How Hydra Affiliate Network Screwed Me Out Of $25,000

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BTP32

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Jan 15, 2009
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I was promoting a "Quality Health" offer for Free Spring Samples.
It was a full registration page with about 15 fields that paid 2.60.
The traffic was being sent to my landing page than to the offer. All traffic was generated strictly with Adwords. There was nothing shady going on. I promoted the offer 100% within the guidelines. I spoke to my affiliate manager every day to make sure everything was on the up and up.

So I am sending them about $3,000-$5,000 worth of leads every day. Everything is great and I am put on weeklies. I promote this offer for a full 2 months. At the end of the 2 months the advertiser decides they are not happy with my leads and doesnt want to pay Hydra. Now I am not responsible for evaluating leads. That is the advertiser and Hydras job to monitor the leads and make sure they are converting for them. How am I suppose to know my quality traffic is giving poor leads. They decide to milk me for as long as they can after I spend thousands on advertising to say we dont want to pay.

So Hydra owes me for 1 week. Which happens to be $25,000. Keep in mind half of my gross income is expenses to google. They just informed me they are paying me $0 of the $25,000 they owe me. Again, nothing shady was done here. Everything was on the up and up. I of course would have settled with a lower number, but $0? I have been a full time affiliate for several years now, and have never seen such unproffessionalism and complete disregard for their affiliates. It was obvious they were fighting for their deadbeat advertiser that doesnt pay.

They threw me for a loop. It took them a full month to tell me they are paying me nothing. I know some people like hydra here, but they are the lamest most unprofessional company, I have ever worked with. They are far more concerned with keeping advertisers than they are publishers. They treated me like I was not important. My clown of an affiliate manager- Charlie- tried several times during this period of no pay to get me to send more traffic to them. I had to laugh.

Word of advice- First of all dont use hydra. Horrible to work with (They told me of another affiliate that lost 4 times as much as did at the same time mine was going on. Apparently they do this to affiliates alot). If you are sending big numbers to offers, always make sure the advertiser is happy with your leads. It is very important.

Theres my rant....
 


Yeah the thing that pisses me off about this is that as Affiliates the only real way we know if our traffic is converting for the advertiser (Making them happy) is if we check on a daily basis with our affiliate managers who sometimes take a few days to check with the advertiser and by that time its too late.

I've had lots of offers pulled from under me just because the advertiser was not happy with the traffic, well first off, the traffic is targeted and converted on my end however after that its completely out of our hands, we have no clue if the traffic continues to be good for the advertiser, if we had some way of knowing (Using an automated system) then we would do more to increase the quality of our traffic.

And like you said to top it all off, the affiliate companies can pull back and refuse to pay and treat you like a dog, pretty much saying your traffic sucks make it better next time when the real fact of the matter is that in our eyes the traffic was golden because it did everything we wanted it to do, CONVERT, once again after that the traffic goes blind to us.

There are still a few obvious big gap here in the affiliate marketing world that needs to be resolved.
 
thats the advertiser problem! they do shitty work whti the leads and then blame the publisher?!?!

damm them!!
 
This is very discomforting actually. I just actually started with Hydra last month. I'm sending $500 a day. I'm set up for net15. That means I won't be paid for my leads until the next month of 15th. So far my AIM has not said anything about my traffic. I even asked once to make sure.

I know other networks will pay you for the bad leads. But if you continue promoting after they tell you not to, then yes I can understand you don't deserve to be paid.

I'm going to have a talk with AM right now. I'm working very hard scaling my campaign everyday. It's stressful as it is. Wouldn't want to be screwed over like this.

-G
 
Uh, that's gotta suck :D

Well, Ebay screwed me over and owns me a lot of money.. fraudulent traffic my ass. It converts so wtf.
 
I'm interested to see if Hydra has a response to this. If the network can't protect both parties then what is their value?
 
BTP32 said:
If you are sending big numbers to offers, always make sure the advertiser is happy with your leads. It is very important.
Click to expand...

If that's our job as affiliates, then what is the point of having the network middleman you out of your profits? If as affiliates you have to deal with all of the hassles that go with going direct with merchants, why use a network? The point is, most good networks stand up for their affiliates and their merchants, and often times take hits for both sides.
 
If hydra is protecting they advertiser the will ultimatly loose money too... cause they say goodbye to their $25.000 %commission

Plus, I am kind of new here, so is there anyway that the company can be sure if the advertiser isn't just lying to get away from paying?
 
threehundred said:
I'm interested to see if Hydra has a response to this. If the network can't protect both parties then what is their value?
Click to expand...


Yes. I am very interested to hear what Hydra has to say about this. This shiznet is very unacceptable. I do the same level of volume with Hydra as the OP and have for several months with no problem. But I mainly use very popular offers.

Stories like this make me want to do nada when it comes to trying new things at Hydra.

It also makes me alot less secure about the money they owe me.

Thing thing is, I'd easily call Hydra one of my two favorite networks.

But this is unexcusable imo.
 
All of you guys are totally on base. I work with several other networks, and have been cut from other offers in the past and always got paid. I deal with large volume and every other network i have worked with had my back besides hydra. I would have been fine with a settlement, and would never have said a word about their joke of a company. They couldnt offer me anything. $25,000 is quite a bit of money, and they just tell me...sorry your out of luck.
 
Well just spoke to AM. They said they give you 48 hours notice to stop the traffic. But pay for the bad leads prior to that and up the to 48 hour notice.

The only reason they will not pay is if you use traffic sources not allowed for the offer or use illegitimate methods to drive leads. That's what i got out of the conversation.
 
LOL strikernr...they are lying to you. Simple as that. Did you not read my original post? Everything in that is 100% accurate and true.
 
strikernr said:
Well just spoke to AM. They said they give you 48 hours notice to stop the traffic. But pay for the bad leads prior to that and up the to 48 hour notice.

The only reason they will not pay is if you use traffic sources not allowed for the offer or use illegitimate methods to drive leads. That's what i got out of the conversation.
Click to expand...

That's the way it should be... the publisher should not be responsable if they suck at converting the leads lol
 
BTP32 said:
My clown of an affiliate manager- Charlie- tried several times during this period of no pay to get me to send more traffic to them. I had to laugh.
Click to expand...


Ahahaha when I first signed up with Hydra I got stuck with Charlie too - he was AWFUL.

When I explained I was a college student and was having problems with cash flow since i was sinking multiple thousands into AdWords he replied back saying he wanted to see $10k monthly for 3 months before I got weekly payments...

I emailed him back 3 times with NO response....after calling hydra to bitch I finally got a new AM, Tammy, who was awesome.

He also failed to reply to 5 emails asking for the top converting search/banner campaigns and never returned my phone calls.

Anyone working with Hydra - if Charlie is your account manager call up and demand to be reassigned - he's an asshat
 
I fully agree with NickRac. He is a complete tool. From my conversations with him he knows very little about affiliate marketing. He was very unpersonable. Just overall a completely lame affiliate manager. Very unhappy with him.
 
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