9th October 2007

Why I am Voting for Paid On Results

posted in Affiliate Marketing |
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There are numerous reasons why I am voting Paidonresults for both Publisher Choice of Network 2007 & Innovation in Affiliate Marketing – Network Award for the inaugural A4U Awards

Shop Window from Affiliate Window is a very good product with massive potential and quite rightly definitely should reaceive highly commended in the category of Innovation in Affiliate Marketing – Network Award. Thus, I duly tilt my hat to them.

However, perhaps you should really stop and think what else innovation in Affiliate Marketing is really about, as Paid On Results has been doing very innovative stuff, not just recently but for a few years now, way before some other bigger networks may have copied them with similar tools, then claim to have delivered it first by simply rebranding it with some fancy name.

You see, Paid On Results develop excellent products & solutions without the trumpeter’s fanfare & just get on with it, though I do wish they were more vocal in proudly announcing them sometimes, but perhaps humility is a postive attribute to have.

Take for example an innovation like customer base tracking which is available for all merchants if they wish to utilise it, or multi-merchant network tracking to track sales across different merchants within the network. Paid On Results invented this stuff and most networks have still not played catch up.

Then of course you have an excellent affiliate area with innovative reporting, on how many networks can you customise your report to show the information you want by removing data you don’t want to see? Not many I expect, and Paid On Results was the first I believe to offer the whole custom table features.

Paid On Results lead the way with making life easier for Affiliates, the highly innovative Deep Link Creator, featured here on this blog amongst others. And by no means least … least as I am sure … I have missed out many other industry firsts.

How about the excellent and reliable Advanced Content Units which are customisable & fully integrated allowing multiple pages of product content to be navigated though by the visitor without leaving the affiliates web site, while still making it easy to drop into any website?

Take a look Here for yourself & click on samples of content units in the left hand column.

What Paid On Results has done to push innovation in the market place should never be overlooked and certainly not under estimated,  what Paid On Results acheived 3 years ago is what you will start to see on other Networks today (if ever), they are true innovators, not bad for probably only being one of the only networks never to have had any significant investment money pumped into them.

We all know & appreciate the good things Clarke Duncan has contributed to the affiliate marketing industry on all fronts, though I would like to give a special mention to one of the unsung heroes at Paid On Results .. & that is Graeme Sandwell who is the Thomas Edison (who was a Scot by the way) of affiliate marketing & very much part of the hue of bright light responsible for the exciting things that emanate from Paid On Results.

On an affiliate customer support note, as some of you are aware I am fairly nocturnal, on the odd occasion I have a query, I might send an email at silly / stupid o’clock, lo & behold I might even get a response at some unearthly time whilst I am working, which for me this kind of around the clock support is impressive … does this guy Graeme ever sleep? I just hope one day he will attend one of the main A4U Affiliate Get2gethers. Paid On Results take a balanced approach to any problems which may need a resolution to & the result is always fair, as they seem to understand affiliate marketing from all angles & sides of the fence.

If that wasn’t enough just check this out! The Voucher Manager Tool which is launching soon.

When you look at the size of the technical team at some of the other networks & compare this with Paid On Results, how comes Paid On Results produce better stuff. I look forward to the day when some major investment company realise this and invests heavily in them for equivalent sized teams of the same quality as what is at POR .. Just imagine what they could produce then, I reckon it would go exponentially of the chart. The same applies to many merchants too, by requesting they take a closer look at Paid On Results whether they have an existing program & are considering going dual network or are fresh to affiliate marketing. Because you know you won’t get the unecessary sales speel.

Therefore, above is just some of the few reasons why I am voting for Paid On Results for both Publisher Choice of Network 2007 & Innovation in Affiliate Marketing – Network Award for the inaugural A4U Awards.

Good Luck

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 at 7:52 PM and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There are currently 13 responses to “Why I am Voting for Paid On Results”

Why not let us know what you think by adding your own comment! Your opinion is as valid as anyone elses, so come on... let us know what you think.

  1. 1 On October 10th, 2007, LB said:

    The biggest problem with POR is that they are in desperate need of a designer. They may have some great programmers on board, but everything they come out with is extremely poor in presentation. I’d love to use some of the content, but it just looks dreadful.

    For the same reason, I’ve sent merchants in the direction of other networks simply because the POR site design doesn’t inspire confidence.

  2. 2 On October 10th, 2007, Paul said:

    Hi Lee, thanks for personal view. Have you tried using the various content units or suggest where there are ones anywhere near as good? These two I am looking at now and are excellent.

    http://www.contentunits.com/cgi-bin/preview.pl?site_id=42

    http://www.contentunits.com/cgi-bin/preview.pl?site_id=242

  3. 3 On October 10th, 2007, Clarke said:

    I agree that the main Paid On Results site is due a revamp, however to be honest we get loads of Merchants apply to join every day and have great SEO positions so are in no rush, but everything must evolve and move on.

    We do however have an excellent looking well laid out control interface that is doing more than just looking pretty; it’s highly functional and very advanced. Many of the top Affiliates have told us it’s the best they have used and many Merchants have commented on how it beats hands down any other Network they used so we have got to be doing something right.

    I can’t however agree with you that the content units look dreadful, comparing what other Networks offer and what we offer I find this a puzzle as we have some of the best looking and most innovative around but everyone has different tastes and your welcome to what you think is the best. However great news for folk like yourself is that if you can do better then the new interface upgrade for the content units that we have planned for some time will be right down your street as it will offer you the ability to have any design you make, done simply via point and click or if your even more technical you can use your own HTML and design code to produce ones that fit your personal standards as to what it great.

    Please if you’re an Affiliate of ours and truly want to work with us to make things better get in contact and say what you think, often many of the great new things you see from Paid On Results is because Affiliates have said such and such could be better or improved, we are all after all moving towards being perfect but know sadly that goal will never be achieved in everyone’s eyes.

  4. 4 On October 10th, 2007, John Lamerton said:

    Whilst I agree that POR is more about function than design, and you could argue that the main site could do with a little web 2.0 magic, there are much worse out there, and i think POR do a stirling job.

    To say that “everything they come out with is extremely poor in presentation” is a very sweeping statement, and one I believe to be untrue. The content units they have come up with have been not only well designed, but well planned (such as the Euroffice ink cartridge selector)

    Would you rather they were like certain other networks, and had a nice flashy site but not decent tools?

  5. 5 On October 10th, 2007, Jason said:

    “everything they come out with is extremely poor in presentation” – interesting comment and you obviously have your reasons for that opinion. How would you improve them? Is there a network who provide better presentation (because I can’t think of one)?

    “I’ve sent merchants in the direction of other networks simply because the POR site design doesn’t inspire confidence” – more fool you then for failing to look beyond pretty pictures and actually use due diligence to give your client the best options.

    What would you rather have a network that looks nice on the front page or one who are constantly innovating with tools that help affiliates and merchants earn revenue?

    For me POR’s biggest failing is that they don’t ram their offering down potential client’s throats so that they’re clear on what the network is about… so sadly they miss out on clients because they’re judged on how pretty they look!

    Jason

  6. 6 On October 10th, 2007, Shane said:

    have to add my tuppence here..

    dreadful ? methinks not.. the content units are cool,

    sure they might look a bit out of place on a webdesigners showpiece site or some agency designed £50k mega site as they don’t have rounded corners and a background gradient or flashing stipey borders but as for your general run of the mill affiliate site, which is what the vast majority of affiliates have then they look spot on, do the job and make sales so give them a try 🙂

  7. 7 On October 10th, 2007, LB said:

    Ok, perhaps I didn’t explain myself very well.

    I’ll give you some examples of what I mean by ‘poorly presented’. Take the Euroffice content unit as an example – the functionality is brilliant (well done!), but in terms of design, it uses every single ‘amateur’ technique going – outer glows, bevels – the lot. Whilst it may not be a huge issue for most people, I’m quite picky about the appearance of my sites – and sticking that on there would be enough to ruin the appearance.

    From a merchant point of view (of which I will be one very shortly) – image matters, simple as. If I’m choosing a network, the image that partnership gives out is important to me. Don’t get me wrong, I would never base my decision on that alone – I wouldn’t go near CJ with a very long stick for example. However, up against someone like AWin or Webgains, you’re going to lose out.

    There are other things that (back to being an affiliate) prevent me from doing more than I already do with POR, and most of those come down to usability and design. I gave up trying to use POR feeds because it was just too much hard work when the merchants I wanted were with other networks that had good feed systems (or better, I should say).

    I’m not ‘having a go’ as such, I just find it frustrating that such an easy thing to fix is deemed as unimportant.

  8. 8 On October 10th, 2007, danny c said:

    You can leave of the headers on some of them, the AMP3 one at least. I think this is a cool option for folk how don’t like visitors to see it as an add for another site on theirs but don’t mind making a few quid through affiliate marketing. I think white labeling is cool and it would avoid having to use headers that didn’t look good on your site. Everyones happy! ;o)

  9. 9 On October 11th, 2007, Clarke said:

    Just to be clear on a few issues, since you clearly never expressed these view points directly to Paid On Results and probably don’t know how we work, based on what you have said.

    You go on about how great a designer you are, yet I can’t look at any of your stuff to compare, but did you know that everything we do, banners, content units and so on are done totally free of charge for Merchants, no cost what so ever. You also don’t seem to understand that if a Merchant can design own banners or creative that we are more than happy to use that, so your example of the Euroffice Content Unit (I happen to like it, and so do the client) but they could if they wanted supplied us with their own header to use. Indeed many of the Agency’s we work with would rather do creative themselves and used our advanced technology and that suits us.

    The feeds thing I found a bizarre statement because we have Affiliates making hundreds of thousands of pounds in commission each year telling us our system is one of the best they have used, we have after all made one standard (that Top Affiliates consulted on) apply over all our Merchants. We have never deemed anything unimportant to fix if people tell us it needs fixing we will review it and fix it, however our top earning Affiliates are not saying the same thing as you, so who do we go with.

    You are posting here anonymously and clearly you never told anyone at Paid On Results what you think, yet some of the highly respected Industry experts don’t share your view on things, what are the readers of this blog to think, is this someone from another Network desperate to slate us, maybe. I guess for your views would have more weight if you where not anonymous about it.

  10. 10 On October 11th, 2007, LB said:

    Clarke,

    You’re coming across extremely defensive here – I didn’t mean any of my comments in a nasty way if that is how you have taken them.

    For the record, I have previously made comment to POR about *some* of these issues – in fact, I even asked for raw data for the Euroffice content unit so I could recreate it myself. I was told it would be arranged for me, and I never heard from anyone again. I do a fairly significant amount for Euroffice, and was keen to switch over from TD to POR.

    Not that it actually matters, but POR are the only network I do very little with. That isn’t entirely because of the reasons given above, but on the one occasion I have actively tried to switch my links, my request was ignored. Whether I get better treatment from some of the other networks because of the volume I deal with I don’t know – but that really shouldn’t be the case.

    In terms of the feeds – it’s been a few months since I looked at them, but when I last did, there was no way of downloading them remotely (the download link was an ‘in session’ link). Please correct me if I’m wrong.

    Again, I’m not having a go – I make my opinion noted because I personally feel it matters. I’m on a number of panels with other networks offering my input on similar issues, and I would like to think that my opinion is noted accordingly.

  11. 11 On October 11th, 2007, Clarke said:

    Of course I am defensive, I can’t just have people say stuff about Paid On Results that I simply do not believe to be true, if you said something I agree with I would say and I did on one of your points.

    “In terms of the feeds – it’s been a few months since I looked at them, but when I last did, there was no way of downloading them remotely (the download link was an ‘in session’ link). Please correct me if I’m wrong.”

    You can’t link to a page in the control panel, but all you had to do was click the download link, select the fields you want and then “download feed” and you are then give your own personal URL that you can use outside of the control panel. The download is custom to what you want and a number of feed based Affiliates have commented on how excellent this is as they can then use the exact same setup across all merchants getting the same information in the format they want.

    We are of course keen to work with all Affiliates but honestly can’t see anything from you based on what you have said (but then I don’t know who you are) but I would be the first person to help you regardless if you made me £10 or £10,000 as long as you gave me that chance and where not rude about as we do get the odd, “you better do what I say as I make loads of money” idiot on the phone and for me that not who I am here to work with so tell them to get lost until they have a bit of respect.

    Please get in touch with me directly if you wish to see what Paid On Results can offer you be it Affiliate or Merchant, Clarke at paidonresults.com is my email.

  12. 12 On October 11th, 2007, LB said:

    Clarke,

    Regarding the feeds – I can see how it works now, so my apologies for being quick to judge on that front (though from a usability point of view, might I suggest changing the terminology to ‘configure’ instead of ‘download’, as that was where I was going wrong).

    I’ll be honest with you and say I think I’ve done around £100 worth of commission through POR this year – and I don’t think I have ever invoiced you at all. As I said previously, my reasons for this are a mix of the issues raised above, and simply because I can’t do a great deal with your exclusive merchants (at the moment, anyway).

    I do turn over significant sums with other networks, but I have only ever once requested something from a network. I generally work with what is on offer – until a merchant or network approaches me (as happens from time to time). As I mentioned previously though, I have requested something from POR previously and never heard anything back – I’m not one to ask twice, because it tells me I’ll be viewed as a ‘pain’ for continually asking. In that instance I simply went direct to the merchant for the data I needed.

    I’ll leave it at that for now, as I have said a few times – my comments are intended as constructive criticism, and only because I *want* to find a way to work with you.

    Finally, the only reason for not being totally open about who I am is because the views here are my own – not those of my company (who will be known to you).

  13. 13 On October 11th, 2007, Clarke said:

    The never ending thread this one LOL 😉 More fun than the A4U Forum 🙂

    Just so anyone who doesn’t use Paid On Results is not going away with the wrong impression. To get a feed all you do is click Download next to the feed you want, configure it to your taste and download your feed, it so simple and loads of Affiliates rave about our easy to use system.

    All the best to you LB in your Affiliate adventures, I would like to say hello to you at an event so if you go to them, please don’t be shy.

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