A sign of the times - [Manwin]

I see a few that could relate to affiliates, what are you trying to say?

lets say they hire 37 affiliate managers, what exactly are they all supposed to do?

p.s. - anyone doing any real business knows how much money the put out monthly (to affiliates), and the rest cry here on gfy like little bitches...

Don't tell me as a program owner you wouldn't build out your own traffic sources if you could too...

Why leave it 100% up to some assclown trying to scam sales out of you?

Are you applying ?

what do they need affiliates for? they can just buy out any sites that matter...

Before of buying a site they need to deal with them as affiliate.

Tell me why on earth I would build my program 100% around the affiliates? As it is I carry for than 55% of our traffic to our program. And I am always there for the affiliates. 1 good affiliate manager that is more than just someone to take requests is whats needed.

A good affiliate manager can make video clips, banners, galleries etc to help the affiliates.

In 2005 or 2006, I wrote a document detailing bringing the affiliate game in-house:

http://www.edgeprod.com/traffic-strategy.pdf

The current state of the industry is the natural evolution of that line of thinking, adapted to modern technologies (tubes, etc).

new job added: president

did you mean Managing Partner ?

Manwin is more than an Internet company now.

They have their own cable channel.

Manwin is winning the game because their eggs are in many baskets. They are not a one hit wonder like most affiliate programs (CollegeFuckFest.com) so they need lots of people from lots of industries to make it all work.

hehe yeah this one

Fascinating pdf for 2006; however very dated today as doing sites is no more the way at all, not mean mgp+blog+review to update into tube, I mean not even worth to do tubes at all for a program... the traffic it is being bought in million hits on the market of ad brokers and direct spots. No one who got big traffic will sell it as affiliate or in % or PPS, they simply sell it you bulk deal prepay. That's what I see on the >$1k/week traffic deals, and especially if >$1k/day. Manwin got the cash so buy the traffic or even the site who generated the traffic, no any site needs to be built.

Great analysis, you're right on the money. In 2005 or 2006, this was a great way to create a traffic funnel. Post-Penguin, no.

20:80

It's a good business practice for ANY program to have their own traffic sources especially when you consider that only 20% (or less these days) of affiliates actually generate any income for affiliate programs, meanwhile, the other 80% are the ones causing program owners the most grief with their 1 or 2 sales a month to the programs sites.

It's no wonder the affiliate business model is dwindling, because webmasters literally want to get paid for doing nothing on their own, there was a time when we actually had to 'work' to make money instead of throw up the latest batch of free hosted movie clips on our free hosted tube site using free exit click traffic provided to us by the sponsor...

The sad thing about all of this is, in reality, if we went back to actually working on our own initiatives and not expecting everything to be handed to us on a platter by affiliate programs, we'd all be making more money... There are only so many times a surfer can see the same regurgitated free content, exclusive or not, on the same sites before they become disenchanted with the allure of porn and stop buying...

Very astute. In hindsight, the failure of programs to segment different classes of affiliates beyond "whale" and "n00b" created a lot of issues. Instead, identifying the roadblocks each affiliate had in becoming a more productive partner would have helped a lot.

The affiliate business model is dwindling mostly due to piracy. And even then it's more like the paysite affiliate model. The pirates are thriving by opening their own affiliate programs which pay per download on their file lockers.

Contrary to what you believe it's harder than ever to be an affiliate. All that promo content is essentially worthless when it comes to Google. And it's worthless for other reasons too such as the fact that it typically has an url on it which tells the surfer to type it in rather than click so the affiliate does not get their commission.

It's would be hilarious that you seem to think promo content is turning off the surfer as opposed to the piracy giving them all they need and more but in actuality it's sad and it shows the kind of idiocy often seen in the industry these days.

Relying on in house traffic primarily and affiliate traffic secondary has been a popular business model in adult for a long, long time. You just don't hear about those companies as much because they don't need to advertise to affiliates and don't want the competition

Nothing wrong with a business offering jobs, enough unemployment over the world. I offered positions in my studio & offices, but still a little premature with our company being so small.

If this was main stream, no one speaks so bad of companies such as Focus creating mergers & purchasing other companies. The large do get larger, negative, yes, struggling for smaller companies, but positive, more jobs with better prospects.

Does Manwin offer staff pensions & bonuses?

No it isn't.

The affiliate business model is dying because affiliates DO NOT WANT TO WORK and the programs pandered to these affiliates.

Piracy has very little effect on the affiliate, it affects the program a lot more than the affiliate especially those programs with exclusive content, lets not forget, affiliate programs have been around for years in adult and many of them didn't use exclusive content for a long time, it was only when every program started going the exclusive route, offering that exclusive content to affiliates for free and starting upping the affiliate incentives that the business model started to die.

Affiliate programs saturated the market, not only with free content, but with EXCLUSIVE free content, because affiliates kept demanding more and more of it... Especially those who didn't understand the concept of marketing, thinking that by offering more for free, they'd make more sales... We are now seeing that this isn't the case and we're seeing the affects of saturating the marketing with so much content that surfers no longer want to pay for memberships, because they do not have to.

This all happened way before tube sites, mass piracy and file lockers so to say that 'piracy' is a cause of the affiliate business model dying is nonsense, the affiliate business model is dying because affiliate programs slowly but surely, killed themselves, over a period of years and years, thanks in part, to affiliates but primarily because of their own greed.

Agreed!

People still want amateur porn, check out new sites that have not been ventured in & spend money. It only takes an affiliate to take up a program, plaster it over their site & offer 20mins of their own time in creating their own style tour if they want to make good money from their traffic

amazing opportunity for someone ... good luck guys

well said.
pretty much what I said to affiliates years ago who expected owners to bend over for them.
The only good affiliate is an affiliate who's not sucking on a program's teat.
You want a little help, fine.
You want me to do your job for you, now I do.

i agree , good luck

Fabian may want to post a Help Wanted ad for a few more lawyers to advise him on taxes, money laundering, avoiding extradition, etc.

ADG

Piracy has caused ratios to triple. It's not because there is too much 30 second promo clips out there. It should be common sense to see.

Piracy has a tremendous effect on the affiliate who stays legitimate. You don't know what you are talking about. Yes it effects the content owner as well.

The decline in the paysite market is not due to the affiliate model. That's pure idiocy and makes no sense. The business started to die in 2006 and 2007 when the porn tube model started taking off. You can see that by looking at the archives here on GFY and all other forums. And guess who ran most of those tubes? Sponsors. For the most part it wasn't small time affiliates but companies like Brazzers/Mansef who secretly owned these tubes.

This is just retarded. I mean most sponsors don't even release good promo material anymore. Most affiliate content out there is 3-5+ years old. The majority of the clips are 30 seconds. Some are up to 3 minutes. To say that this is responsible for the saturation of content compared to piracy by tubes and file lockers putting out hundreds of thousands of videos with full scenes is beyond moronic.

I will give you that we were giving it away too much before the tubes hit. But now in 2012 tubes and piracy are 99% of the problem and affiliate promo saturation is a mere 1%.

But you're free to be stupid. I'm just glad I'm moving away from being a paysite affiliate.

I think the real reason we see many programs turn on their affiliates are a combination of:

1. Revenues are down for most overall in the paysite game. Down severely. Some will disagree but it's obvious.

2. It's tempting to want to get those outstanding rebills 100% rather than 50%. If you can somehow remove those pesky obligations to your affiliates who sent those sales you can have more survival cash.

3. Affiliates are losing a lot of traffic as surfers go to the tubes for free porn.

4. Ratios are increasing due to rampant piracy.

5. Combine #3 + #4 and you see that affiliates are no longer sending the sales they once were.

6. The tubes and their content partner model are often seen as a savior. The new plan is get rid of your affiliates and all the obligations and focus on the tubes.

But the problem with this is that affiliates weren't the reason for your decline and state of desperation. It was the piracy and the wide availability of your full content. It's not rocket science. Your sales will only decline in the long term from this strategy because all you are doing is giving out even more for free than you ever were before. And to top it off instead of supporting your real partners you are supporting the people who stole from you and are building up their businesses.

You just don't seem to grasp what I am saying.

The only reason piracy is even an issue, albeit a small one on the grand scale of the loss of profits of affiliate programs is because affiliate programs created the issue themselves, by freely giving away what they were supposed to be selling to the point of market saturation, I'm not talking about 30 second video clips, or 15 watermarked images from a specific photo shoot, I'm talking about the very same thing YOU mentioned in your post, the sponsor owned and operated tube sites where they posted 15-30 minute scenes from a custom shoot or entire DVD rips... Thinking that would make them more revenue, it didnt, it won't and now we are seeing the trickle down effects of this business model, sales are stagnant, content theft if rife and surfers have the mentality that porn should be free, because program owners pandered to the affiliate, who in turn gave surfers a sense of entitlement to adult content.

When a surfer feels they are entitled to 30+ minute clips of hardcore, triple anal gaping action, if they can't find it, they're going to steal it.

The fact that tube sites and piracy is rampant TODAY is because for the past 10 YEARS programs and affiliates have been promoting the notion that "more is more" guess what, it isn't, not when it comes to running a long term profitable business.

Affiliates simply do not want to work any more, they have been conditioned to think that all they have to do to make money is throw up a hosted free site, gallery or tube, send a few visitors to it and money will start to flow, because that is how programs attracted affiliates, by telling them "we do all the work, so you don't have to".

If, as you say, piracy started in 2006 ish, you should also be able to say what else started in 2006' the proliferation of exclusive content hitting the net and being handed out like it wasn't costing the program owners a dime, to anyone who asked for it.

Why was there no piracy when the vast majority of pay sites used purchased content from places like Ounique and Max Candy? Simple, because back then, content actually had a value to it, that was higher than the value of a handful of affiliates each making 1 sale every couple of weeks.

Nowadays content is looked at as a promotional tool, it isn't, content is the very product we are attempting to sell.

Walk in to any sub shop, ice cream store, local deli and ask for a sample, you get a taster if anything, they don't give you a 3 course meal, fine wine and a free blowjob from their hottest waiter or waitress to make sure you are happy so you may come back again and spend a few bucks with them at some point in the future... If they did, everyone would want one and they'd go out of business pretty quickly because their profits can't sustain the hemmoraging overhead costs, just like what is happening in the industry with the affiliate business model right now, everyone saw that 3 course meals were being handed out, everyone wanted one, now we are all paying the price.

Now I think here we mostly agree. The difference is I don't believe in blaming this on the affiliate and saying "It's all because they don't want to work!". No. What actually happened was Mansef/Brazzers came along and changed the model. They started stealing your content and using it to generate revenue for themselves and WE/YOU/I let them do it. We let them continue doing it for years until it got to the point where they became #1 in the industry and the pay sites and companies started dropping like dead flies. Few people said shit. Especially those at the top of the industry. They just kissed ass and blamed others (such as affiliates) for the decline in sales. Here we are today.

Affiliates had some responsibility in giving things away before 2006. And you might say that if affiliates were satisfied with only 25% revshare and had to buy their own content then Mansef and the piracy would have never arose. But that's just speculation. We know for a fact that piracy is the cause of most of the declines in 2012. And getting more specific there is a good case for saying ultimately that the DMCA opened the doors for all of this.

Piracy is a cause of SOME of the decline but that is only because surfers are demanding content without paying for it. Because *we* have given them the sense of entitlement to said content.

Affiliates DID demand from program owners more and more content to give away for free, in the form of images, movies, hosted promo tools, etc...

We can only speculate about how the tremendous amounts of free exclusive content has contributed to the decline of the affiliate business model but, at the same time, we also have verifiable facts to back up our speculative synopsis that, prior to the proliferation of free exclusive content by affiliates and program owners, things were ticking along nicely. It was only once exclusive content started being offered up at the drop of a hat that sales starting going to shit.

If there was next to no, or little piracy before program owners started utilizing exclusive content and giving that content away for free (around 2006) yet now piracy is rife in the industry, there is really only one conclusion any reasonable person can draw and that is, program owners and affiliates created these problems themselves, because affiliates wanted more and more for free and program owners have it to them, that is, unfortunately, where the buck stops as far as dishing out 'blame'.

Yes, piracy is a problem today, but we created that problem, we enabled it to grow to the levels it is at right now, we realize its a problem but the horse has already left the barn, there's not too much we can do to curb it, especially while program owners are still throwing around their content at every wall they can find for free hoping that some of it sticks and ultimately drives a new sale to their website.

Legtimate affiliates aren't the cause of piracy - sorry. Its bottom feeders like Manwin who are first in line to throw everyone under the bus by "stealing" content from every site on the internet and causing surfers - and insecure webmasters - to believe that licensed content should be made freely available to anyone who is interested.

You content is worth less than a few clicks to a generic cam or dating site.

Manwin would be a much more inspitational success story if their business wasn't built around recruiting affiliates, freely ripping off and disseminating content from all the sites those affiliates promote (thereby making it useless); and then selling adspace back to the very programs who's content they've ripped off and uploaded.

Ironically, Manwin recognizes that idiots will pay $9.99 to watch the same videos on PPV that they already make available for free on their numerous tube sites.

They have their own cable channel? Good for them. Now they get to compete with corporations who take this shit seriously, and don't suffer competition well.

Anyway, best of luck to them. They're pretty well irrelevant when it comes to affiliate marketing, so just move on and get work.

It's obvious piracy is a huge problem. One answer would be to destroy the piracy model but that's tough to do. And unfortunately the opposite is happening with many sponsors "throwing out free content at every wall" as you say. Except they aren't giving it to their affiliates. Instead they are posting it to these tubes and their content programs. This is only helping the piracy model because the same sites they are partnering with are also open to stealing their content now, in the past, and probably in the future too.

The real fun begins when the legitimate affiliate says fuck it and becomes a pirate too. This occurs when instead of dealing with 1:5000 ratios they say what the hell and start stealing your full scenes and uploading them to file lockers who pay on either a pay per download or revshare basis for premium membership upgrades. Then you'll be able to blame the affiliate. And it's already happening. But part of the reason it's happening is because the former legitimate affiliates are being told to "piss off" by the sponsors who are partnering with the pirates. And personally I can see the appeal of this. For starters as I understand it they pay better. It will only get worse as you treat your legitimate affiliates as if they were the enemy.

Piracy (free full content) has HUGE effect to affiliates, for instance I make maybe 5 times less money from the same amount of work or same amount of traffic then I used before tubes.