Affiliate Marketing Tycoon

**Artashes** · 01:39 PM

Greetings Webmasters!

I'm a new member to this forum, so if I'm doing something that is not right, let me know.

The question that bothers me most when talking about advertising network affiliates is: have you ever suspected them cheating?

I've been using a few advertising networks and they all seem to cheat pretty bad!!

My worst experience was FocusIn.com. Now I use FastClick.com, they seemed impressive in the beginning, but now I have doubts again whether they lower the payout rate or if they count all banner impressions.

It seems like the more impressions you generate, the less your earnings are. My question to you is: AM I THE ONLY ONE or have you ever had something like this as well?

Warm Regards,

**TimSchroeder** · 04-23-2002, 09:05 PM

Hi Artashes, it's great to have you with us!

To answer your question, NO, you are not alone.

I have two particularily bad experiences.

The first was when one ad network went down (websitesponsors I think) and I was never paid because of this.

I also reached the minimum with FocusIn (I used them on a game site). The company was sold to new ownership and the new company does not want to pay the old companies bad debts.

The new ownership of FocusIn is supposed to be better but I still would only use them as a last resort.

I highly recommend FastClick though if your lucky enough to get in. I have been paid from them.

Unless you have a fairly high traffic site (I'm not talking to you in particular), I wouldnt try one of those anyway (you probably would not get accepted anyway).

I guess I could say to try CJ, but I am not happy with them anymore.

I can recommend trying affiliatefuel, fineclicks, and Focalex though (because they have work for me and trusted ownership). I have a separate forum for each of those.

Anyway, Welcome Aboard Artashes!

**Artashes** · 04-23-2002, 09:56 PM

Thank you for welcoming me.

Yes, I am at FastClick.com (got accepted pretty fast though)... The best day I had with them was $1.42. But the daily average is $.60-.70. I have 2000 uniques a day and growing.

The truth is: I had higher rates in the very beginning - now with all the traffic I get i tend to receive lower and lower payouts... who knows?..

Anyhow, thanks to my hosting company with affordable pricing, I can just cover the hosting expenses with FastClick. With FocusIn I was earning the minimum - $50 for over 12 months!!!!

So, thank you for your reply. I'll keep visiting and chatting with fellow webmasters.

Best,

**Darkfire001** · 06-13-2002, 10:51 AM

Well I just started using Clickxchange and have no idea what the "heck" is going on? Signed on at CPM of $.25 and what do you know next day advertiser drops mine to $.15 then I check my stats about twice a day and sometimes I might have completed another 1000 unit but then the Advertiser "retracts" some of the impressions and I am left with a partial unit for another day. And since clickxchange has a habit of letting advertisers run dry that is not a good thing for me.

**HeidiLynn** · 06-13-2002, 01:02 PM

clickXchange is alright with me but stay far far away from ClixGalore. Rudeness and lack of professionalism always comes back to bit you..

Example:

I asked a question on getting permission to use click offers in my
newsletters since the website informed me I should ask and I was given a very short and in my opinion, rude response of just one word:
Denied.

I am sorry but in business you need to be a little more respectful of those whom you do business with and if this is the kind of respect your associates get that I no longer want to associate with you.

Please delete my account.

to which he replied
account cancelled

And then from me 2 days later:

If my account was cancelled then why am I still able
to log in and still receiving emails.

I refuse to do business with company whose customer
service is as rude to me as yours was.

I don't know who you are cybrooks but you need a good
lesson in business ettiquette.

to which he replied

cancelled

and you wanna know what the funniest part of it all is? I am still getting emails of new merchants from them

avoid that one...

**AhmedF** · 06-13-2002, 03:16 PM

A few things to note.

The more impressions you show, the more 'defaults' you generate... therefore it looks like less impressions, but its because they dont have the capacity to accomdate all your needs.

As for FocusIN .. .hehe ... I used to use them for ag aming site. Hit the $50 minimum, and then never got paid. Zaq bought them out, and then emailed us letting us know we wouldnt get paid.

I got d*** mad .... at that time, I used to run AdsWise.com, and had reviews of advertising networks ... so I emailed them, told them the massive amounts of bad press I was gonna give them, and forgot about them.

Three weeks later, my cheque of 52.17 arrived in the mail.

Threaten to taint their name, and perhaps you can get your money back too!

**TimSchroeder** · 06-13-2002, 03:52 PM

Quote:

As for FocusIN .. .hehe ... I used to use them for ag aming site. Hit the $50 minimum, and then never got paid. Zaq bought them out, and then emailed us letting us know we wouldnt get paid.

Same exact thing happened to me! But I was never paid.
FocusIn is a truly VERY LAST resort.

**Artashes** · 06-13-2002, 04:00 PM

They must not pay all their debt, but I got paid from ZAQ Interactive, the new FocusIn.com company. Its even more funny - i got the envelope too quickly like within 1 week they were bought by ZAQ. I'm guessing - they simply made a mistake paying me - they probably had other thoughts in mind...

But in general, THEY SUCK!

FastClick seems more respectful to their users - my average day is around $.60 with 2K uniques per day.

Artashes

ANYONE KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT TRIBALFUSION.COM? These guys promise t pay really a lot of money and my site got even accepted. They still write me periodically and wonder why i don't finish the sign up process, which is done by them personally. But I have this feeling about them.... i don't know.

**TimSchroeder** · 06-13-2002, 04:09 PM

I have not used tribalfusion, but I have heard good things about them in the past...

**AhmedF** · 06-14-2002, 05:14 AM

Agreed with Chief.

People are talking about great rates with TribalFusion

**Tiggy** · 06-14-2002, 05:37 PM

I've been doing a lot of log watching lately, and if your site is anything like mine - I can tell you from experience the number of real page views I get is low compared to what a stats package would report as unique page views.

A simple stats package would probably count a unique page view as a hit from a unique IP... but to anyone who wants to know the real numbers, we'll discount any from known bots or spiders - which accounts for anything up to 25% of unique page views generated.

Then there are those bots that pretend to be a real visitor by spoofing the user agent string - if an affiliate program sees bot like activity in their logs (I think I listed them somewhere at the forum before not) then they will likely discount those page views too...

This is one of the reasons why I've made an attempt to cut down on serving valid pages to site grabbers when I can identify them... not that I earn much, but I'd rather people look at the site in their own time as opposed to grab all the pages just to read those few that interest them. Why should I waste money serving pages to bots looking for email addresses or content to steal? If the person genuinely wants to read it then they will access the page as normal. Site grabbers and bots really distort the number of real page views depending on your stats program.

Anyway - why do we always have to point out the negative? I have a positive experience to share... while my earnings have gone down as a result of change in the way clicks are counted, Standard Internet were very understanding when their stats system failed and even compensated their affiliates with their average earnings for the time lost when there were major problems.