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Are these questions normal? (23)

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Hey guys,

Do we have a Clickbooth rep in the house?

I applied for their network a few days ago and got declined
yesterday. My first network decline in 8 years of being a
marketer. I filled out the "appeals" form online, told them
where I buy traffic, what verticals, everything else they
may want to know...

... and I just received an email asking the following questions:

1) What EPC do you need for an offer to be successful with your traffic?
2) What is your testing and optimization strategy for new offers?
3) How quickly are you able to implement and test new campaigns?
4) What verticals do you currently run?
5) Which vertical are you having the most success with in terms of ROI and volume?
6) What is your daily advertising budget?
7) Cap space on select top offers can go quickly. What is your turnaround time for setting up, and dropping a new offer?
8) What particular offers have worked well for you in the past?
9) What media buy sources/platforms do you work with?
10) What countries do you target?
11) Are you direct linking or using a presell page?
12) What search platforms do you work with?
13) Within your search platform, what additional information does the conversion tracking pixel provide?
14) What is your average testing keyword list size?
15) Which ways do we NOT drive traffic?
16) Does "Apply to Run" offers require approval from the advertiser? (Yes or No)
17) Do you market via any other traffic types? If so, which ones?

Have I flagged some kind of bullshit meter with them or something?

These questions feel a lot like they're just testing me to see what I
know about AM. I mean, "Which ways do we NOT drive traffic?" What
the fuck does that even mean? And how do I answer what EPC I need
for my traffic? Every campaign is different. It's not like there's a general
golden EPC number that everyone aims for.

I guess I'm not destined to be working with Clickbooth, I just don't
see me being able to give them the (clearly quite specific) answers
they're looking for to bullshit questions like these. I don't particularly
feel like outing my successful campaigns and strategies to them
either, just because they asked.

Any advice?

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Did you just fill out the application or did you follow up with a phone call? I've found the best way to get accepted to a network is to call them and have a conversation with them.

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Yeah I actually tried that, I called them when I got the decline notice.
They said they need everything in writing so they don't tend to speak
to people on the phone and asked me to fill out the appeal form.

Dude I just noticed that was your first post! Congrats! I'm honored!

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Unless they have an exclusive offer that you can't get elsewhere I would just skip them.

It looks too much hassle for just joining a network.

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Haha, thanks man. Really weird that they want so much info and they won't talk over the phone. I agree with bbrock32 that you should probably just skip them if they're going to make you jump through so many hoops.

Maybe wait until you run into a rep at a conference and drop how much revenue you're doing monthly and when the rep asks you to join the network you can come back with your own convoluted list of questions as to why you should join and how it would benefit you.

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Thanks guys, appreciate your input.

I think you're right, I'll just spend the time I'd put into answering
those dumb questions into applying for 3 other networks.

I am tempted to send them my own list of questions just to be a
dick though... but then that's a waste of time too.

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I had a similar experience. After filling out a list of questions like yours (don't think it was as long back then), I then had to take a "quiz" with questions along the lines of "what does EPC stand for?" and "how do you calculate ROI?" After passing the quiz (one of their answers was wrong by the way - I told them but never heard back) I could only access about 10 public offers, and wasn't allowed to apply for any of their other offers until I'd "proven" myself with their crappy public ones. At that point I gave up - definitely not worth the time.

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They are filtering out the noobs and maybe the more experienced affiliates are recruited directly, not by using the application form. Otherwise I don't see any reason for this...it's just a waste of time and they surely know it.

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At some point in the future you are going to hate getting contacted by AM's about joining their networks
Don't believe me just do some semi-decent adbuys and leave the whois on your landing page domain visible and watch the amount of phone calls or emails you get.

Check out linkedIn for ClickBooth and get in contact with someone. LinkedIn is one of the greatest sites for networking with Network owners, Traffic sources and other affiliates.

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Private whois doesn't seem to work though.
I'd like to know how they get my emails? They won't tell me or "I got your details from LinkedIn.."
I'm not on LinkedIn.

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They are ninja's every large affiliate network has someone doing the leg work hunting you down.

Your lander domain has private whois but does every domain hosted on the same IP on your server?
Does your tracking domain have private whois?

Are you leaving any footprints that they are able to hunt you down through?

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Pretty silly question IMO, very outdated. Those questions will change for every campaign, i think it's just old questions they used to see if you understand terminology or not. Just call them up

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Thanks man. I called them but they refused to speak to me. Need it online "for their records".

Fuck 'em. I'll take my bidniz elsewhere.

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Try email this guy alexis@clickbooth.com I know he paid for a few of his pubs to be on STM.

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actually, I had the same thing. an aff manager from ClickDealer contacted a while back saying "hey we see you are running x offer and we were wondering if you would like to split test with us"

could never figure out how they knew which offer I was running, or how they got my email

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Thank you kind sir. Emailing now.

In that case, this is me hoping that in a few months I'll start getting harrassed
by AMs in the same way. Stalking for the win!

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1. Login in to [insert spytools]
2. Check all ads for (x) niche.
3. Check all Landers and follow links.
4. Check all domains and tracking domains for foot prints that lead to an email or contact info.

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Okay think it's time to wrap this thread.

The email to that Alexis guy comes back as undeliverable, and
Clickbooth have officially exhausted their time allotment with me.

Instead of chasing them or bothering with their dumb questions,
I'll spend that time applying to 3 other networks.

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I don't use tracking domains or anything.
Maybe they are able to acquire my email using the affiliate ID.

@the_writer: sorry for hijacking your thread.
what kind of offers are you searching for? You could make a post about it on here. Lots of networks are represented on STM.

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No sweat bro, all good.

I'm already in maybe 8-12 networks, I had just heard
Clickbooth had a good Asian Dating offer I wanted to
test with a current campaign.

No drama though, plenty more networks out there.

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I understand that, but how would they be able to grab any contact info with whois privacy?

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If you have WhoisGuard then they can't. But they can always find the IP your domain(s) resolve to, then do reverse DNS and see if they can find any other domains you own that don't have Whois protection, can google your domains to find random linkages, forum posts, etc.

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1 Server
1 IP
1 Domain (whois guard)
No tracking URLs

Only thing that leads to me is my affiliate id.

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