A lot of the reviews I get are with companies that I don’t actually work with.  Not that this is a bad thing as I’ve mentioned before, I really enjoy testing out new networks, but it is nice when I get a review request from a company that I’ve either done stuff with in the past and had good experiences or I’m currently working with.  Tatto Media is one of those affiliate networks that I have!

I’ve worked with Tatto Media on a couple different occasions and was thrilled to write up a review about their network.  They have a lot of great offers and features and you definitely should check them out if you’ve never used them.  Well, enough promotion, it’s time to get into the review since that’s what they paid me to do!

Features

The first thing I’d like to mention is the software they use to run their network.  They really went out of their way to make sure the system was built for affiliates.  They run their own tracking software that was built from the ground up, meaning that you don’t have to worry about them using a software like Direct Track that is known for shaving leads, and you can ensure that it’s accurate!

Another great thing about their system is that it was built to be a self-serve platform.  What this means is that instead of having to contact your manager for little small things like placing pixels, you can do all this stuff yourself right from inside your account!  This is an excellent feature that allows you to quickly get your campaigns up and going without constantly waiting on your affiliate manager to do something as simple as placing a pixel.

Also, recently Tatto Media completely redid their reporting and statistics pages which from personal experience I can tell you has made them faster and more efficient!  This is another thing I like about Tatto Media, they are constantly working on improving their systems and are constantly applying new updates to their network.  Some other things I’ve notice them change recently…

• Added a new report called Conversion Tracking Report – This report provides specific lead/sale information, including sub id, tracking info, transaction id, ip address, and payout, allowing you to quickly run sub id reports. While “info” in current tracking links will continue to work, it has been replaced with “aff_sub”.
• Updated Tracking Links – They’ve updated their tracking links making them easier to understand and have added a Source Name  which allows you to specify a name and easily analyze performance in reports that you run.
• Added Tiny URLs – This is something that seems so simple, yet you don’t see many networks doing it.  This allows you to change your long affiliate URLs to something shorter, thus stopping visitors to your sites from seeing long ugly URLs that your own grandma wouldn’t trust!
• Browser Targeting – This allows you to send visitors that may come from a browser that the offer your using isn’t for.  For example, maybe someone pulls up your affiliate site using their iPhone… Now you can send them to an offer that is tailored specifically for an iPhone user which will increase your conversions.

As I said, they are constantly adding new features and working on improving their affiliate system from the feedback they are constantly receiving from their affiliates which is something that I think makes Tatto Media really stand out!

Getting Paid

Tatto Media has several ways to get your money including Checks, Paypal, or Wires.  This allows you to get your money the quickest way possible in order to keep your affiliate campaigns going. There is nothing worse then running out of money when you have a campaign that is successful!  Which leads me to the next thing…

Tatto Media offers net30 payments meaning you get paid once a month, they also offer bi-weekly payments as soon as you build a bit of a relationship with them.  If you’re doing over $5000 dollars a week, they’ll gladly increase that to paying you weekly!

Refer a Friend

Tatto Media also offers a Refer a Friend section to their site and when you log into their publisher system, they put the link right on the publisher snapshot page.  This allows you to grab it quickly and start making money by referring friends to their network.

While I think it’s great that they offer a way to make money by referring affiliates to their network, I will say that I believe their payout is a little low compared with other networks.  They pay 1% of what the affiliate earns that you refer.  Most networks are now offering at least 2% with a couple offering even more than that!  Still, it’s nice that they offer it as once you start using Tatto you’ll definitely want to let your friends know about them and you might as well make some money while doing it!

Bottom Line

The bottom line is that I’ve used Tatto Media a couple times in the past and still use them once in a while now and they are definitely a great network.  The affiliate managers are good, they know what their talking about and it’s a network that really seems to not only help the big affiliates, but also work with building up new affiliates so that they become huge publishers for their network as well.

I would absolutely 100% recommend that you check out Tatto Media.  It never hurts to be signed up with many affiliate networks in this business as you never know which one will have the best offer when you enter a new niche!

I was contacted by White Fire Media  a couple weeks ago and they requested me to write a review of their network.  One thing I love about this business is working with new people and looking at new networks when they pop up so naturally I accepted!

One of the greatest things about checking out new affiliate networks is when you find one that really stands out and does a great job, has great staff, and offer some awesome payouts on their offers!

When you first sign up for White Fire Affiliate Network and log in you’re presented with the a standard looking user dashboard.  It’s actually quite a simple interface which I like.  It doesn’t add a ton of fluff and is pretty easy to navigate.  At the top there are five links, Home,  My Account, Request Offers, My Offers, and Reporting.  In the sidebars there is Featured Offers, New Offers, News, and your affiliate manager contact details.  That’s pretty much it!

One of the weird things though was that whenever I clicked on any of the Featured Offers or New Offers links, I got taken to a page that said “No Offers Found”.  Definitely something they need to get fixed asap!

Again, the interface is pretty simple and straight forward.  It doesn’t seem to have a ton of bells and whistles but I actually think it’s quite nice that a network isn’t focusing on eye candy and instead on their network.

In order to add offers to the My Offers section, you actually have to first go to the Request Offers section.  If you click on Request Offers you’ll be presented with a page like the one above.  It will have the offer names, the average rating, what countries you can promote the offer in, the payout, etc.  Again, pretty simple and self-explanatory which is nice.

Additional Details

I actually had an extremely hard time finding any details about how they pay and when.  This is definitely something that they need to address.  They need to make a page, either include it on their publisher section of their site, or create a frequently asked questions section which lists this and other important information.  It definitely will prohibit affiliate from signing up if they don’t’ understand when and how they will be payed.

Also, they need to include information about whether or not they do wires, if they cost anything, if there is a certain amount the affiliate must make before they’ll get paid, etc.

Payment details is probably the single most important thing that a network needs to have in an easy to find spot on their site!

Another nice feature is that they pay 4% for life on all referrals to their network.  Since I was paid for this review, I didn’t include my referral link in any of the links to their site, but you should definitely take advantage of it!

Bottom Line

Overall, White Fire seems like they have a quick, simple interface with some great offers!

They definitely need to supply some more information for their publisher’s in an easy spot like a FAQ.

The owners really seem to know their stuff when it comes to affiliate marketing and have always been quick to respond to me when I had a question or concern.

They are still in their infant stage, and sometimes this may be the best time to jump on with a network as you’ll get a ton of one on one support from the guys that really know their stuff!

I’d definitely recommend checking them out, and if you have any problems contact Jeff and tell him I sent ya!

It seems like every day new affiliate networks are popping up.  It becomes almost impossible  to weed your way through the overload of networks in order to find those that truly stand out.  I’ve worked with countless networks throughout my career as an affiliate marketer and most times I find that smaller networks can actually be better than some of the bigger networks if they run their network correctly.  The reason for this is because they normally don’t have as many crap offers in each niche as the big networks sometimes have. Instead, if they are a smart network, they keep the number down to a good few select offers in each niche that they know converts through testing that they themselves have done.  This doesn’t mean that they don’t have loads of niches and plenty of offers within these niches, it just means that they cut out the crap stuff!  This is where Profit Kings Media comes in..

Profit Kings Media is a small network in terms of the number of actual affiliates they have compared to some networks like Market Leverage or AzoogleAds, however, this is not a reason to dismiss them and not try them out.  In fact, it’s quite the opposite.  Profit Kings Media does a phenomenal job at treating all their affiliates like super affiliates even if their not!  There are a couple ways that they do this…

• They Pay Weekly!  Whether you’re making $3 dollars a week or $300,000 dollars a week!
• They Offer Cheap Wires ($12 US, $20 International) and also offer free ACH’s or Checks

Another reason that I believe sets Profit Kings Media apart from the competition is that several of the affiliate managers have been or currently are affiliate marketers as well and they’ll work with you to rip apart your ad copy, landing pages, work with you on scaling and testing new traffic sources, and pretty much everything else that comes with being a successful affiliate.  The guys at Profit Kings Media actually know what the heck they are talking about unlike most affiliate networks you work with.  Again, it’s another benefit of working with a smaller network versus a larger network.  Unfortunately larger networks can’t always give you the same amount of help, because honestly, most of the affiliate managers at larger networks have never run a single affiliate campaign in their entire life!

There are a couple other points that I should mention but instead of writing a huge post that most of you won’t finish, I’ll list some of the major points in a bullet list!

• Most of their normal payouts beat what most other networks bump affiliates up to!
• They have a diverse range of offers within just about every vertical that you’d want to run as an affiliate!
• They don’t send you tons of crap offers begging you to promote them…anyone know a network that sends you a daily list of top converting offers…please!
• They are extremely personable and it’s not uncommon to even talk to the owner about an offer or campaign your running and get special treatment!

Some Things That Could Be Improved

There are a couple things that I think the network could improve, mainly with their main website.  The overall design is okay, but there is a lot of information missing that I believe should be on every serious network’s website!

First, I believe they need to have a privacy policy linked to from all the pages in the footer.  Believe it or not, a lot of people (especially affiliates cause we know how this stuff works) wants to know how their personal information is and can be used.  At least I know I do.

I’d mentioned on the homepage under the publisher section that Profit Kings pays weekly, that’s a huge benefit for most affiliates and I only noticed it after searching through the site for a minute.

Also, you should not only have the join now button on the homepage, but also under the publisher page.  A lot of affiliates may click the Publisher link to get more information or whatever, and then in order to sign up, they have to go back to the main page…

Again, overall Profit Kings Media seems like a great smaller network that has a ton of potential to grow if they keep up the hard work.  It’s definitely worth looking into them for your needs as a publisher.

Ringtones.net Revenue Stimulus
Package – INCREASED!

For the past few weeks, we have been helping our affiliates generate additional revenue during these challenging economic times through our Affiliate Economic Bailout Program. The response to the program has been fantastic, but we decided that we could do even more as the New Year begins. With all that in mind, we planned a special announcement to coincide with the beginning of Affiliate Summit West.

Beginning on Sunday, January 11 at 12:00pm MST we will be INCREASING the payout on Ringtones.net to an unprecedented $20

Ringtones.net
Revenue Stimulus Package Payout INCREASED! $20

This new payout increase will remain in effect until January 31st, 2009 at midnight MST. Be sure to take advantage of our Increased Ringtones.net Revenue Stimulus Program and get your 2009 rolling with some increased revenue!

With all of us working together, we can overcome the current economic climate!

Please contact your Affiliate Manager with any questions.

Thank you,

Your affiliate.com Team

If your running ringtones at all or you have in the past but quit, I’d definitely try ringtones out again.  At the very least I’d sign up with affiliate.com and check it out!

I believe that most affiliate companies forget that even the super affiliates started off small, at least most of us, and that any one of their affiliates could become their next big star!  So, you shouldn’t have to put up with the crap of having an affiliate manager that isn’t there to help you build your business!

Here’s the top 5 things to look out for when trying to decide if your affiliate manager sucks…

• Doesn’t Let You Know Your Payout is Being Changed – How many times have you woken up or logged into your affiliate network only to realize that your payout has been dropped?  If your affiliate manager isn’t giving you a heads up that a payout on a certain offer is going to drop (at least 24 hour notice in my opinion) then it may be time to start looking for a new one.  If they claim they aren’t finding out until last minute, then it may be time to move to an entirely new network!
• Doesn’t Tell You When Terms Change For an Offer You’re Running – This is one of my biggest pet peeves in affiliate marketing and kind of goes with them not letting you know of a change in payouts.  If your affiliate manager isn’t telling you when an advertiser changes a term for their offer, like what happens a lot in ringtones, then you may need to request a new affiliate manager.  I personally don’t have the patience of spending 300 dollars on PPC traffic only to find out that let’s say Dada Mobile no longer accepts Sprint traffic and I was never told of this.  You should put up with this either!
• Won’t Return Your Calls, IM’s, or Emails – This is a no-brainer in my opinion.  Your affiliate manager while you like it or not is your lifeline when there is a problem.  They are the person that should, and hopefully will, fix a problem when it arises.  If you are having a problem and you contact your affiliate manager but they don’t contact you back, it may be time to request a new one!
• Promises to Check Something Out For You… Only to Never Do So -How many times have you asked your affiliate manager a question only to have them say that they’ll have to check with the “big guys” and get back to you?  If you’ve been in this game for any length of time, you’ve probably heard it a dozen times.  How many times has your affiliate manager actually gotten back to you when they said they would?  If it’s less than 90% I’d say it’s time to either complain to them and see if they change or….yep you guessed it, find a new affiliate manager!
• Won’t Take the Time to Develop a Personal Relationship With You – While this isn’t necessary and most affiliates don’t even like talking to their affiliate managers, you should always know that if there was a problem you’d be able to go to your affiliate manager and talk to them about it.  If you don’t feel that you could discuss almost anything with your affiliate manager, and trust them with that information, then find a new one!

While these are all things you don’t want to deal with when it comes to your affiliate manager, there is some hope!  Most affiliate networks will switch you to a new affiliate manager if you simply ask.  Most networks understand that not every affiliate manager and publisher is going to be right for each other or supply what a certain affiliate may need.  So if you just don’t seem to be jiving with your affiliate manager, don’t be afraid to ask for a new one…this is YOUR business you’re talking about here!

There are several factors that I look at when I’m deciding which network I’ll be doing a lot of business with. The first factor that I take into consideration is…

Do they offer a variety of offers?

Although an affiliate network may have 2000+ offers, how many of those offers are in the same niche? Of course you want a network that has several good solid offers in each niche, however, you really need to be working with a network that also offers tons of different niches and has a wide variety of niches, in my opinion. This will allow you to focus on one company and with one affiliate manager giving you more leverage for higher payouts, more personal attention because you’ll be doing a larger amount of volume on one network, and other small benefits that can really add up.

Are they personable?

There has been a lot of heat on NeverBlueAds lately regarding them not giving affiliate managers to affiliates that are not doing a certain amount of revenue per month. I can’t remember the total off the top of my head, but anyways my point is, if it’s important to you to have someone help you, dedicated to you, etc then they wouldn’t be the network for you.

I’m not saying NeverBlueAds is a bad company, however, you need to decide what you want in an affiliate company.

Personally, I like having an affiliate manager that I can go to and ask for a raise in my payout, or talk to when I feel that an offer isn’t tracking properly, or whatever else. Some affiliates hate being bothered by affiliate managers so they are happy not to have one. Again, it’s something that you have to decide on.

High Payouts and High Converting Offers?

Another thing I look for in an affiliate network is whether their payouts are higher than other networks or at least on par with the other top networks. Also, if they have good solid offers that convert or not. Of course, I can hear you all in my head now asking, “How do I know if an offer is a high converter or not without testing it?” The answer is, you can’t really. However, what you can do is take a network you’re already using and pick a couple of their offers you’ve had luck on that are converting well and see if the new network also has these offers. If they do, you can assume pretty safely that they work to get the best converting offers on their network as well. This of course isn’t always the case, but it can’t be used to get an idea.

My Suggestions:

Now as I said above, you have to decide exactly what YOU’RE looking for in an affiliate network, but I truly believe that if you use the three questions above to choose your network, you’ll have great success with that network.

As the header says, here is a list of networks that I highly recommend that you check out. They aren’t in any particular order and are all worth checking out in my opinion.

Market Leverage

AzoogleAds

PepperJam Network

Needless to say, I switched to the new offer allowing myself to receive the higher payout and instantly boost my Return Over Investment (ROI). Now I had been fighting with my normal company to increase my payout on this offer I was running and if they did I would definitely be able to double my traffic going to the offer as I would be able to raise my bids on the PPC networks I’m using. Now with this particular offer I was only doing about 5,000 a month with, so needless to say, they decided they weren’t going to raise my payout. Which I’m completely fine with and even understand.

So anyways, I move to the new network which is paying out $5.00 more per lead for a similar offer with a similar conversion rate and raise my bids which well you guess it doubles my traffic which in turns makes the niche go from 5,000 a month to 8,000 a month. So I’m pretty happy considering the work to switch to the other offer took a whole 30 minutes tops. (Filling out their application and switching my links over)

What do you think happens next. The CPA network I was originally running the offer with contacts me and tells me they will match the payout. Are you KIDDING ME! Match the offer, I couldn’t get you to even raise it a dollar, yet the moment I leave your willing to raise it $5.00 dollars! I mean seriously…

I get tired of these affiliate companies that act like they can’t give you another cent because then they wouldn’t be making out yet the moment you switch to another company here they come willing to go above and beyond what you originally was even asking for! It reminds me of sears…You find a better offer somewhere and sears says oh okay well we’ll match it…

Needless to say, Your not getting my business because you match an offer. Beat the offer! If I see an offer and one company is giving a better payout on it, I’m going with that company, they are the ones willing to give more to their affiliates! When you say that you’ll match the offer it makes it sound like your screwing over all the other affiliates that don’t notice that other networks have the same or similar offer with a better payout! If you want our business offer the better payout to begin with. Don’t make us beg and moan and say you can’t do it only to find out another network can…its makes you well…it makes you a liar!

Why Azoogle Gets My Top Recommendation

Although I work in a few different CPA networks (as different networks have their different strong points), the network with the most strong points for me has been Azoogle. I recommend Azoogle for the following reasons :

Reason #1 – Management

I have found my affiliate managers at Azoogle to be the best in the business. Some talk has come up at some forums (like DP) of affiliates being neglected by their AM. Well no CPA network is perfect, but sometimes not all the blame should be put on management, as the affiliate should make some effort to contact their manager if they’re in need of something. Plus if you really dislike your manager, you can always request a change. I loved both of my managers (Fraser was my development manager and Audrey is my manager now – if any of you guys have them). They’ve told me what offers are hot, helped me in marketing them, and have even scraped keyword lists with me. I couldn’t ask for more.

Reason #2 – Top Payouts

Azoogle is known for their top payouts, and they live up to it. Despite a few CPA drops recently, Azoogle has always had the best offers, and best payouts on the offers. It’s also fairly easy to boost up your payout after you’ve promoted the offer for a little. Back a little over a month ago when Blockbuster got really hot, the payout in Azoogle was $52. After about a day of promoting it, my manager was able to bump me up to $58…which is a HUGE increase.

Reason #3 – On-Time Payments

What good are top payouts if you don’t get paid on time? Azoogle pays out on the day they say they will, period. I’ve had one instance of a late payment, and that was after an insane holiday rush and the payday fell on a holiday (I can’t remember what it was).

Reason #4 – Great Offers

They’re always coming out with new offers that seem to convert great for everyone. They’ve also been open to bringing in new offers that I’ll recommend if I have been using them with another company.

Reason #5 – Ease of Use

This is best for beginners, but I loved how easy it was for me to initially navigate through my account, and find offers instantly to promote. Getting around is really clean and easy, which is key for complete beginners.

A Little Walkthrough of Azoogle

Alright, by now I should have convinced you that Azoogle is a bomb network, and you should have signed up. Now that you signed up, I’ll just show you a few things that will get you acquainted with Azoogle and their system.

Once you login, you’ll be sent to the starting screen. From here you can see recent news, your MTD (month-to-date) revenue, MTD clicks, and the menu that will take you to wherever you want to go. Now we’ll go and find an offer to promote.

Hover over the offers menu option, and then click on “All Offers”. This will bring up a screen that looks like this (click to enlarge) :

The offers shown will be the latest ones Azoogle has. You can customize different search options to display them in different manners, but lets say you already know you want to promote ringtones. Enter “ringtones” into the box and search it. Up will come all the ringtone offers Azoogle has. You can see all the payouts on the different offers, and then click to look at more details about the offer. Let’s say we want to look at the RockinRinger offer from Thumbplay. Click on the link, and the screen will look like this (click to enlarge) :

Note : If your account is brand new, the “Search” box won’t be there. Contact your affilite manager and ask them to unlock it.

We’re going to say you’re going to be doing PPC marketing, so you’ll chose the “Search” option. Here, we can read all of the rules for the offer. It’s very important that you read the rules and follow them. You can get in some deep crap if you break the rules, so it’s in your best interest to always read the offer description and rules. You’ll see the “Tracking URL” and then a weird looking URL. This is where you want to send your landing page to, it’s the actual affiliate offer with your tracking code in it. So if your landing page has a button that says “Click here to get started”, you’d make that link to the tracking URL.

Now we’ll take a look at reports. If you hover over the “Statistics” tab, you’ll see a bunch of different report options you can see. If you just click on the Statistics tab, it will jump today today’s stats for every offer you are running. The most useful report in my opinion though is the Sub Report. This allows you to see how each separate subid is working out.

Note : what are subids? A subid helps you track your offers more specifically. For example, if you’re promoting ringtones and you have a carrier landing page, you can link the Verizon button to http://youraffiliatelink.com?subid=verizon. Now if you go into your Sub Report at the end of the day, you can see how many times the Verizon button was clicked on, and how many leads you got from it. Even more importantly, you can track what exact keywords converted to leads, which is pretty awesome.

I’d show a screenshot for the subreport so you can see what it looks like, but I hit my subreport cap, so now they all have to be emailed to me and opened up in Excel.

If you click on the Rewards tab, you’ll see a little graph thingie that shows how many points you have, and what you can buy with those points. I save up for the 100,000 points and go for the big gift card . You have to get at least 5,000 points ($5,000 revenue) for them to start adding up.

Oh, and definitely download the Azoogle toolbar for Firefox. Hover over “Tools”, and then click on toolbar. It saves all the suspenseful loads of your main Azoogle homepage. It tells you your daily (or monthly) clicks, leads, and eCPC.

Alright, well this post is long enough, and you should know by now how much I love Azoogle. You know why I like them so much, and now won’t be completely lost when you do sign up and get your account Approved.