In this affiliate industry, there are a lot of people who don't get paid either on the network side or the affiliate side. One blames each other and it is hard to really keep up with all the news. There are groups out there that does a great job at posting news about who doesn't pay. Heck, there are dedicated Facebook groups about advertisers and networks not paying. Famous forums are geared toward this type of information and their community have fun with it.
Reputations are ruined overnight. Networks have to come out of pocket because of poor advertisers. Networks become broke because they rather keep their name in tact but businesses gets ruined. While on the other hand dumb business advertiser don't know both side of the affiliate industry. They walk away with their revenue they made from the affiliate network.
... thats the problem ... now the solution.
I have been recently involved in a marketing collections project and I am very excited to now announce it to the industry. Internet Marketing Collections is basically a database of advertisers, networks, even affiliates that owe the industry money. Just imagine scrolling through endless threads via the many groups on Facebook about scammers, false advertisers, shady networks, etc. Even keeping up with news blog such as Perform Insider can also be time consuming. You have to do your research and consolidate the data and then make a decision if you really want to run with a specific advertiser direct or even network.
It doe become a headache, most importantly time consuming.
This system basically works by signing up and adding the company or person to our database. If there are repeat offenders, you yourself can see how much in total that person or company owes the industry. So for example, let's take a look at some snapshot from a popular Facebook group..
Here you can easily see two companies being called out and asking for a resolution. Seeking help to see if others got paid and how did they go about it. Most importantly they are giving back to our industry and warning other businesses to stay away from shady people. The problem is what is the next step for these networks or publishers? Sometimes most eat the cost and move on.
Now we have a hub for this type and an action item. We currently work with a team of lawyers who specialize in this type of nonsense and allow you to add their information to our ever growing database. We then also go ahead and forward the claim and start the collection process. There is no need for further work on your end.
Now you have curious people in the industry. They go through the thread and groups and find the agency or network or advertiser they are working with are not listed. The problem is they didn't go back far enough, maybe it was over 6 months ago someone mentioned a company that hasn't paid. You don't know because you technically don't know to go back far enough. Say that right...? Anyways, a person can get lost in those groups.
Since Internet Marketing Collection is a database, you can quickly type and search a company name or person to find out their history. They can owe $50 or $5000, it does not matter. The best part it takes all the data about that company and consolidates it so you know the total amount that is owed to businesses. So instead of you knowing a shady advertiser owes, $100 and let it slip your mind; you find out they owe a total amount of $10,000 among other companies. That is helpful.
Another aspect I want to touch s this doesn't have to be for just our industry. There are a lot of advertisers who try to skip the network and go to ad agency, who will manage their campaign without pre pay. Then the advertiser walks away and then the agency is at a lost. This also works for affiliates who think are the bosses, but are just money collectors.
Sometimes affiliates gets prepaid for their traffic. This is because of credit lines, when I started I was prepaid traffic money. This helped me scale my campaigns the way I wanted them to. Networks, advertisers will prepay an affiliate to allow them to run their offer at higher volume. Sometimes these affiliates con the network or advertiser and are never seen again. With Internet Marketing Collections, you can add in their information to the database and we can start collecting and even gather information about who else they have conned.
I have wanted something like this in the past and to now see this a reality is something amazing to our industry. Already we have networks on here such as CrushAds, who has been part of our beta and is now finding the benefits of such a service. Helping the industry while providing a valuable resource at the same damn time!
