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So here is an idea that I don't have time to make but would be epic.
So often I have offers that I run with caps. Capping out on an offer is annoying. Usually, if you don't catch it in time means you're going to lose a chunk or all of your profits.
This can also happen when an offer is suddenly pulled or the host goes down.
So the solution to this would be to make a service where affiliates sign up with their cell number. Then you charge affiliate networks to be able to access this list / integrate it into their system. You ping the landing pages of the major offers to ensure it's up.
Whenever an offer caps out, gets redirected, etc, the affiliates on that offer are sent a text message right before letting them know to take action.
I'm not sure it would be possible, but if networks started integrating this for free into their system, it'd be huge. And then you could offer a unique benefit to affiliates that is not "highest payouts".
It's a really rough idea but a feature I have wanted for ages.
EDIT: Apparently this already exists... and I got them to give my readers a special deal!
Sounds like an idea I need to tap out and deliver as an API to various offer nets.
I love it, great idea! Heck I just wish they even notified us by email that an offer goes down. I don’t log into the networks everyday just to make sure an offer is still running.
That’s one great idea. However, it’s quite difficult to achieve, but Im hoping this could be done.
Even an email notification to start would be nice. A lot of aff marketers have data plans on their phones. The problem is that there is limited competition among tracking companies like hitpath and direct track, so they don’t really come out with new features very often. Affiliate networks can either develop their own tracking platforms or choose one of these companies to work with.
Good idea Jonathan, hopefully someone develops this, if not, I may prioritize this and have something like this developed in the future.
I know people who already have something similar on their own server and receive text messages when the server and/or sites go down.
I know nagios can do this as well, although I’m not sure if nagios texts or emails. But hey.. who doesn’t receive their email on their phone nowadays
Guess that wouldn’t work when an offer goes down though…
nice idea – this would be a service like pingdom.com plus.
Once a offer is down/redirected/capped/… – you´d receive a text-message/email/tweet once every minute.
I see some issues though that´d probably make a more sophisticated API necessary.
would be fun to develop.
Couldn’t you do this with pingdom.com? One of their checks is to look for text on a page, or text NOT on a page. So if you take a unique line of text from the LP, and it’s not there (either being redirected or down) then pingdom can TXT you. I use pingdom to Monitor my hot tub to make sure it doesn’t freeze in the winter. Possibilities are endless…
That would be a good idea but, like you said, if someone could find time to put this together.
Actually I think this wouldn’t be to hard an idea to flesh out. There are already sites out there that check a URL to see if it went down (returns 404 or timesout) just checkout this website:
aremysitesup.com
Very simple site that you could even try out for free. I bet if you contact Chris Coyier you could even ask if they could develop a warning for a 303 redirect, on a URL, should be VERY easy for them to do.. and would cost practically nothing. Good idea
this a very good idea. i think it could be done it wouldn’t be that tough to pull off and it’s a feature a lot of affiliates would like to have available i’m sure
I think this is an awesome idea, and that it is only a matter of time until integration like this becomes the norm. Listen up networks, your worker bees are demanding new tools
[...] Yesterday I wrote about this idea where a service would text you if your Affiliate Marketing offer got redirected, capped, pulled, etc. [...]
Jonathan,
I really like this idea. This has been a struggle of mine over the years in the corporate PPC world as well, especially in the mortgage industry. The match rate would go down over the course of the day and thus the revenue per lead (it gets split fewer and fewer times as the day goes on and lenders cap out). If you’re able to build a bidding system to automatically look at the real time demand and adjust bids accordingly, you are golden. All very interesting stuff and I think there is still a lot to be done, as you pointed out!
Best,
Ian
Guess that wouldn’t work when an offer goes down though…
What an absolute load of bullcrap. You suggest an idea then remakably discover that the idea already exists and you get a commission when we all sign up to the idea. Do you think we were born yesterday?
Hey Mark,
You can actually view my previous twitter comments where after I post the first service someone tweets to me about their service. But thanks for your concerns – and doing research.