adfinity.com Blog

Hey all, hope you had a great weekend and the traffic is kicking up a notch. There’s lots of exciting things going on here at Adfinity, including some new offers, some upcoming promotions (you’ll find out the details soon, we assure you), and the upcoming trip to San Francisco to drink do business.

Let’s talk about Myspace traffic, and where Adfinity stands.

First off, this is an issue that confronts all advertising and affiliate networks. We’re addressing the issue of “myspace” traffic specifically for two reasons. For one, we know that our offers work well and appeal to similar demographics that are on myspace. Secondly, the online rumor mill has started whipping up rumors that somehow we don’t take this issue seriously.

Here’s the reality. We are 100% committed to compensating all our affiliates on legitimate traffic, earned through any legitimate and industry supported marketing methods. What we do not support is traffic from illegitimate sources and methods, such as (but not necessarily limited to) email spam, private messages spam, private communications spam, and any sort of phishing activities that are used to acquire those spam lists. The number one venue for these sorts of phishing and spam scams is Myspace. Here’s an excerpt from our Terms of Service:

 Phishing, including, but not limited to, sending an email to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft, or any other activity, is absolutely and stictly prohibited.

As Joe Pantel (CEO) stated: “It’s a difficult situation for any advertising or affiliate network to deal with, especially one like ours which is so geared towards a younger audience. Obviously we can’t go asking every single publisher where they get their traffic from - that’s what makes them great affiliates. But we do take complaints or network abuse allegations very seriously. If a publisher is found to be phishing or spamming, we will remove them from the network immediately, simple as that. There’s thousands of great ways that 99% of our affiliates have found to earn legitimate revenue streams, and we’re always happy to work with affiliates that want to verify that their marketing practices meet the appropriate industry standards.”

If you have any questions about Adfinity’s Affiliate Agreement, please direct your questions to Joe@Adfinity.com. Thanks for helping make Adfinity the fastest growing network on the web, and we’ll keep doing our part to ensure quality offers, on-time payments, and superior affiliate support.

Hey all,

Hope you’re having a great Thursday! We’re going to be giving you an eComXpo wrap up in the near future, but for the time being we wanted to take a moment to announce another exciting change here at Adfinity.com. We’ve decided, in the interests of protecting both affiliates and advertiser relationships, as well as the end consumer that we ultimately all serve, to become a no-download network. That means Adfinity will not be promoting or distributing offers that include toolbars, adware downloads, or anything that might be interpreted as parasiteware or similar product.

The reason we’ve made this change is two-fold. For one, we want to focus our energies on high quality CPA and CPL offers, and frankly downloads just don’t fit in to that model. Downloads and tool bars add a level of maintenance and frustration with all parties involved, because the tracking is slightly different and the monetization model is different as well. The second reason is that we want to provide only high-quality offers that consumers truly want and desire. In too many instances, there are stories of toolbar downloads in the dark alleys of the internet. Ben Edelman is a watchdog of the industry, and has proven time and time again that there are just too many gray areas, for advertiser, affiliate, and consumer alike.

With this new change in mind, please note that we are discontinuing both our screen saver offer as well as our joke tool bar download. Affiliates currently running those offers will be notified individually about the change (truth be told, this does not affect many of our publishers). If you have any questions about this change, please contact Dave@Adfinity.com or add your comments below. We’re working hard to create the best affiliate network on the planet, and hope that this change highlights our dedication to our publishers, advertisers, and the consumers we serve.

Here’s a quick thought for you to chew on for the next couple minutes: Are you maximizing the visits to your site?

What I’m referring to is making sure that when people arrive at your site, you’re providing a variety of ways to capture their information - no matter what the scenario. For instance, one of the most important things that you can offer on any website is some sort of email capture. Get those emails! Make sure to remember the simple rules for CAN-SPAM compliance: provide an obvious opt out, include your contact information on the site (so that someone can opt-out even if they can’t find your opt-out form), and capture the signup date and IP address. The signup date & time with the IP address will help you if you ever want to go to a 3rd party emailer to assist you with your email campaigns down the line.

Another example of maximizing your site visits is to provide anonymous polls that might help you get a sense of why someone visited your site and if they’re getting everything that they desire. For instance, if you’re creating a site about the hottest new ringtones, why not include a poll that simply asks “Did you find the ringtone you were looking for?” with 3 possible answers, such as “Yes / No / Some of them, but not all”. This could give you incredibly valuable information as you’re updating your site.

There’s plenty of other ways that you can maximize each site visit to your advantage. Get cell phone numbers - the text message market is going to be hot pretty soon, so if you’re sitting on a list of 10,000 cell numbers - you’ll have a valuable resource for the future.

Just remember, every time someone visits your website, you have the chance to earn a visitor for life. Do whatever you can to find out about them, and profit from that relationship forever.

Get those commissions!

Affiliates! How’s the marketing coming along today?

This is just a quick update post to let you know where you can find real live Adfinity team members in the next few weeks. If you’re a Southern California affiliate, we welcome you to come out to the Orange County Affiliate Dinner. The event is being held at Dave & Busters at The Block in Orange, CA on Thursday, March 15 at 7:00pm. This is a great opportunity for you to mingle with other affiliates, learn some new tricks of the trade, and enjoy a casual networking event. Please RSVP with Dave by emailing Dave@Adfinity.com.

Coming up next week, be sure to join Adfinity at the virtual networking event - eComXpo, running March 20-22! Adfinity is a featured sponsor of the event, including a floor-level booth for your enjoyment. Make sure to stop by and say hello, find out about the latest news (not like you can’t do that already by IM’ing adFinityJoe on AIM), and learn more about affiliate marketing. The eComXpo is free to attend, and is totally virtual, so you can mingle with us even in your underwear (please don’t let us know that though… it might get weird).

Looking a little further down the road, we’ll also have team members at the San Francisco Ad:Tech conference. Please make sure to email Dave if you’re going to be there so that we can find a time to meet, and discuss in further depth what Adfinity can do for you.

See! We’re social. You might even get a beer out of us if you’re nice.

Hey Affiliates! What’s the good word?

So, you’ve managed to find the brand new Adfinity blog. Right now we’re still getting used to this thing, but here’s what we’ve got in store for you…

• Latest news announcements about the Adfinity network. What we’re changing, and most important, why we’re changing things. For instance, most of you might have noticed the swanky new Adfinity homepage. What do you think? Give us your comments below. Obviously, we’re still working on switching over all the back-end elements. Expect everything to be wrapped up through the next week.
• Where Adfinity is going to be. We’re social people, and besides touching base with you via email, phone, instant messenger, smoke signals, carrier pigeons, sky writing (by the way, this is pretty cool), and telegraph - we also get out of the house occasionally. So, we’ll keep you up to speed as we’re attending conferences and networking events across the country (we’ll give you another update in the next day or two about our next 3 events).
• Campaigns, Exclusives, Bonuses. The good stuff. Keep it tuned to the Adfinity blog as we update our network with new offers, exclusive opportunities for you, and of course, affiliate bonuses and contests. Right now we’ve got the $500 bonus program running, but look forward to some hot new promotions in the coming weeks and months. We’re going to be shoveling money out of our bank account this spring and summer (no word yet on Fall, but we’ll keep you posted).
• Informative articles and random thoughts about web marketing. We’re going to do our best to keep you in the loop when things change in the world of affiliate marketing. We’re going to address your issues directly, so please ask your account managers questions and we’ll try to get the best ones answered up here. Anything that we think might help you become a better affiliate is something that we’re interested in providing for you. And if you’ve got something that you’d like to share, please let us know - we’re more than happy to make you a guest blogger.
• Company news and employment opportunities. As we expand and grow the company, keep an eye on the blog here if you’re interested in joining the team. Already, if you’re an experienced publisher or affiliate manager, we may be interested in having a chat with you. Drop Joe an email at Joe@adfinity.com and start a discussion about possibly joining the team.

So, that’s what’s up for grabs in the near future. We’re stoked you dropped by, and we welcome you to leave your comments with us below - we’ll respond to all of them publicly or privately as appropriate. Enjoy your week web marketers! Earn baby, earn!