I caught this story on MSN Money and wanted to share a few thoughts on it. For awhile now, anyone familiar with AOL in the Performance Marketing Space has known that something like this was coming. From all of the reps I’ve personally talked to over the last year, it seems it was inevitable. AOL has been wanting and expecting to cut 2,300 workers from its staff but as reported, only 1,100 volunteered to be bought out.
With only 1,100 accepting buyouts, AOL now looks to cut another 1,200 to reach it’s goal. The cuts are supposed to start tomorrow.
Pretty crazy at a time like this that a company of AOL’s size is now slimming it’s numbers to less than a quarter of its workers of 2004. Currently with a cut of 2,300 AOL will trim nearly a third of its entire workforce.
RUCK’s TIP – Get rid of your crappy, outsourced work-force who cant speak English. I hate to sound biased but one of the major complaints of AOL has ALWAYS been the majority of English speaking consumers/customers trying to speak to someone who doesnt understand you.
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Before we dive head first into this post, I would like everyone to know that what you read from here will likely be the ONLY source of publication for a topic of this nature (unless of course you catch the wickedfire forum thread). (Thanks go out to Mike and Gennadiy for real info). As we all know, and as I have preached for a long time in this industry, we have a lot of…how do I say this politely?….Absolute ball-less people in this industry. Since we all know and understand that I have pair, and I’m probably the most “professional” person you will ever meet, allow me to enlighten you on the events that happened and really put a kink in a lot of businesses today on the interwebz in the cpa industry.
First off – With my Twitter posts, Facebook posts, and my captivating forum posts around the web, I’m not going to ask, I’m going to tell you to STOP ASKING ME IF REBILLS ARE DYING. Ok? I’m not a genie, I dont have a crystal ball. What I have is my brain, my eyes and my ears which are ALWAYS open and looking for information. I give the information as it comes to me and asking such a question is just begging for speculation and if I were one to speculate well then…that makes me the biggest asshole in the world if I were wrong correct?
Moving along…
Ok so a lot of rebill offers went down today. What we have here is a miscommunication of “why” they went down and more importantly we have a ton of “speculation” on events that have not even occured yet. Speculation is a real bitch in this business. Trust me on this one. People talk all day online behind a computer screen and they hear and read all sorts of shit and then they go running their mouth as if they had the slightest clue as to what’s really going on when in fact they have received all the pertinent information to complete the story.
Anyway…
What happened to the rebill offers that went down today? One of the largest issues (and I say largest because this is the one that directly affected most of the offers I know of today) is that Meritus Payment Solutions is one of payment solutions used by quite a few advertisers in this space. Now the blame doesnt go to Meritus because their Registered ISO/MSP is Wells Fargo Bank. Wells Fargo Bank has bailed from rebills/continuity/negative option billing (or whatever else name you want to come up for it).
What does this mean? This means we had some advertisers heavily relying on Meritus and now business is in chaos BUT……..business always resumes for the ones who have their stuff organized. There are literally a ton of merchant options out there people. Much like the explosion of CPA Networks this year, there has been an explosion of advertisers in this space. A lot of them who are complete retards and want to make the quick buck and dont plan their businesses in a smart and strategic manner.
As a publisher if you relied on Google Adwords for 100% of your traffic and woke up one morning to see that you have been banned, do you pack up shop and quit or do you suck it up and find other options?
Enjoy that analogy because that’s what it’s like for the advertisers today who were relying heavily on just one merchant service. Things change, people adapt and smart businesses find a way to succceed.
So the death of rebills is NOT upon us currently. There are still a multitude of options as a cpa marketer out there to promote and their will continue to be more options coming in the future. We are an industry in it’s infancy and nobody likes “baby killers”, they like to see the child grow. So stop jerking around and get back to business.
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Convert2Media wishes each and everyone of our friends to have a safe Halloween weekend!
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The following post is an unsolicited preview of the ubot tool. I dont do paid reviews or any of that crap but I will recommend a cool tool publishers when I trust the creators. I know a Co-Owner of the tool who also participates as a Moderator in a forum I am a member of. There are no affiliate links contained in this post but C2M Publishers can get $50.00 off with coupon “c2m199″ at this link.
For a much more detailed review, check out Barman’s uBot review. He also has a ubot coupon available so if you are a generous marketer feel free to give him the commission.
I could sit here and write all day on what a tool like this could do for you but I think they sum it up real nice in the video below:
To see a little bit of it in action check out Barman’s post on the Quantcast Affinity Scraper. Some of the other things Ubot can do are:
- let’s you create nearly any bot without any programming knowledge
- Point and click interface for the novice users
- allows you to build your own bots which could be sold as your “very own”.
- Lifetime License
- 3 full years of updates and support
Speaking of support, it’s going to be top notch from these guys. Already they have a ubot blog, ubot forum and ubot tutorials online.
Check it out and use coupon “c2m199″ or read Barman’s much more indepth uBot review.
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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.
