TerraLeads Affiliate Hub, A New Affiliate Model

This is a sponsored post by TerraLeads. The content and opinions are 100% my own at the time of this post (you’ll see both good and bad).  If you’re not interested in the review, there’s a bunch of strategy stuff at the end so it’s worth reading through.  I also have a cool post going live later this week or next week about how to make money with influencers by channel so make sure to check back for updates.   

TerraLeads is a completely new kind of affiliate business in Europe calling itself a hub.  They’re taking a unique approach by going with traditional CPA network styled products, but they produce them in house (they own the products), which helps to ensure quality and that their partners will get paid (no waiting for companies to send checks and fund the network).  They’ve created their own tracking technology and they also have their own call centers which employ native speakers for most European languages.  Because of these key competencies, they’ve left the traditional CPA networks in the dust and created what they’re calling an “affiliate hub”.  This is what spiked my interest and why I agreed to do the review.

Every time I work in the EU on affiliate campaigns I charge additional fees because of the backwards thinking by their networks.  That’s why I love TerraLeads approach in creating an affiliate hub.   It wouldn’t work for a traditional affiliate network in Europe that works with retail stores, but it should cause worry for the CPA networks.

As a heads up, being paid for doing a review on this site doesn’t mean I recommend a company.  In fact it’s quite the opposite, but in this case, it is a huge yes.  I would recommend giving them a shot (as of the time of this post).

They’ve passed all of my trust factors, but there are some things you should know.  You can click here to go to their homepage and then come back to find out what I like, didn’t like and then read below for some Facebook ad network, targeting goodness.

On to the review!

The TerraLeads Affiliate Hub.

Signing Up for TerraLeads.

My first reaction to the hub was that there is too much flash on their homepage and I wasn’t sure why there is a banner about a car in the bottom left.  If I’m an affiliate, I want to know about the network or program, the offers and products, what’s unique about them, etc…  When I see things about winning/earning a new car instead of a site talking about why I should work with them, it causes red flags.  But I continued joining and I’m glad I did.

The sign up process helped to show the quality of the hub.  One of the required fields asks for your skype handle.  Within an hour of completing my application someone from their team added me on skype and started a conversation.  This adds a layer of protection for them and also gives you a direct point of contact you can reach if you need something.  That is a huge bonus for you as an affiliate.  If something goes wrong, if you’re missing a payment or just have a question, you have an actual person to reach out to and not a support ticket to wait on.

One thing they could do to make themselves even more accessible is to add whats app and google hangouts. That’s a lot more to keep track of, but it could open up communications and access for a lot more EU publishers who don’t like skype.

Login Issue with TerraLeads

One thing you need to be cautious of is that they do not have a password recovery option (hopefully it is added shortly).  WRITE YOUR PASSWORD DOWN!

Finding an Offer in TerraLeads

Once you’re logged in, the load times are pretty slow and there is a lot of flash.  Finding an offer was also very tricky, but after playing around I figured it out.  They’ll confirm if this is the right way to do it in the comments section below once this is posted.

Click the first box “choose offers” in the opening screen to see available offers.

The offers page is very nicely laid out, but a bit complicated to use. Still I believe, with time they will upgrade it and make more user-friendly.  They use a lot of internal language instead of terminology that an affiliate or regular user would think of.  The big issue with this page (for me as a non-technie) is that they put programmers first by offering APIs instead of access to your links and code in a quick click to reveal format.  If the majority of users are IT people then this makes sense so it is probably done on purpose.

You can use the top sorting to either go by product category like diet or beauty or you can go by GEO.  In this case it means the countries that the specific offer is available in.  For US affiliates, the flags may not make sense, but in the EU they tend to know each others’ country flags so this is actually pretty user friendly.

From here you want to click on “Create stream”.  (If you are a techie or have a tech team, you can use the API system instead of “Create stream”).

In the future I hope that they change the label to get an offer or create a campaign.  One other option could be to add a small question box that can be clicked.  If someone clicks, it can open a small box and explain that this is how you can find an offer to promote.

On this page, start by putting in a name.  Since it’s a chocolate product and I love chocolate, I labeled mine “Chocolate is Delicious”.  I also selected Italy.  Once you’ve done this, the landing page options with the local languages appear.  For me this is a good and a bad thing.

I like building my own landing pages and do not like to use ones that exist on the networks.  Ideally I would drive people to my own web properties so I can capture their information and market back to them over and over.  If I’m forced to use networks landing pages or to go directly to the network, I cannot do that.  One other benefit to creating your own landing page is that you can pre-sell the visitor on why they should buy the product as opposed to a direct landing page which is for someone ready to shop or who already knows about it.  The pre-selling step may help to increase your conversion rates.

The good news is that they have some awesome landing pages that are really well done with strong calls to action, good branding and clean designs.  For a channel like Facebook where the users could be both mobile or desktop, the adaptive designs are also a huge bonus, so I would still give this a shot and drive to them direct, or after a landing page on my site that pre-sells the product a bit.

When you get through all of the landing pages you’re going to find a ton of geeky stuff to help create a ton of tracking and measurement parameters.  This is one of the things that makes me happy and why I love what TerraLeads is doing.  Not many networks enable you to have your own pixels, numerous tracking parameters and other things on/passing through the landing pages.  For CPA networks it would make sense so you can track conversions and optimize, but they don’t offer it in many cases and TerraLeads does.  This is a huge bonus for you as an affiliate.

Second bonus, they let you install your own Facebook pixels with unique and separate fields…huge, huge, huge bonus here.  You could use that for remarketing, building a look alike audience and a lot more.  I did a happy dance when I saw this.

I’m hoping in the near future they’ll add in an AdWords and Pinterest one.  This is something that has been missing from networks for years and it is awesome that it is finally starting to be offered.

I’m stuck on this next part.  I created the full stream and hit save.  Then I clicked through to view all streams and selected the Chocolate is Delicious one.  There is a URL that is labeled “direct links” that lands directly on the adaptive landing pages I created.  I’m guessing that is my affiliate link for the campaign “stream” I created.  It would make sense that if I drive someone to this page, it would track for me since I created it.  But I am not 100% certain so I’m pinging the TerraLeads team to respond in the comments section below.  Here is the sample affiliate link “http://italy.chocolite.biz/?alstream=wbN“.

If that is it, then this was super easy and gives you a ton of control over how you can promote their offers.  One thing that took me a second to figure out was how to find the reporting.  What good is all of these features if you can’t measure them?  Their rep showed me how to find it and it was one of those head to desk moments.  If you go to the main menu click on statistics and you’ll find everything you need there.

Ohh ya, and if you’re wondering about how you can get paid.

TerraLeads Payment Options:

• Wire Transfer
• Webmoney
• PayPal
• Paxum
• Epayments

As you earn more in their hub, you can also get t-coins which can be redeemed for perks like mobile phones, laptops, powerbanks and even a car.  It turns out this is what the banner on the homepage was about.

Now Let’s do Some Strategy!

Because they have Facebook Tracking (wahoo!!!!) available, here are some base niche Facebook groupings that I might try if I was going to produce a campaign for the chocolate diet product above.

The trick with Facebook advertising is to have a super hyper targeted niche.  In this case I’m using the TerraLeads landing page as my landing page.  I’d start by evaluating everything from the imagery to the wording and who the slang is catered towards.

There’s a late 20’s early 30’s brunette woman who’s in shape, having fun and it is extremely chocolatey.  Everything looks fairly modern and upbeat so I’m going to take all of this into consideration and assume a trendy person who is also a Gen Xer would be a good target.  It may be good for Xennials too.

My static demographics from my assumptions are going to be:

• Women – 25 – 37
• Likes chocolate
• Into trends
• Geotargeting would be Italy (probably around major cities or high fashion areas)

The reason I’m not including men, middle age women or college aged people is that this landing page has nothing for them.  If there was a hot guy in his mid 20’s to early thirties, I may try men instead of women and also a subset group aimed at reaching gay men.  If it was a woman who is mid-life than I would change the age range and not target a younger age range.

My first tests would probably include mixing these specific interests together in different ways.  These are more of a base where at least a few would appear regardless of target.

• Likes: buzzfeed, quizzes and other things that are engaging and fun.
• Interests: chocolate, wine and any trendy foods.
• Interests: Diet food, diets, healthy diets, diet drinks
• If income is available, I would eliminate the super-rich and people who do not have disposable income for luxury items like diet trends.
• Magazines & websites like Vogue, Cosmopolitan and gossip magazines for the local country like we have US Weekly and Star here in the US. Trendy diets tend to advertise in these for a reason, they sell and cater to the user base.  By adding these trendy gossip and fashion magazines into the mix you may be able to attract the same user base to your landing pages.
• One extra target could be someone who likes a beach town or trendy beach in Italy.  If you’re able to target traveling to or vacations in and add that beach town, even better because you could run ads geared towards that vacation.  You also don’t have to limit it to Italy, you could do Ibiza or the french riviera.

The next step is to create an ad experience that matches the flow from the initial engagement to your landing page and also the landing page at TerraLeads.  Stay consistent with the imagery, the wording and tone and keep a consistent flow to help maintain the experience which is what got the initial click and can carry through for a conversion.

Overall with some UX tweaks, TerraLeads has the ability to take the EU CPA Networks for a ride with their hub.  They have created an awesome platform, cut out the middle man and they are providing fast, high-quality support.  That may not always be the case, but as of now, they have and A rating from me as far as CPA goes.  They’ve also let me know they’re planning on launching in Asia, Australia and the Americas. Click here to visit their site and become an affiliate.

You can also leave a comment below to let me know what you think if you’ve worked with them in the past or are currently one of their partners.