I’m 3 minutes away from a Saturday but it wouldnt be right without a typical fraud Friday post. This is starting to turn into a bit of work. So far I’ve been invited to two podcasts and 2 speaking sessions covering fraud in the affiliate industry. Who said running your mouth wasnt a good thing?

Affiliate Managers - reading the blog, pay real close attention because I’m only going to explain this once. As a manager it’s pretty damn easy to get that lead report from an advertiser who is claiming fraudulent credit cards and just terminate the affiliate so this educational post may or may not be of any use to you. However, should you read it and comprehend what I am going to say, you may be able to stop these types of publishers BEFORE too much damage is done and costing you a relationship with an advertiser.

Advertisers -  Some of you are experienced, some of you are not and some of you are aspiring to run your own offer. Pay attention because when you start messing with your filters on processing their are most likely going to be options for you to use to keep a lot of this out yourself.

Continue reading " The Dreaded Fraudulent Gift Cards "

The other day I saw over a dozen blogs reporting that the FTC would be fining a possible $11,000 per violation of their new endorsement and testimonial rules which was targeted towards bloggers. Some say affiliates as well, but yet again, that is matter of opinion which I doubt any marketer online has solid proof of.  When I saw these posts I cleaned up my google reader REALLY quick. Posts like that from a marketer may seem harmless, but to someone who has actually dealt with the FTC on certain issues found myself laughing when I read this at the sheer speculation set forth by marketers. I already knew there was more to the story than that and generally when the FTC publishes it’s used as a scare tactic with important information missing or being misread.

Anyway, to squash all this bullshit, here you go -> $11,000 Blogger Fine Not True

Thanks go to Linda from 5 Star Affiliate Blog because when she blogs she doesnt just put it out there without following through with the entire story. You can read her full post here.

Continue reading " FTC: $11,000 Fine For Bloggers Is False "

We are launching another contest today with the new Smoke Challenge. This contest runs from today (Oct.7th - Oct. 31st). Details of the contest can be found here. We are doing a 2 part contest on this one. This contest is for Smoke Assist and Smart Smoker. Here the prizes:

1. Details - Any publisher who generates 100 leads to either offer or a combination of both offers will receive $250 Cash or a Visa Gift Card Equivalent.
2. Grand Prizes - The top 3 revenue producing publishers will receive one of the following:

• Breitling Super Avenger Aviation Chronograph Watch
• Bose Lifestyle 48 Series DVD Home Entertainment System
• Alienware Aurora ALX

Disclaimer: In order to qualify for one or any of the grand prizes the top publishers must producea minimum of 1,000 sales from either of the offers or a combination of them.

Be sure to read the offer descriptions on both of these offers. They have a strong brand and dont allow PPC traffic nor trademark/url bidding or PPV traffic. These campaigns accept Email, Social, SEO and Banner traffic. Fire up the media buys! These offers accept traffic from the US and Canada but do not allow traffic from Michigan and Utah.

Check out the contest details -> here.

Continue reading " C2M Announces The Smoke Challenge "

A very rare and exciting offer has hit the C2M network and we are happy to have the exclusive on it! Not very often does an offer come for MARKETERS and more importantly one that can speed the process of landing page creation and optimization. The WFReview 3.0 Review Plugin For Wordpress does just that! This offer is owned, operated and supported by a Convert2Media Publisher as well.

Bloggers, this is a unique opportunity to promote an offer any marketer will be interested in. This offer pays out a whopping $33 and is located in the cost per sale/branded trials category of your affiliate interface.

A quick synopsis on what the WFReview 3.0 Plugin uses:

• Creates Affiliate Review Sites
• National Directories
• Imports Posts Extremely Easy
• Reviews Blog Posts
• Reviews Directories

This is not a product lacking in support. The WFReview 3.0 team also has a support forum to help you with anything you need help on as well as Tutorial Videos coming soon. As an affiliate you will need to signup with us. We are handling the affiliate program and distribution for WFReview 3.0.

As a blogger or email newsletter owner this is great news for you. The first time around this product was a huge hit and very popular product among Affiliate Marketers. This time, support is top notch and the previous owner has taken back his product to make it even better. You can be the first to promote this offer today by signing up and doing a blog post, newsletter mail out or RSS Feed.

Continue reading " C2M Launches WFReview 3.0 Review Plugin For Wordpress "

I’m really going to hold back and not get to personal with the Traffic Needs Affiliate Network. If you dont already know, they have gone out of business. There really is no need to link to them considering overnight they took their website down. This is one group of people you will want to stay far away from in the future. As a network they failed often times with affiliates awaiting payments for months and just recently they screwed over a ton of networks and publishers by not paying them accordingly.

The lesson to learn is that even C2M had trouble getting payment on time. Unfortunately for them, (an excuse the unprofessionalism), Traffic Needs is filled with a bunch of no-face pussies. I look forward to meeting any of one from that sorry excuse for an ex-company at any event. As a matter of fact, I’m begging for it.

Personal hate aside…

Traffic Needs recently had a couple of offers that converted exceptionally well. First let me start out by saying that the reason they converted well is that they had Domestic Processing on their backends. Anyone that is familiar with domestic processing on the backend already knows that you have to be one of two things to make this work and not get your merchant accounts shut down.

1. Extremely awesome on the backend for support to keep chargebacks down below the ratio threshold.
2. Extremely shady and changing up offers before the chargebacks hit.

Continue reading " Traffic Needs Failure Teaches Affiliates A Critical Lesson "