Category: Leaders

2018

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Ryan Eagle: Making Publishers Rich & Lovin’ It.

If you don’t know who Ryan Eagle is, you haven’t been paying attention. He advertises in almost every affiliate publication, website, portal, blog you name it with flashy ads that match his well known flashy personality. His CPA Network, EWA was named one of the top 10 CPA networks by affiliates.  His content Unlocking Network, BLAM ads has come out of nowhere and has become a major player in the space. As part of our ongoing look at the Content Unlocking space, we’ve decided to sit down with him and ask him the hard questions about his business, his personality and what drives him to make buttloads of money. He’s found a place in the industry, and whether you like him or not, he’s here to stay.

How long have you been involved with the industry? Can you give us a brief background on yourself?
For as long as I can remember I’ve been a computer geek, making my first gaming community in 2002. I began generating enough revenue to cover the server costs so at the time it was simply a hobby which expanded into learning SEO to gain more visitors to my community. In little time I realized the full potential of this and developed several other properties until I hit massive success in 2004 during the “easy days” of making money. I became an affiliate in 2005 and hit massive success throughout the years via media buying, social and contextual marketing. After saving capital throughout the years of success, I launched EWA Network in February 2009 and that entity of Eagle Web Assets has grown drastically since it’s inception. After researching market trends, I decided to submerge myself into content locking in Mid-2010 by launching BLAM Ads.

Love me or hate me, I’m here to make publishers rich. You can check the credentials, I’m a man of my word and I work harder than anyone I know – that’s how I’ve reached the success that I have now.

I’m the absolute best at what I do, and that’s why I’m a cocky asshole – but do not mistake that for ingratitude. I’ve been blessed with everything that I have in my life and I never take it for granted.


What can you tell us about your content unlocking business, BLAM ADS?
BLAM Ads was launched in Mid-2010 and his grown immensely since it’s inception, working actively with thousands of affiliates and webmasters. We came into an industry and applied the same values that all my other companies pride themselves on. BLAM Ads is here to outdo what has not been done, and makes webmasters more money than any other content locking network. We’ve learned a lot, made our mistakes, and I’m confident when I’m saying this: we’re unleashing some of the most advanced and innovative technology to our publishers in the next quarter that will revolutionize the industry, as we’ve done before. We make it look easy, but it’s the sleepless nights that have gotten us to where we are at now.


There have been accusations against content unlocking companies that the model is that they bounce from network to network running unauthorized offers. What are you guys doing to prevent this or to ensure the end advertiser is interested in being on your site?
In all honestly, one company gives the rest of the industry a bad name, and I need not name them because they’ve already gotten their fate set. I can confidently say that both BLAM Ads and one competitor you interviewed earlier are the two companies that actually care about merchant quality. Circumventing merchants not only is deceptive and unethical, it’s short-term and is simply a means to an end. We go to lengths to insure the success of our merchants, abide by their rules and regulations, and operate an ethical business model. If our merchants are not successful, we are not successful as a company.

We have never knowingly done this to merchant, and have always handled every compliance issue with seriousness – we are in it for the long-term and we cannot reach our larger goals by damaging relationships with merchants.


Why do you think that your company is better than your competitors?
More offers, higher payouts, faster pay-terms, stronger support, a sense of community, and superior technology – and that’s being modest. BLAM Ads has the strongest solution for content lockers, and in the coming weeks we will be unveiling a new version of our tracking technology entirely with literally hundreds of new functions that make it easier for all levels of webmasters to make more money. If we do not build, we are getting destroyed.


What do you think is the biggest challenge in the incentive based marketing industry in general? What changes would you like to see?
The biggest challenge is overcoming the old “standard” of incentive quality from years before that merchants are still scared of. When we first started EWA, the incentive industry was booming from primarily GPT websites (hard-incent). The entire industry imploded because “hard-incent” simply does not make merchants money (for the most part). Over the past couple years soft-incent and content locking emerged and because it does not offer any tangible product, the consumer is more inclined to actually follow through and generate profit for the merchant. At Eagle Web Assets, we fully understand the metrics required for our advertisers to profit – and our most successful campaigns are deals that we’ve worked hand-in-hand with the advertiser to make it profit. In fact, in several cases we’ve gotten merchants to experiment with our content locking traffic and generated them far more money than display traffic!


If I was going to ask your publishers & affiliates why they work with you over another company, what would they say?
BLAM Ads makes them more money than the competitors. Period. I’m confident that we have the most dedicated staff, most comprehensive training, and several other benefits as discussed above that are all reasons why publishers switch their traffic to BLAM Ads. I’ve made it a point to research the market and outdo every aspect that every network could offer, and I’m not happy until I outdo myself. I don’t even think that’s possible, so I have a long road ahead.



What do you think about content unlocking for mobile content?
We were the first network to release this and it’s seen a fair amount of interest and traction using it. We’ve developed an entire propriety company to focus on growing our internal distribution which will coincide directly with the release of our new technology.


Do you think brands could benefit from content unlocking? If you could pitch Bose Radio to work with your company, what would you tell them?
Brands are profiting from incentive advertising, just look at the Zynga and their offer walls. The model is simple, BLAM Ads can deliver sales to both small and large brands products. We’ve developed technology that will allow us to work with larger brands which have already been signed on board with our company. BLAM Ads is successfully delivering millions of clicks a day and brands will profit through our service with hands-on support from our company.


You’ve made a great personal brand for yourself that has matured with time. What have you learned in the last few years, and what mistakes have you learned from?
More publicity, more infamy, more money, more problems. I’ve obtained the respect from the right people and generated a lot of haters on the way up to the top; I love them both equally. What’s important is the way I conduct business, and publishers of mine know that I’m entirely serious through direct interaction with me and my companies.


What would be the perfect offer for BlamAds?
Well, I guess one that would have a 100% conversion rate would be a perfect deal – wouldn’t it?


What does the Blam Ads team do on a daily basis that makes the job enjoyable?
Honestly, interacting with our publishers is what keeps us going. BLAM Ads has the most dedicated staff in the industry, the sales team is often up during the zombie hours of the night right along my side. I love waking up every single day and learning through my mistakes, innovating, and outdoing what has not been done. We love our publishers and seeing their success is what keeps us going.

What is your dream car?
I have all my dream cars already, I’m working towards the European Gas Mileage Jet now.

You can Review Blam Ads Here

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Content Unlocking King: Fehzan Ali is Now Big Man on Campus

 Fehzan Ali is one of the new breed of young entrepreneurs who are making a killing in the industry.  He’s the owner of AdscendMedia, one of the top content unlocking companies in the world.  He’s part of an industry that is starting to grow very fast, but is extremely misunderstood by much of the industry. I actual first met him when I criticized the entire content unlocking industry on another publication, and he quickly came to the defense of him and his competitors. He’s an interesting guy, vocal about what he believes in, which mainly is that his company is the dominant and best player in that side of the industry. Whether that’s true, time will tell but until then we have a lot to learn from this young upstart.

How long have you been in the industry?
I have been in affiliate marketing since I was 15, so late 2004! During that time, most of my focus has been on incentivized affiliate marketing. I started off with free gifts site where users were able to earn a free iPod (or similar gift) for referring 5 friends to try a product from an advertiser. It was great and we worked with major advertisers such as Netflix and Blockbuster. Adscend Media was conceptualized in August 2008 and launched in early 2009. The rest is history!

What can you tell us first about your business, what you do?
Adscend Media is a CPA affiliate network that specializes in incentivized marketing, however we also cater to a wide range of paid traffic, social, and display publishers to offer a complete monetization solution for our publishers. Within the incentivized realm, our primary focus is our cutting edge content locking tool that allows publishers to generate additional revenue from their premium content. We offer content locking tools that can be deployed and integrated within a matter of minutes or custom solutions for a tighter integration with the publishers website or project. We also work with a limited number of quality virtual currency partners.

What is content locking best used for?
A few ideas:
– conversion sites, such as doc to PDF conversion site
– indie bands/artists – musicians looking to lock their content
– ebooks
– instructional videos (e.g. guitar lessons)
– mobile application downloads and/or in-app monetization
– royalty free sound packs
– access to premium membership content
– software downloads
– software features, unlocking features for completion of a brief survey

Any movies, music, graphics, ebooks, etc. are fair game as long as the publishers own the rights to the copyrighted file or is the creator. We have many publishers who create their own content. I believe the true potential of content locking has still yet to be unlocked (ironic eh? Ha). There are many innovative uses for content locking that I have yet to be seen done.  

How do you prevent offers from being placed in your system by third parties unauthorized?
We have a dedicated campaign manager who works to hand pick offers that can be displayed on our network. We have a fairly stringent guideline that we follow to minimize instances of offers that do not provide value to the end user.

Why do you think your company is better than your competitors? What do you offer that they can’t?
We offer a versatile proprietary platform that allows us to adapt to the need of each and every publisher. We place a strong emphasis on building relationships with all of our publishers AND advertisers, regardless of size. Given our extensive experience in incentivized marketing, we also understand the full flow of the business from the advertiser to the publisher. This insight is a competitive advantage that allows us to ensure inventory with unique advertiser offer that provide higher EPCs for our users and more value for the end user. We work to make sure the advertiser is happy, the publishers are happy, and the end users are happy. In a nut shell, higher EPCs, better offers, and happier end users as a result.  Additionally, we also place a large focus on ethical marketing and compliance which allows us to gain additional advertisers.

If I was going to ask your affiliates what the best thing you offer them, what would they say?
High quality offers, higher EPCs, high quality support, and adaptability! This is what I’ve heard them tell me at least.

What do you feel is the biggest challenge in the entire incentivization industry?
Quality, quality, quality! I’ve noticed there is often a disconnect between advertisers and incent publishers. The publishers do not always understand what would constitute a profitable lead for the advertisers. To reduce this disconnect, we work to educate our publishers and advertisers about the full flow of traffic. When everyone is on the same page, many of the challenges with incentivized marketing disappear and we’re able to find a point where everyone is gaining value through incentivization. 

In general, where do you think the affiliate marketing industry could use improvement?
I think we are heading in the right direction right now, especially with the inception of the Executive Council of Performance Marketing. The ECPM includes over 100 C-level executives from within the performance marketing industry that have a strong interest in moving the industry further towards legitimacy. I think a major improvement is needed in advertiser offers that are available within the industry. There needs to be a bigger movement towards advertisers that provide strong value to the end user.

Do you feel that brands could benefit from content unlocking? If you could pitch let’s say American Airlines, what would you do?
Absolutely! I think for brands especially, there is a strong synergy to introduce content locking into their business models. Big brands are already established with a customer base so the introduction of a tightly integrated content locking solution can generate additional revenue much easier. Hmm… American Airlines is not the most ideal company I would pitch to, however I’ll give it a shot. I would recommend that American Airlines look into offering an alternative payment solution on their in-flight Wi-Fi services. For example, in addition to offering GoGo Inflight, they could offer 10-15 minutes of Wi-Fi access for passengers who complete a quick survey. This is just off the top of my head however and may be flawed if it interferes with revenues from GoGo, however there are many implementation options to reduce chances of cannibalizing revenues and actually increasing them overall, even if only incrementally.

If you could make the perfect offer for content unlocking, what would it be?
There are so many different offers that could work well with content locking. We currently work with a wide range of advertisers who drive sign ups to their newsletters, services, or even customer leads for auto insurance. With our continued and increased focus on ensuring our advertisers are happy, we have been able to deliver quality leads. The perfect offer is one that can be adapted to the content locking model and we have helped many advertisers create profitable models for everyone involved.

Do you think there is a legitimate way to use content unlocking in social media?
No doubt in my mind! For example, if there is a publisher with a large game guides website and also has a fan page or group, he/she can release premium game guides to his/her fan base via a wall post that guides them to the website and proceeds to offer the end user access to the content. Or in the case of a musician, they can release new music and share with their fan base. 

You are currently in college while running an enormously successful company, how does that work out?
I just finished my last class about 3 weeks ago actually. I’m glad to be out so I can place an even bigger focus on my career. Going to college and running a business at the same time was a great experience, it allowed me to learn about running a very effective business. I applied what I learned in class actively to my business. I didn’t sleep too much… but hey I don’t plan on sleeping too much now either. My family and friends are always wondering where I am in my head… well let’s just say I place most of my focus on my career. I was able to balance university and a business because I am very passionate about my career and what I do. I love it, it energizes me to work.

What is your dream car?
Ha! Great question considering I just purchased it this week. The Maserati Gran Turismo S is one of the most beautiful cars on the road in my opinion, I told myself in 2008 that I would work my ass off to buy it in late 2011 so here I am with the car! Well, now that I have it… my new dream car is the Audi R8, which I plan to add to my garage sometime in the next few years.

On that note, here’s a related story:

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Work Hard, Play Hard With Affillion CEO Jared Esguerra

Affillion is a major  private affiliate network.  They feature an industry-leading content locking platform, high quality email submits, and offers that are hotter than the sweaty city they are based out of – Miami, Florida. If you’ve ever visited their super slick website, then you know these cats don’t mess around. You think you’ve got what it takes to be #1? You don’t have a clue until you’ve spoken with CEO of Affillion, Jared Esguerra.

Check out my interview with Jared to find out what offers are hot right now, and he’ll tell you straight up which elements of a campaign will make you money. Oh, and if you’re wondering exactly how Affillion lives up to their slogan, “Money never sleeps and neither do we,” Jared will let you in on this not-so-dirty little secret.

But, as far as I’m concerned sleeping is for second place finishers or what most people like to call losers, so watch out CPA networks because while your sleeping, Affillion is climbing their way to the tippity top.

Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? How did you first get involved in affiliate marketing?  I was born and raised in Miami, Florida and I am half Colombian and half American. I love living and working in Miami as it’s the most diverse and ethnically mixed cities in the US and there is never a dull moment. It also provides us a great opportunity to fly affiliates down and show them a great time since there is so much to do in this city. I have been involved in affiliate marketing for over 5 years now and like most people I got involved in the industry by speaking to a friend who was making a ton of easy money at the time. Once I learned what he was doing and how he was doing it, the rest was history. In my spare time I enjoy going to the gym, practicing mixed martial arts, partying and watching movies!

Why should someone choose Affillion as their CPA network? What makes you better than the rest? At the end of the day the majority of CPA networks all have similar offers and payouts; what really sets us apart is the relationships we develop with our affiliates. If you want to be part of a CPA network that treats their publishers like family, and takes the time to really get to know you and your needs then Affillion is where you need to be.  We personally test the majority of our offers in house and use that knowledge to then take publishers campaigns to the next level.

Reputation is the most important element in the CPA world, and we live and die by ours. We have never missed a payment and strive to pay our affiliates on a weekly basis given the offers they are pushing.

Another main difference is that we are very picky on who we allow to be accepted into our network and as a result of being a smaller “boutique” CPA network, we can dedicate a huge amount of resources and time to each individual publisher and as mentioned before really build a great mutually beneficial relationship.

Affillion also now has a community and social element to it were affiliates can communicate with each other and affiliate managers via live chat and forums every day to really develop that family feel and help each other out. We also host weekly webinars on various media outlets such as PPV, POF, and Media Buying etc.

There are a lot of mentions about your content locking platform. How does this benefit affiliates? We launched our content locker in beta a short while back and affiliates went crazy over it, the amount of features we added and functionality blew away the competition. We switched tracking platforms and as a result had to rework our content locking platform but it will be back stronger then ever very soon. Once its live again affiliates will be able to monetize their original website content and make money from it regardless of which country they are in.

What traffic sources prove to be most effective for your affiliates? Social media and facebook  are the most effective for our affiliates at the moment. Emailing and mobile traffic come in second. Mobile traffic is exploding and affiliates need to take advantage of it before it becomes to saturated.

At the end of 2010 both Google and Bing confirmed that Twitter and Facebook signals influence search rankings. Do you think Social Media is the new SEO? I do believe that social media is impacting SEO. However I will be the first to say that SEO has never been my forte but I do believe that back linking will always have a huge impact on SERPS and social media might be a smaller part of the algorithm.

With the recent crackdown by the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) on Internet-based false and deceptive advertising, do you think enough has been done to weed out the bad guys from the good guys? How does Affillion prevent and deal with fraud? I think the impact the FTC is having is just affecting the actual marketing strategies of the big time affiliates who were making a killing back in the Acai crazes. I do not think its actually having any effect on the amount of fraud in the industry.

Every affiliate who applies to Affillion must undergo an extensive phone interview and supply a home or cell phone number, no skypes or google voices. We generally are not accepting publishers from high fraud areas, with a few exceptions here and there. Once an affiliate finishes the phone interview, we then analyze their application based on a few fraud metrics that our tracking platform provides. If approved since they are new, there traffic is monitored extensively through more fraud tools that we have. Between all those steps, we have greatly reduced the amount of fraudulent affiliates that sign up with us.

What are the most important elements of running a profitable campaign? The most important elements are making sure you are catering to the right demographics, you can lose so much money by having the wrong targeting so make sure you do a lot of research as to who your ad should be catered to. You can get very creative here and do niche targeting as well, the more niche you go the cheaper your bid prices will go and higher CTR and conversion rates.  Another extremely important element is testing, split test every thing from titles, ad copies, landing pages and pictures.

Online ad spending is said to hit $50 billion through 2015. Can you give us some insight on your business strategy for the upcoming years? We plan to just keep growing Affillion as fast and as large as we can. We will be expanding our incentive and content locking side of the business as that sector is growing in popularity as well. We will also be working to bring in more exclusive offers that will be unique to Affillion. We have some amazing plans in the works for some future projects however I cant discuss them publicly yet at the moment.

Which offers are performing well on your network? Email submits are doing great and is definitely what is hottest. Daily deal type offers are doing awesome.

What advice would you give someone first starting out in affiliate marketing? Where are the best places for newbies to learn about the industry? I always repeat my self when this question is asked because I cannot stress it enough. Spend more time DOING and not so much time READING. Obviously some basic knowledge and preparation is good but what new affiliates need to understand is that they will learn infinitely more by actually just getting their hands dirty and running some campaigns even if its at a loss. There are countless places and methods to get free advertising vouchers for Adwords, Facebook and others, so sign up for those and use them to test. Chances are you will lose the money however what you gain from the experience is priceless.

If I had to choose one source, I would def say Mrgreen’s blog. He has some great posts and on top of that he actually posts case studies and tips you can apply to your campaigns. So if you want to do a small bit of research before you start take a look at the case studies and put your own twist on them. Remember copying campaigns will only get you so far, the publishers that really bring in the big bucks are the ones that are on the cutting edge of the trends and constantly thinking out of the box, so be creative.

So you’re website says, ‘Money never sleeps and neither do we.’ That’s clear with the success you’ve had in the past year. What’s your trick? Coffee? Red Bull? Are your employees chained to their chairs? I guess we need to keep the chains tighter to the chair if word got out about that already LOL. On a serious note, I could not ask for a better team, everyone is 100% dedicated to taking Affillion to the next level and helping affiliates scale. My business partner Kenneth Metral is the best out their at bringing in new advertisers, going offer hunting when affiliates need offers, and over all affiliate management. Our approvals team is top notch and is the main reason why we have eliminated so much fraud recently. We also have one of the best Affiliate managers in the industry, Brottany Dawkins. To this day I have not met anyone that works as hard as he does to make sure publishers have everything they need to be successful. He is literally on 24/7 helping affiliates.

We want to make Affillion the #1 private network in the industry and we will not sleep until it becomes a reality.

When you’re not busy kicking ass in the affiliate marketing industry, how do you spend your time? Give us a glimpse into what your typical day looks like. A typical day mon-fri basically starts in the AM waking up, responding to emails, checking stats, chatting with affiliates and basically doing everything that goes into running a network! To fast forward through all that boring stuff I am huge into fitness and mixed martial arts so around 4 pm I will head to my local crossfit gym for my first work out of the day, then around 8 pm head to my mixed martial’s arts gym for another hour or 2 of jiu jitsu and boxing. In between those sessions is just more work and after as well. So its Affillion and Gym for me Mon- Fri! Weekends are spent enjoying Miami’s restaurant scene and nightlife.

What’s on your ipod’s playlist right now? Well you caught me at a bad time because normally I am a House head and enjoy Axwell, Kaskade and Steve angello However right now my gym playlist is on my ipod with music that would probably make you think im crazy like System of a down, breaking Benjamin, three days grace, Deftones and my favorite, the soundtrack from the new TRON movie!

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Byron Kho Unlocks Money Making

Byron Kho is the CEO of IDz Media, formerly InstantDollarz, an affiliate network and advertising solutions provider.  After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005, Byron helped build and develop IDz Media from loyalty website specialization to an affiliate network handling tens of thousands of clients.  IDz Media continues to do all development in-house, including its affiliate network software, the now ubiquitous Content Unlocker software it debuted in 2008, and exciting new products scheduled for release in late 2011.

1) Byron, tell us briefly about yourself and how you got started in this industry. Before moving into this industry, I was conducting biomedical research into neurodegenerative diseases at Penn.  While fascinating, the bureaucracy and politicization of science was very frustrating and prompted me to look at opportunities elsewhere.  Initially as a side project, my business partner and I started developing websites back in 2004 and 2005 to varying degrees of success.  We ran all kinds of content sites, including a very popular MCAT preparation site, several ringtone sites, credit card comparison sites and other such ventures.  Our first financially successful hit was a shopping cash back program that very rapidly grew in sales and volume to grab a place right behind Inbox Dollars and FatWallet for a time.  We started out as affiliates working with content we enjoyed creating and sharing, but we picked up a lot of experience on the way and realized that we could do a lot more with our talents.  We then switched business models to helping others monetize their own content and generating value for advertisers.  Currently, we operate as an affiliate network and as an advertising solutions provider for all types of clients.

2) Do you think being an Asian in this industry has hindered or helped you achieve the level of success you currently have or anticipated?I would throw age into the mix as well.  As a very young entrepreneur trying to pitch my wares to networks and advertisers way back in the day, age and race were definitely considerations I had to think about.  I assumed that everyone would take young people less seriously, and knowing some of the stigmas against Asian marketers, I felt that I also had a duty to ensure I presented myself as a serious, educated businessperson with some solid ethics.  This rather obligated me to set aside some time to review what I wanted for myself and for the company, how I thought I could get there, and then putting all of that to paper as our future plans.  In reality, I found the industry to be extremely diverse and accepting – which was exceptionally rewarding and helped let me know this was a business I wanted to be in.  Looking back, I realized that the time I spent planning was the best possible thing I could have been doing to get started properly, and get ahead.

3) What are the top 3 factors that you feel contribute to your success? First is definitely technology.  I’m the front-end designer and my partner is the back-end programmer, and together, we’ve built a whole slew of advanced products that have helped establish our little niche in this industry.  A case in point: a few years ago, we sat together in a little room for ONE WEEK and cranked out the software for our affiliate network.  Today, our affiliate network software handles tens of thousands of clients; hundreds of advertisers; tracking and adserving for millions of impressions, clicks and leads every month; robust IP filtering and fraud detection/prevention measures; and rigorous accounting and quality control management modules.  With only minor modifications and periodic upgrades to newer versions of PHP, SQL and other necessary items, our programming has stood the test of time – no major failures or technical loopholes (fingers crossed, of course).  Back in 2008, the release of our Content Unlocker software got a whole new channel of online marketing started and a whole bunch of our competitors busy replicating.  At the moment, we’re even working on a new technology that will hopefully break open a channel of its own.

Second, planning.  I find it a great idea to keep up to date on all sorts of news, from tech updates to entertainment tidbits.  Everything is of use to an affiliate marketer, and can help you figure out the Next Big Thing.  We sit down and figure out what’s working in the industry and what people want, and from there we plan what products and services we need to be offering to keep up with the times.  Same with managing content – you need short-term and long-term analyses of what will be hot, and you create and release content and marketing plans accordingly.

Third, being prudent with risk.  After being around this long, we’ve seen dozens and dozens of companies rise and fall, many of them catapulting their way to short-term fortune with poorly prepared forays into new channels and abusive marketing methods that provoke consumers, advertisers and the government to react – and react hard.  When releasing our Content Unlocker technology, we chose to ease into the markets and grow conservatively, constantly monitoring advertiser response to these new business methods and practices.  We take the time to properly introduce and acclimate our current and future clients to our new products and services, leading to more steady growth, manageable cash flow and an overall positive experience.  Six years after our founding, it’s this approach that has ensured that the issues and scandals plaguing our industry have not touched us in any significant way, and which sees us still around when many of our more wild competitors have disappeared or have garnered terrible reputations and frequent lawsuits.  Much of our aversion to risk is because it will eventually lower the value of the business: largely unethical behavior will generally make up a significant portion of that risk, and it is that kind of behavior that advertisers and the government will eventually target for punishment and over-regulation.

4) How important is it to you to communicate with your partners? Is there a particular message you are wanting to convey? Lines of communication should always be open.  To build strong healthy relationships between partners, both sides need to be convinced of what the ultimate goals are, and whether or not the other side is stable, honest and trustworthy.  The more they know about what we do, why we do what we do, who we are and the problems we face, the more likely they will be there for us when we need it – and it’s a two-way street.

5) Talk to us specifically about your experience and frustrations in dealing with people in the industry. Personally, I love learning, so hearing about or debating new advances in technology and how they can propel the industry forward is a supremely attractive proposition.  My frustration comes around when dealing with companies that are less interested in ideas and very narrowly focused on numbers, or on things that are comfortable.  We see it often: companies go stagnant, doing the same old thing year after year, and don’t adapt with the market and with new discoveries until it’s rather too late.  We’re often in the front of the room pitching new business models and technologies to clients and having to persuade them that new ways aren’t bad, that they shouldn’t play defensive and always be retreating on their marketing, and that figuring out what the “next big thing” is doesn’t include doing the same thing you’ve done for the last 5 years.  We’re a technology company, so for us it’s easy for us to have an idea in the back of our mind one day, and a working advertising platform to play around with the next; creativity is our lifeblood, and so we’re always trying to preach the religion of change.

6) What do you think is the impact of the “new” media on today’s generation? Are they leveraging it effectively and more importantly – are they leveraging it for the betterment of our industry? A lot of the time, today’s generation is creating the new media and leaving others to leverage it!  The business news section is filled with an incredible amount of innovation shown by tons of young technology and marketing firms and their subsequent acquisitions by industry behemoths, and the fact that this growth and creativity hasn’t let up and continues to attract advertiser dollars is a testament to its positive effect on the industry.  These newcomers create new technologies, leverage other technologies to create new products and services, and then incidentally create huge public demands for all these new things.  It all adds up to more methods of reaching consumers, some in more meaningful ways than the “old media” that came before it.  Even when there are speed bumps, there have always been community-minded companies and professional organizations that step up and help develop industry guidelines, best practices and even lobby for changing the legal and regulatory atmosphere to better serve society and business together.

7) Being a minority myself, there are constant stereotypes that I have to overcome, have you ever experienced this? Yes and no.  I try to combat those stereotypes before I ever have to face them, so it’s mostly preparation and a little bit of luck that has limited my exposure to any negative stereotyping.  With the reputation that certain rings of Asian “marketers” have, I have always prepared well ahead of time to defend my ethics, traffic quality and goals and beliefs in a coherent fashion.  That job gets easier and easier as time goes on, as the reputation I’ve built for my company can now speak for me.

8) What are some effective tools and products that help you keep your life organized? We use a lot of internally designed software to manage our marketing campaigns, financial accounting, quality control, etc.  We designed them to streamline, centralize and automate as many of our tasks as possible, so it ended up being more efficient, decreasing the amount of repetitive daily tasks and leaving us time for R&D, and saving us a ton of money that would have otherwise been spent on hiring out some third-party applications.  For my own life, I go simple.  The calendar on my phone keeps my schedule intact, OneNote holds my “Giant List of Stuff to Do and Look Into”, and Google Docs was the easiest way to coordinate development projects and issue tasks to my team.

9) If you had a money tree in your back yard and could purchase anything for your business tomorrow, what would it be? A few motivated and dedicated programmers are worth their weight in gold.  That’s what I’d get – you can never have too many programmers.

10) Any words of wisdom for my readers looking to get into this space? As a technology house, we are a fan of marketers who really know the mechanics of their tools.  Put your time and effort into figuring out the products and services you use.  You should always have an edge, and being intuitive and improving efficiency can always make you money – whether you’re creating your own products and software, or trying to streamline campaigns for clients, or just fiddling with landing pages and driving leads.  Knowing your stuff is always good for the sales pitch!

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Divya Patel finds her Voice

Divya Patel has taken a full turn in her career since college. Having obtained a degree in BioChemistry, she’s taken a turn to business. In the beginning it was an adventure, working as a consultant in companies where she was able to gain all sorts of experience. Going through the ‘dot com’ era, struggling through the ‘bomb’ she regained herself and put herself back in the market. What she discovered, is now booming industry. She landed in an online marketing company and started her never ending learning process, and it still hasn’t stopped, and it never will.

Passion drives her, the abundant amount of knowledge, the challenges, and seeing the results.

Divya’s also one of the founding members of Glam Interactive Group. A company which has recently had to revamp its brand, and is getting a facelift as we speak. Glam Interactive is built to be a networking forum for women in the online marketing space, consider it a LinkedIn + MySpace. Recently we have seen more women entering the affiliate space, but not many are finding the confidence to stand up in the male dominated industry. The goal is to help these women network, and eventually build their confidence to go head to head with the men in the industry. This confidence builds over time, and eventually starts to come out naturally. The network started in 2007 with 12 members and now has reached close to 1000 members.

When she’s not negotiating and crunching numbers, she’s counting out reps for ab crunches in the fitness studio. She’s a fitness instructor for Mona Khan Dance Company, banging out Bollywood filled aerobic routines.

Whether as a marketing professional or an instructor, Divya’s always looking to make a difference. Whether it be just a chat, or an intense cardio workout, the end result should be beneficial. This is her story:

Divya,  if you would be so kind, please tell us about yourself and what you are currently doing. Currently, I am working for Unbent Media, an newly developed affiliate network. I am THE Marketing Manager for the company, bringing on new advertisers and affiliates, along with representing our Agency of Record campaigns. The focus on the network is subprime financial, i.e. cash advance, payday loans, installment loans, debit cards, credit cards, etc.

How did you find yourself working in the Affiliate Marketing industry? Many, many years back I was starting a new phase in my life after going through the ‘dot com bomb’ era. I put myself back in school, and started looking for new opportunities where I was able to get my hands dirty. I started interviewing and landed a job in an online marketing agency, like any other during that time, the company focused on Mortgage and was building out Online EDU. Low and behold, I had to start reaching out and learning about the online industry. What had been labeled as ‘online marketing’ is not known as ‘affiliate marketing’.

How have you found this industry to be? Was it what you thought it to be? I didn’t know what to expect from the industry as I had entered it as it was just being born. What the industry has developed itself to be, is nothing I could have imagined. There is a constant flux of ideas, everyone pushes the limits of technology. Many companies have stuck to what works, but there is an ‘out of box’ movement going on. There are companies that are starting to look beyond the norm, and open up the online marketing space.

There are more and more women playing a significant role in this industry, what do you attribute that to and more importantly – do you think that to be the case going forward? For an industry that is very male dominated, women are starting to stand up and prove themselves. I attribute this to  their work ethics, women not only ‘sell’ they ‘do’. We’re multi taskers by nature, managing home and personal lives, children, husbands, and everything in between. The women that are playing a significant role in the industry have had the confidence to stand up and take more prominent roles. Being in the industry for over seven years, I have seen a greater number of women work their way to the top, but still feel there are many looking to find their voice.

Who was or is a major influencer for you? Hands down, Marissa Mayer, VP, Consumer Products @ Google. Her passion, enthusiasm, and dedication can be seen in everything she puts her hand on. Hired as one of the first female engineers at Google, she has quickly become a major influence to the company and to her peers. Now, I can’t compare our industry to Google. We have progressed fast and far beyond expectations years ago, but we have a lot of growth ahead of us. Marissa is a full package deal for Google, someone that I strive to be at a company one day.

What are your favorite must read industry blogs or websites (brownie points if you mention RickyAhuja.com)? Of course I am always on RickyAhuja.com. But I’m also on Adotas, Association of Marketing, LeadCritic, PaydayBrokers, Media Post, etc. Trust me I don’t get bored sitting on the computer, there is always something that I’m reading on.

Where do you see the affiliate marketing industry heading with social media in the next year? Do you think that micro blogging platforms like Twitter, Four Square and FB have the potential to change the entire landscape of presenting information to the public? This is a hard one to answer. Several years ago the affiliate space was just tapping into the search market. Companies like QuinStreet were dominating search within Mortgage. Over the years, many one man companies started emerging and started running search campaigns from their basement offices. Then emerged email marketing, which led to affiliate marketing through other traffic sources. The whole industry had to learn who their customers actually were, what made them ‘tick’ and how could we grab them with a tag line. In a sense, it was all about hitting them emotionally. Now we hit a new mode, social media. With the dominance of Facebook and Twitter we have been thrown a curve ball. It’s not just about the emotions, it’s about what do my friends think, how are they making their decisions. With social it seems to be about the influence and enticement. What’s a good deal, who is recommending who, and how can we get their attention. Customers are not reading the ads, they are reading their friends comments, posts, and opinions. Blogs are great, they have become research tools now. But Facebook and Twitter are moving at a much more rapid pace. In my opinion, this is going to be a challenge for the affiliate industry. We move fast, but can we get any faster? Or is it best to keep to what we’re doing and find a way to use these platforms as resources, and not primary tools?

You are given a free pass to Affiliate Summit, Ad Tech or Leads Con – where do you go and why? At this point in time, where I am career wise, I would go to LeadsCon. For what Unbent is doing across verticals is lead generation. I feel the audience LeadsCon attracts is more in tune with the lead generation side of business and I’m able to walk away from every meeting feeling as it was a success. There’s more forward thinking, and the panels, when we get a chance to sit in, are valuable to what we’re doing now.

If you could pick the brains of anyone – dead or alive, who would it be and why? Obama, why not? What was he thinking and what is he up to? Being such an influential speaker during his race, I want to know what runs through his mind and how, or if, he uses his words to influence decisions now. Trump, he has that ‘it’ factor. Everything he’s gone through, all that he’s doing. I want to know what makes him tick. Martha Stewart. She’s been through a lot and doesn’t cease to stop. Her sheer efforts in self improvement, confident, and still being a respected figure in the industry is utterly amazing.

What advice do you have for my female readers who are looking to get into affiliate or online marketing? Love what you do, whatever it may be.

Rusell Rockefeller

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PeerFly has few Peers.

Recently PeerFly was awarded the #2 Network in our Annual Survey of Networks. Their CEO Chad French was pretty damn happy about that, considering he only opened the doors in 2008. We decided that it was about time we sat down with him again and see what he is doing with himself, and what we can expect from his network.

We spoke to you a few months ago; you seemed really excited about the future. How does it feel that half a year later your network has blown up and you’re one of the top CPA networks in the world? It’s been an awesome experience.  When I started building the platform for PeerFly in 2008, I had no idea we’d be one of the top networks in less than 3 years time. I attribute our phenomenal growth to my team and the long hours we put in every day to make sure we’re the best we can be.  We’re never content with where we are at any given moment so we continue to push ourselves to the next level. If there isn’t a next level, we create one. We’ve done so much in 3 years… watch what we do within the next 3!

What do you think that you are offering that other CPA Networks can’t provide? I believe the advantages we have over other CPA networks are two things: creativity, and in-house development. We have a list a mile long of ideas that we want to implement into PeerFly and future assets that are not found elsewhere. We are extremely inventive and think outside of the boxes box! Myself, and two others on my team, have web-based programming backgrounds with varying levels of skill. So, when we come together and conjure up something super creative, we’re able to easily implement those ideas within our system. We’ve never relied on a 3rd party to provide value to our affiliates/clients.

Other things we provide that others don’t are several payment schedules based on revenue, several payment methods, daily payments (over a year now), over 1,300 offers in many different verticals, live chat support, a rewards program, and a lifetime 5% referral program.

As you know, fraud is a serious issue. What is PeerFly doing to combat fraud? What types of fraud are you seeing personally? We have been described as one of the most strict and rigorous in terms of fraud and compliance. To begin, our compliance department is composed of two different segments: approvals and traffic. Among other things, all applicants have to verify their phone number using our pin verification system as well as upload a government issued photo ID. If verification passes, they still have to pass another additional 20+ internal points of assessment.  If an applicant is approved and becomes an affiliate, our dedicated traffic manager audits their traffic closely and works proactively with our clients to ensure quality is where it needs to be.

We don’t really see “fraud” like we used to when we first started. Rather, we see non-compliant traffic. IE; traffic that may be legitimate but is not an accepted method or type as described on the offer page. Some affiliates just don’t know how to follow directions. However, most of the time we’re able to catch it before it becomes an issue and steer that publisher in the right direction.

We’ve talked about those networks that don’t pay their bills. What is your philosophy about this? Paying our affiliates on time is something else that sets us apart as well. It shouldn’t even be an advantage because that’s CPA network predicate 101! But, unfortunately for this industry, it is. For the first two years we were in business, we had an extremely low overhead that allowed us to save, save, save. It wasn’t until the beginning of this year that we actually got an office. Even with the office, only a couple of us work there – one being part time. We have had no investors and we’ve bootstrapped everything. Our savings has allowed us to continue to pay everyone on time even when our clients are several weeks or months late on their payment. We’ve been fortunate enough to float money without issues and I attribute that to our non-flashy, low budget, saving mentality style.

For networks that have trouble keeping up with payments and are starting to build a reputation of bad payment issues, you need to step back and reassess what you are doing in this business. The #1 priority we’ve had since day one is paying people what they earned, on time. We will make sure our affiliates are paid on time before our own pockets are paid on time. With the power of the Internet, it’s super easy for a handful of affiliates to take your business down because of your bad financial decisions. I’ve seen it time and time again. Always make sure your output is never more than your input or else you will see failure.

What do you think the biggest mistakes most affiliates are making right now? Giving up. Unfortunately, a lot of people equate this industry with a “get-rich-quick” scheme. They get into it looking to make an easy dollar and then give up when they discover it’s a lot harder than they perceived. I believe there is nothing “hard” about this business. You just have to know what you are doing so you can formulate a strategy. The only thing that separates new affiliates from super affiliates is information. That’s it. You don’t need to have any money, special talent, skills, or degrees. We have affiliates who make $20k a day and it’s not because of their good looks! They understand how to take an offer, formulate an action plan and know whom to target.

Are you offering training for affiliates? Why or why not? What specifically? We’re currently developing a whole new interface and website layout. With the launch of the new design we will also be introducing a “Training & Resource Center” which will focus on providing the information our affiliates need to succeed.  We want to start doing live Q&A sessions, video walkthroughs, a dynamic FAQ system, message board and more. We don’t think our affiliates should be paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars on coaching programs when we can provide all of it plus more for free.

Where do you think affiliates need to go to learn how to be super-affiliates? I believe our upcoming resource center will prove to be a valuable asset and will be able to take our affiliates from “newbie” to “super” in a short time. Other places to frequent for free guidance in this business are forums like: WarriorForum (http://warriorforum.com), DigitalPoint (http://forums.digitalpoint.com) and reading all the latest industry related blog posts at AffDaily (http://affdaily.com) where lots of industry bloggers provide valuable insights and information.

Do you recommend that affiliates try many networks, or stick with a few proven networks? Why or why not? Stick with the proven networks. There should be no need for you to go out looking for or working with new networks that don’t have any history. If anything, let them prove themselves first. If they seem attractive because of payout claims on a certain offer or the types of offers they have, simply ask the current proven network you’re with if they can get those offers or match those payouts. Nine times out of 10, not only will they be able to get that offer but also beat the payout on it as well. The proven networks have a lot more clout and can negotiate better payouts with advertisers. Not to mention – if you work with an unproven or unheard of network, they are more than likely brokering the offer from a bigger, proven network anyway.

What is your opinion of all the FTC lawsuits? How are you guys protecting yourselves from legal actions by the government, and what do you recommend for affiliates? Our industry obviously needs regulation. I want to help build an industry of value, integrity, and sustainability. Not scams, lies, and falsehoods. Advertising powers the Internet so we really have a bright future ahead of us just as long as we can stay accepted and compliant! I applaud the efforts of groups like the Performance Marketing Association, the Executive Council of Performance Marketing and even the Federal Trade Commission for creating standards and keeping both sides straight.

As for us, we work with our attorney to ensure our practices stay within FTC guidelines. We have absolutely no intentions of going outside the realm of veracity and standards this industry relies upon to grow.

Check out Peerfly here

 

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Alex Zhardanovsky went from Epic to Doggie.

I’ve personally known Alex Zhardanovsky for a long time – for almost as long as I’ve been in the industry. During that time, I’ve learned several things about him. First, he’s one of the smartest business men that I’ve ever met: he knows how to get things done, he knows how to take the competition out when necessary but also knows how to build bridges. Secondly, he always has really hot women around him. I’m not sure what it is, but wherever he goes there are models hanging on him like flies on flypaper. After his success in building EPIC into one of the biggest online advertising media powerhouses, he moved onto creating Petflow.com an online pet-food shipping superstore. In about a year, it’s become the #1 online petfood solution and if he wasn’t already rich enough, making him a much richer man. Maybe we can learn a bit from him.

How did you originally get started with the idea of Azoogleads?
AzoogleAds was created because we really weren’t happy with the way that publishers were treated back in 2000/2001.  There really weren’t many “network” options other than Webclients, Adteractive, CJ/Linkshare, private brokered deals and agencies.  There was no real-time repo
rting, no reliable way to know how much you were actually getting paid at the end of the month or if a check was even coming.  We were already aggregating several publishers’ traffic and disbursing commissions, and those publishers were asking us for an online interface that they could log into to see stats of how their campaigns were performing.  So in early 2002, we built the interface, and launched AzoogleAds in July.


Why did Azoogle use its own system instead of using another CPA system like directtrack?
To be perfectly honest, I don’t think directtrack as a licensed platform even existed back in 2002.  I believe that Jason Wolfe (the founder of DirectTrack) was still operating MyCoupons.com at the time, but I could be mistaken.  More importantly, we have always believed in building infrastructure that suited us, as out-of-the-box solutions have many shortcomings.  At the time we launched, we were unique, so we really didn’t have to look “different” than any other network.  In hindsight, the fact that we owned our own technology platform allowed us to execute much faster than many of our competitors, because we could build custom solutions for many of our publishers, when others did not.

Do you think that any company can become a major player in the CPA game using a third party system, why or why not?
I am a strong believer in controlling your own destiny and I don’t think you can do that if you build businesses on top of someone else’s technology.  Especially when the technology you are using is consumer-facing.

What do you think about state of the industry fraud wise, with companies being investigated by the FTC, AG lawsuits and so on. What did Epic/Azoogle do that was different to prevent this?
Fraud will always exist, no matter how hard you try to curtail it.  There will always be opportunistic individuals, those who the laws of this (US) country don’t necessarily touch.  At Epic, we spent a considerable amount of resources on ensuring publisher and advertiser compliance, often at the expense of significant revenues.

Is there any company in the CPA game that you can currently point to besides Epic and say that they are doing a good job? What are they doing right?
I really don’t think that anyone stands out, there are hundreds of networks all doing the same thing.  Everyone claims to have high payouts, exclusive offers, fast payment terms, and great affiliate managers.  None of those 4 things are important anymore, as they’re listed on every single networks’ homepage.  I don’t claim to know what the silver bullet is these days, but anyone running a CPA network needs to remember that it’s a technology-enabled services business, and if you don’t have great relationships with all of your partners, on both sides (advertiser and publisher), then you’re just another me-too that no one cares about.

Do you feel there is still space for new CPA Networks to make money? If so, what do they need to provide to compete?
No matter the industry, there is always room for smart people to make money.  The ones that will be most successful in this space, are ones that understand their advertisers and are willing to invest resources in creative design, technology infrastructure and their relationships.

What made you and  your partner Joe decide to start PetFlow.com?
If you’re a dog or cat owner, there’s 3 things that your dog/cat is guaranteed to do every day.  Eat, poop, and sleep.  2 of those 3 things have to do with the pet’s food.  Over 40% of American households have a pet, and under 4% of those households have ever made a purchase online for their pets.   For us, that presented a huge opportunity for a pet food replenishment businesses.  PetFlow is on fire.

 

Will PetFlow be bigger than Epic money wise for you? Why?
Yes. The online advertising industry generates $22.7 billion in sales in 2009. The Pet industry generates over $48 billion in annual sales.  You do the math 🙂

What is PetFlow’s current affiliate model and relationship? Why did you stop using Commission Junction?
We work directly with publishers an do our own media buying.  I still believe strongly in affiliate marketing, but CJ was not a good partner for us.  I wrote a post about why we chose to stop working with CJ.

What is the environment at PetFlow like? What are your employees passions and what makes them get up in the morning and go to work?
The environment here is exactly the same as the one we had at AzoogleAds when we started.  It’s very relaxed.  Everyone knows what they need to do every day and gets their job done.  There are no set hours, but everyone is expected to perform to the best of their abilities.  Our door is always open to suggestions and we try very hard to keep both our customers and our employees happy.   As a budding ecommerce company that interacts with tens of thousands of customers on a monthly basis, we really can’t afford to mess up.

What is your dream car and why?
Audi r8.  I own it, and it’s f’n awesome.

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Sam Sim Isn’t a Guppy Anymore

Of all the recent posts I have done – I am frankly not sure where to start with this one 🙂 . From his nipple turning antics to constantly picking on his employees or eating more and working less at his office. I am honestly not sure how they get anything done business-wise with all this but he seems to be doing something right. In a recent trip to Seattle, Sam was gracious enough to pick up myself, my wife and my brother to show us his office and introduce us to his team and show us the inner workings of the aquarium aka offices of Guppy Media.

Sam was born and raised in Honolulu and LA and resides in Seattle, WA.  Currently marred to Christine, has a daughter Jessica and son Justin.  On his spare time, he plays on a club soccer team, practice kendo, plays guitar, Xbox live (at night) and heavily involved a volunteer board member at my church.  Also, active with volunteering for world missions at his local church and of course spending time with family.  His favorite sports teams include UW Huskies, Seattle Sounders FC, Seattle Seahawks, LA Dodgers, Boston and Vancouver Canucks.   Graduated from University of Washington in 1995.  Favorite foods are:  Pho, Bibimbap, Sushi and Red Mango and Bubble Tea.

Sam, tell us briefly about yourself and how you got started in this industry.
My career in affiliate marketing got started when I changed my career as a stockbroker for Smith Barney and started business development with Zango / 180Solutions (current day Pinball Network).  I knew I wanted to be on more on the ‘tech” side of the industry, as I saw that many of my clients were making much more money than I was J And particularly in the late early 2000’s with the initial dot com bust, it was a perfect transition for me, with no prior experience in tech, to start in a biz dev role at Zango, driving installs and distribution.  I had always been a top performer and receiving sales and production awards as a stockbroker and fortunately, this naturally carried me over to the interactive ad world.  My spheres of influence, contacts and relationships started in the interactive advertising and affiliate marketing world from here on out.  I owe Zango quite a bit in terms of my initial training and fundamental understandings of interactive media buying.

Do you think being an Asian in this industry has hindered or helped you achieve the level of success you currently have or anticipated?
Honestly, I feel that actually one of the positive characteristics of our industry is that is so diverse and progressive to begin with.  I believe that these two characteristics actually define our industry as a whole, as well as many other adjectives which come to mind such as “hip”, “glamorous”, “trendy”,”youthful”, “energetic”, etc.  I do feel that it is actually because of this culture of diversity, that I feel, personally, I was able to actually flourish more, in the sense of reaching my true potential from a career perspective.  So, to answer this question, I would have to say that given the environment and the surroundings which I live and breathe everyday within our industry, I would actually have to say the celebration of diversity has actually help to foster and proliferate my career.  This is actually one of the key traits about our industry (affiliate, performance marketing) which I actually admire most – cherish and encourage your diversities, uniqueness, and creativity.

What are the top 3 factors that you feel contribute to your success?
1. First and foremost is to always keep your “creativity” cap on.  In my honest opinion, creativity and novel and unique ways of marketing will allow our industry to thrive and flourish.   Innovation is the key to not only survival of a company but also ongoing success as well

2. We are in a service and relationship industry – we should never lose sight of this.  With our industry, being as competitive as it is, the only real way to stand apart from the crowd is to always place an emphasis on best possible client service, to the absolute best of your ability.  Much like the golden rule states, treat others as you would like to be treated.  This hold so true in our service and relationship oriented industry.

3. This is also somewhat related to point #1, but just like Jack in the Box say’s, we must think “outside the bun”.  Our industry, at times I believe, just tends to stick to standardized norms and processes at times and if everyone then begins to follow the same process, this could then lead to what I call “idea saturation”.  We must encourage ourselves to go against this grain and think of and develop new and innovative ways of conducting business, from an operational, marketing and relational perspective.

How important is it to you to communicate with your readers? Is there a particular message you are wanting to convey?
If there is one word of encouragement that I could communicate to my fellow peers and industry colleagues, can all be summed up in one word – “value”.  I encourage everyone, particularly as a daily reminder to myself, to always provide value in all that you do.  Value in the sense that we must give our clients a reason to work with us.

Talk to us specifically about your experience and frustrations in dealing with people in the industry.
It’s really a pet peeve when I go out of my way to do favors for fellow industry colleagues and I often stick my neck out on the line for them.  In many cases, they in turn do not return the favor; much less appreciate what I have done for them.   I do feel at times that albeit we are in an “online” world, we should always remind ourselves that we are all human beings ultimately behind the keyboard and we should all treat each other with mutual respect and courtesy, as is the natural laws of humankind and the universe.  I do believe that we shy away from the tendency to think that we are not email aliases and Skype ID’s behind our PC’s…and that if we were doing business face to face, would things be done differently?

You are well known in the industry, who has been your motivation or inspiration, in other words, who is your driving force?
First of all, I give all the credit and all blessings to God in Heaven.  Through Him all blessings flow.  Secondly, my family is my number one motivational force.  Finally, in terms of inspiration, I actually believe and admire myself.  It may sound pompous, but when I look back at my previous trials and failures and how I was able to maintain a positive attitude and continue to survive and succeed each time; it is a constant reminder and inspiration to me.

What do you think is the impact of the “new” media on today’s generation? Are they leveraging it effectively and more importantly – are they leveraging it for the betterment of our industry?
New media is the reason we are progressing as a society and is one of the few economic sectors still experiencing rapid growth and progress from the financials markets sense.   It is because of this innovation, that new jobs are created daily and I truly believe will continue to be the driving force behind the salvation and comeback of our current domestic economic situation.  Reciprocally, I would hope that with the onset and growth of “new media” that this does not preclude us from continuing to be in touch with our human side as well as the value of real interpersonal relationships and the human touch.
Being a minority myself, there are constant stereotypes that I have to overcome, have you ever experienced this?
Growing up in the south (brief time in elementary) I did experience this, but primarily living on the west coast for the good majority of my life, I have not really experienced it.

What are some effective tools and products that help you keep your life organized?
Google Docs is the only tool you need!!  I also highly recommend Basecamp for CRM as well Assembla for ticket and task management.

If you had a money tree in your back yard and could purchase anything for your business tomorrow, what would it be?
Definitely.  I always wanted to have my own 59’ lifesize “Gundam” robot – http://sneakermaniac.com/59-foot-tall-gundam-to-be-displayed-in-tokyo-park/

Any words of wisdom for my readers looking to get into this space?
Be real and genuine.  Remember you are dealing with humans and not AIM ID’s.  Always remember the golden rule and the basic laws of the Universe and you’ll be fine.  Lastly, always believe in your “inner superstar” – you just need to find the right outlet to release it and let it shine.

——

Ricky Ahuja is the CEO of Affiliate Venture Group

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Lucas Brown is the Santa Claus of Affiliate Marketing. He Has Offers.

I have to be honest, before this interview I knew nothing about HasOffers whatsoever, except that anyone could make their own affiliate network using the system. I thought perhaps it was some low-level system that had some basic features and was nowhere a possible competition for the “major” players. After this interview and some education, it became very clear that HasOffers is a serious competitor in its own right and that Lucas Brown, the CEO of the company knows what he is doing.

What inspired you to make an affiliate tracking software?
In the fall of 2008, my twin brother and I recognized a huge need in performance marketing. Many affiliate programs and networks (including our own) were depending on legacy tracking software that was slow, unreliable and extremely costly to maintain. Since we spent the previous three years developing our own tracking technology for another company, we decided to empower others with our modern technology and make a real impact in the performance advertising industry.

Just as Salesforce.com brought about revolutionary change by providing their software as a service, we are moving the industry to a simpler, more scalable era. Traditionally, starting an affiliate network would require signing a minimum one-year contract, paying exorbitant setup fees, and then waiting for the expensive legacy solution to be installed or integrated. The alternative was to build your own solution from scratch. These very limited options prohibited many online marketers and direct advertisers from getting started with affiliate marketing and learning how to use utilize affiliates as an effective and extremely profitable advertising medium.

We realized we need to build an automated sign-up process that allows companies to create their own white-label affiliate network in minutes, with no contracts, pay-as-you-go. Shifting affiliate tracking to true software as a service vastly lowers the barrier to entry, making it easier than ever for any company to get started. As a result of fewer barriers to entry and lower levels of risk provided by HasOffers, affiliate marketing is growing explosively, increasing advertiser spend and disrupting old models of online advertising.

HasOffers has been criticized in the past for opening the floodgates so “anyone can make an affiliate program?” What do you have to say to those who think this is a bad idea?
There have always been people who were afraid to make technology and information available to the masses.  The argument is usually that some of those masses will use it for negative causes, but the real fear is that those with the illusion of power cannot hide behind expensive technology.

HasOffers is the center of innovation in an industry both run and plagued by old technology. A majority of brand advertising dollars still goes to search and display advertising. The Performance Marketing Association (PMA) suggests that a lack of transparency and education about affiliate marketing limits mainstream advertisers from participating with affiliate marketing. The only way to change this is through education and availability of proper technology for every business size.  I suppose we have a fundamental difference in ideology than most competitors.  It is that the more people involved in our industry, the more advertising spend comes in, and more benefit everyone will receive.

To those critics, I would say that this is an industry based on relationships and trust, and technology should be a standard, not a barrier.

As you know, a competitor was hit last year with the revelations that all the affiliate data of their affiliate networks were stolen and resold. What have you done to prevent this happening from you? Many companies who are now customers of HasOffers went through this stressful ordeal with DirectTrack.  It was certainly a very scary situation for all involved.  Our architecture and security programs are very different from our competitors, and though we cannot ethically discuss these on public record (in the interest of security), our dedicated system and network engineers are extremely protective of our infrastructure.  As HasOffers continues to grow, our larger clients demand extremely thorough security documentation including emergency plans, best practices, data loss prevention, and layered security models, which has also helped us develop an extremely air tight environment for our clients to do business.

What differentiates HasOffers from competitors?
HasOffers tracking technology is far more efficient than any competing platform. Proprietary ad serving and tracking technology allows a single HasOffers server to support over 2 billion requests per month. HasOffers’ efficient ad serving and tracking technology is built in C, enabling it to support 500 percent more requests per ad server than legacy technologies. Requests to ad servers built in PHP or ASP.NET require servers to load 15 MBs of data or more into memory in order to complete each request, while the HasOffers’ proprietary ad serving technology only requires 215 KBs per request. This increased capacity provides a strategic advantage, allowing HasOffers to provide the most affordable ad serving and tracking solution in the industry.  We urge anyone to test HasOffers along side any other system and let it speak for itself.

We are also the first company to provide complete fault tolerance by deploying clients’ ad servers on the Amazon Web Services’ EC2 cloud. We’ve combined this global deployment of the ad servers on the cloud with globally load-balanced DNS. This detects the location of the user making the request to the ad server and directs the user to the ad server in the facility that can respond the quickest.  A user clicking on a tracking link in Germany will be handled by an ad server in the Ireland facility or a user viewing a creative in New York will be handled by an ad server in the Virginia facility. Global deployments of the ad servers with globally load-balanced DNS, increases performance by handling a users request with ad servers that are located thousands of miles closer to them. By dramatically reducing this latency, our ad servers are also able to handle requests even faster than before.

Our team also uniquely understands the value of scalability. While competitors only power an estimated few hundred clients each, HasOffers’ scalable technology has enabled more than 7,000 companies to create and manage their own affiliate networks. Our competitors simply don’t have infrastructures to support this many clients effectively.

What are some of your most notable Customers? Do they tend to be networks or advertisers?
Zynga, AdSimilis, Living Social, Tapjoy, Flycell, Adperio, Palms, adperio, MarketHealth, and the list goes on.

In the beginning our primary customers were networks, within the past year more and more advertisers are adopting HasOffers to manage their in-house affiliate programs. About 55% of our clients are networks and 45% advertisers.

Do you recommend super affiliates to use HasOffers to track their deals?
We do have some super affiliates that user HasOffers to track their campaigns, but they are a minority. There are certainly many solutions focused on tracking the performance for affiliates across multiple networks. We find that super affiliates tend to start their own affiliate networks with us as that is often the next logical step for them.

There are a lot of mentions about your API, What makes your API unique?
Our API is the only complete two-way API, including over 400 API methods and 60 API data models. An API of this magnitude is completely unprecedented in affiliate tracking and is sure to open up vast opportunities for so many companies. The API makes it possible to develop customized applications that run on top of the HasOffers platform. No other affiliate network software has an API this powerful.

The API makes it possible for our clients to transform HasOffers to fit every possible need. Every feature in the HasOffers application is documented and available to use through the HasOffers API. Clients can build applications or customize their current HasOffers application software with the same access to integration for managing advertisers, offers, and affiliates. With the HasOffers API it is easy to create new affiliates, generate tracking codes for new affiliates, and generate any statistics and reports.

Some clients are creating a competitive advantage by implementing completely unique graphic interfaces for their HasOffers account using the API. Other clients are using the New API to build widgets that connect with CRMs and billing systems. A few clients are now building our affiliate tracking software into a gateway monetization system.

What fraud systems are built into the HasOffers System?
Our software gives our clients insight to identify and prevent fraudulent conversions. We classify fraud into two types. Affiliate profile fraud and activity fraud. Affiliate profile fraud analyzes whether the affiliate’s details are suspicious or linked to other fraudulent accounts. This allows our clients to identify potentially malicious affiliates before they are given access to offers. Activity fraud analyzes actual conversion data to identify fraudulent activity. This analyzes IP addresses, conversion times, referring domains, duplicate IPs, comparative EPCs, etc.

We’ve also spent a lot time ensuring our core tracking technology prevents fraudulent conversions. Referral domains can be enforced for conversion pixels and IP addresses enforced for server postback URLs. There are options to limit the number of conversions by IP address and date as well as identify conversions generated by proxies. Tracking links, conversions pixels and server postback URLs can be encrypted with unique hashes. The application also provides ample and filtered information in the reports to give our clients the power to investigate each conversion.

How easy would it be for a network to move to HasOffers?
HasOffers has spent a great deal of time perfecting the migration process for networks.  We realize this is the only real deterring factor for larger potential clients, especially depending on the current system they are using, so we have dedicated on-boarding specialists to help with the process. Most clients considering migrating to HasOffers reach out to us because they are already having tracking issues, frustrations with processes,  or difficulty managing affiliate data, and we realize each business model has unique struggles.  Our on-boarding specialists have not only developed smooth processes for migration across the most common platforms, but they are skilled in adapting to unique circumstances.  This should certainly not be a prohibiting factor in moving a business to a new level of technology and innovation.

Do you recommend that most people move to Server to Server Tracking and why? What are the advantages of this?
For our clients with the technical understanding, we certainly recommend implementing cookieless tracking. With HasOffers, cookieless tracking can also be implemented with iFrames or image pixels, providing a hybrid of client side and server side. This way affiliate third-party pixels can still piggy back on conversions as well. With only server to server pixels enabled affiliates have to implement a server to server pixel as well, which many affiliates don’t have the software or knowledge to accomplish.

If a user does not have cookies enabled on their browser, usually an iFrame/Image pixel will not record a conversion, but by implementing cookieless conversion tracking, users with cookies disabled will still be tracked. We do this by passing a transaction ID (tracking ID) to the advertiser’s landing page on click. Then the advertiser passes this transaction ID to the conversion pixel or server postback URL. Our ad servers look up the user’s tracking information by the transaction ID and record conversions accordingly. This is a great way to ensure conversion tracking accuracy.

What inspired your staff to get up in the morning?
Passion.  After participating in every piece and angle of online advertising, we realized that we should concentrate on the part that we really love, and believe it or not, that’s performance tracking technology.  So we surround ourselves with people who share our passion.  You might describe HasOffers as one big crazy brainstorm on the future of online advertising, and we think that’s the most exciting thing we could be doing.  You can really see the unity it brings our team.

What is your dream car?
I don’t have a dream car. Cars are not a big thing in Seattle. I’d prefer a mansion on Lake Washington.

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Ahuja Means Make Money in Punjabi

You don’t see that many Sikh’s in affiliate marketing. Honestly, you don’t really see that many Sikhs in general, especially where I moved to, Colorado which is the Capital of the Secret WASP Society.  That being said, Ricky Ahuja has made a name for himself in this industry. Ask anyone and they will tell you that he is a very friendly, outgoing person who treats everyone with respect – something that this industry often needs.  Anywho, he’s also a great businessman who has made a good name for himself in this industry as someone who pays attention to what is going on in the industry and is always networking to learn more.

How do you personally get into Affiliate Marketing?
I have been in the space since 2001, started with a loyalty site, on to web design, seo and other lead gen businesses. The tools have changed quite a bit – but at the core it is still the same. Like every other venture, has its ups and downs but love the dynamic nature of it.

What makes Affiliate Venture Group unique and interesting?
AVG like every other network has some offers and some publishers. However, what sets us apart from most of the others is our level of access, transparency and communication. We are definitely not in it to make a quick buck as reputation to me has more value than anything else. I think we have done a good job of maintaining that.

What does Affiliate Venture Group look for in its affiliates?
Transparency, communication and honesty are probably the most important traits we look at. We do not turn away any newbies and take the time to inform and educate them best we can. Had it not been for a helpful AM back in the day, I would not have been in the space as long as I have. We are more about the person behind the affiliate cloak and their word. Take undue advantage of it, we will not be working together in the future. Work with us and you would have found a valuable resource for a long time to come.

What is the most common fraud you’ve found in the industry, and what steps does AVG take to combat that?
We have come across fraud such as use of stolen credit cards to generate leads, posting of leads, fake clicks and referrals, etc. Our core philosophy of maintaining clear lines of communication and transparency have helped greatly in combating this. We can all build tools to counteract this – but the fraudsters always manage to stay one step ahead. Having groups on the social media sites certainly help bring the issue to the forefront but we always have to remain vigilant and proactive to contain/prevent it.

You had an Affiliate Fraud Group on Facebook that was shut down, what happened? Who served you with the C&D?
We had a very promising group called the Affiliate Fraud Prevention Group with over 1400 members which was served a C&D and thus had to pull it down. Not really able to go into too many details but AVG was in its infancy stage and were somewhat blindsided and not prepared. We obviously weren’t alone as other unsuspecting networks experienced the same issues. In a weird way however, that was a good lesson for us in opening up our campaigns for publishers we were not 100% familiar with and enabled us to put certain policies and protection in place.

What he can’t tell you is that he was threatened by “IAG” a company in Florida, that was accused of not paying their bills on the Facebook group.

If you could have any wish, what tool would you like seen made for affiliates?
We work very closely with the developers of our tracking system in identifying various touch points which we feel may lend to fraudulent affiliates coming in and work towards establishing tools to counteract that. Above and beyond that my partner, Chris Kautz,  has often been called The Affiliate Slayer as he has a keen sense of weeding out the bogus pubs. One thing I would like to intimate however, for every fraudulent publisher – I can tell you one advertiser and/or a network that partakes in this same vicious practice. This is a two way street and quite honestly both sides can be at fault. This is precisely why we only work with a handful of partners on both side and that formula has worked out well for us.

What ideally would you like to teach brands about affiliate marketing?
We work with several premier brands, both on the Affiliate Venture Group side as well as the agency side of the business, Pab67Media and fortunately for us, more and more are starting to understand the true value of affiliate marketing. There are instances when however the “brands” are not set up logistically or technically to handle the traffic/sales generated or more importantly, what is converting and what is not and there is where problems typically occur.

Who is the sexiest affiliate manager that you’ve met?
I am going to have to say my wife – she plays a role of a physician by day and by night – she is Super AM. Totally keeps me on top of things and my main driving force (along with my 8 year old daughter). I feel this is the safest answer for me.

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M’thinks that Chris Trayhorn Knows Performance

A few years ago someone told me that someone was making a print magazine for the performance marketing industry. I was pretty damn sure it would fail. While blogs weren’t all the rage as they are now, as an experienced online publishers, I was pretty sure no one would want to read something in print. Luckily I was wrong, and the folks at Revenue Magazine, now Revenue Performance were correct. They understood that in our industry, people really love to get attention and putting great photos of them in a glossy magazine would guarantee distribution. Now some 8 years later, Revenue Performance is the magazine that every major company has on their coffee tables and frames in their offices. I decided to sit down with Chris Trayhorn, the Publisher of Revenue Performance and see what was going on over there.

Is this the Affiliate Industry, or the Performance Marketing Industry? Is there a reason to use one term over another?
Performance marketing. Of course. Let’s think big. Chief Marketing Officers have the shortest job lifespan in the C-suite. They’re desperate for a way to prove that they can make a difference. Performance marketing can do that for them – but they need to understand how, so education is key. Essentially, we have outgrown the term “affiliate marketing”. Performance marketing is where the action is.

What positive changes do you see happening in the next few years for the industry?
Huge growth, so long as we focus on getting the message out about what we do. I find it crazy that often when I talk to senior marketers at big multinational companies they have no clue about what can be achieved with performance marketing. As an industry, we need to be taking a message to those people that we offer a real solution to their problems.

There is a plethora of Affiliate and CPA Networks. What do you think about the increasingly low entry requirements for a network now? Is this a good or bad thing?
It’s good that the industry is dynamic and attracts new entrants, but it concerns me that so few have much of what I’d say was necessary experience and /or knowledge. How many new networks CEOs know what GRC is, for example? Governance, risk management and compliance is a recognized and integrated discipline in large enterprises but I don’t think I’ve ever even seen it discussed anywhere in the performance marketing space. If networks understood GRC better, we wouldn’t see nearly as many flameouts as we do. And that’s just one example.

We’ve had conversations about gurus in the industry, many of them who have become regular speakers at the Affiliate Conferences. What do you see as the biggest threat from the gurus to our industry?
To grow as an industry we need more publishers to build more audiences and generate more traffic. So we need quality training that new publishers can trust at a price they can afford. So-called gurus aren’t the answer because they tend to promote get-rich-quick approaches which ultimately fail for most students.

But it’s not just affiliates and publishers who need training. Advertisers and merchants need education too. Someone in the network space told me the other day, “I have lots of potential new advertisers. I just can’t train them fast enough.”

That’s nuts. Quality training is key to the growth of the industry. We need to be doing more. You’re going to see Revenue Performance taking the initiative in this area in the near future. Watch this space.

What do you think about the growing flame-wars, blogger attacks on people’s personal lives in the industry?
It sucks, but people are people. That means many of them behave badly some of the time. What are you gonna do?

Do you believe that the average person can still get into the industry, and why?
Sure, but they need to work their asses off and be smart about it. But online is still in its infancy. Mobile is just getting started. There’s lots of opportunity.

What is the biggest threat to the industry right now and why?
Personally, I’m keeping an eye on Google. I’m not the paranoid type but it sure looks to me like they’re moving towards a model where they try to direct all shopping traffic to their own properties. They’re scraping content off other publishers’ websites and then finding ways to present it so the user doesn’t need to visit the original site at all. They promote their own properties in preferred positions. They’ve just bought an affiliate site and are playing with other ways to present content and offers. They’re massive in mobile and have their own operating system. And they’re working hard to make it all work together. Other current concerns like fraud and nexus taxation will work themselves out but I’m not sure who can slow down Google.

What is your history in the Performance Marketing Industry?
My company spent 10 years working with Accenture helping them to grow their CRM practice from $1 billion to $20 billion a year. We also worked with Microsoft to help them launch Microsoft Advertising and publish their original online marketing research. Half way through that time I thought there was room for a magazine with a  trusted voice in the performance marketing industry. That’s how Revenue Performance got started. It was a big risk to launch a print magazine for an online community, but once we got the first edition out, people loved it.

Revenue Performance presents itself as a “professional” magazine in contrast to all the blogs. Why do you see the need of there being a print magazine?
We started publishing the magazine eight years ago – I think that longevity implies that it’s our readers who think we’re needed. There will always be a demand for content that advertisers and publishers feel they can trust in a format that they find useful.

Do you feel that we need an organization like the Performance Marketing Association, and why (or why not)?
I think it’s useful that we  have someone fighting the fight on Internet nexus taxes, but it’s a tough gig: trying to stop legislators bringing in new taxes when state tax incomes are at record lows. I wish them well.

What is your dream car?
It’s a dream motorbike: a KTM 950 Adventure. It’s a huge, black beast of a thing designed for fast back-road riding combined with some off-road stuff too. And it’s sitting in my garage.

If you weren’t involved in the industry, what would you be doing?
Something in online education. The internet gives us the first chance in history to provide everyone on the planet with education and opportunity. I think that’s important.

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Shane Graper Believes in Hybryd Marketing? Is He Going Green?

I’m not sure what is the water in Denver, but companies are sprouting up left and right here. Shane Graper, like George Avery of GetAds left his employer in the wake of the Facebook and Attorney General scandals that rocked the industry. From that he moved onto creating his own company, with its own way of doing business and more importantly with an focus on professionalism. From talking to him and the other folks at the company, HybrydAds is very focused on that professional experience and wants to make it clear that they are not like any other company in the industry.

When did you know that you “really liked” affiliate and performance based marketing? I really knew this was something I liked when I had a crash course at Video Professor in 2004. That is when the light bulbs began to turn on and a career was born.

What has HybrydAds done in regards to compliance that you feel is important? Hybryd has spent countless hours analyzing traffic. We have been able to tie many different bad sources of traffic together. This has allowed HybrydAds to actively seek cooperation between other networks to keep a running list of those bad sources. We can share info without giving away secrets.

What do you look for in affiliates that help you know they might be a good choice to approve? First and foremost, can their information be validated? Hybryd does communicate with every Affiliate so that we know how we can provide the best service. We have moved mostly to a referral-based process to make approvals less painful. We still do approve a limited amount of applications and always welcome referrals.

You used DirectTrack while at Affiliate.com, what made you guys go with LinkTrust instead of the platform you knew? I’ve worked with several tracking platforms in the past so when weighing the choices that were out there for Tracking we looked at four things: Accuracy in Tracking, Growth, Reporting, and Cost. Comparing these across the available platforms LinkTrust won hands down.

Do you see this industry as “affiliate marketing” or “performance marketing” and any reason? Looking at this industry as only affiliate marketing is too microscopic. This industry has evolved into performance marketing from affiliate marketing. The Performance model includes the diversity of marketing that is available across our industry. Others might say its just semantics though.

What do you think of the industry groups like the Performance Marketing Association? Is there a need for a representative group? The PMA is great for creating a collective voice in our industry. I do think that there needs to be a representative group but the trick is getting everyone in the industry involved and cooperating.

If you could pitch an airline to use performance based advertising, what would you do? Performance based advertising could help offer more value to their customers. An airline could for example monetize the viewing of in air TV and movies with products and services. Why not try to improve marketing to a captive audience with nowhere to go for the duration of a flight. I could go on about data monetization but I wont. They are doing a bit of performance based advertising already; I was on a flight recently that tried to sign passengers up for a credit card with miles as an incentive. The only issue is it wasn’t interactive and flight attendants aren’t always the best sales force.

What exclusive offers would you like to introduce to our readership? We have been working hard to develop our own Education portal, DegreeChemistry.com. In addition we are getting ready to launch our own insurance portal that you can get a sneak peak of at SelectMyInsurance.com.

What do you think of adware or contextual advertising? Like any other form of advertising it can be effective if used with in the correct guidelines. We all know how successful the Search engines have been at it.

What are the benefits and risks? The benefits are that it can be extremely targeted and valuable to the consumer. The only concern of course will be regarding privacy.

What are you planning to do for the next 6 months of 2011? Without giving away all network secrets we are focusing pretty heavily on technology.

The Denver area in the last few years has become a new mecca of major CPA Networks, from GetAds, Intela & AdPerio. What do you like about the area and what makes you stay here? There is only one thing that Colorado doesn’t offer and that’s an ocean. Other than that, there is nothing you can’t find or do here. You can drive an hour in any direction and find a different climate or landscape for any activity.

If you could move HybrydAds to any other place besides Denver, where would it be? I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. If we did move it would either have to be a tropical island or a place that has a comparable climate with Denver.

What would be your dream car? My Dream Car would be a Truck. Fully loaded, Full Size, and good on gas. Is that too much to ask for?

Visit HybrydAds Affiliate Network here.
Check out all their offers on OfferVault

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Cake’s Jeff McCollum puts frosting onto Affiliate Software.

In the affiliate and CPA network software game, there have been a few companies that have dominated the game. For almost a decade everyone used DirectTrack, and then came HasOffers and LinkTrust. For a long time, that seemed to be the only choice – until last year, when Cake Marketing started to play in the game, soon making it real name for itself. Since then we’ve seen half a dozen major affiliate networks move over and dozens of other companies become clients in a small period of time. I decided to sit down with their Chief Honcho, Jeff McCollum and find out what they are doing that is making people pay attention.

What inspired your company to make your own performance marketing software?
We had all been in performance based marketing for years and realized the industry was moving faster than the available technology. We were frustrated with the time and resources it took to do the most common daily tasks but were most concerned with the unreliable and an inaccurate tracking.  I had worked in Silicone Valley for many years and knew what was possible if good developers could apply solid technology to the fast growing industry. The one thing I did not account for was the 3+ years it would take to build right.

What can you tell us about your fraud prevention tools?
A lot of thought has gone into the toolset we provide our clients for catching and dealing with fraud quickly and efficiently. The collective experiences of our team in finding some of the more sophisticated and creative fraudulent activity of the past few years has been vital in our efforts to improve the accountability of the industry as a whole. From finding improper marketing methods to examining unordinary conversion rates down to the Sub ID level to locating quicker than average click-to-conversion times, Cake gives you immediate notice of fraudulent activity for you to examine, classify, and ultimately shut down within minutes.

As you know, a competitor was hit last year with the revelations that all the affiliate data of their affiliate networks were stolen and resold. What have you done to prevent this happening from you?
Having built Cake Marketing in house from the ground up using only the best modern technologies, processes and techniques, we are able to avoid many of the pitfalls inherent in older or less capable systems.  Security has been a primary focus for us and by basing our continued development of features and utilities on a solid foundation; we are able to maintain an impeccable systems security record.  As some of our competitors are finding out, it is difficult to adapt a software solution to a changing business climate with constantly shifting rules and goals without sacrificing something, often security.   This is especially true in affiliate marketing where the changes are quick and those who fail to keep up get left behind.  Cake was built with this in mind and as a software service, is equipped to maintain what makes it great while changing to adapt to the market.

In addition, by keeping all of our development in house with every line of code and every decision being made within the walls of our offices, we are able to dedicate ourselves as a team to this goal without the risk of outside security breaches.  This dedication extends itself into all aspects of our platform from the architecture of our data centers, peer code reviews and auditing to the customer support, training and professional services.

Cake sells itself as a fully integrated system, especially made for lead capture and distribution. What is unique about your platform that no other system offers?
Cake Marketing is unique in many ways, but the lead capture and distribution engine is the most powerful of its kind and as an added bonus, completely integrates with our affiliate tracking solution.  Being able to send a lead to an email address or simple CRM is not unique to affiliate marketing platforms, but with other systems you will eventually need custom development or a separately licensed product to send leads the way you really need to.  With other platforms, lead generation is tacked on as an afterthought, while in Cake it was built from the start side by side with the tracking solution and can also be used as a standalone lead distribution engine.  Every possible scenario has been thought out and made to be easily configured within the Cake interface without the need for expensive and time-consuming development.

Feature for feature, Cake can match and beat the top standalone lead distribution solutions as well as the best competing affiliate tracking solutions.  The fact that we do both of these in one tightly integrated approach makes us a solution that no other system can top.

How does your lead validation system work better than other systems? What would you say is the most unique part of your system?
Lead validation is a very important part of affiliate marketing because it affects revenue on so many levels.  It can be used to detect fraud, to clean data, to categorize your traffic or as part of your manual review process.  Unfortunately, this often requires continual updates and changes to your websites and forms as your validation rules change or as new offers are added.  As one of the most unique parts of our validation system, Cake has solved this problem by using the same elegant interface that the rest of the system uses.  After placing a simple Cake supplied script onto your form, all validation will then be handled automatically and any changes you make within your system will instantly effect how your forms work online, including alerting the customer of invalid data so that they can fix it themselves.  Using Cake’s proprietary technologies, you can utilize any of our multitude of validators in this process (many of which cannot be found elsewhere), to seamlessly validate your existing forms.

In light of the revelation that Internet Explorer will be blocking a lot of cookies, and that Firefox is looking to do this in a future release, your cookieless tracking system seems very interesting. I’d love to know more about it, what can you tell us?
From our tracking platform’s inception, dealing with cookieless sessions has been a large focus. Whether users disable cookies completely or enable the Do Not Track option in newer browsers, Cake is able to examine the browser’s fingerprint to uniquely track a session from impression to click to conversion sans cookie. We call this Session Regeneration and it’s built into every aspect of our platform’s foundation. We give our clients specific options to configure how exactly this works, but using our default configuration our clients have solved the problem of missing cookies. Additionally we allow the passing of unique identifiers back and forth between Cake and the advertiser if/when the advertiser supports it to enable 100% tracking accuracy no matter the situation.

I’ve heard some good things about your customer support team, what can you tell me that makes it different?
Our Client Solutions Team (CS Team) is more than just customer service. Our CS Team is truly dedicated to providing the most intimate level of service to all Cake clients. The team informs clients on unique Cake solutions applicable to their unique business needs. Furthermore, our CS Team has significant input into the ongoing product development, leveraging the knowledge gained from client interaction. However, the biggest advantage is we offer all of our clients FREE 24/7 phone support. We know that a great CS Team is vital to our success.

What inspires the management and staff at Cake?
After spending years working for online marketing industry leaders (including NBCInteractive, News Corp., Experian Interactive) we recognized the need for a top tier product which executed to the expectations of senior management as well as provided the blocking and tackling solutions for the front line employees. We are driven each day to meet those obligations. The management team here is competitive and we live for the challenges that come up each day to meet the demanding needs of our clients. Who wouldn’t love coming to work with the most dedicated staff in the market taking on the problems of the most sophisticated marketers in the world and helping them succeed?

IF someone wanted to move over to Cake, how easy would it be? What is the time period involved and do you have any examples of transfers that you can talk about?
We have designed our product to reach full deployment within days. Our goals as a team are to have our clients up and running on a time frame that is comfortable for them. When clients want to be up and running in full steam we can have them up within 48 hours. We understand the anxiety of moving systems and have put a lot of time into creating a comprehensive process. Clients get a dedicated implementation rep to guide them through the training and to import their existing data (affiliates, advertisers, offers, etc.) into their Cake instance.

For affiliates, if they are on a Cake system what will they see in the network that they wouldn’t see in any other program?
We’ve put a lot of time into the design of the Cake Affiliate Portal in an effort to make finding offers, grabbing creative assets, placing pixels, testing offers, viewing reports, downloading new suppression lists, and keeping track of invoices/bills as intuitive, quick, and easy as possible. Seeing up to the second stats, gauging overall performance, and finding new great converting offers are all available in one easy to use dashboard, and when necessary digging in to find more specific information is only a couple clicks away. Additionally, all of this information is available via our Affiliate API for those affiliates looking to integrate this information into their own dashboards.

Specifically the things you won’t find in other systems are:

1.      Pixel placement (traditional iframe/javascript/image AND Postback URL/Server Pixels) to testing with immediate success feedback removes the need for affiliates to wait on account managers to place and test their pixels.

2.      The ease in which per subid/creative pricing is viewable/manageable. No matter how complicated your payment structure is, Cake breaks it down and makes it easy to understand.

3.      One click import into your own Cake system making brokering offers from networks a breeze. No need to manually import links/creatives, it all happens for you behind the scenes!

Why use Cake instead of building your own system?
This is the classic buy/outsource versus build decision. Our product has been built from the ground up over 4 years with millions of dollars invested ensuring that our foundation was sound and provides the most flexibility for our clients. Our product allows for clients to have a customized solution within a SaaS license model. This flexible solution can be fully deployed in weeks saving valuable resources and time. Building an independent solution would likely lack the power and scalability required. Furthermore it would take significant time until full deployment. Why pay full price for the Ferrari when you can lease it for a fraction of the price!

What is your dream car and why?
I am not much of a car guy I drive a Prius. I would much rather have a plane so I could travel easily and often with my family.

If you weren’t doing this as career what would be your second choice?
Starting an organization that would educate, mentor, and lend resources to people in countries of extreme poverty to provide a better opportunity.

Want to learn more about Cake?

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Rebecca Madigan of the PMA leads her Army of Affiliates

For as long as I remember the affiliate and performance marketing industry has been attempting to create a trade organization to represent the industry. Every time they tried, it failed miserably without exception — until the Performance Marketing Association came along. At first most of the industry universally panned the idea of another organization, thinking it would be no more than a loose fraternity that allowed a few CPA network owners to drink scotch together once a year. However, with the leadership of Rebecca Madigan, the Executive Director of the PMA, the organization has become a force in the industry, fighting for the industry as a whole and providing much needed leadership. If you ask anyone who is involved with the PMA, they will tell you that one of the main reasons for its success is Rebecca and without her the industry might already just be a footnote. I sat down with her this week and asked her some difficult questions about the PMA, industry as a whole and learned that she dreams of jet planes.

How did you get involved with this industry initially? I joined CJ in early 2005 in product management. I have extensive background in product management for technology products, including broadband, telecom and wireless/mobile. I was the product manager for the first ‘voip’ product called Web Talk, a browser based Internet phone (back in 1994). When I was in wireless and mobile, I was really involved in industry and standards organizations (founding member of the Bluetooth SIG, for example), and saw first hand the benefits of a unified voice dealing with public policy (buying of spectrum) and standards (wireless LAN, GSM, CDMA, etc). It struck me as odd and limiting, along with many people, that the affiliate space didn’t have any industry organization.

Why do you think the industry needs a separate organization for “Performance Marketing?” The industry needs AN organization for performance marketing, there is no other organization serving this business model. We tried to get others like the IAB, ERA and DMA to pay more attention to performance marketing, but those groups aren’t chartered to do so, and haven’t had an interest.

What would you say to those who argue that separating ourselves from the IAB just hurts us? Why not join the IAB? The IAB has been disinterested in performance marketing, in the US anyway. In the UK they do have an affiliate group, but nowhere else. And the IAB is structured for very large companies, or that was the case when the PMA formed. There wasn’t a long tail membership until recently. But most importantly, they aren’t chartered around the performance business model, nor do they even embrace affiliate marketing. We’re still the ‘red headed stepchild’ to them.

As we’ve talked before, the PMA represents both networks and merchants. Isn’t this combining two different groups with different goals? How can they really work together? Actually, the PMA represents the entire ecosystem of performance marketing. We have more affiliates as members than any other segment (>25%), and advertisers are represented the least (14%). We also represent networks, solution providers, agencies, and investors. The way for this industry to mature is for us ALL to work together to drive growth, change, innovation, and trust. I would argue the thing that has held this industry back is the fragmented nature, business segments unable or uninterested in sitting down together to solve problems.

Isn’t having Dell, Amazon, Google and other major players dilutes the influence and ability of smaller players and networks to make changes? As I mentioned, we have more affiliates as members than any other segment, including our top level, platinum. Publishers like FatWallet, Offers.com, RetailMeNot, and Fabulous Savings, are platinum members.

Additionally, the way we’re structured is to allow for smaller companies, specifically affiliates, to be involved, participate in working groups, take leadership roles, vote on initiatives, etc. We all feel very strongly that this industry is only as strong as the entire ecosystem, and in particular, we all need affiliates to thrive for everyone else to thrive.

Lastly, though, I’ll add that we’re an organization that is chartered with doing a lot of things. Our biggest activity to date has been fighting the affiliate nexus legislation, which directly targets affiliates. We’re also developing standards and best practices to improve quality and effectiveness, and stimulate growth (let’s make it easier where we can so companies can spend more time on the important things). All these things take enormous time, resources and money. Where does that money come from to fund these initiatives? Membership dues. The PMA is non-profit and we’re only as strong as our members and our ability to raise money.

What do you think about the growing trend of “gurus” in the industry? My main concern is that they perpetuate the concept of ‘get rich quick’, which doesn’t help our industry. Being successful takes a lot of time, patience, perseverance, talent and a little luck. We believe the way to grow this industry is to focus on long-term growth, not the quick buck.

Affiliate Summit was highly attended but there was almost no mainstream media coverage for some reason. What are we doing wrong in getting that coverage? Good question. It’s an event for industry insiders, the topics of discussion assume a certain level of knowledge (you won’t learn about what performance marketing is at the show). You might ask Missy and Shawn about that, did they invite the press?

Are we the affiliate marketing industry, or the performance marketing industry? Is there a difference? We opted to use the broader term ‘performance marketing’ for a couple of reasons. First of all, the performance model (ads being paid based on results) is bigger than just online. It has been around on television and radio for a long time. We see tremendous growth and opportunity in looking at where experts in the performance model can take it into new channels, like mobile for example. And ‘affiliate’ means something different in those channels, like a TV station or wireless carrier partner.

Secondly, for right or wrong, ‘affiliate marketing’ has a reputation burdened with lack of trust, the ‘wild west’, if you will. We’re an industry maturing into one with very professional companies, and we don’t’ want to be held back by an old reputation.

Thirdly, on the legislative front, the term ‘affiliate’ has come to mean agent or distributor or subsidiary, causing laws to be created that damage our industry. Our ‘affiliates’ are simply websites that earn revenue from advertising, they have no other relationship or level of ownership by merchants.

What is happening on the Affiliate Tax Front?  Does this really affect the “average” affiliate or just the large companies like Amazon? The unfortunate thing about this legislation is that it’s been called the Amazon tax and people think it impacts only them. The affiliates, large or small, are the unintended victims in this. The law basically says that if an out-of-state merchant has an affiliate in the state, the out-of-state merchant must then collect sales tax. So merchants simply terminate their affiliates to avoid collecting sales tax. Not only have Amazon and Overstock terminated, but hundreds of other merchants. It’s passed in NY, NC and RI, but we’ve prevented it from being passed in 15 other states. The way we’ve stopped it is through affiliate involvement – putting faces and success stories behind the name.

This is going to be a bad year, it’s already shown up in more states than this time last year (IL, SC, MS, CT, CA). States are still desperate for budget dollars and they think this is a quick fix. So we go to every state, recruit affiliates to help, and we slowly but surely convince legislators it’s a bad idea.

Aren’t you just pissing off the people in power by filling suits against the state and making the performance marketing industry look greedy? We haven’t filed a single suite against any state. What are you talking about? (BTW, we’re way too small of an association to file a suit of any kind, even if a reason arose – which it hasn’t).

What can we do as individuals to stop this trend of states taxing affiliate sales? Get involved when it hits your state. We have up-to-date information on our website.
Get to know your personal legislators. They’re very approachable and really want to learn about their constituents. If they learn about you now, and understand what you do and how this will impact you, you can build support to block progress. We’ve had this happen with affiliates in VA, IL, CA, CT, GA, TX and PA just this year. These affiliates are learning more than the lobbyists!

What is the PMA’s position on the FTC as a whole? Do you think the FTC recognizes that unique status of affiliate marketers as being different from $100M companies? What do you think the FTC will do in 2011 that might affect our industry negatively or positively? The FTC has a charter of protecting consumers from false or misleading advertising – and we support that charter completely. It’s a tricky balance between having an effective government-run regulatory agency and letting an industry self-regulate. This industry has done an awful job self-regulating, and it’s no suprise the FTC is stepping up its scope and authority.

The FTC recently published a proposal nicknamed the “Do Not Track” proposal, essentially suggesting consumers should have more say and control over how their Internet activity is tracked, and how and where personally identifiable information is used. In theory that seems fine but as we know in our industry, tracking of a user is extremely complex but also delivers the great targeted online experiences consumers come to expect.

There’s been some speculation as to why the FTC put out this proposal. My belief, and I’m not alone, is that it is a challenge to all advertising industries to step up the game in self-regulation. And we completely support that goal.

The PMA is preparing our own response to the FTC, so that we’re sure the unique perspectives of our industry are heard. The submission deadline is February 18th, and we have a volunteer member group crafting the response.

What is your dream car? I work at home and travel a lot. I no longer dream of cars but I could really use a private jet, like a G4.

Read Another Great Interview Mike Krongel of COPEAC