I’m going to share a little story with you today.
So maybe a week ago I had really been playing around with some new ppc campaigns. I generally go out there and throw up a bunch of really targeted campaigns so there isn’t really much risk and then when any of those campaigns show conversions than I really drill into them and optimize. If things still look really great then is when I blow it up and try to expand as much as possible.
Anyways, out of those new campaigns I threw up, one of them did exceptionally well off the bat. Couple hundred profit first day with the test campaign? NICE. I went in and optimized it and let it sit for a few days, things jumped up to $400+ profit a day.
Now back to today, I jumped online to finish up my “blow it up” phase and was greeted by my affiliate manager with this:
Affiliate Manager:
Hey Trevor
Me:
hey man
Affiliate Manager:
no bidding on “*****”
Advertiser is bitching
Me:
serious?
is that new or something
Affiliate Manager:
hang tight one sec
Me:
i guess i didn’t see it anywhere at all on the offer restrictions and it said search-ppc is allowed
so i didn’t really have a way of knowing it wasn’t allowed
Affiliate Manager:
It was not listed
hang tight
Me:
sure
Affiliate Manager:
Crazy when advertisers come yelling then realize it was thier fault to begin with. I am talking to them now. Please give me a few
Me:
no prob buddy
im just thankful you deal with them for me
and i dont have to
Affiliate Manager:
hahha
all good
Affiliate Manager:
So, they realized that they were wrong. The campaign will be updated shortly. I Am going to email you the restrictions now. Can you look and let me know if you think you can still do well with the campaign despite the new restrictions?
Me:
i can maybe bring a few in but i had really drilled into longtail terms with ***** terms
Affiliate Manager:
I guess their internal search guys are crying right now
Me:
lol
dude i would kill them if they were going against me
my ctrs were at like 60%+
Affiliate Manager:
I know you would …ahahha
Me:
well damn there goes that gravy train….is seo still open?
Affiliate Manager:
yes. Let me get you the restrictions
So I took a look at the new restrictions they made. I won’t list all of them that they added but here are just a few in the list:
- You can not mask ***** URL’s with a different URL.
- You can not use ***** trademarks, brand names, web addresses, or any variation thereof in the display URL.
- You can not use direct linking.
- You can not utilize blog sites, review sites, “pre-sell” or other similar web pages.
- You can not use the registered trademark symbol.
OK first of all, you can’t direct link, you can’t load the site/link using an iframe(masking), and you can’t utilize blog sites or other similar web pages? WTF??? You basically eliminated anyone from being able to promote your stuff in any way using a webpage.
The really funny thing is that they also added a bunch of restrictions specifically related to my ad that I was doing…and now THEY are doing it. One example of what I was doing and they were not was using the registered trademark symbol in my ad. There were many more restrictions referring to my ads being used too, that wasn’t the only one. I love how they went from NO restrictions on the offer, to restrictions up the arse like this.
Anyways, the point of my post isn’t to bitch and moan, this kind of stuff happens in the industry…we have to just get used to it.
What I just don’t get is….why are these companies hiring internal search guys? They are paying these guys to go take their product to the cpa networks and bid on their own trademark terms? Why not cut out the internal search guy, take your product right to the network with no restrictions? This way your saving money by not hiring an internal search team PLUS your going to have affiliates who will get WAYYY better results than the internal search people who have no motivation to really rock things like most affiliates do. If your internal search team is only pulling like 5% or 10% or even 20% or 30% of the clicks in, and you can have an affiliate bring in 60% or more of the clicks….that is SOOO many more potential sales/leads to be made that you aren’t getting or even aware of.
I would love to hear YOUR opinion on the matter….or any advertiser horror stories you may have had in the past. Comment away!
That’s sucks. Most of those advertisers don’t know shits about the potential of affiliates.
Good post – surely there is some middle management person mucking it up for the company to protect their own mediocrity. If the top guys knew how easily affiliates can blow their folks out of the water, the search team would be out of a job. Hopefully your words here don’t fall on deaf ears.
Great info. Been reading several of your posts now. How did you learn all this stuff at such a young age? I’m almost 40 and I’ve spent the past 6 years trying to learn all this on my own. Can you give me some pointers on where I can get educated more quickly about Internet marketing? I can’t wait any longer. 🙂
You could always find out the sites/landers the merchant is using, mess with them a little, knock them down to the point they’re only great option is to let you rock and roll with your old strategy!
Why don’t these avertisers just put a big disclaimer on their offer that says ‘WE COMPETE WITH OUR AFFILIATES”
btw, if your using long tail keywords that they are prolly not bidding on anyway, why would they put up a fuss, thats why they are part of the network, so people smarter than themselves can do the work deep work…. ugggggg sometimes i think this industry is more confusing than the femaile temperamant.
ohh and, your AM said “no bidding on “*****” Advertiser is bitching” …….. dont the search engines stop people from bidding on curse words anyway??? hahaha just playin. Keep these post’s comin man!!!
Seems like they are in their optimizing phase. Optimization consists of “See what the affiliates do to make a bunch of money off us, restrict said practices, implement them ourselves.” Seems you made a fool of the PPC “consultants” they hired, the only way to compete with you was to take away your best tools.
didn’t u cloak kws and traffic sources?
@amy Yes, but that doesn’t always matter. If you have an ad in ppc and they go search for keywords they think you may be using, they can still see your ad and where it goes to.
Advertisers use us affiliates as test rats! They watch to see what we do and then smash us with a bat once they understand whats making money. They waste time and money doing the run around from the beginning. If they’re so proud of their offer they should hire heavy hitters from the beginning to capitalize, without opening it up to us and then ripping it away…eff those ninjas…just my experience….
You might already be doing this, but for PPC, just exclude the state that the merchant is located in. Alot of the internal guys are too ignorant to use the adpreview tool.
Who was the advertiser?
Boycott their product!
or …
Simply switch to a competing offer! Ha!
Why do they even bother to use affiliates if they resent paying compensation for our efforts?