My Azoogle Test

After listening to WebmasterRadio.fm lastweek I got inspired to spend more time communicating with my affiliate program managers. On the show, the guest speakers said the number one thing they would recommend to start improving your earnings was by getting the help of the affiliate programs themselves. And you do this by having a good relationship with your affiliate manager.

Well in my case, I thought I would try Azoogle.com. I hadn't really done much with them in the past, and thought this was as good of time as any to get started.

I contacted my affiliate manager at Azoogle and inquired about some offers. She gave me some recommendations on which programs paid out best, and some placement ideas. I went to work adding the new creatives to my site.

My approach was to show the ads to highly targeted traffic. For instance, if someone is reading my insurance company reviews, then I would be sure to show them some offers from various insurance companies. This technique is of course very successful, and was helping me pull in a 15% conversion rate on some of my programs.

Well utilizing this same approach, I marketed a few of Azoogle's offers. After a few days I had sent them a few hundred highly targeted clicks. No payouts. Not a big deal yet. I know some of my programs can take weeks to post payouts. I contacted my affiliate manager to confirm the payout schedule of the offers. She confirmed they should payout real-time.

Ok. So my hundreds of highly targeted clicks I sent them didn't convert one single payout? I thought I would try a simple test. I had a friend sign up for one of the products through my site using my ads. I figured if I got paid for the sale, then I would simply ask them to refund it from my account since I was just doing it as a test.

Well as you might guess, I was never paid a commission for my friend's test purchase. Where did my commission go? Who knows. My guess is the merchant and Azoogle are keeping it.

Moral of the story? Don't waste your time with big name affiliate programs like CJ (Commission Junction), Amazon, Azoogle, etc. They have too many layers of folks with their hands in the pot for you to make any money.

Find those smaller affiliate companies. Those that sell just a few products, or better yet, only sell their own products. This helps you cut down on the number of folks dipping on your commission, and less chances of lost/missing commissions.

I know it can be a lot of work testing and finding all of these gems, but trust me it is worth it. Don't waste too much time with an affiliate that doesn't pay out. Do the test like I did above to verify if they are legit. If they payout, keep working to promote them and see how far you can take it. If they keep your commission, drop them like a bad habit.