btp322

I was promoting a "Quality Health" offer for Free Spring Samples.
It was a full registration page with about 15 fields that paid 2.60.
The traffic was being sent to my landing page than to the offer. All traffic was generated strictly with Adwords. There was nothing shady going on. I promoted the offer 100% within the guidelines. I spoke to my affiliate manager every day to make sure everything was on the up and up.

So I am sending them about $3,000-$5,000 worth of leads every day. Everything is great and I am put on weeklies. I promote this offer for a full 2 months. At the end of the 2 months the advertiser decides they are not happy with my leads and doesnt want to pay Hy.dra. Now I am not responsible for evaluating leads. That is the advertiser and Hydras job to monitor the leads and make sure they are converting for them. How am I suppose to know my quality traffic is giving poor leads. They decide to milk me for as long as they can after I spend thousands on advertising to say we dont want to pay.

So Hydra owes me for 1 week. Which happens to be $25,000. Keep in mind half of my gross income is expenses to google. They just informed me they are paying me $0 of the $25,000 they owe me. Again, nothing shady was done here. Everything was on the up and up. I of course would have settled with a lower number, but $0? I have been a full time affiliate for several years now, and have never seen such unproffessionalism and complete disregard for their affiliates. It was obvious they were fighting for their deadbeat advertiser that doesnt pay.

They threw me for a loop. It took them a full month to tell me they are paying me nothing. I know some people like Hydra here, but they are the lamest most unprofessional company, I have ever worked with. They are far more concerned with keeping advertisers than they are publishers. They treated me like I was not important. My clown of an affiliate manager- Charlie- tried several times during this period of no pay to get me to send more traffic to them. I had to laugh.

Word of advice- First of all dont use Hydra Horrible to work with (They told me of another affiliate that lost 4 times as much as did at the same time mine was going on. Apparently they do this to affiliates alot). If you are sending big numbers to offers, always make sure the advertiser is happy with your leads. It is very important.

Theres my rant....

kingvictory

I agree with you hydra AMs are very unprofessional and rarely respond on AIM or mails...we stopped working with hydra almost...

Sad to hear your story as well..

Nicholas Ho

If hydra is no good, then who should we work with?

honestbizpro

Hey btp322!

That is a nice chunk of change to be expecting and get a Donut Hole.

What type of Offer was it for? Pills? Supplemental health?

I wish there was remedy I could offer up but I can say I hope you learned something from it that will enhance all your future marketing efforts in a positive way.

btp322

The advertiser was Quality Health. They have free sample offers.

honestbizpro

Just checked out their site.

Hey what has been your experience with Hydra before this? You were happy? Will you pull the plug or continue as publisher with them? Just curious.


The advertisers can always be fickle, but Hydra should not have left you hanging for so long while you continue to ad spend. Tough one.

Steve Taylor

You made 25K on a $2.60 offer within a week with a 15 field submit?

You must have one heck of a landing page.

-Steve

Ask...Because you never stop learning.

btp322

I would NEVER work with that garbage company ever again

Mark Brian

Wow, so an advertiser can actually get away with it by just saying they're not happy with the leads, and it's just OK with Hydra? Amazing.

kingvictory

Now that is a good catch steve..got me also thinking now.

SimonHarrison

I generally find Hydra "ok" but today for example I've been running 100% pure Adwords traffic to to $1.50 lead offer, single email submit, I was getting about 1 lead per 10 clicks, making a decent ROI, then bang, gets to about 65 clicks and 5 conversions , now it's up to 120 clicks and no additional conversions.

Doesn't add up to me, seems like some scrubbing is going or something, to out of whack.

Stop sending it to them and sent to an alternative network, very similar landing page, and voila sales back again.

I know the scrubbing is probably not down to them however so cant' really blame Hydra, just wanted to rant.

Nicholas Ho

A friend of mine told me Quality Health scrub leads like mad.

btp322

Scrubbing was really not the issue. I was making a good profit with the probably enormous scrubbing that was already going on.

SimonHarrison

It's interesting that they paid you for 7 weeks worth before they decided the leads were no good. At lets say for example half what your quoting per week, $12,500 , that's like $80 k paid to you and all that time nobody at Hydra checked to see if the leads were dodgy ?

Seems bleeding strange.

btp322

They dont care because if the advertiser doesnt pay them. They dont pay the affiliate.

SimonHarrison

Hi

That's not quite what I meant, that's a given.

What I am saying is you had a relationship on the same offer for 7 weeks. In other words, your were running $25k a week to the same offer, I find it amazing the advertister let you run and paid you for between $80,000 - $150,000 worth of business before they told Hydra they didn't like the leads.

btp322

Its called being a deadbeat and milking affiliates for as much as you can and than not paying.

brendan301

how do you get keywords cheap enough to make promoting those offers worthwhile?

SimonHarrison

If the intention was to milk you then paying you $100,000 and doing it on time every week for 7 weeks straight doesn't make sense.

What makes less sense and the point I'm making is that it makes zero sense that only after 7 weeks did they finally said they didn't like the leads.

There's no sense in them not paying an affilaite who generates your kind of money unless something is seriously wrong. No benefit to them at all to stiff an $25k per week affilaite for one weeks earnings when they could keep you earning for them week after week.

It's flat out strange frankly.

SimonHarrison

I've been paying 0.5 cents for mine today, could get cheaper but my QS sucked, I only had 2 other advertisers competing with me.

Easy to make a profit on that at $1.50 + per sale for a email submit.

gabibeowulf

well .. start a new PPC campaign with "Hydra sucks" .. tell your story .. and why people should stay away from hydra along with pictures of your adwords spend, discussions with am .. let it run for a couple of days and show your AM along with the traffic it gets.

And tell him you still have plenty of money and time to advertise Hydra services. I'm sure they'll come around and realize they "forgot" to send you your payment ..

Arania

There are many networks out there you can work with. See the post above mine from CommissionEmpire.com. They also seem to be an affiliate network. You can always try different ones. Though it might be a little pain, but 1 thing is for sure, there is no single perfect network out there. So you have to keep it trying.

Regards

tmedocianis

I think that showing your adwords spend is clearly the most impressive thing you can do. I also agree that it doesn't make sense to screw someone that is bringing in good leads. On the otherhand, if the leads are crappy, then as a business owner, I wouldn't pay crap for them, so consider yourself screwed.

The one thing that I know about advertisers is that they, like us, are in it for the money. And, I've never seen one affiliate who was sending good leads to a company not get paid. Never. The bottom line is that they will make more off of you in the long run by keeping you productive for them, then screwing you out of a cheesy $25,000. Especially if they've already been paying you. Your adspend is the most impressive thing you can show them because they understand what it is to burn money. They burn it on bad leads all the time.

MicahF7

Man, sorry about what happen, that totally sucks.

I have done quite a few testes with hydra lately and on most all of the tests, there was about a %50 ratio on the scrubbing/shaving. You never know if it is the advertiser or the networks.

Really sucks... DO business with another network.


Micah Rush

<><

MillionaireMama

Do they accept new applications? I applied and even called but they seem skeptical. I did'nt like them anyway but sad what they did to you. Can you fight them in any way?

newsecrets

Actually, it's very plausible.

When the advertiser is offering free trials and then billing their customers a few weeks later, it takes several weeks before they can determine their stick rate and retention rate (and hence, their ROI).

What may have happened here is the advertiser found out (after a couple of billing cycles) that the leads weren't giving them a good ROI, for whatever reason. (Perhaps the product sucked, or didn't measure up to the advertiser's marketing hype, so the cancellation rate was high - or the advertiser doesn't have a good retention strategy - or other possible reasons.) This is often NOT the fault of the affiliate, especially if the affiliate is promoting it properly (without using shady tactics e.g. incentivizing the leads).

If the problem was with the advertiser's sales process (as is often the case), then it sucks that the affiliate is the one who got penalized.

I'm not saying the above scenario is what actually happened in this case - I wouldn't know. But it's a common scenario that happens all the time.

SimonHarrison

That's initially what I gave credence to but I don't buy it.

On that kind of volume $25k per week you wouldn't need more than one cycle, and these free trial offers tend to rebill in 14-30 days absolute max, it's also the kind of money that any network and advertiser will be paying attention to from a single source.

Anythings possible but it would be seriously remiss.

J Elizabeth Dize

Hmmm, that's a little scary. I haven't had any issues with Hydra before...

For that amount of money I'd be doing a lot of investigating. I hope you find a resolution.

goalpower

Where I come from that's theft - especially if you didn't violate terms. Time to sue them. If you just bend over and take it - they'll continue to screw people.

Steve Meade - Master Motivational Hypnotist and IM Pro
WSO - Get Hypnotized for IM Success - Earn $5000 This Week! (only $20)
WSO 2 - Covert Mind Power Experiment

IMAGINOTICS... MYSTERY WSO To Be Launched Soon

tmedocianis

If I'm paying net 7, I'm making sure that net 7 is earned. After all, someone could very easily burn you for $40,000-$80,000 before those weeks get here. Are your telling me that business owner don't know this? Right.

I've never known one affiliate who was sending quality leads to an advertiser to not get paid. I've seen them threatened with not getting paid, but again, if the goal is to make money and this affiliate is making money for them in the long run, why burn them? Every single one of them was eventually paid. Every single one!

I'm also a show me person, so show me affiliates who were sending quality leads to a program who didn't get paid. I can't accept that it's a common scenario, it's never happened to me or anyone else I know.

As far as ROI and sales processes, these people are making money or breaking even on the initial signup, after paying affiliates and networks. Everything else is almost pure profit. Do the research. They don't need a couple of billing cycles to see if they're positive, they're positive at jump. If they're not paying, there's only one reason, they're not making money from the leads. Can someone say, chargebacks, give me my money back, yada yada yada.

I repeat: I've never known one affiliate who was sending quality leads to an advertiser to not get paid. I've seen them threatened with not getting paid, but again, if the goal is to make money and this affiliate is making money for them in the long run, why burn them? Every single one of them was eventually paid. Every single one!

Now if the advertiser really is crappy, just think how they're treating their customers. Maybe you shouldn't be promoting them in the first place. It's a lesson for those chasing easy money. What comes around goes around. You get what you give and I repeat:

I've never known one affiliate who was sending quality leads to an advertiser to not get paid. I've seen them threatened with not getting paid, but again, if the goal is to make money and this affiliate is making money for them in the long run, why burn them? Every single one of them was eventually paid. Every single one!

newsecrets

I'll give you one possible scenario to illustrate:

Remember that the CPA commission is based on the advertiser's estimate of how much he can afford to pay to acquire a lead. (Older advertisers would have more concrete data, but for newer advertisers this would be more of an estimate.) Basic marketing arithmetic.

Now, it's common for marketers to be over-optimistic about their conversion rates and retention rates and hence over-estimate their value-per-lead. Especially when there is a huge temptation to offer higher CPA commissions, in order to attract more affiliates.

Say this advertiser calculated his value-per-lead based on the assumption that the average customer stays on their program for 3-4 months. But after the first 2 months, he realizes that the average customer only stays on the program for 2 months.

Now he has overestimated his value-per-lead, and has negative ROI. NOT because of poor quality leads - but simply because he was over-optimistic with his marketing arithmetic, and over-estimated how much he could afford to pay in commissions for each lead. (This is what often happens with CPA, where commissions are paid before the sale is made.)

In this case, it does take a couple of billing cycles to find out how long the average customer stays on the program. Regardless of how much volume you get, you have to wait a few months to find out how many months the average customer stays on your program.

In particular, different lead sources will have different values-per-lead. So for a new affiliate who just started promoting the offer a few weeks ago, it can take several billing cycles to determine his value-per-lead (regardless of volume).

Again, I'm not saying this is what happened here, but it's a very plausible scenario.

I'd also like to point out that IF this was simply a case of an affiliate sending crappy leads, then the leads simply wouldn't convert and the advertiser would discover the problem within the first billing cycle.

The fact that the advertiser took 7 weeks to discover the problem, is an indication that the leads DID convert (so the leads were at least decent), but the problem was probably with retention (i.e. the leads converted to sales, but didn't stay on the program long enough for a positive ROI).

Who is to blame for the retention rate? It's not necessarily the affiliate. So as long as it's not crappy leads (that don't convert), and the affiliate was promoting the program using above-board and allowed methods, then the advertiser ought to pay the affiliate for the leads that were already sent. The advertiser can choose not to accept any further leads from the particular affiliate, but they should pay the affiliate for the leads already sent, according to the affiliate agreement.

Reid Stevens

I make around $3,000 a day through Copeac and they pay pretty good and on time. At first I had one minor hiccup and after that was smooth sailing and they pay weekly once your numbers are good.

I promote only trial offer health products. You may want to try them out.

Reid

IMChick

SUE to get the money due you.

This is theft, and is against their own company's TOS. You should pursue your rights to payment as outlined in your agreement with Hydra. In other words, sue them, and name the affiliate company as an addtional party in the suit.

Consider telling them that you plan to sue for full payment plus costs and attorney's fees if they do not cough up the FULL amount of money due and certify the funds in 2 business days. Then do it.

This is no small chunk of change, and it's yours, so go for it. In addition, if they can get away with it, fine, but what happens if you don't hammer them on this, and go to another company and THEY decide that if hydra can do it so can they...

tmedocianis

Where's my last post? Did I reveal tooo much about the business! Ha Ha Ha! :-)

Wow! I didn't think that kinda stuff happened here. Wow!

honestbizpro

Hey Btp322, tmedocianis, Reid, newsecrets,

Where did you learn CPA? Just curious. Thanks.

MicahF7

Great question.... I would like to know as well.

MemberWing

Affiliates are always at the bottom of the food chain, no matter what market it is.
Regardless of which chain link is weak - affiliate is guaranteed to hold the bag.

Any lessons from it?

Gleb

Reid Stevens

It's funny you ask, around here it seems like it's just catching on .

I started doing CPA offers 4 years ago running credit repair offer ads in the weekend addition of the USA Today. Those pay so well and it's so easy to get people to enter in the info required.

I had a complex voice messaging system that made it seem like I was a large corporation and in reality I was just a one man show.

Back in those days I was banking 7k a day just from USA Today ads and Investor Business Daily Newspapers, and another secret offline source. I know it seems hard to believe but it's real.

I was able to save up $300k pretty easy then I started doing different offers online through massive media buys working with a popular ad agency that works strictly in the online market.

CPA is simple. People make it seem hard, you just have to really know what you are doing and stay away from the competition. I started with a $256 ad in the USA Today and now I don't want to say what I make, but I run some nice numbers through 4 CPA networks.

I feel bad for some people that spend their hard earned money entering this market and making dismal returns. It seems like alot of people run to google adwords, but believe me there is alot more traffic than you could imagine than google.

You don't need to pay anyone, or buy the latest and greatest course; none of those were even available back when I started. You just really have to think about what you are doing and do it.

Money is not hard to make in this market. Apply yourself and don't stop until you succeed.

Reid

xlfutur1

This happened to me with Quality Health, but not even close to $25K. I have been pretty satisfied with Hydra other than this deal, but it did irk me that they can just say they won't pay you because the advertiser doesn't like the leads. That is BS. that's like telling Google you are not going to pay them for clicks because you didn't like quality of the people clicking on the ad.

Use this New & FREE PDF "Hot Sheet" as an offline door opener. "10 Proven Strategies for Increasing Sales and Profits in 2012" - A business owner's internet survival guide.

Grand Rapids Attorney

Black Hat Cat

Which, in the grand scheme of things, means nothing. It's a big world out there. I imagine there's a lot going on that you don't know about personally.

honestbizpro

Thanks for Taking time Reid!


Yes I learned a while back that Google is not the only game in town. Plus they always win! I am glad you are opening imaginations up to how being a little more creative can pay off big time.

FredJones

btp322, tough luck, sad to know what happened with you.

Reid, very inspiring story. What are the possibilities to do from developing countries outside Google?

ArticleScholar

$25k is a lot of money. This serves as a fair warning to those planning to enter CPA marketing such as myself.

honestbizpro

So true ArticleScholar, but at the same time....not too many other forms of marketing are even discussing these types of figures.

Tony Vercetti

Wow, sorry for what happened to you.
Remember that in CPA, just like in many other "affiliate" types of deals, you run the risk of not getting paid by the network or merchant for bogus reasons.

If they didnt like your leads, they should have either banned you or told you to stop promoting the offer. Its not like you sat all day at your computer and filled out your own offer with proxies (anyways it would be impossible to generate $25k of BS leads a day).

Dean Dhuli

0.5 cents? Are you serious?

That's $0.005, right?

I've heard about 5 cent and 3 cent clicks, but I didn't know
adwords even allowed such low bids until now.

Is it possible you're using CPM?

SimonHarrison

Nope, I never run CPM on Google, I know some people make it work but I always find I end up with considerably less ROI on a CPM basis with Google. Now Media buying, that's a different kettle of fish.

The key is always the quality score. You can get bids at 1 cent per click if you have a great QS and no competition.

This screen shot is from yesterday ,shows basically a very similar campaign from search and content, I always set them up seperately, only difference is I make the content adverts a little more "in your face".

Paid 5 cents for search and 4 cents each on average for content.

My landing page is pretty crappy , I slung it up in 2 minutes to capitlise on something I knew would only be a buzz for a day or so.

Because the landing page has no real Google credibility I got a "good" QS, if I could get a "great" I could probably get search down to 0.03 per click and content down to 0.02 or less.

I got about 1000 targeted clicks for $38 bucks .

See attached

Attached Thumbnails

 

Dean Dhuli

And I guess this also depends on the overall account quality?

SimonHarrison

Perry Marshall recently sent out an interesting video showing two almost identical campaigns , in two different accounts, one account was very new, the other had a long history with solid CTRs etc.

The latter outperformed the former by about 800%

So I guess Google does give kudos to long term accounts which have performed significantly.

The account I'm doing this in however is probably only about 2 months old .

dzoaffiliate

I also read about this in Gauher Chaudry's CPA report!

He warns that if an affiliate is making a ton of money, then they (CAP network) will make some excuse and not pay them.

Another warning is that be careful of what you divulge to your affiliate manager. These guys are fulltime empoyees on a salary and most likely most of them are also doing some affiliate marketing themselves! So don't tell them all your campaign details etc.

DZ

PPC Keyword Toolz - Create Adwords Campaigns with 1000s AdGroups, Text/Image Ads in seconds!
- Backlinks Elite Pro - Finds PR1-PR7 Backlinks
- PPC keyword Genie - FREE NOW!
Keyword Domain Suggestion Tool