Swollen Pickles

A bad affiliate program is one that does everything in its power to make you feel like you've just paid a visit to an alcoholic, sausage fingered, proctologist.

In the good old days Commission Junction were quite good to me. I was doing reasonably well with them, largely on the back of their relationship with eBay. A couple of years ago, if you wanted to earn commission from eBay referrals, your only option was to go through Commission Junction.

While Commission Junction have a large number of partners, 99.9% of my revenue with them was generated via eBay. When eBay decided it was time to fly solo, and started there own publisher program, 99.9% of the money I would have made through Commission Junction was made via eBay directly instead. So, since eBay flew the Commission Junction coup, my Commission Junction earnings have been sporadic at best. Currently I'm only partnered with Musicians Friend, which generally offers high involvement, high value, products for sale. My last commission probably occurred earlier this year, and since then it's been quiet.

Last month I logged into my dashboard and noticed that my account balance had dropped from the previous month, and the month before that. Four months ago I had $47 in my account. Today I'm down to $7. Why? Here's what I found buried in the Contact Us >> Check FAQs section of the Commission Junction site.

If your account was charged a $10 fee it is because you have not generated any commissionable transactions for a six-month period. Publishers that have less than $10 in their account or a zero balance after six-months of activity automatically have their accounts deactivated. Because publishers can sign-up for a Commission Junction account for no charge, our system carries thousands of accounts that are either duplicates or never generate any activity. This makes it necessary to remove those accounts from the system so that it can work more efficiently for publishers and advertisers that are generating revenue.

So each month I'm being charged $10 for what exactly? Extra support? Help in turning around my poor performance? I'm not sure. All I do know is that I never received any correspondence from Commission Junction to tell me they were siphoning my account. Maybe it's there way of coping with the financial crisis? Whatever it is, it leaves me less than impressed.

Now, I may not be a big user of Commission Junction at the moment, but that is not to say I wont find something I want to promote in the future. With that said though, Commission Junction make it very difficult for me to want to continue on with them in the future. If I don't generate a commission this month, my account will finally reach zero, which will see my account deactivated. Surely I can do something to avoid deactivation? Lets check their FAQs some more...

How can I prevent my account from being closed for non-activity?

Commission Junction deactivates accounts for lack of performance (dormant account policy) if they have not generated any commissionable transactions for six consecutive months. To prevent your account from being deactivated, you can make a purchase from one of your advertisers to generate a commission.

So to avoid deactivation I should generate leads... from myself? Doesn't sound 100% kosher, and there's probably sub-clauses in the individual agreements you enter into with the actual advertisers that could end up seeing you booted from their programs?

Commission Junction is one of the larger affiliate programs around, which is why I guess they figure they can get away with such a dick move. For the big publishers I'm sure none of this really matters, but perhaps Commission Junction should consider that big publishers all need to start somewhere. By raising the middle finger to the minnows of today, they may pissing off the killer whales of tomorrow.

I've made a bit of cash from ClickBooth, and they have a butt load of pay per lead offers which seem to convert quite well. So today, I logged into my Clickbooth account and searched for all offers available that were also happy to take Australian traffic. A long list was generated. Too long for me to look through, because I was feeling lazy, as is my right. So I decided to sort the list of offers by conversion rate to look at those programs that converted at the highest rate.

This is when things got a little weird. Somehow this offer (see banner below) appeared in the list, even though it's marked as UK only.

The strange thing is the conversion rate, which is listed as 110%!!

How is that even possible? A conversion rate of 100% is theoretically possible, although extremely unlikely, but how can you end up with a conversion rate of more than 100%? Maybe I'm missing something?

Anyway, if you want access to affiliate programs that can convert at 110% then join ClickBooth right now! If I can convert at 110% it won't be long before I'm driving around in my Aston Martin James Bond car.

Here's one for all the Aussies. It can be a pain in the butt trying to find affiliate programs that are ok with Australian traffic. It's even harder to find those that offer the good stuff.

Commission Monster have taken on Windows Live Hotmail with Hotmail currently paying $0.30 per Australian click.

If you get a lot of Australian traffic, this could be a nice option for you. It takes about 20 seconds to register with Commission Monster, and once you're in, find the Hotmail offer, and grab the banner code. Whack it up on your site and you are good to go. Simple. Easy.

The banner ads themselves aren't too bad looking either. Here's an example of one of the 300 x 250 banner ads.

Once users click on the banner ad, they are taken to a groovy looking landing page.

Monetize your traffic with Commission Monster`s affiliate network

Turn on the TV and you’ll be lucky if you don’t see a story on the big Global Financial Crisis. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that there are a lot of people out there interested in what is happening globally, and how the financial crisis is directly going to affect them. A quick review of Google Trends shows that the number of people searching for information relating to the ‘financial crisis’ or ‘global financial crisis’ has increased dramatically in the last month.

So, we know this crisis stuff is big news, but how can you turn the global financial crisis business to your advantage? Here are some simple steps you can use to turn the financial crisis to your advantage.
(more...)

Just a heads up for any reader looking to make a quick back. I wrote about MoreNiche a few days ago, but in case you have signed up yet, now is the time to do it. Currently, when you join you will automatically be awarded with a $15 sign up bonus. You then earn a further $30 for learning about online marketing via their unique Cash Activated Bonus System which is designed to motivate you and to provide you with starting capital to promote their merchants.

Go join MoreNiche now!... please

For what it's worth, here's a screen shot of the money I've made via MoreNiche having done nothing more than registering (that took all of 20 seconds), logging into their forum and reading some of their 'how to' guides (which are actually worth reading I might add).

So there you have it, that's $25 I didn't have a week ago.

Code4Gold.com is one of the webmaster forums I stop in on every now and then. Today Dave, who looks after the Best Affiliate Programs blog, posted a number of questions regarding the ClickBooth network.

It seems to me that affiliates are so polarized and partisan on this program that they forget to include any details for those of us who are not affiliate yet.

Seeing as though no one seemed to have any answers for him, I thought I'd have a go at answering his questions. Please note, that these answers are largely based on my own opinion, with some help from the ClickBooth FAQs.

What type of advertisers does ClickBooth have? Are they general audience or adult related?

The mix of advertisers that ClickBooth has is similar to competitors such as Commission Junction and the Pepperjam Network, although the volume of advertisers is not as high as either of those two. (more...)

If you haven't signed up to the Pepperjam Network yet you better hurry up and do so if you want to take advantage of $10 new affiliate sign on bonus. The $10 bonus is only available up until the end of July so you still have just under a week to apply to the network.

Why should you sign up? Besides the fact that the Pepperjam Network is one of the more promising and fastest growing new affiliate programs, there's ten bucks in it for you.

Join Pepperjam Network and Receive a $10 Sign On Bonus