New AzoogleAds Referral Terms Screw Affiliates

It wasn’t til today that I caught attention of the new terms and conditions set forth by AzoogleAds on their affiliate referral program. I’m pretty sure I didn’t get their email notice, and I’ve talked to a couple others who also didn’t receive it, but are still an affiliate of the network. The news is already a couple days old, as already discussed by CPA-Affiliates, Cashtastics and many posts on WickedFire, but I will go into some detail on what I think of the changes of how it will affect future relations with AzoogleAds.

Let’s first take a look at the new terms in place by AzoogleAds:

The new terms and conditions are made up of nine new bullet points, though it’s really only two big changes, which are shown below.
• Referral commission will continue to be 2% of referred publishers’ revenue but will now expire after 6 months.
• You must maintain a minimum revenue level of $1,000 in your primary account on a monthly basis in order to receive any referral payouts for that month.

Let’s first focus on “Referral commission will continue to be 2% of referred publishers’ revenue but will now expire after 6 months.“. I can’t stress enough how awesome “lifetime” commissions are, and that some affiliate networks are offering this as an incentive is great. I know many networks that only pay commissions for 3-12 months of the affiliates earnings with the network. While I’m not sure how much volume AzoogleAds’ earns each month based on referred affiliates from affiliates, but I can’t imagine the 2% “lifetime” that they were paying affiliates, would put them out of business. After all, you are only making money if your referrals make money. I believe AzoogleAds is large enough and have been successfully pulling large enough margins on their offers to have a decent profit margin. (Despite recently laying off a bunch of staff and removing their rewards program!)

Second point, “You must maintain a minimum revenue level of $1,000 in your primary account on a monthly basis in order to receive any referral payouts for that month.“. I’m currently an affiliate with almost every network out there. I want to see what offers are new, which can make money, and update my blog readers on network news. This new requirement of having to earn $1,000 a month from actual AzoogleAds campaigns, to get credit for any affiliate referrals is just ridiculous. What about all the bloggers or network directories out there that only specialize in referrals to networks? Well, if you were making money with AzoogleAds, now you’re screwed. I’m sure $1,000 a month isn’t much to many, but to make it a requirement… you’re just digging your grave. I put forth the time and effort to give you accurate and detailed information on how to make money with these networks, a clear example of this success is my “My Blog Readers Have Earned Over $100,000!” post. I will no longer recommend AzoogleAds to my readers…

I really hate to see when an affiliate network doesn’t have it’s own referral program, but the new terms are AzoogleAds is almost at that. How much would it suck, for you to look at your stats and see you made some earnings off your referrals, but won’t be paid because you didn’t hit your $1,000 monthly mark… or to see a “big” referral go black after six months. While it sucks for us, it makes sense for AzoogleAds to not do away with the whole referral program since any referrers will probably still keep their existing links up (I wont), which results in free advertising money for AzoogleAds. However, if AzoogleAds keeps up their tactics and pisses off enough affiliates and referral networks, they may find that their advertising costs to bring in new affiliates would possibly match or outweigh that 2% lifetime in which they used to offer. With the removable of the rewards program and now a horrible referral program, AzoogleAds is now a network for big media that cares only about profit margins and not a meaningful relationship, which I heavily emphasize on.

To finish off this in-depth post, let’s focus on two testimonials from Jordan Visco at NeverBlueAds and Kris Jones from PepperJam Network, whom I will point out, heavily respect their affiliates and referrals to their networks and continue to pay honest commissions on all referrals.

“Its great to see that Zac’s hard work has been paying off for him as he has just passed the 2K affiliate referral commissions mark. Even greater is the realization that new webmasters who have been referred by ZacJohnson.com have now made over $100,000 with the NeverBlue Ads affiliate network. We’re excited that we can work together with affiliates like Zac to spread the affiliate marketing word and bring steady income to entrepreneurs worldwide who are looking to make a living for themselves online.”

“You’re becoming the next Darren Rowse, Jeremy Schoemaker, or John Chow! I should mention to your readers that you are also one of the top referrers of new affiliates to PepperJam Network. Today marks the two week anniversary of the launch of PepperJam Network and since then you’ve referred more new affiliates to us than 90% of the other publishers in our referral program. In addition, your referrals (aka, your readers) are very high quality.”

Popularity: 5% [?]

20 Comments » subscribe to my feed

What are Your Favorite Affiliate Networks & Why?

I think back to around 2000 quite often, when things were still all coming together. At that time there wasn’t the massive amount of affiliate networks and it was no where near as easy to buy some licensing software and setup shop. Back then we had the big players like CJU, LinkShare, WebSponsors, BeFree and a few others. I also remember when the Sharesale network first came out and I really liked what I was seeing. So much, that after I pulled all my merchant programs off CJ, I loaded most of them onto Shareasale. I’ve been an advertiser and affiliate with them since the beginning.

These days, there are just a massive onslaught of ad networks right in your face. With so much competition out there, how can they all last? Even just looking back 2-3 years ago when DirectTrack released their own operating system for running your own network, everyone in the world was starting their own! Even I had my own network for a few months! I couldn’t deal with the management and frustration of running a network on my own, so I said forget that!… but I can say that I tried it! Find a list of DirectTrack’s clients that were running their network software and I’m sure that most of them are out of business or never got to make it big. (Two examples of networks that have thrived using DirectTrack, are XY7 and CPAEmpire) Why is that? DirectTrack had a decent system for managing networks… but I’m sure the offers, competitive rates and affiliate support just wasn’t there.

I really only use a handful of networks for the majority of my business. What matters to me more than anything else is getting the attention and support I deserve. If another network is paying 5% more on an offer, but I’m not already established with them… I don’t care. My personal relationship means all the difference. Just off-hand, five of my top preferred networks are. NeverBlueAds, PepperJam Network, RocketProfit, ValueClick Media & Shareasale. I’ve never had an issue with payment, I’ve always had someone personable at the company to work with, and I’ve made good money with all of them. What are your favorite affiliate networks and how can they better serve you?

Popularity: 5% [?]

25 Comments » subscribe to my feed

Make Money Stuffing Envelopes

Today Reena and I were looking through the newspaper and Reena had just happened to glance through the classifieds for a bit and noticed an ad that said "Make money stuffing envelopes. Earn $1000 for everyone 200 envelopes you send out.". Of course the offer seemed too good to be true, so we decided to look into it a bit more.

On the classified ad it also listed a web site url, which was HomeProcessors.com. I went to the very basic and plain web site and it pretty much just kept pounding the idea or mass riches into your head for little or no effort. HomeProcessors.com goes on to say they will set you up with the program for $39.95 +$5 shipping, and that’s all you need to get started. The site also goes on to say this setup cost will be refunded once 20 leaflets are processed, from the many you are supposed to send out.

So what exactly are these "leaflets" you are sending out, and why would they pay so much for you to do it. According to their site, "The leaflets are advertisements and are not, in any way, offensive and do not contain any pornographic or illegal material at all. They are simply promotional advertisements to sell various products that we resell. The reason we need you to mail out our leaflets is because hiring more employees would require us to pay out more salaries, but also in addition, our company has to consider employee benefits, carrying more insurance fees, employee vacation, more office space and a host of other added expenses that are far too costly for our company at this point in time.". Sounds simple enough… but still too hard to believe… time for some more research.

Next I decided to look up their company name through Google, which was a search for "Avrika Inc.". Not to my surprise, I quickly noticed "RipOffReport.com" (one of my favorite sites) as one of the first links in the result. I went to their site and a person noted "I sent 40.00 dollars to this company with the intention to receive leaflets to mail to help them with advertising for there company. That is there advertising scheme. They advertised this in my local newspaper, on there web site, and in a letter that they personally mailed to me."… so apparently this is just one big pyramid scheme marketing idea, with no actual product… but the people they sucker into using it.

I never had any intentions of taking part in this program, but it was quite interesting to look at the classifieds than do some actual research on what we came across. You can do the same with almost any program that simply "Promises Wealth Beyond Your Wildest Dreams!". The moral of this post is to remind everyone out there, that before you start trying to make money in any area, you should spend some time to see what others are not only saying, but doing. Not only will getting involved in something like this completely waste your time and never make you money, it can also be very illegal. Even if you are starting to make money in a perfectly legit area, spend time to see what your competitors are doing wrong… and right! Learn from your competition, and make your business ethics and marketing better!

What ridiculous programs or money making schemes have you come across or even fell victim to?

Popularity: 8% [?]

19 Comments » subscribe to my feed

Where Did All The Good Affiliate Programs Go?

Recently my good friend Jim Kukral made a video expressing his concern and annoyance with affiliate networks on the "BIG" networks, such as Commission Junction and Linkshare. Jim wanted to promote an offer through BestBuy, which is run through Commission Junction. Unfortunately CJ likes to automatically delete accounts once they go inactive for a couple months. The happened to Jim’s account, so he had to make a new one. Once signing up again, he had to apply to the BestBuy affiliate program and had to wait four days to get a response back… and the response was, "your application was not approved".

I can relate to how Jim feels and I have experienced the same thing several times over. I have not used Commission Junction or Linkshare for nearly three years now because I hate the way their networks are setup. Back when I first was starting out running my own affiliate programs, I had several merchant accounts on CJ and one master affiliate account. Through CJ I had paid out several hundreds of thousands over the course of around two years. In addition to paying out a ton in commissions, I was also earning a ton too. My affiliate account had earnings in the six figure range… but apparently that didn’t matter to CJ. Once I stopped using that affiliate account for a few months, it was deactivated. I contacted CJ and they told me to create a new account. So what about all my data and awesome stats!?.. they didn’t care, it was now lost.

Several years later and I have experienced the same thing multiple times. I find a new offer that is through CJ that I want to check out, then I post a few links here and there, then log in a few months later and my account is deactivated again. I think my latest account with them is my fifth.

So last night I was setting up my new office room and it has a lot of furniture in it from Bombay Company. I decided to check out the site and saw they have an affiliate program, through LinkShare. I really wanted to join the program since I would promote the offer and also buy some furniture through the site as well. It’s been a while since I logged into my LinkShare account, but it was nice to see they didn’t delete my account like CJ does. I logged in, found the offer and and applied. I also added ZacJohnson.com as a new site to my profile, thinking any affiliate program would obviously see my site and how it says "Super Affiliate" and would easily accept the application.

This morning I received a response from Bombay Company’s affiliate manager, and (not) to my surprise, they have denied my account, stating my web site was one of the following: Inability to access Web site, Web site not yet live, Traffic levels too low, Inappropriate material on site. I assume they did find relevant content, as none of the above apply. It’s a shame to have affiliate management in place that would deny a site which states it’s a "Super Affiliate", and has a previous post showing $10k in earnings with another network.

In Jim’s video he talked about how he just wanted to go to BestBuy and other large companies directly. I completely agree, but unfortunately most site and companies do not have the management or knowledge to do so… so they pay too much and outsource to larger networks and miss out on possible opportunities to work with big players like Jim and myself, just because they don’t know better, or provide better and more personal support. The moral of this is posting is that no matter how big or small your branding name or company is, you can always improve your affiliate management and support. As for other large affiliate networks out there, I’m sure deleting accounts saves you some costs on data storage, but deleting accounts of big earning affiliates is just ridiculous. I’ve been in this game long enough to understand how things should be run and so many companies out there are way under par.

Popularity: 6% [?]

29 Comments » subscribe to my feed

Thanks for Missing My Package DHL!

I’ve spent the day getting ready to leave for Affiliate Summit in Florida… but I’m still waiting for my awesomely wicked new business cards I ordered from VistaPrint earlier this week. I made sure to pay the extra $36.84 for shipping so they would arrive in time. At the end of placing my order it said my package would arrive 7/6/07 at the latest. I had been anxiously awaiting the arrival of my new cards so I can finish up my packing and not have to worry about not having them. I kept checking the tracking number on the DHL web site and it’s been listed as "7/6/2007 7:41 am Depart Facility Niles Regional Hub, MI" for the most of the day now. Quite concerned, I decided to give them a call.

Once talking to a representative, the girl says the package was misplaced and left at the DHL Depart Facility in Michigan! She also apologized, but what good does that do for me? When asked about a refund she said that they bill VistaPrint directly and I have to talk with them. (Which I definitely will.) This is quite ridiculous as this was an important package… and the only purpose for DHL in life is to DELIVER PACKAGES! I was told I will have my business cards tomorrow by noon. Lastly I asked what’s the guarantee on that… I was told there was none…

I’m not happy about this. What if my flight left today or tomorrow?…. the business cards are just as important as anything else, if not more important! VistaPrint and DHL management will hear from me on this… as well as my readers. This is powerful blogging at it’s finest!

Popularity: 7% [?]

26 Comments » subscribe to my feed