Affiliate Run Affiliate Networks

13 October
11 Comments
by nickycakes

Affiliates who have been in the game for a while start to recognize other big areas of opportunity for making money.  The two biggest areas to branch out to, obviously, are running your own network, and being a merchant.  Experienced affiliates fit perfectly into running an affiliate network generally because they already know firsthand what affiliates need to get started and they know how to promote the offers well (hopefully).

Directtrack or other affiliate network tracking software does require some money to get started, but after that, it’s relatively cheap to keep a network going, overhead wise, so once the initial costs are covered, it can be extremely profitable, assuming you can attract enough affiliates to run traffic with you and keep them happy.  Also, having your own network gives you payout leverage when it comes to running your favorite offer.  Obviously if you’re running a network, you get a higher payout on most stuff than the affiliates do.  Even a $1 increase in payout can mean a lot more profit if you’re doing high volume.

As an affiliate there are benefits and drawbacks to working with an affiliate run Affiliate Network.  Benefits include:

  • Experience…obviously having a seasoned affililate as your AM would be better than a random straight out of undergrad.
  • Better offers..someone with experience is more likely to pick the offers that are known to pay on time and convert well.
  • Better benefits…affiliates know what affiliates want to see as perks having stuff like in house landing page design and good affiliate tools is likely.

Possible drawbacks:

  • Shadiness… lets face it, most affiliates are shady.  It’s important to trust the person giving you paychecks.
  • Financial stability… a big company with tons of money is more trustworthy in terms of getting paid and staying in business than an affiliate who’s funding their network with their personal money stash.
  • Privacy… this obviously doesn’t only apply to affiliates who run their own networks, but you automatically know that the owner of the network runs their own campaigns and can benefit from knowing your campaign data.  This can happen anywhere though.

Good Affiliate Run Networks

A few of these have emerged recently, and two stand out in Nickycakes’ eyes:

Ordinarily, Nickycakes will never promote a product or service that he’s never actually used before, and in the case of affiliate networks, definately won’t promote a network he’s never gotten a check from before, but this is the exception to the rule.  Recently, this network was started by Ruck, formerly of CashTactics.  Most of the readers here will probably remember when Ruck ran CashTactics and it was actually good.  Recently, though, he gave away the blog to focus on Convert 2 Media, his new affiliate network.  Ruck is full of good info, and Nickycakes is sure his team is just as good.  In fact, at ASE this year, Ruck hooked Nicky up with some inside info that helped him make a good amount of extra profit, so it’s worth signing up and checking out his offers at least.  Ruck’s a good guy and well trusted in the industry, and you’re sure to be getting more help from his team than the normal cookie cutter affiliate network worthless weekly “top offers” emails.  Sign Up Here

It’s almost silly to even mention Ads4Dough on this blog, as 90% of the readers have probably already signed up.  A4D is run by the infamous Smaxor (Jason), well known on Wickedfire forums and his blog where he regularly helps people with coding, blackhat seo, ppc, and other fun.  Jason bought ads4dough from it’s former owners (good guys, btw, one of whom is Rick, now an AM at copeac) originally as a way to get better payouts for the offers he was already running, as well as a good way to see how directtrack works.  He ended up seeing enough potential to develop out the thing and hire some affiliate managers, etc.

There are several remarkable things about A4D.  First, Jason is extremely honest with everyone.  He’ll tell you exactly how much he’s making per lead on an offer, and how much he’s willing to pay you.  The lead volume and EPC stats are clearly shown for each offer so you don’t have to pry the info from the icy gasp of your AM.  If there’s an offer you’re currently running elsewhere, you can pretty much just ask Jason and he’ll try to get it on the network for you if he can, and give you a better payout.  Want help with your landing page?  Want to actually know how to properly run a PPC campaign?  Want real advice on what’s actually making people thousands of dollars profit per day instead of “OMG WE JUST GOT A NEW BLOCKBUSTER ONLINE OFFER LOL!”  Then these are the guys for you.  Even if Jason weren’t a good personal friend, Nickycakes would still recommend the hell out of his network.  Really good guys, for real.  Sign up here

Keep it real.

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