When affiliates look for affiliate networks, MaxBounty is indeniably a destination of choice. The variety of offers, payout and options offered allows for great flexibilty. A network present in all major conferences, it is always a great pleasure to meet up with the two brothers who are leading the company. Not only do they make themselves available to you, but they make sure to respond to a follow up email in less than 24 hours, which is an effort that any affiliate can and should appreciate.
While we do not have an affiliation with MaxBounty, our aim is to provide our users with the best possible integrations with Affiliate Networks. MaxBounty was probably one of the first to be integrated into TrackingDesk and their team was quick to see the benefits of being part of our eco-system. They rapidly provided a testing environment along with the relevant documentation for our development team to put the integration into place. Today, dozens of affiliates and media buyers are enjoying a simple and efficient workflow between MaxBounty and TrackingDesk. We thought it would be interesting for our users to get a sense of what MaxBounty has to say regarding affiliates and performance optimization – so we asked them!
Q&A with Joe Ferguson from MaxBounty:
Q: How would you describe a typical user of MaxBounty?
A: “I think that many of the affiliates that use MaxBounty as their go to CPA network work with us for similar reasons. They’re users looking for a stable network that they can trust, and one that they know will pay them what they’ve earned every week, no matter what. They want to turn affiliate marketing into their primary source of income, and many of our pubs have done just that. For them to do that they need to both be passionate about what they’re doing, while knowing their network is there for them. They want to be informed of what can help them reach that next step, and we’re glad we can be there to do that.”
Q: What advice do you have for new affiliates?
A: “I would advise them to just be patient, and realize that it takes time to become successful at this regardless of how good you are at it. Try not to do too much at once and take your time, put in the work, do research, and eventually you’ll get there. There’s a steep learning curve in affiliate marketing, and it can be easy to get discouraged if you don’t see immediate ROI. It’s those who push through that and learn from their mistakes that will ultimately turn this into something more than a side hobby.”
Q: What makes MaxBounty stand out compared to other affiliate networks?
A: “Our longevity and positive reputation is unrivaled. Even though MaxBounty has only been in existence for about 12 years, we’re veterans when it comes to running a successful CPA network. Like I mentioned earlier, I think a lot of our users see that and choose to work with us, knowing that if we’ve been around for that long that we’re obviously doing something right. If you treat people unfairly in this industry, you don’t last. Many of our competitors also run their own in house affiliate marketing initiatives, something that we’ve chosen not to do. You’re essentially competing with your own affiliates when you do that, and we want to do everything we can to assist our publishers in reaching success, not hinder them.”
Q: With the emergence of new tracking technologies, AB testing tools and analytics – how do you see those business tools affecting the success of your affiliates?
A: “It’s definitely given them more useful information, and more information is always a good thing, especially in this industry. Testing what works and what doesn’t is SO important, and the more tools there are that help them draw conclusions more quickly and accurately, the more success they’ll inevitably find. New technologies and 3rd party software may also change the way affiliates view the effectiveness of different traffic sources. Some may gain preference over others as those new technologies emerge that benefit specific ones, whether it be social media or PPV. Therefore, the way they decide to promote MaxBounty’s campaigns are likely to change with time.”
Q: Are you seeing better performances generated by affiliates who are more technology oriented?
A: “The short answer here is yes. Being more technology oriented makes it a lot easier to get things off the ground. When it comes to optimizing campaigns, being tech-oriented poses many benefits. Having said that, we do have a portion of affiliates that are NOT as tech savvy, but are still finding immense success as an affiliate marketer. These affiliates make up for it by being experts at the business side of online marketing, and have done a good job of outsourcing the tech end tasks to people who are more familiar with it. I suppose it’s a necessary component to have, but the affiliate doesn’t always need to be the one actually doing it.”
Q: What’s the proportion of affiliates using third party technologies compared to those not using them? And do you see a better performance with those using them?
A: “That can be a little difficult to gauge, but I’d probably say somewhere around 60% of our affiliates are using external third party technologies such as tracking softwares, spytools, keyword software etc. While we’ve seen many affiliates not use these technologies and still have success like we touched on above, this amount is in the minority. The key to having success in this industry (for the majority of affiliates at least) is to be utilizing the best available assets as best you can. The nature of the industry is that those assets are always changing and evolving, so it’s important to remain aware of those changes in order to gain an advantage that hopefully leads to increased earnings. So overall, yes, we do see a better performance with affiliates that are using third party technologies in their initiatives.”
Joe brings up several good points and we appreciate him taking the time to respond to our questions. We hope that you take away some of these insights he provided us with on how to increase your performance and revenues. One point we would like to highlight is that you do not have to be “technically oriented” in order to maximize your performance as long as you are equipped with the right tools and information.
Having been on both sides of the fence, we at TrackingDesk know that affiliates must gain access to as much data as possible in order to maximize their performance. We know that by empowering affiliates with the right tools and analyisis capabilities, they will be able to deliver better quality traffic to the right offers and affiliate networks, no matter what their level of expertise might be.
If you would like more information regarding our integration and how to utilize it, please check out our integration blog post or knowledge base.
You can also watch a video tutorial on the MaxBounty integration with Trackingdesk here or below: