[MUST READ] Nothing is SAFE - How I lost $2200 on a pay per CPI/CPL traffic source! (15)
[MUST READ] Nothing is SAFE - How I lost $2200 on a pay per CPI/CPL traffic source!
First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR..!
..and oh boy, * was it ever HAPPY for me! *
I got up this morning, after partying for 2 days straight and what do I see?
*An email from my rep at CPI traffic source telling me that some campaign is exploding and asking me to send them $8000 to keep it going till Monday! * *
* *I think to myself, wait, that can't be right.
I immediately login and check whats up, *the numbers look odd, *I check my CPA Network, and well I see the cause right away - Offer is gone, and there's another offer registering the conversions DOH!
On the 25th of December, *Christmas mind you*- they decided to pause a Cost Per Sale (CPS) offer and redirect it to an SOI offer with the payout of $1.2 dollars. * *Yup, *so since XMAS I was sending traffic, getting conversions and raking up over $2000 in losses.
Asked the traffic source, is there a way to work out a deal to lower this sum, they said No, not our fault.
Asked the CPA Network, is there a way they can help me out? *They said we sent the email, sorry.
Long story short, *just because you run something on CPI basis doesn't mean you are 100% safe and can leave the campaign be and just BANK.
If the campaign you initially setup gets paused, *and they redirect it elsewhere it will continue to postback conversions to the traffic source and you will continue to pay at the rate agreed.
Morale of the story, *even paying on CPL/CPI isn't 100% SAFE!
This was an expensive lesson in CPIs for me, *hope you can learn from it and not repeat the same mistake!
Affiliate networks are notorious for swapping out links on the back end. Budgets, advertisers asking to pause, and a whole slew of reasons can come up. One way to avoid this is to create a script to ping your link to check that the destination URL stays the same and send you a SMS if it changes.
Side question, how many affs would prefer to get an SMS over an email for major changes to campaigns?
I'm surprised your AM didn't hit you up elsewhere. Skype? Phone, etc.
That email probably ended up between:
***HOTTEZT NEW OFFERZ ON THE NETWORK***
- iAmAttila, we just started redirecting your offer.
***JOIN US NOW BEST NETWORK BEST OFFERS***
Originally Posted by The Angry Russian
I would, do it up brother!! I will sign up right away!!
Just curious (and a really noob question) .. how do you setup a CPI if you have no control over the advertiser's landing page?
Originally Posted by mrneko
It reminds me one of my friends story, he have content locking network which was just brokering from adscendmedia, long story short, one offer got paused and from PIN submit got redirected to CPL, his affs seen alot of conversions for 20$ pin sub whereas it was 0,7$ SOI leadgen.... Lost few k's untill noticed as well.
Originally Posted by The Angry Russian
If I were to write something that uses
What value would that be to the forum?
Bonus points if I can set up the script to work from multiple Geos as opposed to the GEO of the server.
Were you using a global pixel? I no longer use them anymore because of a similar story (just not as large)
That sucks!
I always try to get AMs who i can be friends with.. or AMs who truly understand what they're doing.
Usually my AM will text/whatsapp me if there's a problem/switch etc.. anything urgent. This has prevented me from any major problems when it comes to network side things over the last couple years.
..now if i could only get the same thing from traffic sources.
Originally Posted by The Angry Russian
I've had a few similar instances sending mobile traffic to offers that accepted both mobile/web, only for the network to then add a separate mobile version with a much lower payout -- and redirect my traffic there. I still see the conversions at my end, just not at the same payout.
Some networks are much more aggressive with their redirects than others.
Like Advidi for example. If you start getting sales for Fling, and thousands of clicks, you know it's time to check your redirects!
As for SMS alerts, yeah, that would be good. As long as the alerts are opt-in for campaigns selected by the affiliate, not blanket alerts for every offer you've ever been accepted on.
I'll have the payout pinged as a variable instead of a set manual amount for this reason. Anything drastic that happens I'll see it in
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