[Cygnus]

PawsUpPetSupply went offline and will be leaving SAS, according to the e-mail I just got...anyone have a good recommendation for a SAS pet supply affiliate program that uses datafeeds? I really dislike getting commissions stolen like this by trying to force me into another network -- very dishonest.


Joe,

My name is Paul Kalbach from AvantLink.com, and I am the new affiliate
manager for the PawsUpPetSupply program. The email copied below explains
the changeover, and I hope you have already received this. It went out two
days ago. We at AMG believe you will see the great benefits of the new
network, tools, and dedicated affiliate management.

There is another reason for urgency, I understand a large transaction went
through your site during the changeover from ShareaSale to AvantLink.com,
and we want to be sure you are commissioned on it.

I believe you are using a datafeed, so you will be very pleased to see our
advanced, user friendly, dynamic Datafeed ManagerTM tool that is also free
to you. If you have any questions or concerns, please call me or email at
pkalbach@avantlink.com, or go to
https://www.avantlink.com/affiliate_app.php to sign up.

I am looking forward to working with you for a very successful partnership.

Best Regards,

Paul Kalbach
Affiliate Manager - PawsUpPetSupply
pkalbach@avantlink.com
561-451-4754


Dear Affiliate,

PawsUpPetSupply has made a decision to become more aggressive in their
affiliate marketing space. Effective immediately, we have contracted with
AvantLink.com, a new company with the experience, tools, skills and
management to help you earn more.

Our new affiliate network, AvantLink.com, belongs to the parent company,
Avant Marketing Group. They have a comprehensive combination of technology,
tools that are free to you, and conscientious affiliate management.
Starting today they will be solely responsible for managing the PUPS
affiliate relationships, including all communications, and will take over
the ABestWeb forum for PawsUpPetSupply. Therefore, your new affiliate
manager is Paul Kalbach, and he will be in touch soon to answer any
questions and explain more about this next-generation affiliate network
(Paul Kalbach, email: pkalbach@avantlink.com, 561-451-4754).

This will also mean that PawsUpPetSupply will be closing down our
relationship with ShareaSale by the end this month. AvantLink will provide
all network functionality for tracking, payment, and reporting. In
addition, they will provide you with user-friendly tools free to you. They
are charged with helping you become the most effective (income producing)
affiliates of PawsUpPetSupply. Please contact Paul at
pkalbach@avantlink.com or go to www.AvantLink.com to sign up and start
your migration.

I look forward to a strong partnership between you, Avant Marketing Group,
and PawsUpPetSupply.

Best Regards,

Joey Pomerenke
PawsUpPetSupply.com

[Kevin Collier]

Well,

I guess I just have to say something so that I can vent my frustrations...

Background:
I signed up for Paws Up Pet Supply about 3 weeks ago....

I spent the next 10 days making pages for them (I usually work 12-16 hours days)

I logged into Abestweb and read this post that says that paws up is going "paws up" as far as SAS goes.....

(I had just completed my pages about 2 days ago).. so I went to a bunch of my product pages and started clicking on links... and of course, they all went back to my home page since I have it set that way (when merchants run out of funds/become inactive default address goes wher you want, etc..).

I just find it hard to believe that the timing could work out this way.. How long were they with SAS anyway? It's hard to believe that basically, I signed up with them, made a work plan for them that entailed about a weeks worth of work, implemented that work..spent about 80 hours promoting their SAS account and then found out that a couple of days after I got done with the work for them... they switched to something else... and I didn't even get an email ... had to find out from some other poor soul who happened to be of a similar fate..

I love this work...really do..

[my2cents]

they moved... to http://www.avantlink.com/

all I can say is they need to prove themselves at this point.... every few weeks they change something about their program... usually without notice... I've been left high and dry without notice 3 times...

if they are still around in a while maybe I'll try them again... it's to bad... they convert well... I was just starting to recover from the last change when they moved yet again...

to their credit they hired experienced people to run this new program... the guys behind AvantLink.com are know here at ABW

Paul and Scott Kalbach of DynamicWebSource.com fame..

for me I'm going with PetWarehouse.com they are stable, respected, and dont jack their affiliates around....

Joe

[Travelin Man]

Kevin,

Yep that really sucks when you put that much work into promoting a merchant just to have them bail on you. I've had that happen to me too and I'm sure it'll happen again. You learn to screen merchants the best you can but you just never know for sure if you're going to take one in the

Good luck!

[Leader]

I spent the next 10 days making pages for them (I usually work 12-16 hours days)

I logged into Abestweb and read this post that says that paws up is going "paws up" as far as SAS goes.....

Dayum And people wonder why I like WebMerge!!

[Cygnus]

Yikes, 10 days...after I decided to ditch them, I signed up for Entirelypets and had their products integrated within the hour -- so long as they pay me fairly for the traffic I send, I'll stick with them. Affiliate managers, it really is that simple.

[Kevin Collier]

Guys,

Thanks for the tips.... I have investigated webmerge and although I am not a geek... I might be able to deal with this data feed option...

I'll check out Entirely Pets. I also heard about Petwarehouse... just trying to find a pet store that has it all... or close to it.

[Ron Bechdolt]

a new company with the experience

Ummmm, "new company" with "experience"? Anyone else see anything wrong with that statement?

[webworker]

I hadn't put up any PawsUp links yet (didn't they sign on with SaS just this August?), but noticed them off-line the other day so I went around hunting a bit, took a look at the site and their backlinks (of this one and their other sites) at Yahoo with linkdomain:

Anyone figured out what the deal is with the other two sites with very similar names linked to at the very bottom of the page?

[Kellie aka Ms. B]

While I get that the folks now providing the aff management are also providing the tracking platform, the Golden Rule of Affiliate Marketing.........

Don't Do Anything That Requires Changes To Links In Q4!

[Paul-AvantLink]

Originally Posted by Kevin Collier

Well,

I guess I just have to say something so that I can vent my frustrations...

Background:
I signed up for Paws Up Pet Supply about 3 weeks ago....

I spent the next 10 days making pages for them (I usually work 12-16 hours days)

I logged into Abestweb and read this post that says that paws up is going "paws up" as far as SAS goes.....

(I had just completed my pages about 2 days ago).. so I went to a bunch of my product pages and started clicking on links... and of course, they all went back to my home page since I have it set that way (when merchants run out of funds/become inactive default address goes wher you want, etc..).

I just find it hard to believe that the timing could work out this way.. How long were they with SAS anyway? It's hard to believe that basically, I signed up with them, made a work plan for them that entailed about a weeks worth of work, implemented that work..spent about 80 hours promoting their SAS account and then found out that a couple of days after I got done with the work for them... they switched to something else... and I didn't even get an email ... had to find out from some other poor soul who happened to be of a similar fate..

I love this work...really do..

Kevin,

What you say in this post is true, and the circumstances are very regretable. I think you may have hit the worst possible timing of anyone. You should know that during that time PawsUp was in negotiations with AvantLink to be a total, one-stop, source for affiliate network, tools and management. Until the negtiations were done they could not know that they would be changing for sure. That contract was only signed a little over 2 weeks ago, and the announcement made to all the affiliates within a couple of days of that.

There were two things that precipitated the change. One was that they couldn't give the time and energy required to do a first class affiliate program. The second was that the very problems you had, "10 days or 80 hours" of integration (was that datafeeds?). They needed to have a much better answer. So they chose AvantLink. I think they made a great choice, and I think that will prove out in the next few weeks.

Kevin, if I'm not mistaken, within a very short time after signing up with us, I believe last Friday, you have integrated our datafeed into your site. I'm there now and it looks great! I'm betting you will have a much better experience from here on in, and we are here to stay.

I know that doesn't help with the past agrevation, but we will certainly work at making you very happy to be in the PUPS program.

Thanks for your patience, and for giving us a try.

Paul

PS: We tried to email all current affiliates of PawsUpPetSupply, but may have some how missed you - very sorry

[Kevin Collier]

Paul,

Thanks for that. I must admit that the AvantLink solution for Paws Up Pet Supply does seem to make sense. I'm looking forward to promoting other merchants with Avantlink in the future. It's an easy to use datafeed management tool. This time it only took about 5 minutes to implement on my site...and that's nice.

[Paul-AvantLink]

Originally Posted by my2cents

they moved... to http://www.avantlink.com/

all I can say is they need to prove themselves at this point.... every few weeks they change something about their program... usually without notice... I've been left high and dry without notice 3 times...

if they are still around in a while maybe I'll try them again... it's to bad... they convert well... I was just starting to recover from the last change when they moved yet again...

to their credit they hired experienced people to run this new program... the guys behind AvantLink.com are know here at ABW

Paul and Scott Kalbach of DynamicWebSource.com fame..

for me I'm going with PetWarehouse.com they are stable, respected, and dont jack their affiliates around....

Joe

Hey, My2Cents,

Thanks for the good word here! I believe PawsUp's error was that they bit off more than they could digest with the resources they had inhouse. In my opinion they have made the right move to outsource all this stuff, and concentrate on their very good pet supply business.

Give us another try, and you won't regret it.

In any case, thanks for the good word.

Paul

[Paul-AvantLink]

Originally Posted by Kevin Collier

Paul,

Thanks for that. I must admit that the AvantLink solution for Paws Up Pet Supply does seem to make sense. I'm looking forward to promoting other merchants with Avantlink in the future. It's an easy to use datafeed management tool. This time it only took about 5 minutes to implement on my site...and that's nice.

Kevin, My2Cents, and other PUPS affiliates,

I would like to continue these discussions with any and all of you, but I should move over to the PawsUpPetSupply forum, as this one is ShareaSales'. Someone alerted me to the fact that our names were on here, so I responded.

That forum is at: http://forum.abestweb.com/showthread.php?t=58950 Please chat with me over there if you feel like it.

Thanks,

Paul

[Brian - ShareASale]

Hey Paul, I can move the thread for you to that forum... best of luck with PUPS and others... let me know if there is anything you ever need from ShareASale...

[Brian - ShareASale]

Oops...maybe not. I thought there was a forum for PUPS but that is a thread inside the "Announcements" forum. If you develop a forum for either PUPS or AvantLink.com let me know and I can move this conversation over there at that time...

[Merchant Consultant Team]

Smile

[Paul-AvantLink]

Originally Posted by Brian - ShareASale

Oops...maybe not. I thought there was a forum for PUPS but that is a thread inside the "Announcements" forum. If you develop a forum for either PUPS or AvantLink.com let me know and I can move this conversation over there at that time...

Hey Brian,

Thanks so much! You are a professional, and we need more like you. We do intend to develop a new forum for PUPS as soon as I get a little more time. I'll let you know at that point so you can move this over.

In the meantime, thank you again for your great attitude and help.

Paul