I have not been working with the Hydra Affiliate Network recently but several days ago I was logging-in to see what might new and see if any of my 50+ affiliate referrals happened to actually be making any money.

I thought it was strange that I didn’t see the usual list of referrals I had sent to their network in the lower left part of their sidebar. Initially I thought they just moved things around but I still couldn’t find anything.

So, I tried to contact Hydra Network

1. First I emailed them via their contact form to ask them what happened to their affiliate referral program. There was NO response.

2. A couple days later I sent an email response to an email I received from Hydra Network about their latest offers. There was NO response.

3. A day or two later I used their contact form again trying to find out what happened.

This time I put something like “I thought I would try a second time to see what happened with your affiliate referral program and if they notified their affiliates…”

Alright! I actually got a response the third time around and it went like this:

Hi Tim,

We are no longer offering the Affiliate Referral Program, we are working on a new program.

If you were part of the program, you will receive credit up to October. Yes, there was a message in each account.

Hope that helps.

Now I perfectly understand if a network needs to close their publisher referral program or reduce the percentages. I know for a fact that some affiliate networks are facing tough times with all the Google changes and for other reasons. Not all of them. Some grew REALLY fast during the past few years. They upgraded offices. They hired a ton of new employees. I’m not trying to imply that most all of them are struggling or about to go out of business. All I’m saying is that I suspect that many of them (at the moment) are not doing nearly as well as they were a few years ago.

I Have Nothing Personally Against Hydra Network and There Are A Lot Of Things I Like About Them. BUT…

It just kind of irked me that it took me three times before they responded to my question. That they didn’t email all their publishers about the change as far as I’m aware. They instead apparently put a “message in each account.” I know I could have just picked up the phone and called them for an immediate response. I just prefer email for the paper trail.

I don’t know when or where they actually put this message (can someone help?) but I sure as heck never saw it nor can I still find this message anywhere on their website at this time. So I guess I just logged in on the wrong day huh? Maybe it’s on their Hydra news page somewhere but there are so many other updates on that page I couldn’t find it and I doubt anyone else will.

It’s actually NOT a big deal to me that they closed their 5% publisher referral program. I’ve barely worked with the Hydra Affiliate Network all year. I only had about 50 or so referrals and they were not making me more than a couple dollars a month if that.

I thought I would still make a post here for those of you not aware of the change because they didn’t really communicate this with the pubs very well. This might be really old news for some of you but it was new to me.

Your thoughts?

Just a heads up that EVERY affiliate network running direct track is having problems today.

I can’t not login to any affiliate network running directtrack and none of my affiliate links are working.

It’s been down for me at least an hour now and had probably cost me a few hundred dollars before I noticed the problem.

You would assume that a giant like DirectTrack would have multiple backup servers.

UPDATE: I was just able to login to one network but when I tried to look at stats, it quit loading again. Seems like some sort of DOS attack or something but I don’t know…

Breaking News is that Google will be making an announcement later today that Yahoo will be giving some or all it’s web search activity to Google!

More on the deal here: Yahoo, Google set for announcement

and here: Google / Yahoo Search Partnership Announcement

In any case, this is big news for the internet marketing, SEO, and Affiliate Marketing industries.

As most of you know, I am one of the owners of Webmaster-Talk.com

Long story short, Lee Dodd, owner of EarnersForums (and now co-owner of Webmaster-Talk) contacted me about the possibility of merging the two forums. That’s exactly what we ended up doing.

To celebrate the merge we thought we would kick things off with a little contest. Wait, did I say “little contest?” Let me clarify that by saying a HUUUUGE contest!!

Introducing the Webmaster-Talk.com / EarnersForum.com Merge contest with over $25,000 in prizes!

There is going to be five winners who each will win BIG time.

EACH winner get this:

1. A beautiful new Macbook Air laptop from ClickBooth valued at $1,800.00!

2. A Professional version Shopping Cart solution from Interspire valued at $995.00!

3. $500 cash in a Max Bounty affiliate network account awaits you!

4. Another $500 in the form of a Text Link Ads gift certificate should help with your marketing efforts!

5. How about another Apple product, the iPod Touch from Rocket Profit….wow!

6. Another $250 cash in a Pepperjam Network account will make you smile!

7. Sure would be nice to have some custom T-shirts printed for your headline website, right? Well, Ndesigns is going to do that for you! This is 24 Custom Printed Shirts (color T’s, 3-4 color printing, one-sided).

8. The hottest new camera for blogging, The Flip, is provided by AdValiant!

9. Speaking of blogs, the MOST AMAZING paid theme ever is now yours from Revolution Theme and it isn’t just one, but the complete multi-pack!

10. To help you relax that hard working brain of yours, we close the package out with a Nintendo DS Lite from RevResponse!

You Can Read About How the Contest Works Here!

The contest which we just announced a few hours ago is already generating a lot of buzz.

I know some of you are wondering how my little ringtones side-project has been going but I promise to give an update on that shortly. The short story is that volume is getting better and I’m getting thousands of clicks daily at .04 to .07 cents a click. I’m making a few hundred dollars in daily commissions from ringtones but profits are still low at the moment. I have not had the time to do a whole lot of scaling with it the past couple weeks because of the contest. I do think I figured out exactly how some of the big boys are still making hundreds or thousands of dollars in ringtone profits daily through PPC.

Meanwhile, I just had 5 new landing pages designed for 3 new niches I’m entering over the next few weeks. Busy Bee is me.

Back on topic: Now Go Check Out the WT Merger contest!  The prizes are awesome.

Microsoft Corp. has pounced on slumping Internet icon Yahoo Inc. with an unsolicited takeover offer of $44.6 billion in its boldest bid yet to challenge Google Inc.’s dominance of the lucrative online search and advertising markets.Offered 31 a share. AP

At the moment of writing this, Yahoo’s stock price is up about 50% to $28 a share while Microsoft’s stock price has dropped about 4.5% to $31 a share. MSN would be purchasing Yahoo at a 62% premium to Yahoo’s closing stock price Thursday.

It’s clear that both Microsoft and Yahoo’s search businesses have been getting hurt by their main rival, Google. Google already controls nearly 60 percent of the U.S. search market, and has been widening its lead, despite concerted efforts by both second-place Yahoo and third-place Microsoft. If Microsoft and Yahoo combined, they would have a 33 share of the current search market.

It is possible although unlikely that NewsCorp, AT&T or another company could try and come in and outbid Microsoft.

But what does this mean for the affiliate marketing and internet marketing industries?

First, there is a possibility the deal won’t go through. But if it does:

Will Microsoft use Yahoo’s search algorithm for its search engine results?

Will Yahoo use Microsoft’s search algorithm for its search engine results?

I think it’s most likely that MSN will keep both the search engines the same, at least initially. The next most likely thing would be Microsoft choosing to use Yahoo’s search algorithm and not vice-versa. In my opinion, MSN’s search algorithm has improved some as of late but it used to be by far the worst (and easiest to game) search engine among the three.

In any case, this is big news and something you will want to keep an eye on. I would not expect any drastic changes for at least 6 months. It could take awhile for the MSN purchase of Yahoo deal to be approved or denied.

While browsing over some other blogs today I read out about the official launch of a new affiliate network, the PepperJam Affiliate Network! The second I heard about them I signed up and you should too!

The new PepperJam Network isn’t just your average, run-of-the-mill affiliate network. They like to call themselves “The Next Generation Affiliate Marketing.” In fact, they want you to “Join the Revolution,” because afterall, “Affiliates have spoken and PepperJam listed!”

So now you might be thinking that those are just a bunch of great buzz words and not much is really going to be different. Well, your right if you think those are great buzz words but wrong if you think they are only just that. That fact is that PepperJam Network IS different and will only get better over time!

FINDING PARTNERS IN PEPPERJAM NETWORK:

Once logged in and within the “Find Partners” you will see something like this:

You can search PepperJam partners by Keyword, Category and Joined / Not Joined. Under that you will see a list of available merchants under the headings of No., Program Name, Accept Method, Commission, and Action. I don’t know if it’s a bug, but right now when I select all categories and the maximum of 50 results per page, there is no “next” link to view the rest of the merchants after 50. If I narrow it down by category then it should not be a problem anyway.

Program Name:

Under program name and next to the name of the merchant you will see a little chat icon.

The chat icon will be dark if the affiliate manager for that particular merchant is offline or light-up if the affiliate manager is online. If they are online, you can chat with them instantly!

That’s what’s so exciting about this new network. They are incorporating new Web 2.0 technologies that the dinosaur affiliate networks are lacking. PepperJam Network is about transparency between both you the affiliate and the specific affiliate program manager. Good affiliate / merchant communication can be the difference between success and failure.

Clicking on the partner name will bring up a box showing many details of the program including all the additional contact information you should need about the merchant.

Accept Method, Commission and Action:

Under the accept method heading it will tell you if the affiliate program manually approves you into their program or if you will be approved instantly and automatically.

Under the commission heading if you mouse over “View” it will show you the default terms of the program (per sale or lead payout amounts and the cookie duration). While you can also find the historical EPC of a program I wish that info showed in this section.

Finally under the action heading is where you can click to join a particular program. The newest merchants are shown in a right sidebar.

GENERATING LINKS IN THE PEPPERJAM NETWORK:

Once you have been approved into a program the main “generating links” page will show you all the merchants you can promote. I’m not going to show a screenshot of this but I love how it also shows the affiliate managers name, program website, and their specific direct phone number! Now that’s a refreshing change!

Clicking on “more detail” within the generating links section will show you the commission rates, commission terms and historical EPC. You will also find the links to program specific text or banner creatives.

You can create links using optional SID tracking if desired.

THE PEPPERJAM NETWORK RESOURCE CENTER:

In the resource center you will find two tabs containing “Super Affiliate Resources” and “Educational Resources.” Under the education resources you will mostly find links to a few forums and affiliate marketing blogs (their buddies). All I can say is Kris Jones, I love you buddy! How about showing a little eMonetized.com love! (as if that is going to work). As the old saying goes, it’s not just what you know but who you know!

NOW IS THE TIME TO JOIN:

There are a lot of other great new features that PepperJam Network offers it’s affiliates. The network is new and that can give you a nice edge when promoting their exclusive affiliate programs.

Click Here to Join the PepperJam Network Now!

(already joined? How are you liking the network?)

Back on August 8th I made a post about Agloco titled “Is Agloco Going to be a HUGE Flop?”

My prediction was this:

I personally think that when Agloco gets all their server issues sorted out there is potential to to make some short term money. However, long term I’m not so sure. By far, I think the vast majority of Agloco users will make only a few dollars a month if any money at all. Those in the top 1% could make some nice short term money. However, as the other 98% of members in the network end up making pocket change they will begin uninstalling the toolbar and Agloco will die a slow death. I could be wrong.

My prediction was only half true because there was not even any short term success. Here is the email I received today:

Dear Tim,

We would like to update you on the status of AGLOCO’s operations. We continue to believe in the AGLOCO concept, but our revenue is currently not sufficient to give Members a meaningful distribution. And though there are increases in membership, the resulting revenue is not enough to support operating costs. As a development team we are unable to continue to use our savings to fund the operations. If any Member would like to pursue continuing the operations of AGLOCO, you may contact us at agloco1@live.com .

We would like to thank every Member for supporting our effort to bring a piece of the Internet directly to the user. We hope that we can find a way to keep the operations going.

AGLOCO Development Team

Agloco under the current ownership has flopped and may end up closing their doors forever. I’m not so sure how much was spent by Agloco on operations but I would think their current member database would be worth a pretty penny.

Hey, that’s a not a bad business model! Set up a new get paid to surf program and promise big things. Offer downline payouts and let everyone else market it like crazy. Build up a huge million member database. Then sell out for a nice profit. <– (being sarcastic).

RIP Agloco.

I received an email yesterday about the release of the new Microsoft Content Ads Beta to all U.S. MSN adCenter advertisers on August 29.

If you already have an adCenter account you won’t have to make any changes. Your ad groups will automatically expand to hybrid distribution, meaning they will distribute to search and content pages.

Adcenter Content Ads will display on Microsoft network website, including MSN Tech & Gadgets, Money, Real Estate, and Windows Marketplace, as well as partner websites. I assume it will be all these networks and partner websites.

You can read more about Microsoft Content Ads here.

Yahoo’s CEO Terry Semel stepped down late today and will be replaced by co-founder Jerry Yang.

What does all this mean to affiliate marketing? Who knows! But it has sure helped Yahoo’s stock price after hours. The Yahoo company in addition to their stock price has been underperforming for a long time now. Maybe they will start giving Google a little more competition as well. It’s something that has been needed for some time.

Here are some of the news sources that broke the story:

The Yahoo Publisher Network began rolling out their new quality-based pricing ranking model last night.

With this new feature is designed to measure the value of the traffic coming from Yahoo’s distribution partners’ websites and then price clicks accordingly for their advertisers.

In an ongoing effort to raise the value of our Sponsored Search and Content Match products, we’re pleased to announce the phased rollout of a new feature that we believe will help increase the value of Yahoo! Search Marketing traffic to our advertisers. This feature, called quality-based pricing.

What is Changing?
Previously all traffic was treated the same—you were charged the same for traffic from all web sites within our network. With quality-based pricing, you may be charged less for certain clicks than you normally would pay, depending on the overall quality of the websites that are providing this traffic to you. As a result, your click charges can decrease.

How will Click Charges be Discounted?
“Quality” is calculated based on conversion rates and other measurements of the ability to deliver more interested and valuable customers to you from particular distribution partner sites. Discounts will be automatically applied to your account.

I’ll have to jump into my account and see if I notice any changes yet.