Frustrated with initial success and then failure of offers.

Same here

 

Is it possible that some offers will only convert better for certain day of the week or month? Have you tried to run the offer for more than 2 weeks or 1 month?

 

$250.00 gift card offer ....smashed it on Saturday April 4th & Sunday April 5th .......

Rest of the week was a blood bath and I paid for Sergy & Larrys' car payments for the month......

Glad that doesn't happen with Clickbank

 

Yes, I agree with LinkPro. I think some of the affiliate companies adjust "commissions". I've had the same problem. The problem with Affiliate Marketing is that you have to trust these people. You have no idea what's going in the back rooms. These guys also what to make money and with the click of a mouse they can easily take all your commissions. I know there has to be some corruption some where!

 

Sometimes it's better to work straight with the merchants. I was running one offer where I had an EPC of $90+ (per 100 uniques) the first two days of launch and after that it was down to ~ $28 OVERNIGHT! Now talk about big time inconsistencies. One thing I know, people's buying behavior doesn't change overnight, especially hot items like ringtones, games etc. I brought up this issue to my affiliate manager, spoke with the advertiser's account manager and it lead to no where. Even the advertiser had a "whatever" attitude--never returned my emails. They thought I was taking this issue too seriously. WTF! Keep in mind, I was doing $1500/day with them. So, they ultimately decided that they're going to screw me. I said, fuck you too, and went with the advertiser's competitor to cut out a deal directly and I've been happier since then. Very stable EPCs. But with networks, EPCs have rollercoaster rides. One day is $138, the next day you're lucky to get $19 EPC.

My AM said I bring in very high EPCs--that says something about me. I am a very hard working affiliate. I know what I'm doing and I know how to convert an offer. So, I launch another offer with the same network. The first day, I have $128 EPC (network highest EPC), and after 2 days, it goes down to $38. I couldn't sleep, seriously! It's like you put in so much hard work to ultimately find out that it's going to go to waste because of their lame ass reporting system. I can understand if it's 1 or 2 offers, but common, 11 offers repeat the same fucking thing! When are you going to start making money if you spend 3 months doing this? I got very angry and told my AM to not to tell me about how offers do well on certain days, so I tested the offer for at least a week before blowing it up big. The cold blooded AM sends me a cookie cutter response saying they're working on finding out the problem. I'm like WTF! I ended up giving them an ultimatum, because common dude, if you can't handle your top 2% of your affiliates, then you shouldn't be in the business of brokering offers. For that network, I don't do much, but somewhere around $1000/day, not a lot, but I have a *potential* to go upto $10k/day--This is what they don't realize. In business, 80% of your business is brought by 20% of your salesmen. You gotta be retarded to not take care of them very well.

We affiliates work so fuckin hard and the last thing you want to see is the fucking advertiser or the bullshit network scrubbing your leads. I'm seriously very fuckin pissed off at how unethical and irresponsible some CPA networks are.

Anybody else who had bitter experiences like to chime in?

 

I am not sure if it's commissions being inflated at the beginning or if it's commissions being cut later on. If it's the latter of the two...thats flat out stealing. I put hard earned money into these programs.

I hope there are networks out there that are honest and do not have these types of practices in place.... In the long run it will be these companies that survive.

 

You guys also have to look into saturation. Some of these offers ar time sensitive or perform great for short time... so what happens the AM's start blabbing to all there decent affiliates to push the offer while its hot... so you automatically go from 1 man promoting it to more competition which can drive down your conversions. I have seen this happen on many offers.. although i usually ride out the get rich quick people as they fade off but it is pain in the but to be doing so good have it tapper off... but it is part of the biz... now as far as skimming leads thats a whole different story.

 

I was talking about niches that have no saturation at all. I'm usually the one dominating it. I agree with linkpro--The CPA networks who will survive at the end of the day are the honest people, well, not so honest.

Then when you start bitching at them about these discrepancies, they tell you you're not professional. I'm like WTF you talking about, it's my fucking money!

 

This is worrying. So much of this industry is built on trust - little you can really track or see on paper. In many ways it seems amazing that it ever got off the ground.

As economic conditions make it harder to sell in general, it does make me wonder exactly how companies that have enjoyed big money for a long time will react. I mean, withholding earnings in this kind of industry is so simple. It must at least be a temptation for some organizations that are seeing profits fall....

 

Here is what usually happens

a) You have a free lead offer (email, zip, dating, etc.) The first day you'll do very well. Then the EPC will slide within 2-3 days based on how the traffic is working out for the advertiser. Switch to another network, EPC will jump up again and then resume the slide. If your traffic is working out great for them then you definitely won't get the shave. These guys are desperate for converting leads.

b) Your traffic source is changing. For example when dealing with Adwords, you may be getting 100% Google search traffic the first 12 hours, then you start getting partner traffic. By the next day or two you may be getting 0% Google traffic and all partner traffic (both search and content.) Even though it will say you are getting search traffic in your stats, that search traffic isn't coming from Google.com.

And a) can be a result of whats going on with b) as well. Its all inter-connected.

There is other shady shit that is going on at affiliate networks and advertisers as well. I know that the porn industry is notorious for "shaving" off sales commissions. Usually this is a result of advertisers offering ridiculous rates like "$90 commission on $29 sale" or lead payouts far above the competition. However any serious affiliate doesn't give a flying shit about payouts and is only paying attention to EPCs so its not a great strategy on their part.

 

Guys, this is the best shocker news for today. I got an email from the advertiser this morning:

Now, at least this advertiser was honest and genuine and he could have refrained from telling me. But, no, he's so cooperative that at least he told me about what's really going on. So, this confirms that Aff networks have terrible reporting systems.

 

And Sir/Madam, how do you know this?

 

First hand experience.

 

Could it simply be a question of supply and demand. At first the advertiser has plenty of budget to support the links passed through. Then some of big earners hit the campaign and the advertisers budget is used up and so the results drop dramatically.

The only question left is what do the ad centers do with all the traffic that is still being passed to them for the campaign?

J

 

For free offers, from an economic perspective, I thinks this may be a gentle way from advertiser to remind us that they don't like the traffic quality, or as mentioned by mintoj, there is too much supply.

This can be explained very simplely. If they like the quality, they want more, even at higher price. They know your first reaction is to decreas or pause traffic when you see shaving. That may be an indirect caution even it is a bit dark.

This could explain why you redirect traffic to another network, you converts well. That may be, because your traffic are new there. But that may change too after a couple of days.

Also I think this is nothing to do with traffic is decent or not. For example, a free dating offer advertiser may don't like your traffic because they have too much male members, and you have mainly male traffic even it comes from google search.

For pay per sale offer, generally that would be too foolish for advertisers to shave.

I think a viable solution is to pause the traffic or redirect elsewhere, then communicate with AM honestly that you doubt a conversion decrease in your traffic, and you are going to test another traffic sources. I have not done so, but maybe it works.

Last two cents:
1. There is no real free lunch.
2. There IS a risk free job: being advertiser. LOL..

 

It was mentiond that this problem doesn't happen with Clickbank. Has everyone found Clickbank's rreporting to be reliable, any problems with Clickbank?

 

me too.
same keywords same traffic same click but no conversion!

what happened to them?

 

if you're promoting lead offers especially email/zip submits if you send too many leads at once you will more than likely get scrubbed which will almost always drop your conversion ratio.

If you're working with a product or service, try going to the product direct and setting up the same payout, sometimes better, with them ...It's workd in the past for me

 

Yep. Sometimes it's better to just go direct.

 

My coversion rate goes up and down all the time since I don't drive a lot of traffic to Azoogle.