Preface
Let me start by saying that this isn’t a flaming post against COPEAC and it isn't about rebills and yes, its relatively long. It is simply a description of the situation I am currently facing. I have been an affiliate marketer for roughly 2 years and in those two years I haven’t encountered a situation as described below. Neither have my personal friends, who have been in this business for 4+ years. Marketers who have heard my story suggested that I post on WF since I have exhausted all other options and COPEAC will not help me in any way, shape, or form. Anyways, this is my story of how I lost $4,600 through COPEAC.
My Situation
I started advertising with COPEAC in December 2009. Starting by promoting a few offers, I was put on weeklies within two weeks of getting accepted. I inspected all of the campaign pages to make sure I was promoting the offers in an acceptable way, and I was. My affiliate manager was very pleased with the quality of my traffic.
On February 1st, I started providing the same traffic quality to a new campaign. Before sending any traffic, I closely examined the 'acceptable methods of promotion' and 'extra terms' that were associated with this offer. I verified that my method of promotion was acceptable and the offer contained no extra terms that outlined penalties or scrubbing of leads. I continued to send direct link traffic to this offer from February 1st to the 21st creating $4,200 in revenue.
On February 21st, I purchased hosting and a domain. Until now, 100% of my traffic was direct linked. I developed multiple landing pages for a variety of offers, from different advertisers. The layout of these landing pages varied and some included iframing. I split tested offers that specifically allowed iframing in the 'allowed methods of promotion'. However, I made an honest mistake and mixed up URL links (which as you know can look very similar if you are using P202) which resulted in the offer in question using a simple iframing feature on a landing page, instead of the intended offer. The iframing wasn’t malicious or ‘shady'. It was simply for aesthetic reasons.
Traffic was sent to this landing page from February 22nd to February 23rd (less than 48 hours) and resulted in $400 in revenue. On February 23rd I received an email at 7:20pm from my affiliate manager that stated the advertisers saw iframing from my recent traffic and planned to scrub (1) weeks worth of traffic.
On February 24th, the advertiser responsible for the offer scrubbed ALL of my leads (not 1 week) from February 1st through February 23rd. This resulted in $4,600 being scrubbed from my February revenue. At this time, my affiliate ID was blocked from viewing the offer page. I then requested the help of another COPEAC affiliate to look at the offer page and examine the 'extra terms' section.
The 'extra terms' section was blank, identical to how it was when I looked at it when I started the offer. More specifically, it did not include ANY extra terms and did not outline ANY violations that would give the advertisers the right to scrub all leads. In order for an advertiser to legally justify scrubbing leads for an entire month, I would expect it would be outlined in the extra terms section, which I have seen on countless other COPEAC campaign pages.
Now don't get me wrong, I've seen many offers that outline the advertisers’ ability to scrub all leads. If this page had those clauses, and I made this stupid mistake, and they scrubbed all of my leads, I would not be posting this right now. I would be kicking myself and accept the loss.
The best part is this; The offer page was edited on the 25th of February (less than 24 hours after my leads were scrubbed and I was blocked from viewing the page) and the 'extra terms' section was updated to include a clause, informing affiliates that if they were caught promoting the offer in an unacceptable way all leads would be scrubbed.
In my mind this means one of two things. 1) The advertiser told COPEAC to include that clause and whoever was managing the offer messed up. 2) The advertiser did not tell COPEAC and was waiting for the first affiliate to mess up so they could scrub/steal every conversion. Regardless, someone messed up and I was the affiliate who got screwed over in the process.
As I mentioned above, I've never had any leads scrubbed before so this is new to me. But friends of mine have told me that given similar circumstances (no outlining extra terms, ect.) they were warned or leads were scrubbed for the period of infraction. In my case that would have been < 48 hours.
I think the part that has me the most upset is the fact that my COPEAC affiliate manager, as well as his direct manager have expressed to me how fraudulent and bogus this situation is. They both have acknowledged that I got a terrible deal and that this shouldn't have happened.
So obviously, I have been on my manager for over 2 months to try and get COPEAC to fix this situation that they clearly know is wrong. Why haven't they taken care of me you ask? I was told that since I am a rather "small fish" and I am not bringing in $XX,XXX /day that I am not a priority.
Truthfully, this is making me go insane. My affiliate manager and his supervisor BOTH agree that I should not have had the $4,200 in revenue that was direct linked from Feb 1st to Feb21st scrubbed. Yet, COPEAC will not help me because I "don't earn enough revenue to be a high priority". How can COPEAC do business this way?
Both COPEAC and the advertiser are taking advantage and hoping it goes unnoticed and that I simply "go away".
I was under the assumption that running traffic with COPEAC (or any network) would provide protection from fraudulent advertisers. Instead, all COPEAC has given me until now has been the run-around, an admission of guilt, and the middle finger.
I apologize about the length of this post but I wanted to express the whole story. As I mentioned above, I was encouraged to post here to find out if COPEAC is notorious for this sort of thing, especially with mid level affiliates.
If anything like this has happened to you, were you able to get it resolved?
Or do you have any suggestions for actions I should take to increase my chances of this getting resolved?
Respectfully,
Robert
Let me start by saying that this isn’t a flaming post against COPEAC and it isn't about rebills and yes, its relatively long. It is simply a description of the situation I am currently facing. I have been an affiliate marketer for roughly 2 years and in those two years I haven’t encountered a situation as described below. Neither have my personal friends, who have been in this business for 4+ years. Marketers who have heard my story suggested that I post on WF since I have exhausted all other options and COPEAC will not help me in any way, shape, or form. Anyways, this is my story of how I lost $4,600 through COPEAC.
My Situation
I started advertising with COPEAC in December 2009. Starting by promoting a few offers, I was put on weeklies within two weeks of getting accepted. I inspected all of the campaign pages to make sure I was promoting the offers in an acceptable way, and I was. My affiliate manager was very pleased with the quality of my traffic.
On February 1st, I started providing the same traffic quality to a new campaign. Before sending any traffic, I closely examined the 'acceptable methods of promotion' and 'extra terms' that were associated with this offer. I verified that my method of promotion was acceptable and the offer contained no extra terms that outlined penalties or scrubbing of leads. I continued to send direct link traffic to this offer from February 1st to the 21st creating $4,200 in revenue.
On February 21st, I purchased hosting and a domain. Until now, 100% of my traffic was direct linked. I developed multiple landing pages for a variety of offers, from different advertisers. The layout of these landing pages varied and some included iframing. I split tested offers that specifically allowed iframing in the 'allowed methods of promotion'. However, I made an honest mistake and mixed up URL links (which as you know can look very similar if you are using P202) which resulted in the offer in question using a simple iframing feature on a landing page, instead of the intended offer. The iframing wasn’t malicious or ‘shady'. It was simply for aesthetic reasons.
Traffic was sent to this landing page from February 22nd to February 23rd (less than 48 hours) and resulted in $400 in revenue. On February 23rd I received an email at 7:20pm from my affiliate manager that stated the advertisers saw iframing from my recent traffic and planned to scrub (1) weeks worth of traffic.
On February 24th, the advertiser responsible for the offer scrubbed ALL of my leads (not 1 week) from February 1st through February 23rd. This resulted in $4,600 being scrubbed from my February revenue. At this time, my affiliate ID was blocked from viewing the offer page. I then requested the help of another COPEAC affiliate to look at the offer page and examine the 'extra terms' section.
The 'extra terms' section was blank, identical to how it was when I looked at it when I started the offer. More specifically, it did not include ANY extra terms and did not outline ANY violations that would give the advertisers the right to scrub all leads. In order for an advertiser to legally justify scrubbing leads for an entire month, I would expect it would be outlined in the extra terms section, which I have seen on countless other COPEAC campaign pages.
Now don't get me wrong, I've seen many offers that outline the advertisers’ ability to scrub all leads. If this page had those clauses, and I made this stupid mistake, and they scrubbed all of my leads, I would not be posting this right now. I would be kicking myself and accept the loss.
The best part is this; The offer page was edited on the 25th of February (less than 24 hours after my leads were scrubbed and I was blocked from viewing the page) and the 'extra terms' section was updated to include a clause, informing affiliates that if they were caught promoting the offer in an unacceptable way all leads would be scrubbed.
In my mind this means one of two things. 1) The advertiser told COPEAC to include that clause and whoever was managing the offer messed up. 2) The advertiser did not tell COPEAC and was waiting for the first affiliate to mess up so they could scrub/steal every conversion. Regardless, someone messed up and I was the affiliate who got screwed over in the process.
As I mentioned above, I've never had any leads scrubbed before so this is new to me. But friends of mine have told me that given similar circumstances (no outlining extra terms, ect.) they were warned or leads were scrubbed for the period of infraction. In my case that would have been < 48 hours.
I think the part that has me the most upset is the fact that my COPEAC affiliate manager, as well as his direct manager have expressed to me how fraudulent and bogus this situation is. They both have acknowledged that I got a terrible deal and that this shouldn't have happened.
So obviously, I have been on my manager for over 2 months to try and get COPEAC to fix this situation that they clearly know is wrong. Why haven't they taken care of me you ask? I was told that since I am a rather "small fish" and I am not bringing in $XX,XXX /day that I am not a priority.
Truthfully, this is making me go insane. My affiliate manager and his supervisor BOTH agree that I should not have had the $4,200 in revenue that was direct linked from Feb 1st to Feb21st scrubbed. Yet, COPEAC will not help me because I "don't earn enough revenue to be a high priority". How can COPEAC do business this way?
Both COPEAC and the advertiser are taking advantage and hoping it goes unnoticed and that I simply "go away".
I was under the assumption that running traffic with COPEAC (or any network) would provide protection from fraudulent advertisers. Instead, all COPEAC has given me until now has been the run-around, an admission of guilt, and the middle finger.
I apologize about the length of this post but I wanted to express the whole story. As I mentioned above, I was encouraged to post here to find out if COPEAC is notorious for this sort of thing, especially with mid level affiliates.
If anything like this has happened to you, were you able to get it resolved?
Or do you have any suggestions for actions I should take to increase my chances of this getting resolved?
Respectfully,
Robert
