Affiliate Sales Hi All

Further to the post about the changes to the FTC and the interview organised by Tru-Guru with Linda Goodman we just thought we’d share our experience as to why it’s sooo important to stay on top of the changes across the industry.

As you know we are relative PPC newbies ourselves. Well, be warned. Google cuts no slack for newbies – we got slapped – big time. We had our Google account suspended – which actually means closed. Why? because we chose the wrong campaigns to promote. Perhaps we are slow or something – but we really didn’t make the connection… instinctively we must have made some connection but apparently it didn’t make it to the frontal lobes…

When we were choosing campaigns to promote on Google we would try and vet the campaigns ourselves by filling out as much of the offer as possible to see how it worked.  So, for example, in the case of some grants campaigns we ran – we discovered that prospects would be billed within a week, despite the landing page advertising a ‘free trial‘. So we wrote an article telling people why we thought the grants packages are a good idea in principal and then TOLD them subscribers would be billed unless they canceled within a week. We made every effort to be transparent and ethical. Evidently when Google decided to revoke our account they didn’t consider the whole account. And it shows no mercy for being gullible/stupid/trusting – you pick the descriptor.

Our major crime/blunder? We assumed that networks only ran ‘honest’ campaigns. And maybe the networks don’t vet/screen for ‘quality‘ (read that as honest) offers – and whether they should is a whole other matter… Bottom line is we, naively, ran two offers that contained a certain brand name and implied a certain relationship to said brand, and we got our account closed down. How are we supposed to know whether Google has or has not brokered a deal with a given product? BTW we had previously tried to approach other product owners about a given offer and we never once got a response…and we all know what it is like contacting Google right? It’s ironic hey? That we as advertisers who own a site branded on honesty and transparency get suspended for running ‘dishonest‘ ads. Go figure.

Anyway, after having read in the press about some of what was going on with law suits etc we suggested to Google, that they appeared to have closed our account because of a policy shift that NOONE but Google knew about and perhaps a mass email informing affiliates of the policy shift would be good; we sure as hell didn’t know. To date, Google has not responded to that suggestion. In fact it took us weeks of searching for email contacts to even find a human at Google to talk with. After our account was shut down we did a whole lot of forum searches to figure out what had gone wrong. For clarity’s sake we are talking about two compaigns in a portfolio of about 80 campaigns; clearly we were not ‘serial offenders’. I remember reading in a forum one guy who said being ‘suspended’ (an intersting reframe – CANCELLED) from Google was the best thing that ever happened to him. Have to say we have had a very warm welcome from MSN. We explained what had happened with Google and asked for guidance while we worked out the system. So far we have received really friendly and helpful customer customer service.

The point of this post? This experience has caused us to reflect on the role of the CPA network. What responsibility should CPA networks take for vetting the offers they run? We think they play a critical role. The CPA Networks broker the deals – which begs the question of how offers are selected for inclusion in a given network? If affiliates can have their account shut down what about the networks? Or will they argue ‘buyer (affiliate) beware’. We are all responsible for raising the bar in online advertising – which inlcudes the networks. We think Networks should have some sort of consequence for listing questionable offers. What do you think?

At the very least, we believe ad networks need to work with advertisers to make it easy for affiliates to ‘test’ an offer  (dummy) to see how it works. For us to do that we spent a lot of time looking for addresses and zip codes etc because we want to run quality offers. As searchers we do not want to waste time going to offers that do not meet ouor needs or deliver what the ad says. We plan to approach a few of the networks to see if they will respond to this question. Enough said on that topic for now.

In the mean time we know (from the Arbitrage Conspiracy Course) that lots of folks want to join a network and we know Max Bounty is looking for new affiliates. We can honestly say we have had a relatively good experience with Max Bounty. Our Max Bounty affiliate manager (AM ) has always made himself available. In contrast we have had NO reply to any emails to our AM at Monetizeit – not one  in 12 months and hardly ANY contact from our AM at Rocket Profit, depite attempts to make contact; let that speak for itself. But the Max Bounty AM has always been accessible, empathetic etc – and we have not felt that he has treated us any differently because we are, at this stage, small PPC fish (anchovies). I am sure he has – but we have not felt that – which is important. It’s not as though we are prolific affiliates – e.g. we have had periods where we have not posted campaigns at all because life is what happens to you while your  busy making other plans (thanks John) and we have not been hassled etc. So from experience, we can recommend Max Bounty as a CPA Network. And they have just given their site a makeover making it more user friendly. So all in all we rate Max Bounty a very positive user experience.

If you are an existing affiliate who want a new CPA Network, we think Max Bounty are worth recommending. If you are new and want a supportive network to start out with visit Max Bounty and follow the bouncing ball. Either way, we wish you luck and will keep you posted on our progress with the networks. Who knows? Maybe Max Bounty will post a response?

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