TylerCruz.com: An Internet Entrepreneur’s JourneyThe journal of a young web entrepreneur on his journey to wealth.

Build Your Own Affiliate Network with HasOffers

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The following is a paid review for TylerCruz.com written and reviewed by Michael Kwan. It is completely of Michael Kwan’s opinion and is not influenced by being paid. If you’re interested in having your site or product reviewed, please view my advertising page.

If you happen to be a fan of Tyler Cruz’s blog, then there is a good chance that you are interested in how to make money online. By extension, there is a good chance that you are reasonably familiar with the nature of affiliate marketing and affiliate networks. Have you ever considered working from the other side of the coin?

Rather than signing up for an affiliate network so that you can run offers on your site, have you ever thought about running your own affiliate network? It may sound like an incredibly daunting and potentially expensive endeavour, but the HasOffers platform provides "a robust tracking and management software solution with no barrier to entry." The best part? It’s free, so long as you stay under one million clicks.

Building Your Own Affiliate Network

Yes, you can create your own affiliate network. HasOffers, according to the official company website, is the "first white label affiliate network solution that gives you total control, with powerful technology, complete customization, and no startup costs or monthly fees." This is a white label solution, so your affiliate network can be branded however you would like it to be.

The signup process for HasOffers is very straightforward. After filling out the basic registration form, you will receive a confirmation email. It takes about ten to fifteen minutes for your new network to be activated, and then you’ll be able to log into your custom dashboard.

For the purposes of completing this review, I set up a "dummy" affiliate network located at tylercruz.hasoffers.com. This configuration is the default (having your network as a subdomain on hasoffers.com), but you can also have it run from your own custom domain instead.

The administration panel for a HasOffers-powered affiliate network looks almost like the dashboard you would see when you log into your affiliate account elsewhere. The "snapshot" offers an at-a-glance look at your network, getting quick links, updates, and stats. From there, you can navigate to the various other areas to customize your network as needed.

Setting Up the Fundamentals

Obviously, before you can start scouting for new affiliates to sign up with your network and before you can start populating your network with affiliate offers, you need to get the fundamentals in place.

Under the "Company" tab in the user dashboard is an option to "Customize Application." The first option on the resulting page is "Change Preferences" and it is here that you can establish the basic settings for your affiliate network.

You would have already determined the network name during the registration process, but this can be altered from this screen. Also from the preferences screen, you can adjust the support email, the requirement for a W9 form, the approval process, referral program, minimum payments, and your custom domain.

As mentioned, if you are already familiar with affiliate networks from the perspective of an affiliate or publisher, then you will already be familiar with some of these details from the perspective of the network. The difference is that you are now in control.

Creating and Managing Offers

Realistically, the single greatest thing that will differentiate one affiliate network from another is the selection of affiliate offers. When you have the fundamentals in place, you will then want to populate your affiliate network with offers.

Since HasOffers is a white label solution, they are not necessarily there to help you shop for advertisers who want to use your newly formed network. That’s up to you to determine, just as it is up to staff your company (there is a section under "Company" to manage your employees).

From what I can gather, you cannot import a database of offers into your HasOffers-powered network. Instead, you must enter each offer manually. The Create Offer form provides fields for the offer name, description, preview URL, creative URL, payout type, lead caps, cookie lifespan, conversion tracking type, and more. You can also target specific countries and browsers.

Based on this Create Offer form, I do not see an area where you can upload and supply your affiliates with ad banners, email creatives, and other marketing materials.

Customizing Your Look and Feel

Let me preface this by saying that I am neither a web designer nor a web developer, but it seems that the design elements of HasOffers are lacking.

From what I can gather, you can customize things like the logo and color scheme, but there are no obvious ways to upload information pages for your affiliates. I see an area where you can insert CSS stylesheets, but as you can see from my dummy network, there are no information pages.

How can I discuss the strengths and benefits of my network? How can I "sell" potential publishers on why they should sign up with "TC Media" over some other affiliate network? Where is the branding aside from a simple logo and customized color scheme?

And All That Administrative Stuff

HasOffers seems to offer a fairly robust administration panel where affiliate network owners (like you) can adjust and tweak their networks as needed. You can manage your offers (including offer categories and suppression lists), generate a variety of reports (including those related to your referral program), manage your affiliates and employees, deal with billing and invoices, and configure the details related to advertisers.

All of the administrative back end appears to be in place, but the front end seems to need some serious work. As I’ve already said a couple of times in this review, HasOffers is a white label solution, so it’s up to you to brand your network. However, I would have liked to see greater integration into this backend that allows for easier customization of information pages and branding.

Free for Up to One Million Clicks

HasOffers comes in two different editions.

The Pro Edition is free for up to one million clicks. With the Pro Edition, you have full access to smart tracking, live statistics, offer management, unlimited advertisers, a free subdomain, referral reports, and email support.

For $799 a month, you can upgrade to the Enterprise Edition of HasOffers. This provides you with unlimited clicks, telephone support, dedicated service resources, and a custom tracking URL. This is quite the vast discrepancy in pricing, especially when the only "main" difference is number of clicks allowed.

Should you create your own affiliate network with HasOffers? The free Pro Edition is worth giving a try, but you have to realize that is not completely free. You still have to invest in your own domain, employees, branding, and all the other things that go along with running a successful affiliate network. HasOffers only provides the software platform.

This is akin to asking if you should buy a motherboard so that you can run your eBay business. The motherboard is only one part of the puzzle, just as HasOffers is only one part of your affiliate network endeavour.

How to Get Tracking202 Pro and $100 for Free

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I’ve been pitching Tracking202 Pro ever since it launched 3 months ago. Tracking your keywords in PPC affiliate marketing is essential and I don’t know anyone who is doing big numbers who isn’t tracking their keywords.

Well, now you can get Tracking202 Pro for free.

The guys are Tracking202 are currently looking for moderators for their forum and are giving the following benefits to those who they accept:

• You get Tracking202 Pro for free so you don’t have to pay monthly fees or per click fees. You only need to cover API cost if you use Google
• You get the first chance to beta test new 202 software or tools before release
• All newly appointed moderators will get $100 in AdWords advertisement credits

To apply, e-mail Aaron at aaron@tracking202.com with your:

1. Name and email
2. Summary of who you are and your experience in affiliate marketing
3. Experience using Tracking202, Prosper202, and Tracking202 Pro
4. Experience moderating other forums (if any)
5. Statement how can you contribute to the 202 community
6. Explanation on why you want to be a 202 moderator

Now, obviously you’re going to have to have some affiliate marketing knowledge and/or moderating and administrating experience, but your chances of getting accepted as a moderator are pretty good if you do.

This is a great way for those of you who want to use a premium PPC keyword/stat tracking service such as Tracking202 Pro but can’t afford it. It’s also a fantastic way to get $100 to help you get started.

Good luck!

I’m Giving Away a 2010 Honda Acura TSX!

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Now, you’ll need to generate $500,000 within 62 days to win it, but you weren’t expecting me to give away a brand new car to a random blog reader were you?

While $500,000 in 2 months is certainly a lot, broken down that works out to an average of $8,000 a day so it’s certainly not unachievable. In fact, I know a number of people who could easily do that.

June was a really good month for PublisherChallenge, and site members have generated $129,754.16 so far. That puts the site on pace to hit and exceed the one million dollar mark ($1,000,000) next month in July! Once that milestone gets hit, my next one will be for $10,000,000.

We have 2 new competitions that start in a few days and the prizes are absolutely awesome.

The first is being run on PeerFly, which is their 4th competition on PublisherChallenge in a row, and the other is by CPARev, which is their 2nd in a row.

PeerFly’s Summer Challenge

PeerFly is back with their 4th competition in a row, proving that they’re here for the long run and that by signing up with then you can expect them to run future competitions as well. They have already given away over $13,000 in prizes to PublisherChallenge winners.

In my last PublisherChallenge update, a commenter named Sebastian told me that he was a larger affiliate who could push big numbers but that the VIP prizes weren’t quite big enough to really excite him to compete for them. After a couple exchanges back and forth, we came up with the idea to run the competition for a longer period of time so that we could give out better prizes.

I’m always open to constructive criticism, and so we’re running PeerFly’s Summer Competition for 2 months from July 1st, 2009 to August 31st, 2009, and are literally doubling up all the prizes.

You can find out more information about PeerFly’s Huge Giveaway here.

Here is a quick rundown of the prizes:

Main Prize Category

• 1st Place – Samsung 52-Inch 1080p 240Hz LCD HDTV
• 2nd Place – 2.53GHz 13-Inch MacBook Pro
• 3rd Place – 2.13GHz White 13-inch MacBook
• 4th Place – PlayStation 3 Rock Band 2 Package
• 5th Place – Canon Rebel XS 10.1MP Digital SLR Camera

New Signup Prize Category

• 1st Place – 16GB iPod Touch
• 2nd Place – $100 Cash

VIP Prizes

• $50,000.00 – $99,999.99 VIP Tier – 17-inch 2.8GHz Macbook Pro Package
• $100,000.00 – $99,999.99 VIP Tier – VIP Vegas Trip for Two for 4 Nights
• $200,000.00 – $299,999.99 VIP Tier – ZERO-G Weightless Experience
• $300,000.00 – $399,999.99 VIP Tier – Epic VIP Vegas Trip for Two for a Full Week
• $400,000.00 – $499,999.99 VIP Tier – 2009 Honda Accord Coupe
• $500,000.00+ VIP Tier – 2010 Honda Acura TSX

PeerFly has continued to offer the best VIP prizes. I really want somebody to win one of the bigger VIP tiers as it’d be awesome to send somebody to experience weightlessness or give them a true VIP Las Vegas trip.

It’s also the first time PublisherChallenge has ever offered cars as prizes. While a Porche is out of the budget, a 2010 Honda Acura TSX is nothing to scoff at.

PeerFly takes really tight margins on their offers so chances are they can meet or beat whatever payout you’re getting anywhere else.

CPARev’s July Challenge

CPARev has returned to PublisherChallenge with a bang by putting up an even larger prize pool than their first contest. There is now $4,000 worth of prizes for the Main Prize category, and as usual, there is no minimum prerequisite required.

While PeerFly may have the better VIP Prizes, CPARev has the better Main Category prizes.

You can find out more information about CPARev’s Affiliate Challenge here.

Here is a quick rundown of the prizes:

Main Prize Category

• 1st Place – Upgraded 13-Inch MacBook Pro
• 2nd Place – 2.13 GHz White 13-inch MacBook
• 3rd Place – Sony PlayStation 3 80 GB
• 4th Place – Canon Rebel XS 10.1MP Digital SLR Camera
• 5th Place – Amazon Kindle 2

New Signup Prize Category

• 1st Place – $125 Cash
• 2nd Place – $75 Cash

VIP Prizes

• $50,000.00 – $74,999.99 Tier – MacBook Air and Canon Office Printer
• $75,000.00 – $99,999.99 Tier – 2.8GHz 17-inch MacBook Pro
• $100,000.00 – $199,999.99 Tier – Sony Bravia 52-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV
• $200,000.00 – $399,999.99 Tier – VIP Vegas Trip for Two for 4 nights
• $400,000.00+ VIP Tier – ZERO-G Weightless Experience

Your chances of winning a great prize are actually really good and I’m not just saying that. For example, in the current CPARev contest, and with only 4 days left, 4th place is currently only at $379.15 and 5th place at $144.00. If things fare the same in July, that means if you generate an average of $5 a day you could win an Amazon Kindle 2 ($359 value).

Good Luck!

Anyhow, check out these two competitions and I hope to see you on the leaderboards soon!

Heading to the Philippines for Two Weeks

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In exactly one week, I’ll be on a long plane ride headed to the Philippines after a stopover in Hong Kong.

As some readers know, I’m actually half Filipino, and so I’m going to see a lot of my relatives that I’ve never met before including my aunt, grandma (who just turned 90), and about 4,023 cousins. I went to Korea by myself for a bit over a month when I was 19, but I’ve never been to the Philippines before.

My return flight is set for 13 days later, but I might extend the trip by a week depending on how backlogged I get in work, how easy it is to find fast Internet access, and how homesick I get. I think the penalty for changing the return flight is only around $300 or so… I’ve never cancelled or changed a flight before so if somebody knows roughly how much it’d cost to extend my stay, I’d appreciate hearing your thoughts.

Where I’m Going

I do not know the plan perfectly, but I’ll be in Baliuag for a couple days to start, as that is where my Lola (grandma) and relatives live. After that, my immediate family is travelling to the northern tip of the Philippines to Vigan.

Here are a couple random photos of the the Philippines I grabbed from a quick Google Image search:

As you can see, the Philippines is a real tropical country.

My Transportation & Bodyguard

As in most poor Asian countries, the Philippines has some crazy types of transportation. When I’m travelling with my family we will be in a SUV, but the majority of the time I will most likely either be in a weird type of small car or “tricycle” which is a common type of taxi there.

I’ll be in the sidecar, lol.

I’ll be hiring a 24/7 driver while I’m there, and possibly a full-time bodyguard as well. I’m thinking of giving him my cameras so that he can be my cameraman as well. I wonder if some locals might think I’m some type of celebrity with a cameraman following me everywhere, lol.

Here’s a video of the downtown area in Baliuag, Bulcan which is close to where I’ll be staying for the first 2-3 days:

Limited Internet Access

I’ve been told that there are a lot of Internet cafés in the Philippines, but I doubt it’s as widespread as in Korea. Hopefully though, I’ll be able to attend one regularly so that I can keep up with my work and take care of any important business that can’t wait until I return.

Depending on the Internet connection speed there (I think most places still don’t have high speed yet), I may not be able to upload any videos. In fact, I doubt I will, especially since I just got a brand new expensive HD video camera and my videos will probably 500 megs each, so I may just post some photos or else I’ll wait until I return to post my videos.

Web Entrepreneur Meetup

Depending on my schedule and how things pan out, I might be meeting up with 1-2 acquaintances I know in the Philippines. If you live near Baliuag, are making money online, and are interested in meeting up, let me know and maybe we can arrange something.

It’s Balut Time

For those pinoys out there, I’ll be trying Balut for the first time and will be filming the experience as well, so be sure to watch out for that, lol.