John Hasson

I’ve worked with several companies in my Affiliate Marketing… .blah.. you know.. let me just tell you my InsureMe story.

Long ago I was building informational websites about a TON of different topics. At one point reviewing my PPC bids, I noticed I was outbid on a keyword for insurance. I though, “How dare someone outbid me!” (I was new at this :)) They were sending traffic directly to InsureMe. I checked in my list of thousands of CJ affiliates… sure enough they were in there. But they also had a direct affiliate program. So away I went.

I figured if this poor sap can bid this (I think it was something like 30 cents) and make money, how hard can it be? So I start bidding on PPC and sending direct traffic to them. No landing page, nothing. But I am making a *small* profit. Along comes one of the many Google slaps. Landing pages?! Content?!?! The Google lords will be the end of me!

*Fine*, I’ll make a killer landing page (or two or 3…). However with a cool landing page you don’t want to lose people in the crossover to the merchant… InsureMe had (still does have) this really cool thing called cobranding. You make your own site and when you send people to InsureMe it matches your site’s layout and design. Awesome!!!! (I think ) Now people are more likely to complete the quote. You know.. cuz they won’t be thinking.. wait, I was on site A, now I’m on Site B?!!?!
This was pretty slick and things are going along fine. I happened to be in Colorado and I even got to have lunch with April (my *awesome* affiliate manager) and their CIO. It was a great experience, we traded ideas and war stories; I even was able to meet some of their IT folk. (When I asked April if I could meet them she seemed a little surprised–but I’ve spent my entire career in IT and you can tell alot about a place by the *feel* of the IT folk–the feel seemed fine.) After my meeting and InsureMe tour, I put even more effort into it and got in their top 25 or so affiliates for about a month. Good times…

I started focusing on other things (all sorts of RL things kept popping up [RL = Real Life for you non-mmo-gamers]) My traffic was dropping (you know if you don’t keep on top of your PPC/SEO game, the results drop) A few months passed and I went from one of their top 25 affiliates down to 60 or 70. A pretty significant drop. But did they give up on me?! No.

Out of the blue I get an email from April to try out one of their pilot programs. It was perfect for me. I ended up working for a handful of people over at InsureMe and a lot of back and forth phone calls and emails to get it working. Even though I was not one of their “top” (or even close to middle at the time) affiliates, everyone I worked with was professional and really top notch. I’m not sure how much I can say about the pilot program other then I am in it. If they say I can say more, I will

So… long story short: They rock because even though I had some crappy months they still treated me awesome.

PS: InsureMe Affiliate link. (What kind of person would I be if I didn’t include an affiliate sign up link!)

Tags: Online Moola //