Patrick Gavin Responds To My Auction Ads Criticisms
Over a month ago I was forced to remove AuctionAds from the site because it was just plain broke. Earnings had dropped from nearly $1,000 in May 2007 down to $25 in August, and still no evidence of any earnings whatsoever from my nearly 100 referrals left me no other choice. Most anyone that’s been using AuctionAds knows exactly what I’m talking about, and AuctionAds performance is a hot-topic at DP Forums - so it’s not like I’m just some crazy webmaster wearing a tinfoil-hat and screaming about conspiracy theories.
Thursday I received an eMail from Patrick Gavin introducing their new product, ShoppingAds - I’m sure all or most AuctionAds publishers received the same email, but in case you missed it, this was the pitch (in part):
Thanks so much for your support of AuctionAds. As a user of AuctionAds I wanted to invite you to use our currently private ShoppingAds product! ShoppingAds is a cost per click product powered by the major shopping comparison sites.
Because I have no interest in flushing any more of my nearly 1,000,000 monthly page-views down the toilet I really was not interested in adding yet another ‘broken’ system to my site - Because of that, and combined with the fact that I had a really bad day at work that day, I replied to the email with a typical Randy Brown smartass response that I assumed nobody would ever see:
yah.. let me know when Auction Ads is working like normal and i’ll give it a try.. As far as I can see it’s still seriously broken..
After pressing the send button (which felt better than kicking my dog), I went about my business of watching something about ferrets mating in captivity on the Discovery Channel.
Less than an hour later I received another email from Patrick - a short one-line message asking exactly what kind of problem’s I’ve been seeing with AuctionAds. I was in a better mood at this point because I had eaten dinner, and that ferret-mating show had been really interesting, so I lightened-up a little and replied with this honest response:
Hi Patrick..
What I see is tens of thousands of impressions, virtually no clicks (i know, you’re working on that one), no (or extremely low) earnings, and no referral earnings.
I compare this to several months ago, were I saw the same number of impressions, yet earnings were close to $1k/month - never have seen any referral earnings though.. Support told me that they’re counted, yet now that i have removed AA from my site for weeks/months, I’ve still seen $0 from my 80 or so referrals… Same problems that all the other webmasters are griping about in the DigitalPoint forums.. i could point you to a few threads but i’m sure you or your people have seen them.
Anyway, i know you guys are working on these things, and i know the transition is not an easy thing - so i do plan on trying AA again when it appears that everything is back on track..
PS - i’m really not a fan of how AA has handled things since the takeover. You should give this a read: AuctionAds Should Hire John Reese
I pressed the send-button and eagerly awaited Mr. Gavin’s response. By now it was long after 11pm in Patrick’s time-zone so I did not expect a response until the following morning, but Patrick must be working late because less than 30 minutes later I received his response to my criticisms (photo added by me):
Randy, I agree. Believe me it wasn’t an easy transition. The biggest problem was we had no idea what went wrong and posting “we know things are messed up but have no clue how to fix them or if they will be fixed” would have been a tough post to write. I know we should have been more open but we were working our butts off for solutions. The bottom line is AA is a CPA product and results can vary. It obviously will work best when it hits your site for the first time because if your regular audience clicks the ads once and takes an action it will be great but they may not click the next time. Anyway, AA is getting back on track and we are not done optimizing it but I do think you will see great results with SA, thx again!
———————
Patrick Gavin
President
So.. He blames at least part of the problems with AuctionAds on me or my site because it’s a CPA product, promises they’ll be back on track soon, and assures me that ShoppingAds won’t be a total waste of space on my site.. If nothing else, Patrick is a great salesman and eternal optimist.
I’ll give AuctionAds another few months to fix their broken system and give it another try - I’m not even going to bother with ShoppingAds.
AuctionAds Should Hire John Reese
I just finished reading John Reese’s “Shocking Changes At BlogRush” post and I am completely amazed at how he so totally gets it.
Let’s compare another new startup company AuctionAds, to BlogRush, and how they’ve handled a few situations:
Both ventures are very young, both experienced explosive, unexpected growth almost immediately, and both have experienced growing pains due to their success. For both, this has resulted in system wide problems like incorrect stats, downtime, etc - very similar in many respects.
Now lets look at how the two companies have dealt with these issues:
- AuctionAds: Ignore the problem(s); Make no announcements in the blog or give any other information to customers for weeks (if at all), claim to have fixed the problem(s) when they are not fixed, ignore user/support requests; blame publishers for the problems
- BlogRush: Post updates that members cannot miss each time they log in for even the smallest of problems; DO/accomplish what they say they are going to do; listen to user feedback and actually give (some of) what is asked for; Post a two-page letter that members cannot miss explaining how they’ve made mistakes, how they plan to fix them, publicly identify other problems with the system and how they plan to fix them, explain other issues and why they are important to the company, and remind all BlogRush users that THEY are what is important to the company
Now; I know these differences are subtle - but if you look very closely you may see Read more
The Secret To Making Money With AuctionAds
If you own a website and you have not already tested or at least checked out AuctionAds, get over to www.auctionads.com now and sign up for your free account and start showing ads on your site within 5 minutes or less - then read the rest of this post to learn the secret to earning some decent cash with ActionAds.
First, the basics: What is AuctionAds ?
AuctionAds is a new eBay Affiliate revenue sharing system that allows you to easily earn money on your website by showing image-ads for eBay auctions. Each time someone clicks on one of the ads displayed on your site and then buys an item on eBay, you earn money. Because AuctionAds has great-looking images of the products, CTR is very high and because of the 30-day cookie, each time someone clicks on of your Auction Ads you make money if that person buys anything on eBay for the next month! You can also target your AuctionAds with keywords so that only items that interest your website visitors will be displayed - resulting in higher CTR.
There are other eBay affiliate programs out there, but AuctionAds is by far the easiest and fasted to use. You can be up and running with AuctionAds in less than 10 minutes. And, before you ask - YES, you can use AuctionAds with Adsense on the same site, and even on the same page.
My tips for using Auction Ads:
- Select keywords for items that your visitors will be interested in. Don’t load your ads with keywords like “Ferrari”, “laptop”, or “most expensive digital camera” unless that’s really what your website visitors will be interested in. You know what your visitors want - give it to them.
- Use rotating ads. AuctionAds will automatically rotate ads for multiple keywords by seperating your keywords with a semi-colon “;”. For example:
auctionads_ad_kw = “DVD Player; iPod; MP3 player; Wii”;
- Use ‘negative keywords’: Prevent ads from displaying by using negative keywords. The following example will display ads for iPods, but not for iPod cables or earphones:
auctionads_ad_kw = “ipod -cable -earphone -earbud”;
(update: it looks like the negative keywords aren’t working right now. I’m not sure if this is a glitch or if they have removed this feature)The SECRET to making money with AuctionAds:
The secret to earning with AuctionAds is waiting. That’s right.. waiting. You know, sit back and forget about it for 30-40 days. I’ve read too many complaints from people trying AuctionAds for the first time saying they aren’t happy with it because they were not making any money after only 7-10 days (or less) and not sticking-it out.
The key with AuctionAds is TIME & patience. Remember that 30-day cookie I mentioned above? As you get more an more clicks, and your referral cookie gets planted on more and more PC’s your odds for earning are dramatically increased. I guess I should also mention that the other secrets are traffic and clicks, but hopefully you already knew that. After 30 or 40 days you should start to see the Snowball effect. Depending on the niche of your website and the demographics of your visitors the earnings could be large, or not. But if you don’t wait that full 30-40 days you won’t know for sure.
To learn more about AuctionAds or to sign up and try it, go to www.auctionads.com
AuctionAds: Earning After Only 7 Days
Around a week ago I decided to give AuctionAds a try. 
Because you don’t get any earnings until after an auction ends and is paid, I assumed it would take at least a week before I saw any earnings. I didn’t get my hopes up very high so I was pleasantly surprised when I checked my stats yesterday and saw my first earnings posted: a whopping $6.45 !
I understand that $6.45 isn’t really very much, but considering that Adsense placed in the exact same location as my AuctionAds banner earns even less, $6.45 isn’t too shabby.
Because AuctionAds lets me choose the keywords for auctions that I think interest GrownUpGeek.com visitors, the CTR is pretty high - and as time goes on and as more and more of my cookies get planted, I expect the earnings to continue to grow. Jeremy Schoemaker of AuctionAds calls this the SnowBall effect. If he is right then AuctionAds has the potential to be a great income stream.
