Pepperjam Affiliate Network Review

This review is going to be from the perspective of the affiliate.  We will follow up and write another review from the advertisers perspective once we have had a chance to explore that area of Pepperjam a little more thoroughly.

I am fairly new to the Pepperjam Affiliate network but man, color me impressed!  The company was founded in 1999 by Internet marketer Kristopher B. Jones.  Their offices are actually pretty close to me, they are based out of Wilkes-Barre, PA which is about 2 hours north of our offices in Reading, PA.

They started out as affiliates themselves and leveraged their success and expertise by switching sides and becoming an affiliate network. The huge benefit of the path they took is that they have a very strong understanding of what affiliates are looking for in a network.  They took the concepts they liked from other networks and programs and improved upon the things they didn’t like.  Their mission was to solve two major problems that they saw in the affiliate marketing industry.  The first was poor and unreliable communication and the second was lack of real transparency into how programs were performing.

The software that runs their network appears to be completely custom made and is pretty and functional at the same time.  Too often networks hide behind fancy graphs but lack the tools that real affiliates need to really succeed.  That is not the case with Pepperjam.  They have the fancy graphs but they are actually useful and give you real data to test against.   Of the offers I have tested, they offer a wide array of linking options and give you the ability to add your own tracking id to each URL you deploy so you can test what is working and what isn’t.  These are tools that are designed to help affiliates make more money for their advertisers.  It seems like such an obvious concept and Pepperjam isn’t the only network offering these kinds of tools but they are certainly one of the best.

They offer both revenue share offers where you are paid for a % of a sale  and CPA offers where you are paid based on an action other than a sale.  They offer you all of the tools you would expect from a top-tier network and some that I hadn’t seen before.  You can grab coupons, generate coupon feeds for easy integration into your site, build out a store with product feeds, build out customized contextual ads with their pepperjamADS system and more.  This all keeps coming back to the fact that the tools they provide are impressive and if you know how to use them, you can make more money with the same offer on Pepperjam than you could with a network that doesn’t offer these tools.

At the time of writing this review they have 557 active offers and the most important part of that number is that these are NOT the same old offers you see in every other network.  They have some very impressive companies and some really great exclusive offers that you will only find at Pepperjam.

In conclusion, Pepperjam is a network that we strongly recommend.  At the very least, you need to sign up and take a peek under the hood, you will be impressed. Sign Up for Pepperjam Network and Get a $10 Sign On Bonus

Geek/Talk is a Great Community, Be Part of It

I started my online career way back in 1997 and one of the first message boards/communities I became apart of was Geek/Talk.  It is a webmaster community filled with all levels of expertise, there are plenty of newbies, intermediates and experts ready to step in and help guide those who need it.  It’s funny because for all the years I have been doing this and working in this industry, I have never enjoyed a community more than Geek/Talk yet I can’t honestly say I think they are the best.  I am not sure what it is about the place that I enjoy, maybe it’s the nostalgia but I think it has more to do with the quality of the members.

I went through a 2 or 3 year period where I was just too busy to visit message boards so I have been away from the community for quite awhile but I am back now and I want you to join!  Unfortunately, as with many things, the board isn’t what it once was.  It doesn’t have as many active members as it once did but it’s still worth your time.  I would love to see our readers on the forum and joining in the discussion.  You can check it out at Geek/Talk Webmaster Forum.

Commission Junction Forced to Pay Up

This week, Commission Junction affiliates may see a little bonus in their commission check.  Last year, they settled on a class action law suit with angry publishers who were claiming to have lost money from CJ’s policy of allowing companies using Malware (Malicious Software) to promote their offers.  The settlement wasn’t all that much when you consider the amount of money that could have been potentially lost because of these tactics.  The settlement was for $1Million.  The lawyers get their cut out of that right off the top (of course).  The rest of the money is split up amongst the publishers and advertisers.  The payment is based on how much you earned between April 20, 2003 and July 22, 2008.

You can read more about it at cjsettlement.com

ShareASale Affiliate Network Review

ShareASale.com is an affiliate network offering both cost per sale and cost per lead offers.  Based in Chicago, they were founded by Brian Littleton and have been around since April of 2000.  During that time, they have done the most important thing any affiliate network can do, they have established trust with their affiliates and their merchants.   No matter what side of the table you are on, trusting the affiliate network you are going to be sending your traffic through should be on the top of your list of important things to consider.

They appear to be a rather small company but that does not seem to affect their service.  Anytime I have emailed them whether it was as a merchant, or as an affiliate, I have gotten an answer pretty quickly, usually the same day.  Customer service is important in any business but even more so when it’s a company that is business to provide a service that is supposed to make you or your company more money.  I think they understand that and have made communicating with their affiliates and merchants a priority.

For You Affiliates

As an affiliate network, ShareASale is an aggregator of affiliate programs.  They act as a service provider, giving you a safe list of programs you can join and market, they provide the tools and the means to track the sale or lead.  They aggregate your payments so you can promote multiple affiliate programs and get one check.   It costs you nothing to be an affiliate, ShareASale makes money by the fees that the merchants pay.

As of the date of this article, they have over 2000 merchants in their network.  They do a good job of providing transparency into how the individual merchants are performing for other affiliates and if the merchant is well funded or at risk of running out of money and having their program shut off.  The network has a very strong focus on shopping sites and with 2000 merchants they cover a very wide breadth of topics.

One of the things I am not crazy about is the way their software works.  It’s fantastic in it’s ability to to track and manage programs but I find the interface to be a little clunky and hard to navigate.  I think they could do with some improvements in that area.  I know I have had to personally help a few new affiliates with simple things like where to go to find new affiliate programs to join and get links.

If you are not already an affiliate of ShareASale, you can sign up by Clicking Here

For Potential Merchants

From a merchants standpoint, the pricing is very reasonable.  They charge a $550 network access fee and a 20% fee on top of what you pay your affiliates.  So, if you are running an offer that charges 10% of sale, you are going to pay a total of 12%, 10% for the affiliate and 2% for ShareASale.  The pricing is very reasonable when you look at how many active affiliates they have.  The marketing is virtually risk free as long as you manage it properly.  They have a huge network of affiliates that are waiting to promote your offer, a network of affiliates that has taken them over 8 years to build up.   For a more comprehensive review, check out our post on becoming a merchant on shareasale.  If you want to skip directly to their site instead, you can Click Here.

Party with AzoogleAds at the Playboy Mansion!

We haven’t done our full review of AzoogleAds network yet but it’s coming.  If you aren’t familiar with them, you should get familiar.  They are a leader in the CPA space and have a great selection of offers.  You can check them out and apply to be a publisher of their by Clicking Here They have a very strict acceptance policy and will verify all of your info and put you through the 3rd degree before approving your application.  That is one of the things that really impressed me about this network.

If you aren’t working with them, now is the time to not only give them a try but to make every effort to send them as much qualified traffic as you can.  Andy why is now the time?  Because they are giving away 2 tickets to a party at the Playboy mansion!  That’s right, the top 25 affiliates who show the biggest incremental increase in revenue will be flown to LA and given 2 tickets to a party at the Playboy Mansion.  You can get all the details at http://www.cuatthemansion.com/