OFFICIAL What Can Affiliate Networks Do Better? Thread

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AdHustler

AdHustler

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Here at Wickedfire we are a tough crew. It's what makes us unique. We expect a lot out of the companies we deal with. My question is....

What can affiliate networks do better?

Let's be a positive force for change in this industry. Post what you'd like to see affiliate networks do to help affiliates and improve their networks!
 


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.
 
1. Not allow Advertiser's to pause or stop a campaign on a Friday at 6pm or midnight. This has happened so many times to me and it hurts like hell when you've scheduled a weekend full of inventory for an offer and it's gone, or worse, it's redirecting to an ink jet offer.

2. Allowing weekly wires is a must after the affiliate shows performance and has established reputation, min. 30 days is fair.

3. Exclusive offers - get something that hasn't been whored by everyone else. I actuallty got an email the other day from a network proud to say it had a new Google offer, it's the same shitty one we've all seen, same LP, get a clue people!

4. An AM that uses IM and communicates with me. I perform much better when my AM is a click away and can notify me the moment a new hot offer is out of the gate.

5. The ability to deploy links without having to hit the DEPLOY button. I want to be able to make 100 deployed links with simple cut/paste of an ID code vs. having my webmasters sit there for 30 mins and generate them.

All this aside, I'll waive 1-5 for just some HOT GODDAMN OFFERS. It's the solid offers that keep me there, the rest is icing on the cake.
 
^ Well duh. If they were making bank as an affiliate why on earth would they consider a normal job?

As far as suggestions, I'd love AM's that were actually online once in a while. I joined neverblue a while ago and had some questions, but I haven't sent a dime of traffic because my AM is literally never online.
 
clashctyrokr said:
^ Well duh. If they were making bank as an affiliate why on earth would they consider a normal job?

As far as suggestions, I'd love AM's that were actually online once in a while. I joined neverblue a while ago and had some questions, but I haven't sent a dime of traffic because my AM is literally never online.
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True,
 
More accurate and detailed stats for each traffic type and creative for each offer available in the interface and updated daily (at least).

More managers who specialize (or who at least have some knowledge of) in different traffic types outside of search and email.

More transparency on shaving practices. This will never happen but it's a problem none the less.
 
dickarmy said:
More managers who specialize (or who at least have some knowledge of) in different traffic types outside of search and email.
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Isnt it the affiliates job to know about these traffic sources? Quite honestly I'd rather my AM not know shit about traffic sources but rather know if theres a problem with the offers and how to get them fixed.
 
narsticle said:
Isnt it the affiliates job to know about these traffic sources? Quite honestly I'd rather my AM not know shit about traffic sources but rather know if theres a problem with the offers and how to get them fixed.
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How about an AM who's actually been an affiliate marketer and can help with both traffic sources AND offer maintenance ;)
 
Don't scrub/shave.

We work hard to make money for everyone, so the least they could do is not fuck us for a quick dollar.
 
i don't get why the hell you'd want an AM who was an affiliate. i want my AM's online, able to secure offers and to go to bat for me with shady merchants. i don't give a FUCK if they know how to market.

- lucas
 
If AM's were good at affiliate marketing, why are they working for a network to begin with? Just sayin.

For me, the list is short:

Differentiation - Exclusive offers not every network has

Communication - Honest communication about what is doing well and what isn't. Not just what they are supposed to be pushing / getting merchant pressure about.

Community - A good network talks openly about their business and addresses things above board. A handful are great at this (Copeac, C2M, A4D. Azoogle), and some are really poor. See the 20 page long thread in Shooting the Shit to see who is bad at this. I don't care if it's some bullshit internal "policy", the AM community is your lifeblood to getting affiliate pickup.
 
lukesloot said:
i don't get why the hell you'd want an AM who was an affiliate. i want my AM's online, able to secure offers and to go to bat for me with shady merchants. i don't give a FUCK if they know how to market.

- lucas
Click to expand...

And if the AM knew more than you about affiliate marketing, you wouldn't ask or need help?
 
Roundabout said:
1. Not allow Advertiser's to pause or stop a campaign on a Friday at 6pm or midnight. This has happened so many times to me and it hurts like hell when you've scheduled a weekend full of inventory for an offer and it's gone, or worse, it's redirecting to an ink jet offer.

2. Allowing weekly wires is a must after the affiliate shows performance and has established reputation, min. 30 days is fair.

3. Exclusive offers - get something that hasn't been whored by everyone else. I actuallty got an email the other day from a network proud to say it had a new Google offer, it's the same shitty one we've all seen, same LP, get a clue people!

4. An AM that uses IM and communicates with me. I perform much better when my AM is a click away and can notify me the moment a new hot offer is out of the gate.

5. The ability to deploy links without having to hit the DEPLOY button. I want to be able to make 100 deployed links with simple cut/paste of an ID code vs. having my webmasters sit there for 30 mins and generate them.

All this aside, I'll waive 1-5 for just some HOT GODDAMN OFFERS. It's the solid offers that keep me there, the rest is icing on the cake.
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Hey roundabout, I don't know you well, but you make a lot of good points. The most interesting one is you want unique a new offers.

Which is kind of interesting. I've been reading the mailer section and I know you're a mailer. The irony of the whole unique offers thing is search/media buyers want the exact same offer and they don't want it to change one bit. I know guys that have run the same offer for months. Only when it breaks down do they want to move. We do a lot in bizopp and have about 20+ offers and everyone runs the same one pretty much. I think what happens is affiliates see what other affiliates are running on search/media and decide it's the best and run that. So in turn we have advertisers make the same page or a similar pages to pick up volume and compete. I think this is common among heavy ppc/media networks.

I just thought it's ironic because mailers are the complete opposite they want constantly fresh offers and creatives and burn them out pretty quickly.

Also with regards to offers going down issues. I think if you stay away from the big offers you shouldn't have issues. I know that our biggest offers cap on volume a lot and will redirect randomly though the day. That's because the advertisers merchant accounts just process anymore. If you stick with the offers no one is running I think that should be less of an issue.

All the other points I think you'll find most good networks the AM's use IM. Weekly wires after 1k/week is hit. etc. Those are pretty commonplace now among the good networks.

Just my 3 cents. :D
 
I know AM's with affiliate experience is a big talk in this thread. We've dealt with this a lot internally and I've talked to many affiliates about how they feel on this topic. Typically it breaks down like this:

n00bs = love AM's that are helpful, can guide them and give them advice on everything under the sun.

Medium to Large = Want AM's that know nothing other then how to place pixels and tell them what offer is converting best on the network. Because they believe that anyone with some experience is going to steal their campaigns.

HUGE = Don't give a shit because they understand that there's enough out there for everyone and they're usually 3-4 steps way ahead of any affiliate manager.

With that said I think there's some places that AM's can excel to help their affiliates that's not about what to bid on traffic and where to find it. A couple things I think AM's should know.

1. The background on offers/advertisers. How solid they are and stable their offers are.

2. Caps that are set on the offers and where they are for the day.

3. Psychology, Sales and Marketing principles. Not saying the best but they should be able to look at a lander and see the action item on the bottom left and help someone understand why that's bad placement.

That's just a few ideas. But there's a lot more. There's a lot AM's can know that can help affiliates be successful I think. That would be an interesting thread in and of itself.

What do you think your AM should be able to help you with?
 
smaxor said:
I just thought it's ironic because mailers are the complete opposite they want constantly fresh offers and creatives and burn them out pretty quickly.
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Sad but true. The problem is, we have a finite "base" of leads. Let's say a mailer has 500,000 "biz opp" leads and gets maybe 1000 fresh leads a day. Those 500,000 will become saturated from mail drops relatively quick, and the 1000+ per day coming in isn't enough to warrant a daily drop to garner some extra sales. So, you wait a bit, and when the count is more substantial, you drop the offer again. Rinse, repeat for your top 20 offers and you've now got a reasonable system in place for making money the email way.

We have to deal with attrition as well. Those 500,000 leads become 499,000 day 2 from optouts, etc. and new data needs to come in at a higher rate to maintain your metrics.

Whereas in Search, the world is the limit, and there is always fresh blood looking for your ads. So I can totally see your point how a killer offer can literally work for itself and keep you happy really, forever, or until break-down occurs.

smaxor said:
I know that our biggest offers cap on volume a lot and will redirect randomly though the day. That's because the advertisers merchant accounts just process anymore.
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I couldn't make a living with that unfortunately. Mailers plan their drops strategically at various points of the day. I'm surprised you don't get a lot of complaints from people for that, esp. high volume search people who are paying $3-$5 a click and getting redirects? But I'm assuming you tell them in advance what the cap is, and assign a cap to each client so they can monitor their lead and back off accordingly. To be honest I'd rather invest in an offer without caps so I don't have to worry about the door closing during a profit-run.

Great points all around, however, keep them coming.
 
narsticle said:
Isnt it the affiliates job to know about these traffic sources? Quite honestly I'd rather my AM not know shit about traffic sources but rather know if theres a problem with the offers and how to get them fixed.
Click to expand...

Totally disagree. 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.

If I'm doing buys, having a good manager who is familiar with running media buys and those running media buys on the network, they're going to have a better idea of what's working and what advertisers are stable. Not many managers are familiar with Display though.
 
the scrub/shave factor will never go away, so not even a point to consider. I think Affiliate Managers should be hitting mailers/pubs up as much as we hit them up. I must bother 30-50 managers a week to get more traffic on offers, but they don't always do the same for the good offers they have.

An AM with some "tracking" experience is always helpful. I've yet to find one who knows more of the faults in tracking systems.
 
smaxor said:
I know AM's with affiliate experience is a big talk in this thread. We've dealt with this a lot internally and I've talked to many affiliates about how they feel on this topic. Typically it breaks down like this:

n00bs = love AM's that are helpful, can guide them and give them advice on everything under the sun.

Medium to Large = Want AM's that know nothing other then how to place pixels and tell them what offer is converting best on the network. Because they believe that anyone with some experience is going to steal their campaigns.

HUGE = Don't give a shit because they understand that there's enough out there for everyone and they're usually 3-4 steps way ahead of any affiliate manager.

With that said I think there's some places that AM's can excel to help their affiliates that's not about what to bid on traffic and where to find it. A couple things I think AM's should know.

1. The background on offers/advertisers. How solid they are and stable their offers are.

2. Caps that are set on the offers and where they are for the day.

3. Psychology, Sales and Marketing principles. Not saying the best but they should be able to look at a lander and see the action item on the bottom left and help someone understand why that's bad placement.

That's just a few ideas. But there's a lot more. There's a lot AM's can know that can help affiliates be successful I think. That would be an interesting thread in and of itself.

What do you think your AM should be able to help you with?
Click to expand...

Great breakdown.
 
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