Innershell Affiliate Empire » Affiliate Networks

My beef with Express Revenue.

Melvin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 07:37:36 +0000

If you are an Express Revenue affiliate manager, I hope you’re reading this…

For the last few weeks, I have been trying my hardest to get into Express Revenue. I had sent in my application, then missed a phone call, and got my application denied. Not a big deal … just call them up and get this sorted out just like every other affiliate network right?

I have attempted to contact Express Revenue numerous times without any success. The toll-free number provided was not serviceable from outside the U.S. Since I am in Canada, I get a busy signal. So the next best thing was through AIM. I installed AIM just for this, sent a message to an affiliate manager that was online to call me back, and still received no calls.

Guys, this shouldn’t be THIS painful. If you run a business and are contacted, I expect to receive adequate response. If this is the way they run their business, how can I trust sending my traffic to them that cost me money? Maybe I can’t and shouldn’t.

If you are an Express Revenue affiliate manager and would like to work with me, please feel free to use the Contact Me link on the top of the page to reach me. Otherwise, I won’t sweat it as you can see that my list of affiliate network is quite long already. Besides, Neverblue rocks!

UPDATE – Mar 19, 2009

I got contact with a senior affiliate manager at Express Revenue. Hope to see what he can do for me over the next few days. There’s hope yet for this network.

Trouble getting approval for affiliate networks?

Melvin — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 07:50:13 +0000

I want to talk a little about getting your application approved on the major affiliate networks. Today, I was answering a flurry of phone calls as all the affiliate networks decided to call me one after the other about my application. It took them a week to call me since putting in my application. Neverblue did it in less than 24-hours.

One thing is for sure, you do not need an existing suitable content website to get approved. I told each and every affiliate manager calling me that I did not have a website to promote their offers. My goal was to promote their offers using PPC either through the major search networks (i.e. Google) or through social networking PPC (i.e. Facebook) with customized landing pages. I also gave them the impression that I knew what I’m talking about and that CPA affiliate networking is not new business to me. That gave these managers enough confidence to approve me on the spot.

Remember, the goal of the approval process is to weed out the spammers and scammers that join the network and use blackhat techniques to promote offers. They also do not want people who are just going to play around and try things out. If you want to be approved, please spend a few hours reading and know your shit. You need to be able to speak affiliate marketing lingo and know what your goals are short-term and long-term. If you can do both of these, you will get approved without having a quality content website to promote your offers.

Any idiot should be able to get approval. That’s my $0.02.

First contact with my affiliate marketing manager.

Melvin — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 22:19:54 +0000

As you can see, I am quite scattered in how I want to make money online. But today, I received a phone call from my Neverblue’s affiliate marketing manager. We got past our introductions quickly and began talking immediately about my business and my options. I told ‘her’ that I do no want anything over saturated, but want something that has seen some decent conversions for a person just entering the CPA arena. My goal is to promote websites through PPC advertising either on web search engines or social networking sites.

She understood what I wanted and said she will send me follow-up e-mail within the day with some offerings that I should try. When I finally got the e-mail, she provided me with 4 of what she thought were good performers. These were the offerings that were recommended:

Game On (US) – This is an online mobile gaming offer with a payout of $6.00/sale.
FreeCollegeScholarships.net – Offers free scholarships and payout is $4.00/lead.
Majesty Cruiselines: Bahama Cruise Vacation – $1.40/lead.
Over40Matching.com – Obviously an over 40 dating site with a $3.00/lead.

First thing to note is that all of these offers are for US residents only. Being Canadian, I cannot market to the audience I am most comfortable with. But I am up for a challenge. I would also not promote the Majesty Cruiselines offer because of its lower lead payout. Not that I am being greedy, but if I am spending $0.35/click on PPC advertising, I will quickly earn less than my advertising expenses.

I am not interested in the dating site because it is quite saturated already. Facebook would be a great place to use PPC advertising because I can use demographic targeting. I believe Facebook frowns upon dating advertising though. I have to do more research before ruling this one out too.

Today, I will be researching Game On (US) and FreeCollegeScholarships.net and post up some details on how I am going to promote it, my keywords, and my target demographic.

Offline affiliate marketing.

Melvin — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 19:20:09 +0000

Here is a different spin on affiliate marketing. Instead of trying to find an offer from an affiliate network, you can create your own affiliate program with your local businesses by negotiating a cut for leads and sales to the business.

ShoeMoney explains how to Make Money Online with Local Affiliate Programs and is a worthy read. Check it out.

My Neverblue registration was accepted. YAY!

Melvin — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 05:47:17 +0000

Got a phone call this evening from Neverblue. Yes, it was an interview.

They asked me about my business, other affiliate networks I belong to, my marketing techniques, what I plan on marketing, and my website url for review. They were happy with my explanation and said that that I would receive an e-mail within 15-minutes if I was accepted. 1-minute later, I got an e-mail that went straight to my Gmail spam inbox. I will have to fix this soon.

I logged in right away to see how Neverblue compares to my other affiliates: Commission Junction (CJ) and Amazon. First thing I noticed is that there are less than 1000 campaigns available. CJ and Amazon has thousands upon thousands of products and services to chose from. Campaigns were broken into topic categories such as automotive, technology, dating, etc. It took me less than an hour to review all the campaigns and their payouts.

Umm … now what? I do not know where to start. I am confused as to which campaign to pick, how to research them, and what to do next. Help!!!

I signed up with Neverblue.

Melvin — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:52:30 +0000

Referral Link!!!

I signed up with Neverblue. They were recommended in Neil’s Web blog that I read and I wanted to see what they offered in terms of campaigns, but you have to be a member to see their campaigns. So what did I have to lose? By the way, a campaign is a program setup by a company that will pay you when a customer takes an action (e.g. signing up, purchasing a product/service, etc.) I used to call these programs, but I will start calling these campaigns now so that I am being consistent in terminology with the rest of the world.

The process for signing up with Neverblue was not very simple. Apparently, I have to prove that I am worthy of becoming an affiliate. I was asked to provide details regarding my experience in the web marketing and promotion industry. This included how many years experience, my current affiliate networks, my current websites, and my marketing/promotion techniques. Since I have done this before and have several websites to showcase, this was not a problem. But I could see how somebody starting from scratch would have some work to do.

Anyway, I completed the application and looks like I have to wait for a phone call from Neverblue to know if I am approved. Am I going to be interviewed? Wish me luck.