Choosing the correct CPA Network can be tricky. In fact, sometimes it can seem like a huge giant that’s hanging over our shoulder. Every time we run an offer, in the back of our mind we are thinking, am I receiving the best payout? Will this network pay me on time? Can I trust my affiliate manager on this network? Of course these are all very valid questions and this article hopefully will provide you with some techniques to make sure your working with the affiliate network that is best for you!

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

Popularity: 16% [?]

So, I decided a few days ago that I was going to move a niche that I was doing from one network to another that had a similar offer with a higher payout. Now, I did some quick testing and notice within a couple days of stats the offer with the higher payout had roughly the same conversion rate as the offer I was currently running that had the lower payout.

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!

Popularity: 7% [?]

Affiliates are always looking for the best CPA company to work with, and what they should look for in a company to work with. My top recommendation is to join up at AzoogleAds, as they are my most preferred network for a variety of reasons. I’m going to write up a review of Azoogle, and then write a little guide that will “break you in” to Azoogle once you sign up. I’ll show you where things are located, and how to navigate around and use a few of their features.

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.

Popularity: 9% [?]