Jason Akatiff was a regular blackhat SEO making cloaked pages and having fun making money online until he purchased a failing affiliate network last June. I thought it would be interesting to do an interview with affiliate network Ads4dough owner about his network and the issues he is seeing starting his own network.
ShoeMoney: Jason tell us about your background and what made you take on ads4dough.com?
Jason: My background is I was raised up in a suburb of San Jose, CA and lived there until I was around 27 when I moved to San Diego. I wasn’t ever into computers much other then to play video games. Then totally stopped using them for anything other then term papers and stuff like that for about 10 years.
Being as I was from Silicon Valley I wanted to go into computer engineering but hated college and doing anything that wasn’t going to make me money or I didn’t absolutely love doing. So that whole college thing didn’t last to long. Went to Junior college for 4 years so I could kind of drift for a while. Then transferred to UC Santa Cruz to get a degree and dropped out a year later.
I had various jobs in between then and now like being a waiter, notary public loan signer, sold franchises and was a speaker for Tony Robbins.
I got into this whole line of business when I was working as a franchise sales rep for Blimpie Int’l the sub sandwich chain and they we’re about to go into bankruptcy and I got laid off my job. So I decided I was going to go into buying and selling of real estate which I created a site for it called enhousepayments.com. It actually expired the other day and doesn’t exist anymore. So I knew absolutely nothing about computers, online marketing, ppc, servers, really nothing at all to do with this business.
I picked up a copy of dreamweaver and a template from template monster and hacked together a site that I put on one of those cheap 7$ hosting providers. So i started reading around on how to get traffic and started to learn some SEO. Got my site ranking pretty well and a decent amount of traffic (which was about 5 hits a day at that time, which was decent for me then 
) And a lead would be generated here and there. So I was pretty happy. But but then the site got hacked and someone managed to put a bunch of spam pages on it which I had no idea about at the time. They were auto generating pages on my domain and and then using some sort of ppc xml fee to create search pages. I found this by checking in google and seeing I had 10k pages indexed and the site was only 10 pages. Needless to say the site eventually got banned and I was so pissed off as I’d put all this work into building it out and now it was junk in my eyes at that time.
I started to poke around and stumbled across search engine cloaker and the search engine cloaker forums And that’s what got me started in Blackhat SEO. Which I’d like to clarify is different then straight Blackhat. I think they get confused a lot. Blackhat SEO is the art of auto generating sites and links on a massive scale through automation. Blackhat can be construed as anything shady like fraud and hacking.
ShoeMoney: I disagree with your definition of blackhat but please continue.
Jason: One thing I was always sure of is that I never defrauded anyone and never broke any laws. So eventually after playing with search engine cloaker, blog solution and a few other pre-packaged software solutions I kept finding flaws in them and thinking to myself “If this software could only do this or that it would be so much better”.
At that point I had met some people through cloakingforums.com and syndk8.net and they had suggested that I try to hire some people offer the freelance boards. So I did.
Trying to use freelancers at that point was basically a joke as I had only a half baked idea of what I wanted. And most of the time would wind up with things that didn’t do what I need. That’s when I decided I needed to learn to code myself if I was going to stick in this business for the long term. To this point I’d been in the biz for about 4 months and honestly had no idea about anything. I just kept hearing about people talking about it.
I decided PHP would be the best way to go as that’s what most of the people I knew were using. And figured it would be better to chose a common language rather then something like PERL that might have been more robust. In short I learned to code and started automating all sorts of projects myself.
But that had it’s limitations. As a single person you can only do so much work. I had a lot of friends that had been trying to work this business for some time and weren’t seeing a ton of success like I had to that point. So what I decided to to is start taking on what I called “project partners.” Often times when someone tries something they only try half way, or there is just one hurdle they can’t seem to get over. Or they get stuck.
What I decided to do because I had that unfortunate experience trying to outsource was to work with people as partners and a project by project basis. We’d structure it as I usually had the idea, at least when first starting out, they’d do most of the coding but if they needed resources or got stuck I’d push them through. Then we’d split the profits. Often times I get the question aren’t you afraid they’re going to take the idea and go run with it themselves and take all the money? Sure that’s a concern but I think a lot of that has to do with how you pick the people you work with. I always worked with people that didn’t make 1000’s of dollars a day by themselves. Maybe they made 100-150$/day on their best day ever. Then I’d work with them and we’d make 500-1000/day on their project and so splitting half was still much better revenue then working by themselves. And in all honesty it’s much more fun to work in teams rather then in isolation.
This really lead me to figure out that I truly enjoy helping people make money and seeing them get excited when they have success. But in all honesty buying a network never crossed my mind even 1 time really until I was in #cakes on irc and someone posted a link to an ad for ads4dough.com on sitepoint.
Funny thing was I knew who started ads4dough.com, it was originally started by a couple for friends of mine Rick and Rob. And apparently they’d taken on a new partner to help them and he had listed it on sitepoint to sell.
That’s the first time I thought about owning a network in all honesty. I saw it on there and it seemed relatively cheap I think the price was like 30k and they had claimed it was making 10k/month so I figured it’d be a good investment and just something to do on the side with my other stuff. Little did I know what I was in for.
ShoeMoney: When was the date of purchase?
Jason: I purchased ads4dogh technically on June 1 although I started taking it over a couple weeks before that. So about 4 and a half months now.
ShoeMoney: During that time what was the most surprising aspects of owning your own network?
Jason: Well from an affiliates perspective it looks like a really simple thing to do. All you have to do is get some offers at one price and then get some affiliates to promote them at a little lower price and that’s it. That’s just not the case. There’s so much work that goes into it. It really is all consuming.
ShoeMoney: How many active publishers do you currently have in ads4dough.com?
Jason: I’d guess around 350-400 based on the checks I send out monthly.
Yeah I soooo love it. It’s the greatest thing ever for me personally. I get to share all my knowledge with affiliates and help them get going in the business and make money. And if they do well I do well. It really couldn’t be a better scenario in that sense. Honestly I think it’s the tip of the ice berg I’d like to take it as big as possible. I really think this industry is tiny and growing. There’s a lot of very very risky things about it. But I do love it.
ShoeMoney: Do you think your Blackhat SEO background helps you in running the affiliate network?
Jason: Oh 100% helps! I haven’t just done BH SEO. I’ve done PPC, Banner Buys, etc. But knowing as many aspects of the business as possible is very very important. How can I help an affiliate that’s doing BH SEO if I hvaen’t done it myself? How can I help a guy running content network if I haven’t done it myself? You get the picture.
ShoeMoney: Lets talk about a huge issue in affiliate marketing – fraud. How do you deal with it?
Jason: A huge thing about running a network is blocking fraud. There’s soooooo much fraud in this business. A lot of the stuff we built to get around things as BH SEO’s we utilize on the other side today. Such as building tools to hunt down fraud. It’s rampant and there’s a lot of different levels. There’s whole rings of people in China, India, Vietnam and other countries that apply to be affiliates. That’s the full out blatant fraudsters. They’ve gone as far as to hire actors to call in to the affiliate network to get approved, if you can believe that. So when affiliates apply they wonder why they don’t just get approved and it’s a free for all, that’s what we’re trying to stop on a daily basis.
As an affiliate you may think, well what’s that got to do with me. You’re just impeding my progress. But think about it like this – How long and how much money can it take you to setup a fresh campaign on adwords? A while and can be a good amount of money right? Well imagine there’s some fruadsters in the system that decide to start frauding the offer you’re running. The advertiser gets pissed and pulls the offer. Who loses? There’s other types of fraud as well. There’s guys that control botnets and stuff leads. So guess who this hurts, that’s right all the good affiliates. As the advertiser sees the value of the leads being worth less and less. Because they’re getting so many junk leads.
Those are just a few of the major types of fraud. You also have people that signup to be affiliates that have no money. So a 30$ comission to them is big money. So they use their CC and fill in a couple leads then immediately cancel the offers. This really is fraud too in my opinion.
ShoeMoney: wow thats a lot. So how are you trying to grow to compete with the bigger players in the industry?
Jason: In any marketplace you really need to differentiate yourself. But luckily in this industry most of them are truly terrible and rip off artists. So first off is we truly don’t shave affiliates ever. And to stand by that I’ve posted a split test script on the ads4dough.com blog so people can put us head to head with any other network on a straight split. I’ve had at least 10 aff’s do it and we win 80% of the time and tie the other 20%. I mean truly we’re putting the affiliates first. As they’re the whole driver of this industry. I always felt like a peon and I was the least important peice of the puzzle. But honestly that’s not true, we as affiliates are the most important peice. We’ll be releasing competitive research tools, split testing tools, multi-variant tools and eventually a bid management platform. All of it will be free to our affiliates. We want to earn our money by affiliates having more success. We also believe that will build loyalty to the network at the same time.
Also we only hire experienced Affiliate Managers. I know this could be looked at as a conflict of interest in a way. But it’s worked well for us so far. Kaveman from Wickedfire aka Brandon has been an affiliate himself for around 3 years and decided he wanted a nice steady job. So he’s got experience in most of the fields of AM and is able to help his affiliates under him the same as I do with the affiliates under me. It’s worked really well so far and people have really appreciated it.
ShoeMoney: So you think a lot of networks are shaving leads and stealing from affiliates?
Jason: It’s been proven time and time again. I always encrouage every affiliate to split test their offer from time to time. Even my own guys, if they say “hey this offer isn’t converting that well” I say “use the split test script and network x or y has it test against them”. As affiliates that’s truly our job. Split test everything. I know networks that have gone as far as shaving clicks to make conversions look better. So always go by the clicks at the advertising source and divide your revenue earned to get a true EPC. As EPC or eCPM is the only thing that matters really. Everything is else is just a component of those.
ShoeMoney: What kind of feedback are you hear from users on the social network platforms like Myspace and Facebook?
Jason: Facebooks and Myspace are doing amazing. My favorite part about the social stuff is it’s more roots, demographic based marketing. Rather then trying figure and fight over a keywords it’s much more find offers that convert to a general demographic. So what are things that convert to a general demographic? Weight loss, dating , tones, payday loans, halloween costumes, and the list goes on. I think it teaches people how to think for doing large scale CPM banner buys as well. Same ideas and mentality. From so many years as PPC affiliates most people are stuck in the keyword mindset and if you come to the social game with keyword mindset you’ll usually go home empty handed. From so many years as PPC affiliates most people are stuck in the keyword mindset and if you come to the social game with keyword mindset you’ll usually go home empty handed.
ShoeMoney: What are your biggest challenges currently with the network?
Jason: I mean there’s really a lot of financialy at stake as the payment terms are different. Most of the big affiliates want to be paid on weekly wires. Because they run massive CC debt to run their campaigns. Well most of the advertisers want to pay on the best terms at a net 15. So for big offers you can be floating 1-2 million at any given time. That’s a ton of risk if the advertiser decides they don’t want to pay for whatever reason. And do advertisers decide not pay? Oh hell yeah.
ShoeMoney: This has been a great interview! Anything else you would like to add before we go?
Jason: Networking is everything man. I know you’ve talked about it a lot but let me reinforce it. It’s the heart and soul of this business. It’s all about who you know at the end of the day. I hope this industry changes. I think think that a lot of affiliates are treated poorly and given the short end of the stick. I’m hoping to make a difference and put affiliates at the for front. And the networks are here to serve them. I’m hoping through word of mouth, helping and treating people right I can be a catalyst for change in the industry.
Special thanks to Jason for the honest interview. Check out Ads4dough for more information about his affiliate network.
March 3, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Nice interview, i am using ads4dough, so it is great to hear from her owner.
January 22, 2009 at 2:10 am
Nice interview, apart from the irritating regular spelling mistake of “then” insead of “than”.
January 22, 2009 at 2:15 am
DOH!! TYPO! I meant “instead”. How embarrasing….
January 12, 2009 at 6:15 am
I just signed up.
Thanks.
January 5, 2009 at 4:56 am
i was just in
November 8, 2008 at 9:36 pm
I love reading this..Interview is personal!
November 6, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Its like a network proxy. Google cracks the back hat tricks, and black hats seo experts create new tricks. Its a war, not worth to play..
November 4, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Great article. Thanks!
November 1, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Great read, and a great network!
October 28, 2008 at 1:55 pm
I appreciate ur efforts its good to see the interview process but i am stuck up with few things i need understand them clearly
Thanks for ur solid work
October 25, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Great interview, its always nice to take a peek at whats going on in the minds of top affiliate marketers.
October 23, 2008 at 9:09 am
Brilliant interview, shoe but too long where is the cameran did you
fired him. Respect Smaxor
October 23, 2008 at 9:09 am
yeah, it’s strange how some things work out.
October 23, 2008 at 9:01 am
yup, great interview Shoe! We’ll see how it goes with time.
October 23, 2008 at 7:43 am
Jason’s def a good guy, great interview
October 23, 2008 at 12:58 am
I have always felt that an affiliate program could have a newbie program. Something to so some handhold and have community interaction. Kinda like 30 day challenge but longer and just for that affiliate program.
I like what he had to say but am still fuzzy on what all ads4dough is about. Great comments though about the issues of the industry. Headed over to check it out and learn more…
November 7, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Great idea BusinessX! We’re considering holding FREE bootcamps for affiliates. Trying to decide what the sweet spot level for affiliates would be. But they’d be held here in San Diego and would probably be taught by me personally. Only so many hours in the day. We’re building a team, helping affiliates and working on getting the best offers first and foremost. As you can see above we haven’t even written our FAQ because it doesn’t help our affiliates make more money.
October 22, 2008 at 9:33 pm
The black hat tactics makes it harder for us honest people to make money.
October 22, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Very nice interview. Congrats to Jason. I’ll definitely check out his company.
October 23, 2008 at 9:02 am
yeah, it’s quite cool. This guy is smart
October 22, 2008 at 11:15 am
Interesting interview – thanks for sharing it with us. I’m not surprised to hear about the amount of fraud, much as I love the internet it seems to get more overwhelmed with ugly stuff all the time.
October 23, 2008 at 9:03 am
yup, you have to be extra cautious on the web these days, the bigger it gets, the much unsafer it gets.
October 22, 2008 at 10:59 am
Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but once you go to ads4dough’s site and click on the FAQ, it’s all ‘Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet?’
If you haven’t finished your website, don’t expect me to try it out
November 7, 2008 at 5:05 pm
I’m sorry to hear you judge a book by it’s cover. Honestly we can’t take everyone. I know copeac and advaliant are great networks as well.
November 24, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Who cares about the FAQ. If you’re an affiliate you know what a network offers, it’s not rocket science!
October 22, 2008 at 10:54 am
Very revealing article.
October 22, 2008 at 10:07 am
Cool interview! He seems to really want to go to bat for the affiliates, which I think is cool, but how does he feel about the advertisers? I mean they are the ones that are shelling out the dough! It seems as if there might be issues in the future where some advertisers are not interested in doing business with some one that isn’t putting their revenue stream first.
November 7, 2008 at 5:04 pm
I hear you and I care and deal with advertisers very well as they’re important to the equation as well. However they’ve always been treated well.
October 22, 2008 at 8:20 am
Great interview. I’ve got to read it again though.
October 22, 2008 at 6:28 am
I have little understanding of journalism. It was a great interview.
October 22, 2008 at 5:19 am
very interesting success story.All the best Mr. BH SEO
October 22, 2008 at 5:09 am
That was a pretty good interview. Lot of informative stuff in it. Definitely worth the read.
October 22, 2008 at 4:40 am
As an interviewer myself, I have to say that you asked some great questions. And I liked Jason’s answers. No phony BS. Straight to the point.
October 21, 2008 at 11:54 pm
I found this to be fascinating. It’s good to understand the type of people that are making up the security-end of the SEO business now. Thanks for the interview Shoe. :^)
October 22, 2008 at 7:30 am
yea I agree this is a great interview and its always good to see the people behind it
October 21, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Yeah, good interview… Seems a little strange to see “lorem ipsum” text all over FAQ page (http://www.ads4dough.com/affiliatefaq) of such a big network though…
October 24, 2008 at 9:15 am
Yea that threw me off as well.
Why?
October 21, 2008 at 11:16 pm
awesome conversation. thanks shoemoney for the info.
October 21, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Sign up for A4D for sure. Jason is always around to help out. So far I have found some of my best offers on a4d. No other network can touch the epc on some of these offers.
October 21, 2008 at 10:44 pm
great interview. It is also an awesome insight into owning an ad network.
Shannon
October 21, 2008 at 9:53 pm
It does not look like he has products that would fit into my websites topics/theme.
October 21, 2008 at 8:54 pm
That was a great interview and I enjoyed reading it! I hope Jason has success with Ads4Dough. I just wanted to point out that the domain mentioned in this article “enhousepayments.com” was never actually registered. I think that was a typo because “inhousepayments.com” was registered, deleted, and now it’s available again! I’m surprised the domain squatters haven’t registered this domain yet. Hurry before it’s gone.
October 22, 2008 at 12:17 am
Hahaha actually was endhousepayments.com, sorry for the typo.
October 21, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Wow, I had to re-read some parts to understand the writing, but blackhat SEO will always be on top when it comes to marketing and making money.
-Mike
October 21, 2008 at 6:41 pm
That was an awesome read. I have been wanting to join up with his network and have heard so many good things about it but just never pulled the trigger. I guess after reading more about him, it is about time to signup. Great insight into how a network runs.
October 21, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Ads4dough is a good network.
October 21, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Nice interview! Thanks for sharing this!
October 21, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Awesome interview… I’m pretty much a n00b, I’ve been lurking here for a while finally decided to comment, then cruised over to the a4d site and signed up.
October 21, 2008 at 4:27 pm
It’s nice to see an alternative to adsense. I will check ‘em out.
October 21, 2008 at 4:26 pm
It’s nice to see an alternative to adsense. I will check them out.
October 21, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Great interview! Jason is a great guy… Very smart and has taught me a thing or two about marketing.
October 21, 2008 at 4:07 pm
“Networking is everything man. I know you’ve talked about it a lot but let me reinforce it. It’s the heart and soul of this business.”
I wholeheartedly agree to that statement. As much as you may want to live your own life, it’s the others that really make you.
October 21, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Interesting interview. It’s got to be brutal to have an affiliate network. People trying to screw you at both ends. But at least you’re building long term value.
October 21, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Great interview, it will be useful, thank you for posting.
October 21, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Haha I remember when ads4dough was only making $10k net a month and was for sale on sitepoint for $100k…things have certainly changed!
October 21, 2008 at 9:32 pm
When was that?
October 22, 2008 at 12:13 am
Hahahaha yeah 10k/month was far from reality when you looked at the books. It made about 100$ a day or less. And most of the pubs that were running that 100$ a day was fraud of some sort. In hindsight I should have started fresh. but I thought that buying a fully running network was going to help me. In a lot of ways it hindered.
October 22, 2008 at 4:39 am
I think I remember this. It is rather funny how things work out.
October 21, 2008 at 2:19 pm
October 21, 2008 at 2:14 pm
This was one of the best interviews I’ve read on Shoe Money. As a proud member of Ads4dough, I’m now even more excited to get out there and start earning, Jason sounds like a truly stand up guy.
October 21, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Awesome. Good luck Jason.
October 21, 2008 at 1:22 pm
I agree that networking is everything. The stronger your network is, the more possibilities you can entertain.
October 21, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I definitely agree with the last part… Networking is everything!!
October 21, 2008 at 1:10 pm
I used to be an affiliate marketing noob. Then I got on Ads4Dough. Now I’m an affiliate marketing noob with money. Lots.
October 21, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Good stuff, they really do like to help out affiliates make money…and they know what they’re doing when it comes to affiliate marketing.
October 21, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I found it quite interessting to read this interview. thanks for posting shoemoney
October 21, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Very interesting read. Useful to know what potential problems one might run into as they get farther along in this business
October 22, 2008 at 7:33 am
Yea there is fraud everywhere and you would have limit it if you wanted to get far
October 21, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Good Interview. Networking is so important. I am a student in the design field and I know that most of everything happens through networking. It was interesting to seem where they came from and where they are going.
October 21, 2008 at 11:55 am
Nice interview!
October 21, 2008 at 11:42 am
Good Interview. As always smax is informative.
October 21, 2008 at 11:34 am
Great interview by jason — now get paid.
October 21, 2008 at 11:13 am
Brilliant interview, Lot of respect for Smaxor.
October 21, 2008 at 11:12 am
Nice interview, interesting to read the story of another entrepreneur and his route to where he is now. Thanks for sharing this with us!
October 21, 2008 at 10:44 am
What a good interview ..
It is too long ..
I must take a time to read this interview.
October 21, 2008 at 5:38 pm
its long and its worth it…
October 21, 2008 at 11:53 pm
it’s well worth going back to re-read later!
October 21, 2008 at 10:38 am
Great interview.
October 21, 2008 at 10:25 am
Nice reading. Nice interview Jeremy
October 21, 2008 at 10:08 am
BlackHat is not the way to go seriously do it the legit way
October 21, 2008 at 10:27 am
Well, he seems to learn the lesson and trying the legit way by starting this affiliate network.
October 21, 2008 at 10:03 am
Great read, and a great network!
October 21, 2008 at 9:39 am
Great interview, I am going to take Jason up on his split text challenge we will see how it goes.
October 21, 2008 at 9:37 am
blackhat is the way to go
October 21, 2008 at 9:35 am
Great interview with Smaxor. Well worth reading agian.
October 21, 2008 at 9:30 am
Great freakin interview and mad props to Smaxor.
October 21, 2008 at 9:16 am
I just wanted to speak from some personal experience with ads4dough. Jason really is the way he appears in this article; I’ve met him in person and he’s nothing but helpful. One of the few networks I trust 100%. I’m actually one of the people who splittested an offer with a4d and some other popular networks. Not only did a4d come out on top, but it actually beat out the network they got the offer in question from!
Really can’t say enough good stuff. Excellent interview smax.
October 21, 2008 at 11:57 pm
“Not only did a4d come out on top, but it actually beat out the network they got the offer in question from!”
Let me make sure I understand what you’re saying here. You’re saying the ecpm was higher than if you went direct. If that’s true, and a4d continues to stay true to its philosophy of never shaving as it scales, then it could become the greatest CPA company of all time. Will it be a retro affiliate company that actually protects affiliates instead of caving into advertisers?
October 21, 2008 at 8:56 am
I’m a member of ads4dough but have not used them yet. This interview makes me want to give them a serious try. Thank you Shoe.
October 21, 2008 at 9:35 am
You really should, the payouts are great and Smaxor is an honest guy.
October 23, 2008 at 7:43 am
Yup, and helpful to boot..
October 21, 2008 at 8:55 am
Great interview, I haven’t used A4D much YET but once I move onto my next campaign I am definitely going with Jason’s network, and my AM Brandon is always willing to give advice for campaigns. If you’re not already signed up I recommend doing so.
October 22, 2008 at 6:32 am
Indeed, all this sounds very convincing. I think I can try…
October 21, 2008 at 8:43 am
Very good interview. One thing we can get from this interview is that whatever your background in life, it’ll always be helpful. You see, blackhat SEO isn’t necessarily the best thing to do, but that background helped him understand the business a lot better…
October 21, 2008 at 8:35 am
thanks Jeremy, that’s a really interesting article. do you mind me asking if you would use them? You seem to use only Google for your ads but I might be wrong.
October 21, 2008 at 8:34 am
Very informative interview shoe, fraud is all over the place huh?
October 21, 2008 at 8:31 am
This is a great interview, I hope his affiliate network succeeds
October 22, 2008 at 12:05 am
Thanks Zuprit, It already is succeeding
October 21, 2008 at 8:26 am
That was out standing interview, I am going to read it again,just in case I missed something. Please do more of these
October 21, 2008 at 8:24 am
An interesting interview. Thanks Jeremy…
October 21, 2008 at 8:22 am
I do believe that there is really a huge fraud in affiliate business like what he has said.. I mean especially in the lead type of offers..
October 21, 2008 at 8:31 am
I agree there is a lot of fraud but its good to see that he is dealing with it and trying to catch it
October 21, 2008 at 5:34 pm
i think its nearly impossible to stop it but to lessen it at least can be a greatone
October 21, 2008 at 8:21 am
Thanks for this interview! It’s interesting what problems you have when you’re an Affiliate Network owner.
October 21, 2008 at 5:46 pm
being an owner of an affiliate network is damn very hard I think…
October 21, 2008 at 8:15 am
Interesting interview. Although I completely disagree with the facebook part. From my experience it’s a rubbish form of advertising. Even with the most targeted adverts I couldn’t achieve a decent click to sale ratio. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but I can’t bloody figure it out
October 21, 2008 at 8:54 am
Keep trying
October 21, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Did you try dating? It’s not as easy as it once was.. but still profitable.
October 21, 2008 at 11:04 pm
I had some success with facebook advertising, but nothing like I was seeing from search and content network PPC.
I doubt I will be spending resources on social media advertising any time soon.
October 22, 2008 at 12:04 am
Thanks for the feedback Clog. If you’re interested in learning to advertise on facebook and have some experience on other platforms I can probably give you some suggestions that might move you in the right direction. That’s what we’re here for, as I believe all networks should be.
October 22, 2008 at 2:49 am
Yep I tried dating. I went really specific and even invested in a couple of images which I thought would sell the service. Not a single sign up… Rubbish ;0
October 21, 2008 at 8:01 am
Great interview with Jason. Keep up the good work A4D, your checks always brighten up my day.
October 21, 2008 at 7:59 am
As an affiliate for Ads4Dough, I can personally vouch that this is a great network. Jason had me approved on the same day I applied and I started making money the next week.
October 21, 2008 at 7:55 am
It’s always interesting to read about each side of the business, I wasn’t too surprised about the level of fraud but it’s amazing how resourceful fraudsters are.
October 21, 2008 at 7:54 am
Wow, there’s a lot of information there! I think this is one of your posts that warrants another visit later on just to make sure I didn’t miss anything.
October 22, 2008 at 6:30 am
The most interesting thing is that this was indeed an honest interview. Get this product is difficult.
October 21, 2008 at 7:50 am
Great reading. Nice interview Jeremy
October 21, 2008 at 7:49 am
very long interview…but very nice, thanks
October 21, 2008 at 11:47 pm
Yeah. Way too long there.
October 21, 2008 at 7:47 am
This is a cool interview. This Jason guy seems to enjoy giving people the chance to earn some money. Its just 4-5 months, so its a long journey to go for him. We would like to see the future result.
October 22, 2008 at 12:01 am
Yep agree’d I can’t wait to see where we are in 2-3 years. With some of the ideas I have and the circle of people I network with always adding to that I think we’ll all be suprised
October 23, 2008 at 7:45 am
For the better I should hope….
October 21, 2008 at 7:37 am
Wow, never realized how much fraud was involved. Great post
October 21, 2008 at 7:30 am
really great innterview from a french webmaster
October 21, 2008 at 7:28 am
wow man, this is a heck of a great intervierview for me to bookmark. I’ve been long seeing ads4dough on some sites and wickedfire but I havent really tested it.I like the way he pointed out the importance of networking which is something I don’t do before I started my internet craps and its one of the things that I always think I have developed and I enjoyed having it
October 23, 2008 at 7:44 am
If you’re not part sign up now, it’s definitely worth it!
October 21, 2008 at 7:15 am
Very nice interview
October 21, 2008 at 7:04 am
This proves once again that blackhatters are the community that come up with the most interesting ideas these days. The rest simply follow and follow badly while we’re at it.
October 21, 2008 at 10:43 am
Yes, of course. They are genius
October 21, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Haha yeah I don’t think we need to start calling black hat marketers the geniuses of the industry.
November 8, 2008 at 3:51 am
Please don’t! The industry got a bad enough name as it stands!
October 21, 2008 at 2:20 pm
yeah, that was a very good review. I hate when you can tell a review is a phony and they were paid to write a good and honest review.
October 21, 2008 at 11:58 pm
As far as the most brilliant being a BH SEO takes a lot of skill and knowledge of how to code these days. And it gets harder and harder. It’s still possible to game google for rankings just gets tougher as the days go on.
I think there are a ton of brilliant people in paid traffic sources such as ppc, cpm buying, social traffic buying, etc. I really see this is where the industrary is headed with the ability to buy on more and more sites every day in both cpm and ppc. Easy to use self serve platforms making this process much less daunting.
October 21, 2008 at 6:45 am
great interview, maybe chack back on how its doing in a year ? that would cool.
October 21, 2008 at 9:59 am
I agree that was a great interview. Its nice to see an ad company that is honest and is very helpful. It always encourages me to see an honest internet marketer and this interview showed me Jason is one of those people. I’ll definitely be checking his company out.
October 21, 2008 at 11:05 am
I agree, that was a really awesome interview, albeit a bit long.
October 21, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Yeah a bit long. But a big one.
October 21, 2008 at 9:28 pm
yeh, wonderful to know about how a person achieves success..
Do you still favor BH SEO ?
October 24, 2008 at 11:50 am
Seems to be a lot of black hats around. Hope I can be one of them one day
If that is a good thing
October 21, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Yep thought it was a cool interview. I don’t agree with his definition of black hat either and that it is not illegal because spamming is actually illegal.
October 21, 2008 at 11:55 pm
As far as still favoring Blackhat SEO. I really don’t do it much anymore. It seem to keep getting harder. And honestly there’s just to many easy placed to buy traffic to make money. So we primarily focus on those now.
October 22, 2008 at 5:52 pm
I agree great interview, and while it was a bit long, thanks Shoe for not doing it on video, I hate that, I prefer to read them!
November 8, 2008 at 3:49 am
AwSEOme interview indeed! What struck me most is his take on “keyword mentality” with social networks. Love the way the web is evolving!