The affiliate game has changed so many times over... I remember when affiliate networks competed for affiliates in the vast pool of networks back in 2009. Express Revenue did a similar contest and is bring that back to life with a private Jet to Affiliate Summit West!
Instead of just doing a talk about the contest, I wanted Jake to go a head an let him tell you about his company and even some insights on the industry itself.
- Jake I am not sure we talked to each other in the past, or maybe it has been a long time. Please describe who you are and how you got started in this industry.
Ian, thanks! It has been quite awhile. My name is Jake Kauffman, and I’ve been in the affiliate marketing industry since 2004. Since then, I have been an affiliate marketer myself, co-founded and ran an affiliate network, and later became an advertiser running my own campaigns. I’ve really seen it from all angles in this industry, but my roots go back to being an affiliate myself and promoting offers with big media buys and PPC campaigns.
- I remember you guys back in the day. We did a blog contest together. What happened since then?
That was a nice kickoff in the early days of the network! Since then, we have been been more private, working with our internal campaigns and high-volume publishers. However, I missed working with and learning from a wide array of people, so once I got enough resources I decided it was time to open back up ER (Express Revenue) to everyone. Now that we have re-built our platform and expanded our account management team, we are excited for our re-launch and are making our entire network available to new publishers. Basically, all of the good campaigns we have been running internally, are now available to all publishers who sign up.
- What type of network are you? Do you concentrate on health? or overall offers and what differentiates you from everyone else?
We are a performance-based CPA affiliate marketing network with campaigns from all across the spectrum. Whether you specialize in lead-gen, trial sign ups, email submits, downloads, etc., or your industry focus is education, insurance, finance, etc. we make sure to have something for everyone. It may seem like there’s a health-specific focus—such as diet, skin, brain, and muscle—because those offers were our internal campaigns that we ran exclusively for awhile. However, we want to be a one-stop-shop for every type of affiliate.
What makes us special, is that if we don’t have an offer and you want it, we can build it ourselves pretty quickly and get it live for you. We also pride ourselves on our CPA rates. If somehow you have an offer from somewhere else paying a higher CPA, just let us know, we will be able to beat it.
- Since you are a network, some networks create their own offers, do you do the same? How does this work with affiliates knowing you can compete with them on traffic? or even advertisers for traffic?
We can and do create our own offers, but only if there is a specific demand there for that for the very reason you touched on. We don’t want to squeeze out affiliates, because we really do need to preserve a fine balance between working with them and making sure to not encroach.
So the version of my answer here is: yes, we definitely have the ability and do create our own offers, but only on request or to meet exceptional demand.
- With Express Revenue now reopening to the public, what is your goal with the network?
It goes back to what I touched on earlier, that we want to be a one-stop shop for all your affiliate marketing needs. We’ve seen how some pubs have to jump from network to network to get an offer that one has that the other doesn’t (and it’s not an exclusive), and the same with having to jump around to maximize pay rates. We want to eliminate that hassle. Specifically, we’ll have one of the widest selection of offers so that every type of affiliate can find something at ER; we WILL match pay rates so that you don’t have to jump around from network to network to make sure you’re earning the most possible; we’ll give you the fastest pay schedule so that you can only keep growing your campaigns. It seems lofty and idealistic on paper, but we truly do want to fulfill every different type of pubs’ every need at Express Revenue.
- Also being more public I understand you are going to replicate a contest as well as you did in the prior years. What does this new contest entails?
We are doing a similar contest to the crazy prize promotion we did years ago, just this time even crazier since the grand prize is a 1-year membership to JetSmart (a private jet club where you can take unlimited free private jet rides to places like New York, London, Los Angeles, Paris, Las Vegas, South Florida, etc. all on-demand)! In fact, one of the “middle” tier prizes is a private jet ride with me from New York to Las Vegas in January for Affiliate Summit West!
Basically, we’re giving out performance bonuses to ALL Express Revenue pubs based on their total revenue for the month of October, and these prizes are IN ADDITION to your regular commissions. We made different prize tiers, and depending on what your revenue figure for the month, you’ll be rewarded with a prepaid gift card, a new Macbook Pro Retina, season tickets to your favorite sports club, or even a private jet club membership.
