First the Reward program now the Referral Program takes a hit!

As we all know the reward program got a little while back now they are cutting back on the referral program. See for yourself:

Dear Publisher,
Thank you for participating in the AzoogleAds Publisher Referral Program, and for connecting us to your friends, family, and acquaintances.

Starting February 1, 2008, we are introducing some changes to our current Referral Program which may affect you:

• Referral commission will continue to be 2% of referred publishers’ revenue but will now expire after 6 months.
• Start date is the day first penny is earned, and expiration date is 6 months after first penny is earned.
• You must maintain a minimum revenue level of $1,000 in your primary account on a monthly basis in order to receive any referral payouts for that month.
• If you earn less than $1,000 in any given month, you will not qualify for a referral payment that month. However, you will be eligible for any month thereafter, up to the 6 month cutoff date.
• $1,000 threshold must be for revenues that you have earned from regular offer promotion, not referred sales.
• You may not refer another account belonging to you.
• When the 6 month expiration date has ended, you cannot refer the same publisher again.
• Referral payments will be on net 60 terms
• Referral payments will be paid out to parent accounts, not children accounts
These conditions will be listed under our FAQ section starting February 1st 2008.

Thanks again for your support and keep spreading the good word about AzoogleAds!

As always, we’d love to hear any questions or comments that you have; please send us your thoughts at .
Sincerely,
Mitchell Richler
Vice President of Network Distribution

 

Got the email this morning too. This is a huge hit for those of us with a big referral network. If Azoogle wants to compete with the huge flood of new CPA networks, cutting the referrals down is not a good idea.

 

Wow........

 

So what do you think of this yourself as you refer publishers to AzoogleAds by the looks of things?

Do you understand what they mean by 'you have to receive a revenue level of $1,000 in your primary account on a monthly basis in order to receive any referral payouts for that month'? Does it mean that if you don't earn $1,000 in your account from your own earnings on their offers that you list on your site, then you will not get any publisher referral earnings for that month even though your referrals are still earning money or does it just mean you will still get your publisher referrals earnings, but you will not be paid them for that month and they will roll through to the next month?

Personally I don't like what they have done with their new rules. 6 months is strict. It's not easy to refer new publishers that earn money for you than having only 6 months from each referral. This is going to hit them when it comes to getting others helping them to get publishers. The bigger a company becomes the less they want to give out to their publishers it seems.

I don't think it's the best move any company can make. The reasons for this is because the CPA industry is getting much more competitive with all the new networks starting up. They should be trying to get as many publishers using their network as possible and not trying to reduce others for helping them to refer new publishers. They've made a big mistake here I believe. 2% referrals earnings is low enough, but now having it for just 6 months takes it just a little to far.

 

I can't believe they cut off the referals. I didn't got any e-mail, I saw the referal tab is gone and asked... Than saw Xbox's post here... I have now approx. $1-1.5k less each month, or less after 6 month cutoff time (how generous Azoogle)...

When I signed up Azoogles promise was "lifetime 2%"... Now they cut it off? Guys, I never thought Azoogle could turn into something I don't like, and I'm not really sure if I continue to drive more traffic to your network. You turn into a network that doesn't treat their affiliates with respect.

 

marcowitsch I wouldn't bother spending your time and money in getting referrals for a company that doesn't want to give anything much back in return. Look at many of the other CPA networks out there where many of them pay you for the life of your referrals earnings and many of them pay over 2% (2% is very low). I wouldn't infact think many referrals would want to help them get referrals when they can earn more by getting referrals for Azoogles competitors instead. That's exactly what will be happening is that AzoogleAd's publishers that have been getting referrals will just turn to their competitors and get referrals for them instead which is only going to help to damage AzoogleAds.

 

It's not a question if I spend a lot of time to get some referals or not, it's a question of trust. If Azoogleads promise was "2% LIFETIME" when I and others signed up, and then they cut it off after 1 year or so... Is that a company you can trust? I don't know anymore, even tough they always paid on time and I've earned a good chunk of money with them I start to have a bad feeling when I think of having so much of my money in a company that treats me with disrespect.

 

Hah. Is this because I just posted about this? oh you guys.

 

seriously. They did promise "2% lifetime"... I was counting on some of that income...

I spend a LOT of time creating a website to get referrals. Now I think I am going to close the doors on that...

 

I've already stopped my recruiting/teaching...Even ran it by my AM first, and he said that they couldn't make exceptions.

Poor poor decision on Azoogle's part

 

As soon as I got the email I cut all traffic to AzoogleAds from my sites by around 95%+. I will not be removing them as they still pay affiliates and have some good offers and things, but at the end of the day I am not going to spend thousands per month advertising my site and just sending them practically free traffic.

I agree on what you say marcowitsch. I bet there are a good few people that have probably actually done PPC marketing on just their referral url alone. They probably calculated that if they spend X amount of pounds and earned X amount of pounds on average from each referral then on average each referral should cover their costs once they are with the network for just under 1 year. Shame to say that these publishers will now have wasted their money on PPC marketing to get these referrals believing they were going to get lifetime referrals.

I think someone needs to show this thread to Adzoogle. I will not as I've already sent them one email on what I thought of their new rules before reading this post.

 

lol Azoogle reads this board probably every day; they've seen it.

Plus Alex and Joe are away right now in Vegas I believe.

 

Yep, that most probably explains it. Their in Vegas and most probably gambled a lot of money in the Casinos and therefore lost it and now have to cut the income they pay publishers for referring other publishers to their network.

 

As a business this is a very bad move for them, you should not make promises that you can't keep. It would make sense if they said "from now on" all new referrals would fall under the new rule but this is just ridiculous. I hope they can still pay the rent on their new office when all of their major affiliates jump ship to another network. Lord knows they have enough competition now for us to just move else where.

Great job burning your clients Azoogle.

 

You mean you can't make promises you can't keep unless you're a giant. Google breaks promises all the time but if you read the fine print, somehow it's all OK.

You have to look at it from their perspective. If some schmuck had referred me, they'd be getting $50+/day right now for FREE whether or not they did anything. That's money that would otherwise be going to Azoogle.

A company does what is most profitable for it in the long-run (hopefully) and this is definitely a more profitable move. Anyone getting referral money has to also be generating money for Azoogle or they get nothing.

From my perspective, it would suck if I weren't generating the revenue I am but then again, if I weren't, I'd have yet one more fire under my ass to do so. Just think, this will either encourage people to jump ship or to just work harder.

In the end, it's what they should've been doing to begin with. The fact that they implemented it now is what sucks balls, but better late than never.

 

So you say it's totally understandable that they promise a LIFETIME commission to all their affiliates, then stop it when they think it doesn't fit anymore or isn't profitable enough?

Wow... What a trustworthy company. I mean many people relied on this and trusted Azoogle when they said "You get comissions as long as your referral brings us business". And cutting this off, breaking this promise is something I absolutely don't understand.

1% of the money I earn with Azoogle was from my referrals, so it doesn't hurt me really that it stops in 6 months, but the point is that a company that lies to their customers isn't exactly the type of company I would rely on for long-term income...

Who knows, maybe they decide sooner or later that the payout they offered 3 weeks ago on an offer isn't profitable anymore, then cut it by 50% and you get only 50% of the money you tought you were getting... Who knows

 

I would say I probably have as many referrals as anyone.... and yet I only make about 100 per month. As long as they continue to take care of me on offers I do not think that is a really big deal.

 

The thing is that there were some people such as myself who worked their asses off recruiting and training people to use Azoogle (see here). I did this in the interest of long-term, residual income, not the first 6 months of commissions when nobody's going to make much money anyways. When I referred those people, I was told that I would receive 2% of their revenue for life, and Azoogle stepping back on that promise does make a strong statement. I understand that there were some people out there making good money off of referrals when they didn't do anything to get it...but there are also some people like myself who got those referrals and got them to perform doing hard, honest work. It's unfortunate that Azoogle has to toss a blanket rule over everybody, regardless of what their referral list looks like.

Will I continue to use Azoogle in spite of this? Yeah, of course I will, they have some great offers to promote. There's nothing I can do about their decision...I've already talked to my AM about this, and they can't budge, but it is a strike against them in my book. Rewards gone, referral program squashed...It won't take much more before good affiliates do start packing their bags, if they haven't already.

 

Ahh I gotcha... that makes sense.

If their terms of service stated that you would have 2% for the lifetime of the user then.... I doubt they would want to do this.

 

Indeed. Unless there was a clause stating, "We can change this at any time" then, if I was earning anywhere near $500.00 per month in referral income, I'd get my attorney involved. At $500 per month it is then worth my time and money to file suit if need be.