Ian Fernando » affiliate networks

Thirsty St. Patty’s Thursday with MonetizeIt

Ian — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 17:59:38 +0000

Yesterday I went and hung out with MonetizeIt, a division of MediaWhiz. for St. Patty’s Day. Interestingly enough St. Patricks day landed on a weekly gathering called Thirsty Thursday. Jordan hit me up beginning of the week seeing if I was doing anything Thursday and wanted to know if I wanted to see there new office.

A while back I wrote how I toured MediaWhiz office 2 years ago and now they have a bigger and nicer office, even though I did miss the balcony from their old. Also I do apologize that didn’t get a video of their new office or pictures, next time. I was starting the Patrick’s day early as were MonetizeIt.

Entering their new office, I can tell it is going to be much bigger than their other office. I walked in and simply just asked for my AM – Jordan. We took a quick tour of the office, which was a very nice and had a more professional style to it. They had an amazing view of the river and other scenic views. It definitely was a nice upgrade from their previous, again the office was pretty big and had a lot of room.

…. should have reserved my desk.

I met everyone from the MediaWhiz team as it is the parent company of other smaller company’s such as MonetizeIt, the affiliate network. We then just went in a back room and shoot the shit with Jordan and Dan. After a good talk we just started the tradition of Thirsty Thursday at MediaWhiz.

They had food, which I didn’t care for much. A couple of the MediaWhiz team had to leave as they also had their company basketball game going the same night.

I hung out for a bit and got my self acquainted with other team members of MediaWhiz. We put up some music and just had a fun time with friends. Basically shoot the shit with other team members, Dan, and Jordan.

As the day started to end and the night started, a couple others and I went ahead and went out for another drink. We went to a local bar and then across to another bar to get some more drinks and food. It was a fun fast paced night and I am definitely tired today. The night was definitely fun and enjoyed.

I want to thank Jordan and MediaWhiz for inviting me to their new office. I will have to get a video tour of their new office when I am over again. Apologize that I didn’t get it for this blog post.

Affiliate Managers, Please Don’t Tell Me What to Promote

Ian — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 22:52:28 +0000

I wanted to post this last week when it happened, I was just thinking if it would be a good post. Well anyways, I decided to just post this. There are times when your affiliate managers are your best friends and I am very close to many of them. But when people move and shift, you get a new affiliate manager. They do not know you are or what your status is.

Anyways, I was talking to one of my go to networks and apparently I have a new affiliate manager. So I pinged her and gave her an introduction. I went ahead and asked for an offer that was in a particular niche, it was for mobile traffic.

My new affiliate manager that handled my account told me why I am looking for that offer, I should be pushing diet, biz ops, and penny auctions. Now she didn’t even bother looking or asking, she just cut me and told me I should be pushing the more popular offers.

… kinda ticked me off.

[image credit]

I pinged another person at that network, she was my AM prior but she moved on up in the corporate ladder and the AM I had after her left for another job. S anyways, I pinged her and told her what I was looking for. She got to me telling me they had these offers and maybe expecting more later on in the month. Now that is what I was looking for.

I told her that my other AM wasn’t up to par and apparently do not know my style when it came to their network. No problem, but my question was simple – do you have this offer. I didn’t appreciate the interruption and saying I need to push the more popular items. Really didn’t like being told what I had to do.

Affiliate managers are important but the publisher are also equally important because we are the ones pushing the traffic. Telling us what to promote is ok when asking the questions “What is a good offer to promote now?” In my situation, I already knew what I wanted and what type of offer I was looking for. I just wanted to know if a network had the offer and if not if they can get it for me.

The fact my new Affiliate manager told me to promote the more popular offers bothered me because she didn’t even bother looking to see if the offer I wanted was available. If she catered her response differently I wouldn’t have been so annoyed. The fact she totally ignored my requests and told me why definitely bothered me.

With that in mind, affiliate managers are a resource to us affiliates and I go to them for some help and some exclusivity to an offer. That said, affiliates are an asset to an affiliate network, we are the ones providing and pushing the traffic to the advertiser. They need our traffic and most important the quality.

The fact I was told why am I looking for such offer and I need to be pushing diet and the other popular offers was really unattractive. The worst part is this situation will be remembered, bad for the network and the affiliate manager who I was talking to. Affiliate managers represents the network, treating affiliates as if they are just the ones to push traffic is not justifiable. A relationship needs to be set. It is important to work with the affiliate and not just tell him to push traffic and run an offer.

Remember only 7% of affiliates (I know its probably less) that signed up to your network is the network.

IANteract Dinner 2011 Sponsored by Executive Fortunes

Ian — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 23:34:46 +0000

Affiliate Summit West 2011 in Las Vegas and at the Wynn Hotel is on its way and again I am having another IANteract Dinner to go hand in hand with this amazing conference. As you know after my first official IANteract Dinner in Boston at ASE08 I started to follow through and keep doing one each Affiliate Summit.

This dinner will be no different, the dinner will be held relatively close to the Wynn and is private invite only. Again the reason I do this and the reason I do it in the first place is to interact with top people in the industry and build that relationship. It is always better to talk business over food among trusted people and top marketers in the industry.

This time Executive Fortunes is sponsoring this dinner at Affiliate Summit West 2011. This is a fairly new network and I had the chance to talk and meetup with Tyler at Ad-Tech this November. We had a talk about the network a bit and just had fun at Ad-Tech.

Currently Executive Fortunes is having a contest and is raffling a prize to the top affiliates. The prizes include…

Apple Macbook Air
(2) Apple Ipads

To be entered in their raffle the affiliate must generate $3000+ from December 1st to December 23rd! The raffle winners will be drawn live on Christmas Eve night! So this is a great way to get an iPad on Christmas! Take part in the contest and easily rake up 3k in a month, pretty simple.

… back to the dinner.

Everyone that has came to the dinner knows how beneficial it is and I always try to invite new people to the dinner, especially with people I want to meet and network with. If they will be beneficial to my circle of network, my sponsor, and me then why not invite that person. The purpose is to create a tight relationship with affiliates and marketers to leverage each others knowledge and even brainstorm an idea, without the noob commotion.

This is the reason for this dinner because after the IANteract dinner, the parties starts and usually its harder to network when the bass of “Teach me How to Dougie” is in the background. So I am going to find a nice restaurant, its always an amazing restaurant too, and start inviting people.

I wan to thank Executive Fortunes for sponsoring this 2011 IANteract Dinner at Affiliate Summit West.

Thank You from Ian Fernando

Ian — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:33:27 +0000

This post is just a thank you post to several people and networks at Ad Tech that I met up. Usually I wrap up conferences or trade shows with 1 post. But there was a lot going on and I wanted to make sure I pointed out to certain people and networks instead of just a big post.

Thanks goes out to…

Clickbooth
They had a nice ass booth and took me out to lunch the next day after their exclusive VIP party they had. Thanks to Eric and Brittany for inviting me and taking me out to grab some coffee. Plus some good food.

Ads4Dough
Going out with Jason and meeting and getting to know his whole team was great. Especially meeting new people and connections that I would have probably not made before. The night was a definitely a great night, especially the second night out. Damn.

GMB Direct
The first night out was great hanging with Ads4Dough and Gene from GMB direct is a must. These guys def know how to do it and do it well. Gene is a great guy from the first time I met him at Ad Tech San Francisco!

Pinnacle Dream
First o all thanks to Eva for getting me a pack! …yes that email works. Great meeting up with everyone and also introducing a new Pinnacle member to the trade show environment.

Tatto Media
Mike is a great guy, I just wanted to thank him for having a nice private 2 story booth. Bryn, Hustler and I just relaxed at the top after such a long walk around the trade show floor. Great booth!

Convert2Media
Now these guys always have the goods. Beer, Ninja Optimization Shirts, and more schwag you want. They always have unique shirts that I do not mind wearing outside my home office. Hell I rocked their shirt the next day! Ninja Optimization FTW!

Unique Leads
Thanks to Glenn for having me at his home and having a nice private dinner. It was great meeting up with Shai and others that he invited. It was a nice clean relaxed environment where we just talked and enjoyed a good ass dinner.

Encore Ads – Phil
Thanks to Phil for letting us get in the cab. The capacity of the cab was 4 people and Phil had to leave which was beat cause I know Phil would have had a blast that night. Thanks again.

Dustin Metcalf
Great kid, I had to crash in his room at 5am in the morning being dumb tired. Showed him how to pimp a few girls and make sure to be more open. Great kid, we will def meetup at ASW

CPARev Affiliate Network

Guest Post — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:49:01 +0000

As you know there are affiliate networks that are growing left and right. But how do you find the right one and who can you trust? Well, best thing to do is always test out a network and communicate with a network. I recently had the chance to talk to Dustin from CPARev about his network and get an inside scope of their system.

Dustin was nice enough to let me have a temp account to tour his offers and their interface. Currently they are using Direct Track, I have my opinions about Direct Track. But Dustin states they are working with an in house tracking platform. I think personally every network should have their in house, as it provides more versatility to the network and to publishers.

Now with all these networks what separates CPARev from the rest? There were a couple things that I noticed network side, interface has more of a welcome feel to it. CPARev is using Direct Track but they have managed to alternate the interface pretty well.

Below are 2 screenshots, one being the main dashboard and the tools area.

Here are some things which are listed on their site about their network.

On Time Payments
Affiliates are paid on a NET30 basis, payments (Checks or PayPal) are made to those who reach the specified monthly minimums. Payments are made on time, every time.

Highest Commissions
We provide the highest commissions in the industry and will compete with the commissions of other CPA networks, given that the offer in question is not exclusive to the other network.

Because We Care
Our affiliate managers are available 7 days a week, with guaranteed phone support on the weekends. Your affiliate manager will call you by your first name and, if opted, will occasionally contact you by phone or e-mail to see how things are going!

We Want Your Business
We accept all LEGAL types of sites and methods for gaining new leads. This includes incentives, PPC marketing, social network applications, e-mail marketing, affiliate networks, and more. We know that as long as you can provide genuine traffic, than you will also provide genuine leads, which equals happy advertisers!

With the fist couple statements being the same with almost every other network. The response time I get from Dustin is very useful especially to a publisher. Though I do not wirk with this specific network, communication is important and Dustin has given that to me.

The last 2 statements Because We Care and We Want Your Business is very powerful because they are willing to work with you as a publisher. Again, communication is important and it is definitely a must. I have had poor communication with several networks in the past.

Communication is important even without throwing in an offer or asking for traffic, and CPARev has done so. I have spoken to Dustin about just random things prior to the arrangement of his CPARev network. Interaction is there and a definite plus for any network and CPARev wants to know about yu as a person and not just as an affiliate/publisher.

As far as offers, it seems they have a lot of incentive offers. I personally do not run incentive offers but to me they look like they have a good variety of offers in each niche that is out and popular. They have the grants and acai as well as some aging offers.

Once you login within the dashboard, you get to see the new and featured offers. This is helpful to see what new offers are out, so you can test to see if an offer will be profitable or not. This gives you the first ‘scoop’ to access the offer before anyone on any network. You just have to keep on point.

Overall

Dustin is a great person to talk to and very highly responsive. The network has fairly good amount of offers, most being incent offers. They also have a nice clean interface using Direct Track, but they are moving to their own in house system soon!

If you have not heard of CPARev, I encourage you to take a look at their network and talk to either Dustin or anyone from his team in a better way to help you earn money online through cpa marketing.

Affiliate Networks Not Using Direct Track

Ian — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:14:38 +0000

As you know I always and usually have issues with networks that use Direct Track, I hate their reporting system. I automatically have issues with tracking especially with subids or there are issues with the advertisers, there is always something. I have blogged about it several times, I have also been contacted by Direct Track themselves. Well today I will be doing a write up of the networks that do not use Direct Track and why, they have a far better reporting than DT networks.

Hydra Network
Hydra has a ton of offers and a ton of exclusives. I find them pretty well formatted. Though I have not sent them high volume but with the volume I have sent there were no issues with my tracking. I found it very easy to grab the affiliate links, populate the creative, create the subids, find the subids, etc. Hydra is a great place to start with tons of offers and easy tracking. One thing that is pretty cool is the sidebar graph, when you log into their dashboard, you get an overall sense of your traffic and income generated.

Motive Interactive: Advent
If you have not seen my video reviews of Motive, then you are definitely missing out on a proprietary system. Their ajax system is great and very simple to use. I found their tracking is not real real time, but it does track all the subids. I friggin love the interface with the visual graphs, it gives me a quick overview of where I am currently standing instead of putting everything into excel. Their network is very solid and had never had any issues related to tracking – just maybe I wish tracking can load a bit faster, especially if I am testing a campaign.

CX Digital
CX has a nice system and one of the networks that allows you to export subids or stats to CSV. This makes it easy for me to dissect the information and quickly filter out converted clicks. The reporting breakdown each click (if your using Prosper202) and shows you the offer, instead of just the subid. There are not multiple options like DT to find what you want. CX also gives you the chance to just show converted subids as well.

Neverblue
I think one of the easiest reporting and stats. It gives you the option to view html and export to excel. It also breaks the subids down to the offer and you can show only conversions as well. You can chose specific date ranges as other networks. One cool thing they have this site categorizer. If you have more than 1 site with NBA then you can see where the clicks are coming from, especially if you do more of a banner advertisement. It is also very simple to navigate, I think I click 3 things in my NeverBlue Dashboard and my report populates.

Advaliant
Not so interface friendly reporting, but it gets the job done. It has a very simple interface and tracks subids. There is no sorting of any kinda. There is only 3 options that you can chose from and it is very general. But you get your stats and I never had any issues with their reporting. It is on point and real time, especially if your testing the offers and you want to see the live subids click.

OfferWeb
Very simple interface and gives you quite a few options such as leads generated, subids, daily rev report, etc. It is very straight forward and simple, there really isn’t any awe to their reporting. I also currently know they are switching their tracking to LinkTrust, not sure how that works. But I think anything is better than DT.

Azoogle Ads
Their tracking system is great. It can be a bit complicated but you can get use to it within 10 minutes after playing around with some of the options. The best part is the day parting tracking they have which is the best feature and I think every networks should have. It helps optimize CTR by time of day and even conversions. Everything is simple to use on their end and doesn’t require much knowledge to figure out what type of report you want to look at or generate.

These are the networks that I have had experience with and played with. There are other networks that has non DT tracking such as MonetizeIt and Viral Partnership. I have not delt with these networks personally, so I can not talk from experience. But if you are looking for non Direct Track tracking systems then looking at these networks or even starting with these networks can be a plus. I mean if you read my blog in the past, direct track sucks ass.

If you have had issues with Direct Track then you know the pain, you see stats in diffrent reports that you wont see in another, strange. DT has just too many options for simple reporting, I want to see clicks and conversions that is basically it. Also with the ability to sort and dissect the clicks more carefully (especially if your not using P202) then you want to get the most details from a click or conversions.

What network gives you the best reporting without any issues?? Post them at AFFpinions.com
or comment below is cool too…

Don’t All the Networks Sound a Like?

Ian — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:31:44 +0000

After going to all these conventions and signing up with several networks, I noticed they all say the same thing. I recently just got back from Affiliate Summit Boston and will be going to IZEAFest and Blogworld next week. While traveling and talking to these networks they all sound the same. They all seem to say the same thing as well. I know there are networks out there that special in offers no other network has but why does every other network say the same thing.

I personally notice that I see the same exclusive offers on other networks, so is it really exclusive to that network? Here is a quick break down of what I notice all the networks say:

Best Offers
Best Tracking
Best and Exclusive Offers
Highest Payouts
Competitive Payouts
Fast/Secure Payments
Able to contact advertisers directly
etc etc etc

You probably have had your share of similar language from the networks. Well I decided to look at this and wanted to see if there was a way to differentiate the networks apart from each other base on user experience. I decided on an opinionated or review type site would be beneficial to help beginners and affiliate decide what network is best to join.

I was going to create a review by review site base on my own experience but then that is just my word. Why not have others contribute base on their experience as everyone is different. I decided to create AFFpinions.com, which is an epinions.com version for affiliate networks. Here is my reason why I networks need to be reviewed by independent users. Watch the video below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, don’t they all sound similar. I know it is a marketing thing to say you are the best and how you are better than another network. To me I am part of several networks and it just annoys me to have multiple networks ask you to give them traffic. I hate it! I will send you traffic when I have the time to. We are all busy, so to help new affiliates decide what network is better than another an opinionated version of a review works best.

AFFpinions.com even helps networks better themselves and what to improve. If they are seeing their network are being bombarded with poor results, they can read everyones opinions and see what they need to improve on. It is not just for affiliates but for the networks. Think of this as a communication gateway to the networks. Networks are busy and may not have the time to listen to everyone comments. AFFpinions simply just gathers everyone’s thoughts for the networks to review and see what they need to improve on.

The website is still in a alpha/beta mode. I am asking what needs to be added to create a more interactive environment. This is a tool for every affiliate, it shows what is popular and even brands the networks even more. How reputable are they? Well AFFpinions.com will definitely grow their brand and reputation base on their affiliates and users.

If you want to join more networks but do not know what your experience will be just read what others have been through. It is a community of users base on their experience and base on their experience will help you decide what network to join.

How Many Affiliate Networks Are you In?

Ian — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:55:27 +0000

So I just got back into PPC affiliate marketing and I am part of several networks already: ShareASale, CJ.com, Linkshare, PepperJam Network, AzoogleAds, NeverBlueAds, etc. I recently just joined 4 more networks. Also I have been getting free gifts in the mail – like t shirts! It is amazing the amount of exposure you can get from affiliate summit and multiple conventions.

So today’s post is about how many networks should you be joining. I have talked to some of my online friends and some are active in fewer than 5 networks but joined a total of 10 networks. Other are active in 2 networks but joined about 15 networks. So when is the time to tell other networks “NO?”

I have been receiving emails and calls from other networks – I personally do not mind talking to people but what does each network separates themselves from the rest? All the answers are the same:

We have higher payouts
We have more offers you will not see
We are friendly and supportive
We have a better system

The funny part is they are all a like – I was looking at a network and their offers and found some offers are going through another affiliate network! WOW! I knew of this prior but I mean some of the networks are going through another network which is maybe going to another network. A lot of the users are friendly and they are great to talk to, I personally found one to be really annoying and a pain. It was too much that I ignored his IMs and calls – I will contact him if need be.

So where does the line draw when trying to join affiliate networks, after so many it becomes cumbersome and hard to manage. I find myself looking and exporting reports from so many networks that I am not that organize with all my data. Also I tend to forget what offer I have with whom and I will login into a network and then find no stats, later remembering it is with another network.

Where do you draw the line and say no more networks to join? Should you do that and keep an open mind – if you do not use them, delete your account? After going to so many conventions should you even bother talking to all these networks? What is really the big deal in joining these networks and not making any money or doing anything with them later on?

Here is a quick video of what i just said:

Click here to view the embedded video.

What are your thoughts? How many networks are you part of? Are you always communicating with that network? How many specific networks are you heavily active in?