Help! My Affiliate Manager Sucks!

In continuing with the “Five Reasons Why Your Affiliate Network Sucks” series, today we will focus on “Affiliate Managers“. The best way to think of an affiliate manager is like the coach of a sports team, they “should” be there to provide input when you are looking to improve your marketing (game), and most definitely there to notify you on the latest offers available and what’s hot. Lastly, but most important… they are your life line to the network and the easiest/fatest way to getting premium pay outs.

Here are a few ways you can tell if your current affiliate manager sucks, and what you can do about it.

- How about a Booost?!
In my last post on “My Affiliate Network Pays More than Yours!“, I focused on the different payment structures from all the networks. The public payout rates varied heavily, yet they were all for the same offer. You affiliate manager is your inside man to get you the best payout rates on an offer. I’ll tell you right now, my affiliate managers at MarketLeverage (Erick) and NeverBlueAds (Tina) are the best. On some of these other networks, affiliate managers want to see “some volume” first, before giving you a higher payout… of they will give you an increase, but you know they still have so much more room to offer. While this makes sense for affiliates and managers that do not have any prior business, or massive lead volume… it’s really just a time waster for the affiliate and the affiliate manager, when you know you are dealing with an affiliate that can deliver.

- This is the Internet… Be Available Online!
This is soo crucial… affiliate managers NEED to be accessible online, and I’m not just talking about email. While some affiliates like to pick up the phone and chat for a while, many don’t. All affiliate managers should be available by either AIM Instant Messenger, GMail Chat, MSN Messenger or whatever… just don’t rely on email. No only will this make your affiliates happier and not have to wait for an email response, but it will also grow your personal relationships with your affiliates. I talk to my affiliate managers several times a week, whether it be about network offers, or just to see how they are doing.

- Newbie Affiliate Manager
While the majority of affiliate managers I have come across are seasoned and have a pretty good idea what internet and affiliate marketing is, I sometimes feels bad for the networks and affiliates that are using/working with newbies. Every one has to start somewhere, but when you have to explain marketing methods or how other networks run and work with higher payouts, its frustrating. Your job is to market and make money with the network, not train any new affiliate managers in the process. Networks… make sure you have well trained and knowledgeable affiliate managers!

The majority of affiliate managers out there on the well known networks are really great… from time to time you will come across a newbie or someone that just isn’t as good as they could be. In a situation like this, you can ask who your friends or other business contacts that are working with at the company, if they like their manager. If you end up with a nice recommended affiliate manager, simply contact the network and ask nicely to be changed. In most cases you shouldn’t have any problems.

[This post is covering part one of the “Five Reasons Your Affiliate Program Sucks” series, and is focusing on “Bad Affiliate Managers“.]

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My Affiliate Network Pays More than Yours!

When you first join a new affiliate network, one of the first things you probably look at are their cpa rates and payouts. If you are a member of many affiliate networks, you are already too aware that different networks offer different rates… why might this be? In most cases, the difference in commission payouts to users are one of the following:

1.) Profit Share for the Network
Depending on the network, they may just be taking a bigger profit margin for themselves and passing less commission off to their affiliates.

2.) Volume & Poor Sales Team
Another major factor in pricing, is how much volume the affiliate network can deliver. Usually, the more volume an affiliate or affiliate network can deliver, the better payouts they receive. Nearly as important as volume, is how well the affiliate network’s sales team works. I’ve talked with many affiliate networks over the years that weren’t aware other networks were paying more, their usual response is that they will contact sales to re-negotiate a better rate. (Shouldn’t this have been done in the first place?)

3.) Offer Type
Some affiliate networks are able to negotiate their own deals based on landing pages or processes for accepting leads. In most cases, a network accepting “incentived” leads, will pay less than an offer accepting “non-incentived” leads. Some networks also have the leway to create their own landing pages or be the only ones to offer “search” marketing.

Different Affiliate Networks, Different Payouts
Nothing speaks volumes like real life examples. The best way to do this is by giving you an actual case study on many well known networks and an offer all of them share. BlockBuster has one of the largest advertising campaigns around, and they have the ad dollars to back them up… no wonder their offer is on nearly every affiliate network out there. If you head over to BlockBuster.com, you can join their affiliate program directly through CJ.com and earn $33 per signup, or you can earn more or less with the affiliate networks below.

From the chart above, you can see there is quite a difference in cpa payouts among the networks. It is also important to note that many of the affiliate networks have different guidelines as to how you can promote the Blockbuster affiliate program. Rextopia for example has their standard Blockbuster offer available at $41.50 cpa, then another (email only) free trial version for $19.20. AzoogleAds has the lowest payout on the chart, but they also have a different landing page from the other networks. CPAEmpire only allows you to promote the program through banner placement. The rest of the networks have their own guidelines as well, whether it be if search is allowed or if they accept incentives leads. All of these guidelines will affect your bottom line as to how you promote an affiliate offer.

As an affiliate, it is YOUR job to find the best affiliate network and offer that performs best with your marketing strategies and efforts. As you may have already noticed from past advertising, going with the highest payouts isn’t the best solution. Make sure you test your advertising across all networks and compare your numbers.

The Power of Negotiation
I can tell you right now… if you are running the Blockbuster offer on RocketProfit or Hydra Network (or any network) and you are getting a lower payout than the $41.50 that Rextopia and NeverBlueAds are paying… the network will likely do everything they can to boost your payment up and at the least MATCH their rate. If in the worst case scenario, you can leave your current network and start testing (or split test) the offer else where.

EPC - Network Earnings Per Click
A feature available on many of the many of the affiliate networks, is the ability to search all offers by their EPC. While this may seem like a great idea for some, many successful affiliates already know it’s best to not judge an offer by it’s EPC ranking on affiliate networks. When you look at EPC averages from a network wide average, you are getting very general numbers, and usually very wrong. Imagine how many people on the network are running the offer to targeted traffic, but at the same time, how many are also promoting the offer to general traffic. Another way to look at is, if it’s a new offer and the person bringing in the most volume is a very targeted pay per click affiliate. If you only have basic traffic, your numbers aren’t going to be anywhere near what the network epc is showing. You must test your own affiliate offers and numbers and not rely on network wide epc charts.

Now that you understand the important of being an affiliate with as many networks as possible (to view all offers and payout rates), make sure you take advantage of your ability to split test your campaigns across other networks, negotiate better payout rates, and don’t rely too heavily on network epc averages.

[This post is covering part one of the “Five Reasons Your Affiliate Program Sucks” series, and is focusing on “Low Public Payout Rates“.]

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Five Reasons Why Your Affiliate Network Sucks

A great deal of the money generated in the affiliate marketing space, is done through many of the affiliate networks out there. With so much competition among the networks, it’s a surprise how some networks let themselves be seen. Over the next 5 days, I will be outlining a few of the top reasons why some affiliate networks just suck. If you are currently an affiliate network and reading this blog, make sure you stay tuned during the week to see where you might be slacking off, and how obvious it really is to some affiliates.

Here are Five Reasons Why Your Affiliate Network Sucks!

1.) Low Public Payout Rates
- Is your affiliate network paying higher or lower than your competition?

2.) Bad Affiliate Managers
- You affiliate managers are the blood and lifeline of your business. Make sure they are working for you!

3.) Same Offers as other Networks
- What good is an affiliate network if they all offer the same thing?

4.) Direct Deposit / Wire Transfer & Paypal
- Affiliates want their money fast, especially if they are spending a lot of money (ppc) to make money!

5.) Network Running Off DirectTrack
- Is it time you moved onto your own network platform?

Remember, this was just a quick outline of the where many affiliate networks are slacking and potentially losing thousands (if not millions) of dollars in commissions. Affiliates are the key to your success, and when we have so many different networks and options to turn too.. you will only get so many chances to make a first impression.

Where does your favorite affiliate network stand?

The next post in the series will focus on the “Low Public Payout Rates” from many well known affiliate networks. You know other networks are paying more… so are the networks paying a few bucks less, pocketing your profits???

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Was it as good for you, as it was for .Me?

We are now past the first 24 hours since the release of the new .me domain extension. I completely forgot about the .me domains going for sale yesterday, then a couple hours after their release I saw everyone talking about them. I headed over to GoDaddy and started looking for some good names and to see what I could find. I managed to pick up a few good names, and amazingly enough, all of them went through and are confirmed.

Below are just a few of the domains I managed to secure yesterday. I have no plans for development of them yet, but may throw something together in a couple months.

Zac.me
SuperAffiliate.me
NicheMarketing.me
AffiliateNetwork.me

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the majority of domain buyers out there. With the new buying spree of .Me names, everyone wanted the to make cool names out of the new domain extension… such as HIRE.ME, LA.ME, AWESO.ME, and of course, the much sought after FUCK.ME. After many complaints from numerous people on Twitter, and many blog posts, it seems that many people were able to register these domains, but were then given a notification from GoDaddy, that the domain was already taken. Because of the horrible response from .Me and GoDaddy sales/processing… the whole ordeal is seen by many as a big FAIL.

If you haven’t made an attempt to buy any .Me names yet, I’m sure there are still millions of good names still available. While the higher price of $19.95 per year may shy some buyers away, it may be a good opportunity for you to come across some generic names which may help with your search listings, should you create a site around the name. At the least, you might be able to grab a good or creative name, then flip it few a few hundred bucks down the road. Early in the day I was able to come across a lot of available names, then looking them over last night, almost all were taken. A great majority of celebrity names were all taken as well.

I’m really not a big fan of all the domain extensions out there, and most of them are nothing compared to .COM and .NET… but it’s still fun to grab a couple names every once in a while. So, in the end… did you walk away with any new .Me domains you were looking for?

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How to Promote a Web Site or Product without an Affiliate Program

What if you have a product that you really like and want to tell others about it, or even create a web site around it and attempt to try and earn a few dollars in the process. The first thing you would do, would be to visit their web site and see if they have an affiliate program. Let’s use Myoplex (energy / protein drink) for example. Before or after going to basketball everyday, I make sure to grab a Myoplex. I love the drink, so I don’t mind giving them some promotion… but when I visit their web site, I see that they don’t have an affiliate program…. what’s a blogger/site owner to do? Here are a few choices you have.

1.) Find another Site with an Affiliate Program
Myoplex is growing in popularity fast, and one of the most popular places to buy the high protein drink is through GNC stores. Let’s head over to GNC.com and see what they have available. As expected, they have over 35 different products for sale on Myoplex. They have the product, but now we need an affiliate program to make it work. Yes, they have one! Now you can earn a nice 11% commission on every referred sale. Now, instead of that free promotion you were just going to give to Myoplex, (or any other desired product), you can now be earning a nice commission on all referred sales. (and not just on myoplex)

2.) Contextual Advertisers
Myoplex was a great example and luckily for this case study, the largest provider (GNC.com), had an affiliate program. What if you can’t find any sites with your product that have their own affiliate program? Visit Google.com and do a search for your desired product. When you search on “myoplex” you will see a ton of advertisers on the page. Instead of promoting an affiliate program directly, you can run Adsense or Yahoo Publisher Network. Based off your heavy content site, Adsense or YPN should trigger exact or related ads. (If you search “myoplex” on Google, you will see both GNC.com and the parent company, EAS.com, both advertising through Adwords. You may not be able to promote EAS.com directly through an affiliate program, however through adsense you can promote them on a per click basis.)

There are many retailers advertising on Google Adwords for “Myoplex”

3.) Direct Contact
If all else fails and the product or company you are looking to promote, doesn’t have an affiliate program and there are no relevant advertisers on Adsense… try contacting the company directly. The only thing you have to lose by contacting the company, is that they don’t reply back or they say “not interested”… and you are back where you started anyway. On the other hand, if they are interested, you can sell them advertising on your site, possibly work out a deal for any referred sales, or at the least, ask them to send you samples or some freebies for your time and promotion.

There is nothing better than a web site that offers a true testimonial. I have no problem telling others about the Myoplex protein shake because I actually use it and would recommend it to others. With the combination of a real testimonial site and information to back it up, the ability to push traffic and sales to the related advertisers should not be a problem at all. Not only is there a high demand for Myoplex out there, but since they don’t have a “direct” affiliate program, it may make it that much easier for you to succeed with promotion. Now think about what other type of products and programs are out there that you can take this same method to and apply it.

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