Dylan Stout is the Director of Affiliate Operations at RevenueAds Affiliate Network. With over 4 years of affiliate marketing experience, Dylan has helped build RevenueAds into a premier network 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 used Tripod to build our sites. We had this site back 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 campaigns without incentives.
2. How long was it before you realized you could live off your affiliate income?
Since 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?
Paid accounts may surprise you at first if you don’t actively make sure 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 more importantly, our publishers are always paid on time. We have an excellent track record of paying on time or early each pay period. Great 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 that 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 things to be as successful as possible. The key word with us is flexibility. Affiliate “A” can run rebilling campaigns as a media buyer and Affiliate “B” can run dating 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 will get it for you. I feel like that’s our job, basically working for each affiliate until they have the exact tools they need.
5. Do you offer bi-weekly 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 are proving to be the most effective for your top earning affiliates: Email, PPC, Pay Per View, Facebook, Media Buying or any other?
We have affiliates who make great money on all of the traffic sources listed 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 daily. We are working on creating pay per click and cost per view tools that will be free for all 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 hard-working, 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 believe it has prevented several major advertisers and many branded 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 deliver 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 very good information on many of the affiliate marketing forums and blogs. Many affiliates are willing to share their failures and successes, saving you hours of testing. A couple of sites that 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 to fail. Keep pressing 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 that the most important thing is to be willing to put in the time and effort to scale a campaign. If you don’t have automatic traffic sources that you can simply turn on, it will require tweaking 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 spend time and selected a good campaign to promote, you’ll need a 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 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 waiting until they find that traffic source 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 be as profitable as possible while keeping a small part. The advertiser and the affiliate. The affiliate is making money for the affiliate network and the advertiser is footing the bill. Therefore, the most valuable affiliates for 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 as much as 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?
Honestly, I really can’t complain too much here. There are things that sometimes make it difficult, but for me it’s 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 it’s key to be able to adapt in a field that changes at a rapid pace. There may be changes to what you do, just be ready to evolve with whatever comes your way.
At RevenueAds, we’re looking to get more in the 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 internal offerings as well as tons of direct relationships with advertisers.
