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What's Your #1 Gripe With Affiliate Marketing Right Now? (29)

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Normally the affiliate community is very positive. We're very anti-complaining, and very pro just-deal-with-it.

But occasionally it's good to get some things off your chest. So this is the thread for it!

Is it magically vanishing offers that are really rotting your chestnut?

The endless supply of bot traffic griping your veins?

Something else, erm, accelerating your walrus? (OK, I admit it, I ran out of colourful metaphors there.)

Take a chance to put your feet up and share your woes!

What's your #1 AM gripe, complaint or annoyance right now?

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Right now what's really making me angry are caps applied network-wide, once the daily cap is met, the offer is paused ... aaaarggghhh

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right now:
network reverse engineering where my traffic has been coming from to then update the offer terms and adding my sources as "not allowed" to then start running there themselves.
Then if I keep running there and drive up their bids for a few days, my CV mysteriously tanks to the point where it's impossible to beat them.

The war isn't over though..

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I really wish there were more advanced tracking softwares out there that had native integrations with both crms/clicktrackers, quickbooks, and banks. Noones done this, its technically possible, and a huge opportunity.

Another thing id like to see is affiliate marketing to identify less as 'affiliates' and more as general 'performance' marketers, because i believe this will aid a better integration with the general business community, as opposed to being kindof silo'd off.

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Now I'm really angry when my offers stop or when I have a big ROI differences from day to day (day1: 154%, day2: -32%, day3:102% etc...). And also I feel upset when people steal my landers from Adplexity which I made for a very long time I need to cloack it.

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@johnaff - I think that shift is definitely happening. I'm seeing more and more affiliates starting to realise how broad their skillset is and identify more as performance marketers - which, as you say, opens up a lot of opportunities in some very interesting areas.

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I get this. When I'm at a startup conference and I start talking about affiliate marketing everyone starts to look sketchy even though I tell them I'm selling tools and services. When I use the term performance marketing, only a few know that I was actually referring to affiliate marketing...which makes the conversation more comfortable.

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cant seem to make $10k/day for longer then a week before everything gets shut down & I have to reset. fml #ineedjesus

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That would be so sick to have a service kind of like Mint.com+Xero.com combined, that tracks spending, and helps settle book keeping.

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Yea!

My original idea is actually a combination of basically affiliate tracking software (cake or hasoffers) combined with a bank escrow account. The purpose would be to have real-time distribution of funds, from the advertiser, across all levels (network/s, AMs, referral partners, and the affiliate).

An interesting corollary would be that the cost of starting an affiliate network would be reduced to near zero (cashflow problems solved through having escrow accts), and there could be unlimited numbers of networks (solved by real time distribution).

I got this idea from reading the scifi book rainbows end by vernor vinge. He makes a lot of mentions/allusions to what affiliate marketing looks like in the future, how it is used in ALL commerce, and how it blends seamlessly with an augmented reality world.

If you look at trends, the movement is clearly towards both better attribution, and more realtime distribution of money; either way its both technically and physically possible.

I think its kindof silly that people like elon musk can be building spaceships to go to mars, yet theres still not software to solve all these attribution/bookkeeping issues for a fairly large industry.

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Affiliate marketing is becoming harder and harder. Monetizirs popping up all over the place are killing the lone joe, because if you throw tons of money at them in 24 hours, their automatic algo's are going to optimize everything so it becomes profitable and adjust accordingly in real time, so the 'affiliate' has nothing to do. This pretty much kills any chance for the little $100 a day investment on ad spend guy, aka newbies.

You gotta be a seasoned guy knowing and willing to put thousands of dollars into an offer to find nuggets that convert within your maximum CPA so you can turn a profit.

That leads to the next problem after you do all that, the campaigns last for a few days max, and then they start to die out, so you are back at square one.

This explains the mega influx of gurus popping up, getting people lured in with their rented cars, rented mansions, and fake screenshots. They are charging $5 to 20k a head for private mastermind where they just feed re-hashed shit, and make it sound good.

Ad networks (FB, Google) are getting smarter, for example google's ad algo detection is so smart, if they find out you are running stuff they don't like they are going to feed you low quality traffic NOT BAN YOUR account. So you LOSE money, and Quit on your own.

A lot of people, including nutra people are flocking to ecommerce thinking its some sort of new cash cow, it's not. With ecommerce there's countless headaches, fullfillment probably being the biggest headache of them all. If your customer is delivered the wrong item, or it takes a long time (more than 3-4 days) then come the shower of complaints, which affects your back end, as well as time. Yea it can be managed, but it's not mega profits affiliate marketers dream about, or are used to. If you do a 30% roi on 1 million spend, to make $300k u are doing amazing. Ecommerce is heavily affected by Facebook ad prices and CPMs. if CPMs shift, ecommerce margins are wiped, so you need to also be tolerant of that, that one day youll profit, next day youll lose.

Mobile, mobile, mobile... more and more regulation came in for app installs for example on all the good traffic networks. BUT instead of increasing payouts, app owners decreased payouts. Which makes it even more difficult for the average joe to make any profit whatsoever, that's why so many people didn't succeed with the magical cookbook, because there was no one to eat the meals, or the meals cost so much no one wanted to 'pay' for them.

Automation is key without a doubt, it's not in reach of most people that make up affiliate marketing because really good programmers charge $100 per hour, or are so rare to find you need to go through 20 to find a good one which is also time and money.

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@iAmAttila So what do you suggest for a newbie just starting out?

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Agree on most of this. Been talking about this coming shift for a while.

The only difference is that I believe the automation and machine intelligence technology will be in the hands of everyone. But without data, the tech will be less valuable to newbies.

The winners will be the people with the most data and the best algorithms.

Unfortunately, the lack of quality data is what will wipe out a lot of newbies and unsophisticated marketers from being able to compete.

Pro tip: start making sure all the valuable data you've generated in your tracking software can be exported for training the algorithms and automation bots that are coming.

The first thing that's going to happen with the shift to automation is that networks are going to have the option to not work with as many affiliates as they have in the past.

The top people are going to be even more effective and driving leads/sales. Plus automation and access to data will allow them to profitability do more internal media buys with less skilled employees.

Next, advertisers/offer owners will eventually have less of a need to work with networks. Due to the same reason.

So how about the newbies? I predict there will be a new class of bird dogging affiliates who work with monetizers and networks who act as monetizers.

Even then they will be fighting for scraps, I will explain more later.

Working with a monetize will be a win win since the newbies will now only have to focus on acquiring clicks and then handing them over to monetizers to convert to sales.

Monetizers win because they will generate more data to feed the machine and continue to make their algorithms more and more efficient.

Over time I expect the best monetizers will almost always be able to out perform the average marketer.

Over time I also expect the best monetizers to have direct relationships with the major traffic sources, networks and advertisers.

When that happens the average affiliate will once again be left fighting for scraps. Build assets now while it's still "easy".

If you know you can't compete on the tech side, the best asset, to build and cultivate is a traffic source. It will always be in demand.

The easiest and best one anyone to build right now is an email list.

To get my post back on topic a bit, it's also a great cure for many of the gripes you'll have as an affiliate.

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Nice reply thx! There is big talk about building email lists... but no one ever talks about the "then what"

With email lists you cannot spam cpa offers. You need to engage your audience either yourself or through an avatar the people can identify with. Lets just say its not as easy as ripping some landers and banners and running traffic.

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Yes I think the "then what" part is what discourages most people from trying. Because it does take more work vs what's working now.

I remember back in the day had the same problem. I built multiple lists and did nothing with them so they died.

Eventually I figured it out, now my biggest asset for driving revenue with Prosper202 is the email list and the relationship I work on building with my subscribers.

It's been been my secret to being able to keep Prosper202 free for so long. For now Prosper202 is currently no longer free, and email is how we will rapidly grow revenue on our paid offerings. I'm still deciding/experimenting on if we should have a free option and how to position it.

These days you can apply the same content curation playbook people have successfully used on social channels to engage with an email list.

It's much easier to build an engaging newsletter, even in a niche you know little about, than before. With tools like buzz sumo etc anyone can do it.

Find and curate the most interesting articles in your niche, email them daily or weekly. Segment your list based on behavior and observed interests and make targeted offers. Your goal is to bring Facebook's level of targeting to you email lists. Obviously not possible, but you get my point

The pro is that to an extent, you now own and have control over a bigger base of the "variables" that cause affiliates the most grief, and you are not building on someone's platform. You still have to rely on an esp, but with your list backed daily, you can work with almost any esp.

You also open up a ton of monetization options that are not possible without an email, many of them recurring so it builds up the LTV of every person you capture.

When you know these numbers and optimize them, you can start to profitability bid higher than most affiliates and still make way more money.

Long term, it's also something you can sell for a substantial amount of money.

Ps: here's an example of what's possible when you have an email list. We are able to set and monetize cookies tied to email addresses of newsletter/list subscribers. These are then purchased by bigger brands for retargeting purposes. So even clicks from an email newsletter, to articles on sites you don't own, get monetized in the background on a CPM basis.

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I'm going to play devil's advocate here...

Monetizers have been around for years and still newbie affiliates have been coming through starting from scratch and smashing it. If things were easy as throwing tons of money at the Monetizers for 24 hours to profit, then would be an AMAZING opportunity for newbie affiliates.

Monetizers only work for super cheap broad traffic. As an affiliate if you target premium traffic, or target small niches with matching niche campaigns then you will beat Monetizers any day.

Once again nothing new here. They have been around since the beginning of the internet era, just in different forms.

The only time it was easy for newbies to run campaigns on FB and Google was when the ad platforms first launched. Since then it's mostly been seasoned affiliates adapting with each move FB & Google have made.

I don't mean to target you Attila! And I understand this thread was created to get some annoyances off everyone's chest.

I guess that ties in my gripe with affiliate marketing.

In affiliate marketing one of my gripes is people complaining. Complaining about things being harder, things being more challenging, a sense of entitlement, whilst they are working their own hours from their luxury homes and apartments, after amazing luxury holidays, etc etc.

For everyone reading this feeling disheartened, thinking affiliate world is collapsing...

It's not.

It's changing. It's always been changing. It's evolving.

Overall there is HUGE growth in this industry. The big companies in the space now are absolutely MURDERING the numbers big companies did 8 years ago.

Opportunity is everywhere, even for small affiliates, just in different forms.

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Mine is since facebook flagged my ad account i got lost and found it hard to get into mobile or pops traffic sources coz fb was pretty much the only thing i was good at

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I've been around since 2003.

I'm seeing a HUGE shift in the market that's driven by 3 things...

1. The offline budgets are moving online and driving up CPM's for quality sources.
2. The agencies & brands are starting to "get it".
3. Compliance gets more stringent and is only going to get tougher when Hillary gets elected (my opinion)

We were split testing, click baiting, optimizing for the last 10+ years. There was little competition, that's not longer the case. Agents are figuring out what we're doing that gives us our competitive advantage. I'd say 60-70% of my strategies I've been using for 10+ years are now becoming mainstream. Through tools, services, etc.

My prediction is the WH affiliate world will continue to get smaller and smaller. The BH shady stuff will always exist as scams are scams. As AI gets better and legit sources get smart they'll figure out how to remove this, if they want to. Not like sweeps or nutra are ever going to go legit. They operate on the fringe. But the sources will figure out how to charge you a lot and deliver you shit traffic... and what are you going to do about it?

My personal opinion is the future is building and running your own WH products. Using your marketing skill set and selling direct to customers is where the future is going. The tools available at this point are insane.... Clickfunnels, Unbounce, Shopify, Leadpages, etc.

What took whole dev teams now a single marketer can do. We run a setup with clickfunnels/Shopify + 3rd fulfillment center + 3rd call center much the same that we did as an affiliate. Sure it's a little bit more complicated but at the end of the day we own the customer. Can remarket to them, can sell them products in the same vertical, can call then, etc. This competitive advantage is what's going to win the market at the end of the day.

I've been in this for many years and this is the first time I've really seen the tides changing (USA at least)...

This doesn't mean this isn't the greatest time in all history to be in online marketing.

It is!

You just need to be in front of the curve. Rather then the tail end and grabbing for scraps.

I run a network and buy media as an affiliate every day. But I"m telling you the brokers will dwindle slowly over time. The margin the affiliate and network make you'll need to make your offer successful. So start building and preparing now...

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Google already has this ai. Since their biggest algo update that came karch 31st if you run nutra they somehow know and send you shitty traffic on gdn. Nevermind if you use the top 10 best placements in a geo that each sent 50k conversions.. today those placements will drain your budget at a cpa so high youll just kill the camp. Think they put shady ads etc way down the ad chain spot so your ad shows up like 20th after all the previous ads.

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^^ Which means there is more opportunity for whitehat campaigns!

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The future eh?

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They ban white hat as well, you just never know with G. It really depends on the reviewer looking at your account; how they interpret their policies. This is a fact. We had google employee create banners which she believed were adhereing to policy, she even confirmed with policy team in Dublin, then we submitted, and had it rejected by Indian office. When we emailed their policy to ask WTF when Dublin approved they said NO its not compliant. Back and forth.

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Resubmit so it goes to different reviewer in India

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Do you mind elaborating?

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My biggest gripe is compliance rules constantly changing.

Whenever I get an offer to work on a particular traffic source they ban my account for something that was perfectly compliant 2 weeks earlier.

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From a network point of view, false or scam traffic some people try to pass off as legit - or trying to run illegitimate ad banners Thankfully we have systems & great AI in place to prevent these types of fraudsters. I will also echo everyone here who's been saying that AM is much tougher that it was - esp with Google And microsoft tightening the reigns - and the industry is getting much smaller to the point that only the whales or seasoned pros can turn over a profit leaving out the newbies and semi newbies out to dry

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In general the industry is becomming more professional rather than getting harder/ dying

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In particular POF rotating ads on the same page/placement thus generating extra impressions and causing very low ctr/cvr.

In general, advertisers who pause you on offer right away without giving any feedback in terms of what is and is not working for them and helping you optimize.

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This entire thread is exploding my brain. Vernor Vinge just jumped from my SF list to my business list.

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