Affiliate Network Offer Sharing and Cutting Margins
It’s one thing for an affiliate network to have the same offers as other networks, but for them to be one of the lower paying affiliate networks, it’s pretty sad. Fortunately, some of the best affiliate networks out there don’t just rely on “public” and “general” offers and actually start to create their own. Today’s post will focus on affiliate networks that provide their own affiliate offers and not just swap offers with all of the other networks.
Where did my Margins Go?
As more networks tend to swap and share offers, this usually means the best margins on the offers are thinning out. If the main affiliate network that brokered the offer, is getting $50 per lead (and paying affiliates $35), then brokering that same offer to another affiliate network (who then pushes it to their affiliates for $30 per lead, so they can make $5 profit per lead), you are getting the crappy deal by going with any network besides the one brokering direct. An offer can only be brokered and margined down so many times… not to mention, if the offer is available on so many networks, it may get over saturated by affiliates very quickly.
DirectTrack Makes Swapping Easy!
For those of you that don’t already know, many of the affiliate networks are run off a network called system “DirectTrack“. Years ago when I played around with idea of running my own network, I remember seeing the function to swap and share offers from one DirectTrack offer to another. While this isn’t a horrible thing, it’s just good to note that you may see the swapping or sharing of offers more often through DirectTrack run networks, just because of the simplicity of tracking and management. (If you wanted to start your own network up, essentially you could get a DirectTrack account, then just grab all the “shared” offers from other DirectTrack networks. This would drastically cut margins, but you would not have to broker any deals direct, as it would all be tracked through DirectTrack.)
Where are the Exclusive Offers?
The majority of big affiliates networks have their own “exclusive” offers available. By offering exclusives, networks are able to pull in affiliates to promote offers that aren’t available on other networks. Popular exclusive leads are usually for weight loss, debt consolidation or lead type offers. Networks usually also have a boat load of custom or unique ZIP/EMAIL submit offers. Here is a break down on a few affiliate networks with exclusive offers and their numbers.
| Market Leverage | 57 Exclusives |
| Rocket Profit | 44 Exclusives |
| Rextopia | 28 Exclusives |
| CPA Empire | 19 Exclusives |
| Copeac | 9 Exclusives |
From an affiliate stand point, the worst thing you can do as an affiliate network (besides fraud and non-payment), is to have a new affiliate login to your system and see nearly all of the offers available, listed on a bunch of other networks as well. The ONLY way that you can successfully pull this off, is by paying more than the other networks. In most cases, the networks that do the most swapping and sharing of offers, are the smaller guys that can’t compete and get the big advertiser deals themselves. While this may seem alright to the network, it won’t be when the affiliate finds another network paying a decent amount more on offers they have been promoting for months now.
[This post is covering part one of the “Five Reasons Your Affiliate Program Sucks†series, and is focusing on “Same Offers as other Networks“.]
Wait... before you leave, consider these top resources:
market leverage just seems to be kicking butt right now.
there are no such thing as exclusive offers
What about clickbank? Lollllz %_%
Yeah, that is a BUTTLOAD at ClickBank but I don't like their tracking 1 bit.
If you wanna see if your offer’s at the top or not, you can check an offer service like offer vault/aff spy, or you can follow the redirects on your search link and see where the source is coming from.
Funny Zac, I was just going to use that picture of the angry guy at the bottom of the post for one of my posts this week, but I thought naw, too much nostrils. lol!
ha yea, way too much… but still used it!
It kills me when people talk about exclusives. Exclusives on affiliate networks are merely private labeled sites. It's the same 10 offers on each network, just with a different label.
True, but some networks are able to secure deals with other sites/offers that other networks haven't grabbed.
You forgot to mention the only networks that matter in this game: non-directtrack. I think you'll find that the number of exclusives and direct advertiser relationships are much higher than any directtrack network.
Copeac and MarketLeverage are both running off of DirectTrack… and major players in the affiliate marketing space.
Major players?!
Compare there revenue to any of the big guys and you'll see that they are not.
I think if a network lists an offer as exclusive, that's a bad sign. Honestly, stop working for directtrack networks.
I thought Pepperjam has a ton of Exclusives.
btw, have you ever heard of CashEngines.com? I just got a couple hundred dollar check from them and don't think I ever signed up with them. 😮
Yea, a great majority of offers through PepperJam are exclusive to the network.
I haven't seen CashEngines… but free checks are always good! 🙂
You do wonder if exclusivity really exists? It is'nt that difficult for most of these companies to "white label" products over to the other guys.
Interesting how you use the word "exclusive" here
Go to an affiliate network and search under the tab of "exclusives"… it's what they call them, so I referenced them to that as well.
truth be known there is no exclusive, its all marketing ploys…
And don't even get me started on the so called margins…life , my lad, is tough!
Yes it is getting annoying to see how much margin these affiliate companies are taking in. ML is by far the best one.