Advertiser Not Paying? Affiliate Network Will Cover you? Think again. (18)

I always see here affiliates that saying working with affiliate network is "safer" than directly with the adveritser
because they are charging the advertiser and if the advertiser will run away with your money they will cover you.

I worked as affiliate and advertiser manager long ago and I can hunt the advertiser in 3 second the only reason I'm working with
affiliate networks and not directly with the advertiser is because the reason above ^^ and because of weekly payments which is nice to get the money faster.

I have my 1-2 fav aff networks that 90% of my activity is with them and I trust them very well but I always see here a lot of good recommendation on AppFlood and they are also the main sponsor for the meet up so I told to myself why not to try them .
They have good direct and exclusive offers , few weeks ago I started to promote their pin submit WhatsApp offer for Portugal.

the CR was quite good I sent them like 900$/day +- revenue for 3 days and after those 3 days the CR of the offer went down like really bad I asked my AM she told me that nothing changed with the offer and she doesn't know what happened .

I had other successful campaigns with no time to maintenance this one so I just dropped it .
Few weeks after I'm seeing AppFlood still didn't pay me even though they told me I should get weekly payments, I sent them an email and this is the answer I got :

http://www.screencast.com/t/GyUMxcvxyg9g

1 lead is 8$ that means they cut my revenue from 2608$ to 1296$ I don't even remember what was my profit but it wasn't high so it is clearly that I'm in losses.
This is pissing me off really fuck those 1300$ I don't care . What piss me off is why always the affiliates are at the bottom of the pyramid??
I mean she is telling me the advertiser had technical problem this is his fault I thought I'm profitable and paid for more traffic why I need to get punishment for the advertiser/affiliate network mistakes??

anyway I learned my lesson , and I hope it helped you as well be carful and work only with affiliate network you trust because I'm sure 2000% that if it was happening with my regular aff networks I work with they were paying me without even asking questions.

There has been too many payment issues being reported by affiliates involving this affiliate network.

Time for me to move to a different affiliate network. Its a shame because they have really good offers.

It's not really that easy as you get it... if advertiser would run away with money - they would probably still pay you.
But its about bad tracking, its not your fault but that you didnt check it before scaling up, its kinda different scenario than you say.

Because if you would run DIRECTLY with this advertiser it would happen too.
But... if you would run via network and he wouldnt pay - they would pay you, and if you would run directly and advertiser wouldnt pay - you would get 0$. So its kinda different scenario, I'm not defending anyone because I think its a shame that company is jeopardizing relationship over 1k$ especially it wasnt any fraud or anything like that.
The thing is most IO's says advertiser is paying based on his stats which they should control and see that something isnt right.

There are only few networks that sponsor events and are safe at the same time I could vouch for mundo, c2m and adsimilis. F5 for sure is good too as you can see on forum but I'm not there personally.
It's not allways about affiliate being at the bottom of pyramid which you know lol

I think you're getting this one wrong though.

That statement from appflood is saying that there was a tracking issue on the backend for the advertiser. What happend is that the pixel was firing to the network, despite generating no installs/conversions. One of the worst situations that can happen, because fake-revenue is generated in the network. The network can't bill the advertiser for this, so it's lost revenue.

They did double your actual payout after checking numbers in the CRM of the advertiser.

It's an ok gesture from Appflood. The problem seems to be their communication with you. Here's what should have happened: AM contacts you and tells you about the issue. AM asks you if you are ok with them removing X amounts of fake-leads that were generated by the tracking issue. Depending on your answer they pay you in full or remove the leads, or offer you to pay half the leads or your full traffic cost.

There are a lot of options that could have been better for all parties involved than the one selected by Appflood.

I had the same issue happen to me years ago with another network.

In my opinion it's not your fault. All you have access to is numbers you see on the affiliate network side. They are your reference and you optimize based on those.

If there is an error, the party that caused it should take full responsibility, not you.

I would ask Appflood to either push the advertiser into paying or them covering the full amount for you.

Guess it's a lesson in always double-checking things when they seem too good It's not your fault *or* appflood's that tracking on the merchant's side was set up wrong.

I had the same happen with Adsimilis a few months ago. The advertiser messed up their tracking pixel and CVR was 10x + higher than it should've been. Not sure if the advertiser paid them, but we got our money without having to make a fuss.

Red alert Appflood?

Originally Posted by bbrock32

In my opinion it's not your fault. All you have access to is numbers you see on the affiliate network side. They are your reference and you optimize based on those.

From a purely legal perspective, it would be wise for everyone to read the T&C's carefully for all the affiliate networks they sign up to. You would be surprised to see what you find there. For example, there are many networks who in their T&Cs legally prohibit you from directly contacting the advertiser, so if you decide to "go direct" you could legally be sued for damages.

Likewise, it is probably worth reading what the T&C's are for cases of advertiser tracking error with the various networks you work with.

A4D has paid well over $4,000,000 in payments to affiliates that the merchant didn't pay us on.

Not all networks are created equal.

You as the affiliate obviously don't know the credit worthiness of these merchants. You as affiliates don't even talk with them or know who they are in most cases. It's the job of the network to vet them for credit worthiness and that's our risk to take.

Now you do have a responsibility though. Just like all merchants aren't created equal and some are not credit worthy. The same can be said about networks. There's around 100 networks that come into the space every year. There's also 99 that go out of business every year. I have no idea who Appflood is but they sound like another network that's popped up. With all networks you need to rely on stories of other people on what has happened when things got bad. Who did they protect and who did they make sure was made whole. There's definitely networks in the space that treat the business in this way. But by no means should networks like C2M, Clickbooth, Neverblue or A4D paying when they don't get paid make you think that all networks are going to do this. The older established networks have large war chests and have can afford to make sure they maintain good standing relationships with their largest assets, that being you the affiliate.

if you're going to work with newer smaller networks operate like a network does. That means vet them for credit worthiness based on historical stories of payments to affiliates in "bad" situations. Everything is always good until it isn't. Don't go by people that say they always pay on time. But rather by people that say "I know the merchant didn't pay them but they paid me and did what was right". If you can't find any information about a network ask in here. Are they a U.S. based network or a Cyprus, Chinese, Seychelles network where the laws aren't favorable if things get bad? How willing are you to sue and peruse the money? All these things should come into your decision on how much credit to issue.

Once you decide how certain you are you'll get paid by them then extend the credit in the amount you're willing to lose based on the credit risk assessment. If one of the large major networks doesn't have the deal you want but 2-3 smaller networks do, run to all of the so that you hedge your risk. Then if one doesn't pay you're not out everything. Also, you can now cut this network as a partner cause you know they're not going to back you.

For more reading on credit risk management and hedging you can read a blog post I made a while back.
http://www.oooff.com/php-affiliate-s...al-management/

I've been in this space as a network, affiliate and advertiser for over 11 years. I dealt with over 4,000 merchants in that time. These best practices are what keep us in business in growing. In this space if something can go wrong 95% of the time it will. Which is why 99 of 100 new networks go out of business ever year.

Highly recommend above article from Jason. Thanks for the share.

Originally Posted by Smaxor

A4D has paid well over $4,000,000 in payments to affiliates that the merchant didn't pay us on.

Not all networks are created equal.

You as the affiliate obviously don't know the credit worthiness of these merchants. You as affiliates don't even talk with them or know who they are in most cases. It's the job of the network to vet them for credit worthiness and that's our risk to take.

Now you do have a responsibility though. Just like all merchants aren't created equal and some are not credit worthy. The same can be said about networks. There's around 100 networks that come into the space every year. There's also 99 that go out of business every year. I have no idea who Appflood is but they sound like another network that's popped up. With all networks you need to rely on stories of other people on what has happened when things got bad. Who did they protect and who did they make sure was made whole. There's definitely networks in the space that treat the business in this way. But by no means should networks like C2M, Clickbooth, Neverblue or A4D paying when they don't get paid make you think that all networks are going to do this. The older established networks have large war chests and have can afford to make sure they maintain good standing relationships with their largest assets, that being you the affiliate.

if you're going to work with newer smaller networks operate like a network does. That means vet them for credit worthiness based on historical stories of payments to affiliates in "bad" situations. Everything is always good until it isn't. Don't go by people that say they always pay on time. But rather by people that say "I know the merchant didn't pay them but they paid me and did what was right". If you can't find any information about a network ask in here. Are they a U.S. based network or a Cyprus, Chinese, Seychelles network where the laws aren't favorable if things get bad? How willing are you to sue and peruse the money? All these things should come into your decision on how much credit to issue.

Once you decide how certain you are you'll get paid by them then extend the credit in the amount you're willing to lose based on the credit risk assessment. If one of the large major networks doesn't have the deal you want but 2-3 smaller networks do, run to all of the so that you hedge your risk. Then if one doesn't pay you're not out everything. Also, you can now cut this network as a partner cause you know they're not going to back you.

For more reading on credit risk management and hedging you can read a blog post I made a while back.
http://www.oooff.com/php-affiliate-s...al-management/

I've been in this space as a network, affiliate and advertiser for over 11 years. I dealt with over 4,000 merchants in that time. These best practices are what keep us in business in growing. In this space if something can go wrong 95% of the time it will. Which is why 99 of 100 new networks go out of business ever year.

Gamegenetics didnt pay us over 20K$ (last month) cause the advertiser didnt pay them.
While we got a payment with that advertiser with other networks.

Be aware...

Appflood was for me personally suspecious from the beginning. Read several times reviews from smaller newbie affiliates who didn't got paid by them, also some weird EPC stories about high volume affiliates there.

Nothing against asians but the main reason I never wanted to work with them was, they're sitting in china (or wherever) and gives an absolute fuck about who tries to catch with them. If you ever tried to make serious business with asian (located) people you know probably what I'm talking about.

I'm amazed that they would risk losing an affiliate or even worst, get bad press on STM like it's the case for such a low volume .. for $1k ? worst decision ever, that's a microscopique portion of what they pay just sponsoring different events, it baffles me..



Mehdi

Aren't they sponsoring the London event? I have heard quite a few negative things about them lately. I personally don't have an account with them but was thinking about it. Probably going to hold off with all this negative press lately. I would assume they have an account here if STM is allowing them to be a sponsor. Maybe they should speak up and defend themselves before the event. I don't think they want to piss off the STM nation just before they show their face in London, lol.

When app installs were all fine appflood was amazing. After google released their laws is when appflood started becoming strict and not paying affiliates who violate these policies. I feel theres a direct connection between those things.

Originally Posted by marketone

Aren't they sponsoring the London event? I have heard quite a few negative things about them lately. I personally don't have an account with them but was thinking about it. Probably going to hold off with all this negative press lately. I would assume they have an account here if STM is allowing them to be a sponsor. Maybe they should speak up and defend themselves before the event. I don't think they want to piss off the STM nation just before they show their face in London, lol.