There seems to be this new trend going around where affiliate networks want to be exclusive.
Former affiliate networks that took just about anyone, are trying to make this big push to get rid of any affiliates who are currently non-performing (ie. haven’t produced $x,xxx in the last x months).
This makes ZERO sense to me.
Pruning low QUALITY affiliates makes sense. Affiliate networks can’t afford fraudulent affiliates. It ruins their relationships with advertisers. Having some kind of quality metric makes sense.
I think that some affiliate networks are losing site of the fact that they need affiliates. Just because an affiliate hasn’t performed in the last x number of months or ever for that matter doesn’t mean anything. An affiliate can be doing $100,000/month with one affiliate network and $0/month with another (numbers for demonstration purposes only). Does that mean they aren’t a big affiliate? Realizing that they are, why wouldn’t you want them to have an account at your network? Just because they aren’t working with you now, doesn’t mean they aren’t ever going to.
Now, you can argue that having crap loads of non-performing affiliates takes up too many resources. If an affiliate is taking up an excessive amount of an affiliate managers time AND not sending any traffic then you have an argument. In that case getting rid of the affiliate makes sense. I doubt this is the case in most instances, since I don’t think most affiliates doing no business with an affiliate manager are going to be wasting much of their time.
I personally am signed up with quite a few affiliate networks that I do no business with. I like to have an account so that if I need an offer or see something I like, I can be ready to run with them. I’m guessing that other affiliates do the same thing.
Unless it’s based on a quality issue, I think that affiliate networks that are booting affiliates for non performance are making a really bad business move.
What do you think?
Totally agree.
I have never been terminated from a cpa network, especially not for this reason, but I have known more than one person who have.
This is such a huge mistake. I will do huge numbers with a network for months than may not for months or even a year…but I am always still observing the offers they have and if the right opportunity arises I will take it in a second…IF I have an account there.
10000000000000% agree. I am a part of just about every network. I like to be able to pick.
If there is an offer I need, I know I can have instant access to it. – Not go through approvals and waste time.
every major* network
We will take you guys.
You are more than welcome.
http://www.UniqueLeads.com
I definitely agree. Typically when I’m starting up a new campaign I’ll browse through all of the networks I belong to (or something like Offers202) to find some offers to split test.
I have a few networks that will see traffic from me for a few days in the beginning of a campaign and then it’ll stop(they lost the split test).
Getting rid of affiliates who lack quality, like you said, makes perfect sense. But why get rid of dormant affiliates? Or even low volume ones? So what if they only send you $100 in traffic a month? They likely don’t require much of any resources from you – so why get rid of them?
Some people are just stupid. They don’t think things through properly.
Those non-performing affiliates could be killing it elsewhere and just waiting for the right offer or opportunity to test something on a particular network.
Yeah, I was pretty miffed when I found out I couldn’t login to my Hydra account anymore. Definitely a short-sighted move on their part as I was planning to send quite a bit of traffic to them.
In this industry where it is hard to keep affiliate’s traffic, what networks are doing are wrong. why?
you want the affiliate traffic when he becomes big next time.
we do not send large amounts of good traffic also.
If networks stop the accounts, I’ll just bring my business elsewhere.
Such a myopic view.
I completely agree here. Its not so much as i’m not a big affiliate as i’m just with 20 other networks and tried your offer and its not converting as well as this one.
This is madness! Its unfair, something has to be done.
Just to note, it wasn’t me that got kicked out of any network. I do however see this happening quite a bit and don’t really like it.
I agree it’s short sighted to terminate affiliates based on non performance. Everyone is someone and deserves to be treated as such. Sometimes networks don’t want to invest time into affiliates, which is in their interest to help newbie affiliates become super affiliates.
If you’re logging in regularly, the Network can probably see your login history, and they should suspect that you’re actively in the business but just not active with them. That’s potential for the Network and they shouldn’t cut you.
But if you haven’t logged into your account in 8 mos to a yr, your contact info is prob out of date and you’ve likely moved on. These are the accounts that people sell on blackhat forums to make a few bucks because they don’t need them anymore, so the accounts become security risks.
[…] decided to complete & publish it after reading Ad Hustler’s post Get Out of My Affiliate Network yesterday. I can’t agree more with Ad […]
Very well said Ad Hustler. I think affiliate networks are forgetting about the fact that Affiliates are their customers, not only merchants. You’ve inspired me to complete a draft post on my blog, thanks for that also 🙂
I agree. I’m surprised that these networks would just cut affiliates off without any prior notice.
A simple email asking the affiliate to confirm on a link to remain active would have probably sufficed.
Guess they didn’t think of that or perhaps didn’t care.
Yeah, I know what you talkin’ about. Coincidence, I got the same message just last week from a certain network. I blew up in my AM’s hoe ass face and said this is bullshit. Said, is this is a tactic for me to run traffic? I’ll setup a PPC campaign tomorrow if necessary. Even though I’ve been busy with other projects. I didn’t go off and talk about me running legit traffic and not blackhat traffic as some of the other posts here talk about. They should be satisfied with me being legit, since as others said, you never know when you might find the right offer/campaign to run. Instead they tryin to run game on a nigga.. fuck that shit. I told that hoe ass AM that I’ll be contactin their president to make sure this shit is legit, since it sounds fucked up to me. Bitch, started back-peddling quick like.. hoe’s these days be trippin.. watch out niggas..
Agreed. I’m signed up with tons of networks, but I’m not running campaigns with even half of them atm.
I get the impression that it’s pretty normal practice to do this, just so you can rotate networks or switch to a different offer or different network with higher payouts if needed.
@TRIPpin Perhaps the funniest comment I’ve read this year. Well done.
Hydra just axed my account. Can’t see how I was draining their resources since their am’s have never done anything of consequence for me, but guess their 22 mil in operating expenses must have gone somewhere 😉
I tried logging into my cj account yesterday and i’m pretty sure they let me go for the 3rd time. I do not plan on going back with commission junction anytine soon. The only sale I had was taken away as “FEES” for not making more sales, just like Clickbank. Why do they take money away that you earned anyway?
i like Shareasale and Linkshare also Neverblue. I will work with them, they also have a better reputation than the other 2 I mentioned.
When the need arises for me to go back to CJ I will do it .
I really am not missing out on anything.. They do miss out on not ever getting a sale by me 🙂
I disagree, but to be fair, a few years I go I probably would have agreed with all of you. Now that I’ve been a publisher a merchant and a network I have a far better understanding of all three sides and that’s really how you have to look at everything.
The bottom line is 99% of affiliates talk a big game and do nothing. The whole “small guys become big guys” thing is talked about like it’s an everyday thing, it’s not.
The amount of fraud and shit traffic on the networks is staggering, the big networks are starting to see that 100 million in rev last year doesn’t mean anything this year, the playing field is changing and if they want to survive they need to clean up their act, and fast.
A 30 day scrub should be common practice. No activity in 30 days, account canned. Want back in? fill out an app again, that’s business.
You don’t need an affiliate account to see offers, between the offervaults of the world, the fact that you often remain on the networks email list forever even if you’re banned forget just deactivated, and that you can always reach out to your old AM to inquire about what’s new and hot in certain verticals if you want additional offers for testing.
Frankly, well over half the people bitching about this are full of it anyway, they don’t run traffic to anyone, they just want 50 accounts if they ever want to get off their ass which is going to be never anyway.
If you are in fact a player, then you should have no issue proving it. I sure as hell would never have an account deactivated, even the networks I run zero with know I run numbers elsewhere and are always hitting me up to run them, even if I don’t have an account they use business cards I handed out at shows three years ago to this day always sending me some new offer they want me to look at and most publishers get the same.
In the end it’s all about marketing anyway, everyone is a consumer, and everyone wants what they can’t have. It’s like little kids who don’t play with a toy for a year and don’t give a shit if it goes in the trash until someone else plays with it and they can’t, all of a sudden it’s a catastrophe.
If Hydra closed an account I ran zero on, that’s my fault, not theirs, because obviously they don’t know a pimp when they see one, and if I’m running 300k a month to someone else what the fuck do I care about an account I haven’t picked up an offer with in 6 months? I can always pick up the phone and get back in if I’m legit.
“I can always pick up the phone and get back in if I’m legit.”
Yea you definitely can. Its just a pain in the ass to have to waste time doing that when you already did it x months ago.
I can understand you point of view but think its an unnecessary practice.
I completely agree with you that it’s unnecessary, because if Hydra and all these other morons had given an inch of concern with who their publishers were from day 1 this wouldn’t have ever happened in the first place, but when the money is flowing there is little cause for change.
The truth is, the word is out on what these large networks do to solid advertisers with their junk traffic and they need to get some good PR fast because none of use believe their BS about how “strict” their approval process is, my 4 year old daughter could get into hydra.
A lot of smaller networks are picking up steam because they know most of their publishers personally and have a far better handle on who is running what and how.
It’s unfortunate this had to happen, but it did have to happen. We’ve been taking ID’s, utility bills and affiliate manager references for the last few years on our internal programs and I think you’ll continue to see that become the norm with every network.
Hopefully this type of sweep won’t ever have to happen again because they will now know those dormant accounts are at least linked to legit pubs and don’t have to be concerned.
Good points Rob. I do agree with you that reputation will matter a lot more in the future then it does now. This industry will probably be much more about who you know and who knows you.
I agree with Ad Hustler, and Hydra is full of you know
Hi Ad Hustler, We only choose our preferred network, which pays on-time weekly or bi-weekly and has plenty of offers. And, that’s the point we hardly earn money with other networks. Network should know this fact.
Rob has really nailed it with his explanation. I manage an affiliate network that succeeds, in part, due to the attention that our AMs are able to give to our publishers that perform as well as those who are legitimate and are trying their best to earn revenue. If we don’t clean shop once in a while then our AMs get bogged down, the risk of fraud within a network is significantly higher with thousands of inactive accounts with possible fraudsters lurking in the shadows waiting to strike, and if somebody wants to get back in all they need to do is contact an AM with a legit reason as to why they should not have been removed. It’s exceptionally easy for us to see who is really performing within other networks, and those who have good sites registered are unlikely to be dropped, regardless of protocols to remove sites that fit certain criteria, but even if that did happen they’d be let back in with a review or call. Given the security risk of having so many inactive accounts, dropping those who don’t produce is a simple fact that inactive account-owners will have to deal with and I hardly see it being worked up about if you are in fact innactive within that network.
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