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Comment RSSNon-Payment Bandwagon Pile On
Written by Pace LattinJuly 15, 2012 # 2:54 pm # Marketing Insights, Specials # 20 Comments
Perhaps you aren’t paying attention, but one of the top issues in the industry right now seems to be networks not paying their bills. With the failure of quite a few networks and a lot of new networks popping up with the business model of screwing affiliates, more and more companies are selling their network by pointing out their history of payments. No longer are just highest payments the best, but companies need to prove that they actually pay their bills.
Jason Akatiff, the founder of A4D Performance (FKA Ads4Dough) a told us that payments to publishers are becoming more important, because publishers don’t have time to be running after non-paying networks. “As a publisher the most important thing to me was getting paid on time every time,” said Akatiff “It allowed me to free my mind from worrying about the finances and I could focus 100% on building campaigns.”
Networks are often acting like banks for many affiliates, and because of that affiliates want to make sure that the network they are working with actually has funds to pay them. In the day and age where it seems that anyone can start a HasOffers network, more and more affiliates are growing up and realizing that a business needs more than just a website. If affiliates and publishers wanted to take the risk, they’d probably work with the network directly. If a network cant pay on time, what use is it working with them and giving them part of the cut?
CPALead, the content locking agency and network, has been on company that has been very vocal about their campaigns. In order to prove that they pay everyone on time, they offered a reward to anyone who could show otherwise. Peter Tarr, the CEO of CPALead told us that affiliates need to do a lot more due diligence on the companies that they do business with. “My advice is to ignore all of the hype and look at each company as a real business, try to understand why they should be stable or why not,” said Tarr. “Treat it as though you’re performing due diligence on a publicly traded security. Is there risk? What kind? Are they a target for a big lawsuit? Are they currently being sued?”
Similarly, Adknowledge, one of the oldest companies in the industry has been making it clear that they feel the industry is full of less than solid companies, and their stability is one of their best assets. They recently started a new campaign on Performance Marketing Insider, comparing networks that pay their bills to Ghosts, Bigfoot and even Aliens. The advertisements ends that Adknowledge pays on time, and they are “proud to be a rare sight in the industry.” They have told us that they will be advertising their network in coming months with equally creative banners that differentiate Adknowledge from the rest of the pack.
Tarr told us that the payment issues aren’t necessarily bad and that this is part of an industry consolidation period. “In the end, the better and more established companies are able to stand out and be recognized for the good job they’ve done in building reliable, long lasting companies.”
Jason Akatiff said it perhaps best: “At the core, the only thing a network has is its payment history and trustworthiness. Without that it is nothing and will wither and die.”
Written by Pace Lattin
Pace Lattin is one of the top experts in interactive advertising, affiliate marketing. Pace Lattin is known for his dedication to ethics in marketing, and focus on compliance and fraud in the industry, and has written numerous articles for publications from MediaPost, ClickZ, ADOTAS and his own blogs.
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CPALead does pay BUT what they fail to tell you is that they are very quick to terminate non active accounts and KEEP any earnings that have not met the Minimum Earnings threshold of $50. This happened to a TON of people and yes it all ads up as profit for them.
I have had an account with CPALead for around 3-4 years now. I have not been active in their network for over a year and yet I still have an account there.
Maybe it is because I have a history of driving volume traffic?
I have moved away from CPA and into selling my own products. After all of the trouble I had with Blam recently, I do not think I will be looking back at CPA anytime soon.
I appreciate CPALead trying to expose some of these people who are paying late or not at all.
Its funny that you describe affiliates as using the network as a bank. The way I see it most networks are using the affiliate as a bank when it comes to traffic. You put your money(paid traffic) or time(organic traffic) on the table and hope you get paid for it. At anytime a network can pull some BS in the form of late payments, deny promotion methods, or whatever else they come up with. In other words they can default on the loan of traffic. They can even shave a few extra points if they choose. It is up to you to trust the network and monitor the stats they provide. Maybe they change the offer around and start testing different offers with your traffic.
When a bank loans money, collateral is provided. A bank providing a loan is able to set the terms and control the negotiation. In most cases, the affiliate has zero bargaining power with a network. When you loan your traffic to a network, you have almost no recourse should they choose to screw you. There are no independent auditors to represent the affiliate and check on the network. Conversely, networks can scrutinize your traffic at any time.
When you look at how many layers are between you and the customer with CPA offers, you can start to see the advantage of selling your own product. Consider the complications networks have with fraud and the scrubbing losses that are shared across affiliates. Once you factor in the overhead of the network and consider the unknown variable of network technical issues, CPA networks do not hold much appeal. Not to mention the trust issues or the stringent rules you have to abide by.
What happened with BLAM?
The reason I got out as so many denied me payments. I can se now, many were one man scam NW’s set up. But even some of the big ones were bad (EPIC)
Mark recently posted..Trading System For Momentum Stocks
has anyone has trouble getting paid by blinkads since the sell in may 2012. I have been getting the runaround, have been given several excuses. am owed a little less than 3k, cannot get tanya to respond with anything other than excuses!
Adknowledge pays like clockwork with me. Very happy customer ^=^
^^truth for sure
“At the core, the only thing a network has is its payment history and trustworthiness. Without that it is nothing and will wither and die.”
Definitely been seeing a lot of this lately. Glad there are still companies like Adk that are reliable.
1) Akatiff comes from a blackhat background.
2) I have reported to Jason personally not just blackhat, but ILLEGAL activity on his network (affiliates on his network spamming through phished webmail accounts) on numerous occasions. This activity violates CFAA and CAN-SPAM laws.
Sadly nothing has been done about it.
You have no idea what you are talking about. U r sad little girl.
i`m more than 4 years in content locking, first with cpalead , and change to adsendmedia and 1 years ago
both company paid on time, like last adscend payment i got in on SUnday ( do you know how many cpa company paid on time even in holiday? )
i try another cpa company , blams , mgcash, leadbolt, dollarade , because they make payment late
and 1 more thing it`s funny when blamas delay payment because tax information, and to get information you need to find it on 3rd inner page FAQ ( why don`t add in member dashboard)
why they don`t use like cpalead or adscend ( in dasboard )
for me 3 content locking who pay on time is , cpalead,adscend media and pointclicktrack
Saw the article and thought I would leave my thoughts.
Been working with the network of cpalead for over 2 years while I dn’t make thousands or more a day I have never had any issues with getting paid what i did earn.
I’ve worked with CPAlead since 2010 and I just want to chime in. I’m no “huge earner” and my campaigns typically come in spurts…work for a couple months, do nothing for a couple months, etc. etc. but over the past couple of years I’ve earned over $13,449.24 and been paid ALL of that on time, whether I was on Monthly, Bi-Weekly, or Weekly.
The support is second to none and their offers have nice payouts, especially if you can get approved for premium. I’ve used other networks like AdScend, BLAM, etc. but none have the ease of use, community, support, and trust that I have with CPAlead.
Anyone saying they didn’t receive payment probably send fraudulent traffic, which NO network is going to pay you for.
We [Clickbooth] see networks come and go in this industry constantly. We’ve made a point to always pay our publishers, on time, every time. We’re able to do this because we have an insane credit team that analyzes tons of variables on each business that we work with AND we only work with advertisers who are delivering consumer value. If you’re working with an advertiser or network that seems to willing to push the envelope slow payments or no payments are probably in your future.
Yup and never approve anybody!
You’re great at PR for being able to spew out that much BS.
Love Clickbooth, always pay on time, no BS. Top network.
Tried clickbooth… made more money with adk…
VooDoo Vox is definitely a network that does NOT pay their affiliates. Stay away from them . They will give you every excuse in the book not to pay you!!!