Quote:
Originally Posted by TheDoc
It's not everyone, not every affiliate program is down, not every legal free site is down... many are growing, doing great.. seeing more profits, sales, etc than ever.
The tides changed.. but a new one is always coming in.
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I have to be honest...I have spoke to a lot of program owners, face to face and man to man. I've even looked at a few peoples NATS with them. I have not found one big mega paysite program owner who is "seeing more profits, sales, etc. than ever" Not one.
I've seen a lot of people doing marketing and hoping that there is a big whale out here that might read them claiming that and become their affiliate and save the day.
But TheDoc, I have to tell you...those big guys are in trouble. I have watched with my own eyes what has happened. As an affiliate, it started for me in the second half of 2006. Coincidentally right about the time that tubes and torrents first started to grow.
Alexa doesn't show back far enough to tell the real tale. But I watched my traffic fall from a little over one million uniques a day down to the 600,000 uniques a day range within a couple of months in the last part of 2006.
It didn't bother me because I was still making over a million dollars a year just on affiliate sales.
By the end of 2007 it was in complete free fall and the tubes and torrents were taking over.
And then near the end of 2008, the rebills stopped as people just quit spending money (economy + everything free)
If I were still an affiliate only I would be in the poor house.
I'm sure that there are one or two exceptions to the rule for paysites...hell, I'm one of them, though I'm not "seeing more profits, sales, etc. than ever" but not losing ground either.
But I was KILLING it in Jan. of 2008 with the paysite. Making more money than I ever had with Claudia-Marie.com And good thing because my affiliate sales to other sites were dropping like those alexa graphs.
I have busted ass and monetized things to the point where I am still kicking it. But this bullshit has set me back hard. I'm nowhere near the revenue that I should have been at by now.
And many of the big programs that keep this business alive have watched their profits drop to the point that they can no longer sustain the large number of people working for them. Content producers are going down, many companies that were shooting 3 to 4 scenes a day/ 5 days a week are no longer shooting.
I'm really at a loss to see how or why you think that everything is just peachy.
This is kinda reminding me of that "Baghdad Bob" guy. "Everything is fine"