Promo Tools Behind Password Protected Area

Ours are pw protected and will stay that way. If you are not signed up to the program then you don't need to be in there. There is a link to the affiliate program on every page of a tour normally. Doesn't take long for a surfer to realize they can grab full galleries by clicking on that link. Common sense.

Ok...

Had this conversation on another board and they disagreed with that idea... they felt the more the galleries were out there the better chance of viral marketing... and as the galleries are low def pics and video as opposed to whats in the site, the real potential members would still join...

Anyone else got any opinions on this, especially those affiliates who were saying they wouldnt promote a programme without a password protected area... ???

what he said.

doesn't make any sense from an affiliate point of view.
If you don't have to log in, the FHGs won't contain an affiliate id, so....

Not True...

There are still scripts that dont require you to log into a password protected area to get the FHG's linked with your code... look at how that works on www.BigPimpCash.com to see... even though I am sure you know already...

I can only see two reasons... 1 to stop randoms going through your promo content and burnign additional bandwidth (not a bad reason)

Or secondly to stop people from accessing the galleries and getting it for free, meaning its not as exposed/saturated to surfers who may just then go and sign up... not sure how much this really works however... (a) it stops viral marketing of your galleries and (b) FHG's are only a teaser with the better stuff, as in the high quality pics and video inside of the members area... I mean anyone who's going to knock one out to 10 second video clips probably aint going to join the site anyways...

So to be blunt people I am not sold that there is any major benefit from putting it all behind a members area... I see a lot do, but I also see some big ones who dont, and they are still getting promoted... we need more input from those who do and dont ???

open to everyone

http://www.tushycash.com/hosted.html

that's one example of a site I'll never promote (not with the current setup)

example: I send a visitor to one of your sites, a cookie gets set with my refid, visitor is curious and clicks on your "webmaster" button, visitor is sent to bigpimpcash.com, visitor clicks on "hosted galleries", visitors ignores the CCBill id part and just visits the galleries, a cookie gets set with XXXXX as refid...

think about it...

All the time you spend starting threads about why you don't want to do things the normal way, could have been used to set up a normal, pw protected affiliates area...

what a stupid fucking conversation

If you don't password protect your tools, then there's a greater chance that the "cheaters" will rip all the content from your FHGs and use it to promote other sites... It's common if your program is revshare... they do it to promote PPS programs instead. Password protecting doesn't necssarily stop it but makes it more of a pain..

If affiliate program uses CCBill link codes, then you don't have to worry about "cookie gets set with XXXXX". The cookie will be renewed only if CCBill ID exists. So if you send surfer to paysite, a cookie gets set with your ID, and then surfer visits some hosted gallery without (or with incorrect) ID, surfer's cookie will remain the same.

And I think it's much better to have galleries in unprotected area like tushycash, than to have full-length movies in the webmaster section like juggcash

Hmmmm....

Seems the courts out u-bob... some seem to disagree with your logic... I do also, sorry ! I also set my cookies for 90 days for my affiliattes... so the surfer can click off and forget about my site... as long as he comes back in three months he is still carrying your cookie...

As Mika said with your scenario the cookie isnt stripped... well at least not to my knowledge anyways

Super Negro yes it is a stupid conversation when you take the time to post and have no actual input... why dont you say something constructive as opposed to something negative...

So TushyCash.com have an unprotected area, yet get promotion ? So it's not a commanderment then ? And again how long does it take someone to sign up for a password protected area anyways, if they really want your content they will get it... not one person as given me a cold stone reason to protect it ???

There is one big reason surfers become members. The quality/quantity of the content in the site. If you open up the affiliates area to surfers you give him access to a lot of YOUR content in one style and theme. Diminishing the reason for him to sign up.

Or by having too little content there you tell him how small the site it. On the other hand if you have as much content in the affiliates area as we do you give him a great reason to sign up.

We opened the affiliates area to surfers to show them the size of the site and we disabled all the links so they could not get to the actual content. Win - Win.

But just thought of this. With the new retro site opening soon and the way the fans love to post on retro boards it might help to give them lots of galleries. So it also depends on the content.

As usual there are different answers to the same question.

Duh

Yes indeed there are and you managed to contradict yourself very well... it's either a bad idea or a good idea... Whats all this retro bollox... it's viral marketing what ever niche it is... to password protect it means people cant grab and share your galleries... like they do.

I understand if the average Joe is grabbign galleries and sharing it all over the place, then this effects affiliattes... ie less chance when they use it their surfers aint already seen it, is that the main reason for password protecting the area... for something that seems to be such a issue with affiliattes they certainly aint bombarded this thread...

Programmes like SpunkyCash and TushyCash dont use password protected areas, yet they have plenty of affiliattes pushing them ???

buzzwords over common sense

So you don't mind if i put your full length, hq, vids on a tube site, put a lot of 3rd party ads around, but leave your watermark intact...? it's viral marketing!

Dude...

This happens all the time regardless of a password area... how many programmes get their shit ripped and put on every torrent/tube site... tell me something that is common sense and I might just listen to you...

i wouldnt base my decision to promote a sponsor based on whether or not they have their FHGs behind PW or not, but one would assume, if you have 100s of FHgs unprotected, you are basically giving away your content for free at that point.

if you use various sets across hundreds of FHgs, that is a lot of free content in one area.

Hey...

Hey Fletch but do you believe the people who would just view this would of been a potential buyer ? To me anyone who wants to look at low res small sized pics, and low res video clips of around 10 seconds is just looking for free shit... and as no intention of joining the site anyways... the true potential sign up will join for the good stuff... I guess thats just my opinion... but one shared by plenty who dont seem to be hurt by not having their stuff behind a password protected area... I just dont get the argument, the one being put forward as common sense, makes no sense !

whether or not the person will sign up is irrelevant to the discussion. but i understand your point.

i am not arguing with anyone, was just tossing in my two cents. which was, whether or not protecting fhgs would stop you from promoting a sponsor.

ps its not even 7 am here yet, im still waking up lol

Lol...

Like you I am definetly not wanting an argument... I just want to understand via discussion what the problem is with not havign them behind a password protected area, like a lot of sponsors see to have it set up without...

You say whether the person will sign up or not is irrelivant, so what is the relivent point ? Not having them password protected is bad because..... (feel free to finish the sentence)

I understand how and why it MAY benefit an affiliate PROGRAM, but as an affiliate, I will not promote sites that do not protect their promotional tools / content.

This really is simple and shouldn't need any discussion.

"Protecting" the tools / content is very simple to do. I don't think a single affiliate will say they prefer things unprotected, so not doing so shows that your affiliates aren't that important to you.

seriously you all, 22 posts into this thread and you all are treating this like you are on the verge of curing cancer

this was a stupid fucking question

kind of like walking up to someone and asking what flavor ice cream you will like better...how the fuck are they going to know? it something you have to do and try for yourself

Lol...

for 32 posts you certainly sound like the resident expert ! Flavours of ice cream... interesting analogy, not !

So Affiliattes why do you prefer it to be protected, yes another dumb question but I am on a roll... is it cause you believe that the content will be saturated via surfers grabbing the promo materials ? A simple yes or no will do, abuse is optional

Hey...

Trust me my affiliattes are more than important, thats why I am asking the questions that make me look dumb and are getting me abused I will be putting it behind a password protected area dont worry

Exactly. As an affiliate, I don't send my traffic to a tour so that you can give the surfer access to more free content. I send traffic to make sales.

How much unprotected content affects sales is something that is impossible to quantify. But for myself, rather than argue about whether it does or doesn't, I simply move on to another sponsor who has the content protected.

anyone that has a problem with password protected promo content is a stupid fuck... my guess is that the person that posted that is a surfer.

What difference does it make what the sponsor does when there are scores of affiliates who post all sponsor galleries on one page anyway? I see it all the time. If you have a problem with non-pw-protected promo areas, then do you also refuse to promote any sponsor who has affiliates sucking search engine traffic to their free content dumps where they post hundreds of free galleries featuring indexed model/site pages? I'll bet not because that problem isn't as obvious to you and you probably trade traffic with those people anyway.

I can see this issue from a few different angles; with all the free porn out there I don't think it really makes a difference; more exposure might be better since we constantly have to compete with other sites that have tons of exposure; it's hard not to get lost/forgotten. Having said that, we still keep our promo content password protected. I think it's pretty silly though when webmasters think sponsors should be punished for doing what other "webmasters" do times a billion. Affiliates should spend a little less time worrying about how sponsors are supposedly trying to screw them, and more time worrying about how their esteemed colleagues are trying to screw each other, themselves AND the sponsors.

When I have considered putting our promo content in the open, it's been to make it easy for the webmasters who are MANY times too lazy, disorganized, etc. to keep track of the un/pw and get the shit. No offense, because I'm the same way. The easier it is for me to get a sponsor's promos, the more likely I am to use them. Stupid, but true.

I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other, but ...

Another reason is the convenience of having the HTML automatically generated
with your CORRECT linking code. Another is possibly integrating the galleries with
other parts of the affiliate system, like reports, though with most affiliate systems
being handled by CCBill or NATS these days the second reason isn't particularly
common. Having the html generated with your correct affiliate code and things
liek that do make sense, to me. You can instead just use simple form that says
"enter your affiliate ID here" and that works so long as the webmaster doesn't make
a typo. I once sent a bunch of sales with the wrong affiliate ID using such a system -
logging in would have prevented that.

Another reason is more subtle and kind of "murky". Generally, for security reasons
and otherwise, it's a good idea to limit access to ANYTHING in your business to
only those people who should have that access. It may not be immediately apparent
exactly HOW public access could end up being bad, but we know that in general many
security problems happen when things are made more available than necessary, so
someone who focused on security, like me, would probably have you log in.

Here's one contrived example of how public access could hurt you in a way that
you wouldn't have predicted. Recently there was wide ranging hack that was tried
on most web servers. It involved "SQL injection" - posting sneaky code in everybody's
forms to attack any scripts using an SQL backend. The hack scripts automatically
searched Google for forms and hit every form they could find. If you had a publicly
accessible PHP script which generated affiliate links for galleries listed in a database,
your whole database of URLs could have ben changed to hack URLs. Your affiliate
tools wouldn't be subject to these random attacks if they were protected by a log in.
Not that the exact scenario I described happens often - the point is that unexpected
events happen often and the better you control access to any of your systems the
lower the chance you'll get screwed in one way or another.