most doable for high volume to me. It's much easier to make big money if the advertiser is making money too, rotating offers to avoid scrub because your traffic blows will be stressful and tougher to keep volume.
You said you were still making money with the scrub and that's the key thing you gotta look at. The advertiser is just doing what they need to do so they make money too. Just think of the scrubbing on e-mail submits as a very unpolite way for the advertiser to tell you, "Your traffic isn't worth the payout you saw on the network so we are going to effective pay you less by scrubbing you"
Edit : Someone else thinks what you described is incent. This all depends on if you are using interstitial ads from an ad network that the user can close to get there results or if you have a popup on a page that tells people they must complete the offer before continuing. Also what MaxSteve said is spot on of course and hopefully doesn't apply to you. I guessed that it probably wasn't from the start since you said you started at 10% and with iframing/incent you usually start much higher then that.
Also the network is likely no longer recording the click because the tracking systems many networks use only record 1-2 clicks from a single IP. So you can click on your affiliate link all day long but only see 2 clicks to the offer. I'm guessing this is so they can brag about how high their EPCs are and to confuse some people that are split testing into thinking they convert better because from just looking at the network reported EPC it will appear that way.
I've never done huge volume on submits but I've heard there are two main ways people do it.
1. Rotate the offers around so you don't send much volume to any one offer on a single network. This way they don't ever have time to scrub you even. With how many networks and submit offers there are out there this certainly seems doable to some extent.
2. Change the offers until you find a promotional method that gets you the ROI you want. As I said before it's a balance between misleading ads that get attention and ones that are ignored but don't get scrubbed. Once you find the sweet spot that works you can just stick with one offer much easier. You gotta change offers at the start because if you have a promotional method that makes quality bad and brings on the scrub it usually stays that way, you can't switch to higher quality traffic and see the scrub go down. Once the submits' system decides your traffic blows you gotta go at it with a different pub ID to avoid the scrub it's set for you.
Method 2 seems the most doable for high volume to me. It's much easier to make big money if the advertiser is making money too, rotating offers to avoid scrub because your traffic blows will be stressful and tougher to keep volume.
You said you were still making money with the scrub and that's the key thing you gotta look at. The advertiser is just doing what they need to do so they make money too. Just think of the scrubbing on e-mail submits as a very unpolite way for the advertiser to tell you, "Your traffic isn't worth the payout you saw on the network so we are going to effective pay you less by scrubbing you"
Edit : Someone else thinks what you described is incent. This all depends on if you are using interstitial ads from an ad network that the user can close to get there results or if you have a popup on a page that tells people they must complete the offer before continuing. Also what MaxSteve said is spot on of course and hopefully doesn't apply to you. I guessed that it probably wasn't from the start since you said you started at 10% and with iframing/incent you usually start much higher then that.
Some people are just sloppy. I do not think merchants should "disallow" iFrames. Do not want framed traffic? Just put in the JavaScript to take care of the problem and stop wasting everyone's time and scrubbing your affiliates willy-nilly.
Because some affiliates load the landing page within their own iframe for legimiate reasons and they don't like it when their frames are broken.
- Regpath sites: They have a bit of branding at the top of the page, and a skip button at the bottom of the page. Between those two is an frame/iframe with the offer.
- Splash pages for search engine ranking. Buy a relevant domain, the offer is loaded in a 100% iframe on that domain. i.e. www.getafreeipod.com vs. some long merchant landing page URL.
Because an offer appears more legit if the url in the address bar is the original site they landed on.
edit: Steve is on the ball!
miketpowell, thanks again, you are a plethora of useful info during my tail-between-my-legs state of n00bage. your second plan sounds good to me, although ultimately your EDIT post was what I plan to do: make the interstitial opt-out and make sure the user gets what they wanted to begin with. i suspect this was the problem.
MaxSteve, i don't need this CakeSlice you speak of, i'm a pretty damn good programmer (though i can make mistakes, and i think i may have with this offer). And it was intuitive to me that i would have to show the full ad. i was giving the user the full page of the offer. it WAS iframed, but only because it was my method of the interstitial. maybe this has something to do with it, maybe I need to do it a diff way.
what sucks is that i had just started another method of the interstitial on another site that has pretty decent unpaid traffic and i was getting clicks. now that i'm not getting the lead count, i had to take it down. i'm pretty bummed out. one source was seriously high traffic, the other was higher quality leads and now i can't use either
i wrote a nice email to my AM asking him to work with me on it. honestly, i figure this is all due to me being an idiot and was breaking some rule (possibly the incent, possibly a low-quality lead complaint from the merchant, who knows?) that i should know by now. but hey, you live you learn... i'm hoping they don't ban me, but i'd rather go out knowing that i tried to work with them to keep their network decent.
MaxSteve, i don't need this CakeSlice you speak of, i'm a pretty damn good programmer (though i can make mistakes, and i think i may have with this offer). And it was intuitive to me that i would have to show the full ad. i was giving the user the full page of the offer. it WAS iframed, but only because it was my method of the interstitial. maybe this has something to do with it, maybe I need to do it a diff way.
what sucks is that i had just started another method of the interstitial on another site that has pretty decent unpaid traffic and i was getting clicks. now that i'm not getting the lead count, i had to take it down. i'm pretty bummed out. one source was seriously high traffic, the other was higher quality leads and now i can't use either
i wrote a nice email to my AM asking him to work with me on it. honestly, i figure this is all due to me being an idiot and was breaking some rule (possibly the incent, possibly a low-quality lead complaint from the merchant, who knows?) that i should know by now. but hey, you live you learn... i'm hoping they don't ban me, but i'd rather go out knowing that i tried to work with them to keep their network decent.
duly noted. though, i'd rather let my AM know that i have the network's best interests in mind rather than grumble and walk away. if they choose to tell me off then it shows what kind of company they are, no? i'm willing to work with them on it, not looking to make enemies.
