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Just a rant...i guess

O

operationoffers

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Over the last few weeks we have had to ban more publishers then we normally would. I am seeing more of this simply because we have increased our security and other scripts that help to expose fraudulent leads as well their source.


Just a note to new publishers and those just entering affiliate marketing

Please promote your affiliate campaigns ethically and honestly. Do not use "Black Hat" methods for promoting offers, filling our your own leads, increasing search engine ranking...etc. Google has become much harder on those who do not use purely organic methods to rank in search engines. CPA Networks are also cracking down HARD on publishers who feel that it is necessary to take short cuts.

I hate to make threads such as this when my only goal is to make money for our affiliates as well as our advertisers. The hard cold truth is this; if you use black hat methods you will eventually get caught. Our main goal is to keep the industry clean and profitable to both sides as well as trying to eliminate the misconceptions some affiliates have about CPA Networks. There are networks that work hard and are ethical.

Lets all work together to keep this industry profitable!

Have a Great Day
 
Those who use blackhat methods to earn in fraudulent ways must be punished and banned from networks. No two ways about it.

Blackhatters are the ones who have tarnished the image of IM on the web.
 
I totally agree, however what I don't agree with is your definition of "Black Hat".

Black Hat was once a great thing to be involved with, it pretty much stood for going against the grain and using your imagination.

The term Black Hat these days seems to mean illegal, which sucks!

I was once into some black hat stuff but never anything illegal.

Black Hat can be great, illegal is always bad!
 
I see your rant and reraise you with my own.

I think the real onus falls on the network for not being in control of their affiliates. Lack of knowledge/experience in managing affiliates is also a big factor, if you don't know how these affiliates promote your advertisers campaigns how can you possibly expect to deliver quality traffic? There are a few good industry leaders who actually understand the core business of running an affiliate network - the rest are just saturating the market and giving the good guys bad reputations, burning one advertiser at a time with terrible lead quality and masses of poor traffic.

The reason? Affiliates spawn from thin air just by reading a blog they are now self-proclaimed "online marketers". Millions of them exist and the number is growing. Adrian Morrison and Empower Network are prime examples of the blind leading the blind. These people keep feeding them new information and new products to help them "learn" how to "market" products. These affiliates who don't have any prior advertising or marketing experience are lead down a path to believe that sending clicks as cheaply as possible to an offer and converting them to leads is all they need to focus on - afterall there is no point delivering traffic if the affiliate can't make a good ROI. They are correct in those assumptions because nobody tells them otherwise.

Lots of affiliates from hundreds of networks make posts on various forums and groups about how the affiliate network banned them and how they aren't being paid for traffic. The majority of these cases are simply because of unintentional bad quality - these affiliates simply don't know how to send good quality because they don't know better, nobody told them otherwise.

Going back to the point - as the middle man, the buck stops with you. The goal of an affiliate network isn't just to connect traffic with the advertiser by any means necessary. If you let affiliates run your campaigns, you should accept the accountability and responsibility that goes with it. Either don't let inexperienced or unreferenced "affiliates" into your network or educate the ones you do let in. You need to do better quality checking and due-diligence - understand how your affiliates promote and who they are. If you can't do these things, you shouldn't be network or more to the point, question why/how fraud and bad ethics occur. This world is built for money.

Affiliate networks (the majority) provide a disservice to the advertisers because they don't help the advertiser reach ROI metrics, they don't dig deep into those relationships, they focus on getting as much revenue as possible whilst keeping as much margin as they can - all in the hope that the advertiser is "happy" with the quality. I have managed high volume campaigns for advertisers, sending xx,xxx leads per week - in my mind I was always conscious of the true value of the leads - there is a reason certain traffic types are not permitted.

CPA is not a win/win for advertisers - granted they are paying for a desired action but not all consumers have the desired intent for the product. Consumers who sign up to an offer from website X may back out into a high lifetime value customer but the traffic is too expensive there, so the affiliates are taught how to arbitrage traffic as cheaply as possible - including the guys who make posts asking how to get "free" traffic.

In my eyes there are two types of affiliates:
1) Marketers - these people understand metrics on both sides (advertiser and their own)
2) The other 90% - sending clicks to offers however they can

If you want to straighten yourself out and learn to deliver higher quality, speak with your affiliate manager - ask them how your quality is and how to improve it. Ask for quality reports from the advertiser (don't just settle for a vague answer "yes your quality is ok") - you might be surprised to learn that you are delivering higher quality than other affiliates who may be doing 50x the volume you are. If not then join something like the CPAFIX Dojo - I certainly think it'll be a better breeding ground to learn these skills than the majority of resources out there!
 
MI
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