Dylan Stout is the Director of Affiliate Operations at RevenueAds Affiliate Network. With over 4 years of experience in affiliate marketing, Dylan has helped build RevenueAds into a premier network that advertisers and publishers turn to when looking to promote and advertise online.
1. How long have you been in affiliate marketing and how did you get involved?
I have been in affiliate marketing for a total of 4 years. It all started when my good friend Matthew Stowe created a website based on social media. At the time, we were using Tripod to build our sites. We had this site in the glory days of internet marketing. It was in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. We wanted a way to pay the bills to maintain our site that we had built just for fun. That’s when we came across a company called ClixGalore and started running cost per click campaigns. We were earning between $0.01 and $0.50 per click. After that kind of burnout, Matt went on and started IncentReward, which was a popular incentive affiliate network. Then, about two and a half years ago, we started RevenueAds focusing primarily on non-incentive campaigns.
2. How long was it before you realized you could live off your affiliate income?
From the time we were very young, when we started doing internet marketing, it took a couple of years before we realized that college was not necessary and that we could work from our living room, and now from our office, and make a living. that way.
3. What was the biggest mistake you made when you started affiliate marketing?
Accounts that get paid may surprise you at first if you don’t actively ensure that your advertisers pay on time. We’re proud to have a strong accounting team to make sure we get all of our payments on time, but most importantly our publishers always get paid on time. We have an excellent history of paying on time or early each pay period. Big publishers expect it, and that’s what we offer.
4. Many CPA affiliate networks already exist. What makes your network different?
With so many networks, it’s hard to find something that someone doesn’t offer. I would say the main thing we focus on at RevenueAds is understanding that each and every affiliate is different in their needs and abilities. Therefore, not all affiliates will need the same thing to be as successful as possible. The keyword with us is flexibility. Affiliate “A” can run rebilling campaigns as a media buyer and Affiliate “B” can run appointment campaigns with an email list. Therefore, we try not to set strict policies across the board. Tell me what you need, be it campaigns, payments, payment terms and we’ll get it for you. I feel like that’s our job, to basically work for each affiliate until they have the exact tools they need.
5. Do you offer biweekly or weekly payments? If so, how much do you have to earn to qualify?
We offer weekly payouts, we like to see at least $1000 per week to get the weekly payouts.
6. Which traffic sources prove to be the most effective for your top earning affiliates: Email, PPC, Pay Per View, Facebook, Media Buying or any other?
We have affiliates that make great income on all of the traffic sources mentioned above. If you have the right campaign and a creative way to promote it, you can be successful.
7. Do you offer online training for new members?
Yes, we help train new members on a daily basis. We are working on creating pay-per-click and cost-per-view tools that will be free for all of our affiliates when they promote their campaigns.
8. What are the criteria for your network to accept a marketer? How do you prevent and manage fraud?
If you are motivated and hardworking, there will be no problem for us to accept you. With fraud, we have internal checks to remove all fraudulent subscriptions from our network. Unfortunately, due to fraud with lead generation and CPA marketing, I think it has prevented a number of major advertisers and many brand name companies from getting into affiliate marketing. This really hurts everyone involved with internet marketing by making more money with companies that have huge advertising budgets. But that’s what also sets us apart from other networks, with our rigorous selection process, we only provide the best traffic for our advertisers.
9. In your opinion, what are the best places for a new affiliate to learn affiliate marketing? What advice would you give them?
I think you can find some great information on many of the affiliate marketing forums and blogs. Many affiliates are willing to share their failures and successes, saving you hours of trial. A couple of sites I enjoy reading are evilfire.com and affbuzz.com.
My advice to new affiliates is that hard work and determination can equal success and great rewards. Don’t be afraid of failing. Keep pushing and don’t be too quick to throw in the towel.
10. In your experience, what are the three most critical elements to running a successful campaign?
I would say the most important thing is to be willing to put in the time and effort it takes to scale a campaign. If you don’t have automatic traffic sources that you can just turn on, it will require tuning and a lot of testing. Choosing the right campaign is essential in this area. Your affiliate manager can be very helpful in helping you choose a campaign that will work well enough for you to be successful. They have the inside scoop on convention fees and campaign earnings per click for various traffic sources. Once you’ve decided to put in the time and have selected a good campaign to promote, you’ll need good ad copy, landing page, or creative. From there, you are ready to scale it.
11. What is the difference between a Super Affiliate and an Average Affiliate?
This is a tough question because I don’t know where the determination is made that this affiliate or that affiliate generates enough leads to be considered a “Super” affiliate. Some of the affiliates that generate large amounts of volume have just found something that works for them, usually a source of traffic that they can monetize with a good campaign. An affiliate running a lower volume of leads is simply a “Super” affiliate who waits until they find that source of traffic or campaign they can crush.
12. What are the keys to building successful relationships between affiliates and affiliate networks? What are some of the challenges of being an affiliate manager/owner?
Well as an affiliate network we basically have two parts that we try to make as profitable as possible while keeping a small part. The advertiser and the affiliate. The affiliate is making money for the affiliate link and the advertiser is footing the bill. Therefore, the most valuable affiliates to an affiliate network are the ones that work closely with the affiliate manager to ensure that the advertiser gets quality traffic. A good affiliate manager should ALWAYS have the back of an affiliate who is working with them to drive traffic to campaigns. Affiliate networks need to understand the struggles of an affiliate, fight for whatever they can to help the affiliate succeed, after all if the affiliate is not successful then there is no traffic.
13. If you could change one thing about the affiliate industry, what would it be?
I honestly can’t really complain too much here. There are things that sometimes make it difficult, but for me it’s so much better than most other jobs I could have right now.
14. What do you think about where the industry is headed? What advice would you give affiliates to keep up?
I hear things every day about this amazing new source of traffic or this great idea. Most importantly, I think being able to adapt in a rapidly changing field is key. There may be changes to what you do, just be prepared to evolve with what comes your way.
At RevenueAds, we’re looking to get more ownership of our own campaigns and properties. For affiliates, I’d say dollar signs should be motivation enough.
15. What are your goals in 2010? And how is the progress so far?
Our goals for 2010 have been to continue to grow at a fast pace and introduce our own exclusive in-house offerings as well as tons of direct advertiser relationships.