I remember when I first started out, I thought most of my affiliate managers were just pushing offers on me because they needed volume on them – regardless of how well the offer performed. The fact is sometimes this is true, you just need to be able to tell the difference.

This mindset becomes a problem when you start putting every affiliate manager into this category. I like to think that there are three types of affiliate managers, you need to be able to tell which one they are so you don’t waste time running crap and more importantly lose money.

Affiliate Manager Type #1 – The Bimbo

They are everywhere and very easy to spot out. Just take a quick look at their profile picture and as much as I hate to stereotype, there are not that many attractive female affiliate managers who actually know what they are talking about. There are always exceptions, and I know plenty of hot affiliate managers who know A LOT about this business, and they rock.

But let’s be honest and I know most of you already know this, a lot of networks hire hot affiliate managers who know absolutely nothing about this business simply to get horny young affiliates to work with them. Even worse a lot of them will pretend to flirt with you on instant messenger or facebook to make it seem like they actually care about you.

You need to STAY AWAY from these types of affiliate managers. If you’re unsure if they are this type or not simply ask them questions like “If you were to run this offer how would you go about setting it up?”. You can probably gauge just from that answer alone how much they know.

Affiliate Manager Type #2 – The Weasel

This type of affiliate manager can be VERY annoying and sometimes relentless until you reply to their email or answer their phone call. Most of the time they are just desperate for new affiliates under them, but occasionally you may run into someone good who truly does want to help your business out and provide you with good offers and information.

Affiliate Manager Type #3 – The Veteran

This is the ideal affiliate manager. They’ve most likely been around a long time and know their stuff. Some are past and or current affiliates themselves and can be really helpful. It’s usually pretty easy to tell who the veterans are just by how they talk to you and approach things. Instead of just saying “hey this offer is hot you should run it”, they will most likely also tell you where it is running hot and how it’s been promoted, thus making your job easier saving you time and money.

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I just started using DirectCPV and talked to these guys at AdTechNY and they have a great network setup with some interesting traffic sources.

Essentially the traffic comes from their LoudMo Products.

So far it seems to be a decent network to try and expand on volume that you are already having success with elsewhere.

I think everyone should at least sign up and take a look around. The key is getting in early!

Use this link and the code “br25″ to get an extra $25 free added to your account.

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Sometimes it’s gonna hurt.

I’m sure you’ve seen all the bad buzz about Dennis Yu during the last couple days ever since his post on techcrunch.

I personally think the post could have been done completely different and had less of a negative effect. If you’re not really familiar with the affiliate marketing space than the post sorta makes our industry look like we just spam and take advantage of people, which is of course far from the truth.

Some particular things annoyed me like calling Zango spyware when it is in fact adware. Incentivized offers should not be labeled as scams, because they aren’t. Certain advertising methods, while maybe shady are certainly not in my opinion spam.

I think Dennis had some good intentions but went the wrong away about it. It’s great to have some juicy information to get a guest post on a highly read tech blog, but not when it’s at other peoples and in this case a whole industries expense.

Even I admit I stuck my neck out at first before I completely read the TechCrunch post (I had just briefly scanned it before that comment). I like to try and support my friends and not just jump on the hate bandwagon, there is of course always two sides to every story. To be honest I would have being better off just not saying anything.

I like this quote Ruck said in the Wickedfire thread:

Dennis nor Techcrunch is going to slow down advertising on the Internet and they damn sure will not slow down the minds that work and adapt this quickly in an industry such as this.

All in all I think there is way too much drama going on about this, so I am done talking about it.

On a happier note, I can’t wait to see everyone at AdTech tomorrow!

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Back in April I wrote about a temporary (and most likely outdated) fix to the error I face so often when sending mass volume through prosper202.

Recently Wes (thank god) let me know about a way to fix it for good and I can say I haven’t had a problem since I applied this 2 second update to my prosper202.

If you’ve ever gotten or fear getting the “The table ‘202_clicks_spy’ is full” error message, which essentially makes all your traffic go to a white screen until you finally notice it and reboot your mysql then you will want to do this update (holy run on sentence).

When logged in to phpMyAdmin run these sql statements SEPERATELY:

ALTER TABLE `202_clicks_spy` ENGINE = MYISAM

ALTER TABLE `202_last_ips` ENGINE = MYISAM

That’s it, the problem shouldn’t happen again and hopefully you’ll save some potentially lost monies.

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I just found a couple interesting posts by Ken Smith the co-founder of Zango on his personal blog:

What Zango Got Wrong

What Zango Got Right

Exerpts From Some Old Zango Emails

Definitely some interesting reads if you’re in the CPV/PPV space.

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Just got this email:

It is with great excitement that we announce the relaunch of Zango Ad Services as LeadImpact. You will continue to receive the great customer service and ROI that you have come to expect from us, and based on your input, we are also working on additional improvements that you will see in the coming weeks and months.

Starting November 10th, the Zango Ad Services Web site will redirect you to www.LeadImpact.com, where you will be able to log into your account directly. All of your account and login information will stay exactly the same, your campaigns will remain active and this change will not affect traffic delivery.

Could this be because of some of their shady practices in the past, or maybe the fact that they recently went belly up. Either way I’ve been with Zango for a long time now and they still have a ton of traffic. It will be interesting to see where LeadImpact takes this.

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I think the beauty of the internet is that anyone can hide behind their monitor and for the most part say what they want without anyone knowing who they are. I would guess 99% of people do that by using screen names.

As most people have noticed I am 100% transparent everywhere I am; forums, email, instant messenger, blog comments, twitter, etc. I don’t hide behind screen names or pretend to be someone I am not. I think this is very important for business in general and also great for networking.

If I notice someone who is completely upfront about themselves and everything they do I am way more likely to want to work with them or even talk to them. It also helps when you use a picture of yourself everywhere you network online so when it comes to meeting in real life it’s that much easier to put a name to a face.

I’m terrible with names but from the people I know online who have their pictures on their avatars or wherever, I almost always will remember them solely because of that. It’s also nice going to conferences or events and you feel like you know the person or vise versa simply because of seeing their image and name everywhere they socialize online.

Just thinking off the top of my head, pretty much every successful person I know uses their picture everywhere they interact online.

Don’t be afraid to be transparent online – who cares if you’re young or whatever. I’m 22 and I look young as hell – just be confident with who you are.

Unless you have something to hide that is.

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I’ll be honest, I had never heard of Robert Drysdale until I met him. I don’t watch much fighting, some UFC time and again but either way I don’t know a ton of fighters.

It was the second day of DK’s Thinktank when Robert came by to hang out with everyone and show us some fighting moves. He also let anyone who wanted to challenge him one on one.

I was told Robert is one of the best Jiu-Jitsu fighters in the world. I gotta say, for a guy that tough he didn’t seem to have any type of ego or tough guy persona about him. He was nice and very chill to everyone. I think that’s what I liked most about him.

Heres a picture of me with Robert (I had just gotten out of the water from attempting to surf so I’m a little rough).

He stayed around for most of the afternoon then had to head back to Vegas. How awesome of him to come down to San Diego for just the afternoon.

Next time you’re in Las Vegas you should definitely check out Roberts Jiu-Jitsu Gym for some one on one training.

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GET A KEG AT YOUR BOOTH!

This was Convert2Media’s booth at ASE in NYC. If you saw it you probably also saw the ton of people that were constantly around it.

Yeah they had free beer, but that is the point. It gets people to come over and hang around…while their standing there drinking they’re gonna ask questions about your company. Also the more people hanging around your booth makes you look a lot more popular, hence more people will come to check out what all the fuss is about.

You also don’t have to try and stop people walking by because most people will come to you.

All I gotta say is, and I said this at ASE over and over, any smart network has a keg or drinks at their booth!

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At least in my opinion it isn’t.  When I’ve wrote about PPV/CPV in the past I always referred to it is a “popup” or “popunder” but this is not what it is. You can argue that it is similar but I disagree. A popup is typically not related to what the person is visiting the particular website for (ex. a poker popunder on a movie site).

Adware on the other hand is like if you were visiting apple.com and a new window opened up an offer for a free iPhone or something related. The user experience is much much better with adware than regular website popups.

Popup = unrelated

Adware = new window with relevant info, product or service

Anyway I just wanted to make that clear in case I had confused anyone about what PPV/CPV really is…yes it’s interrupting people while surfing but for the most part with relevant information or products which could add value to their overall experience.

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