4. THE ORIGINAL AGREEMENT (and why I didn't hold him to it):
I offered Fletch a deal to receive 50% of ALL SALES made on a new tour for Naked College Girls. Why? Because I really wanted to try out a partnership with him and see how having a designer on hand would work out. I offered to provide all content and hosting. He'd provide design and promo materials.
Fletch told me that he couldn't really afford to put the time into such a project because he lose out on paid assignments during the time spent constructing this new tour.
So I told him that I understood that and offered to pay him full price for the tour itself: $500. I'd still pay him 50% of all sales
in addition to this $500 payment if he'd keep on top of decent promo materials for affiliates. He agreed, I gave him 500 bucks and he got busy.
The first day the tour launched it did really well (ratio wise) for some reason. When it fell to shit the very next day I thought the reason was most likely because the first day had to be from signups from surfers/posters from GFY. The days afterward the ratios went all to shit. I mean, they were HORRIBLE.
So I didn't hold Fletch to his part of the bargain: making new promo materials on a
regular basis for affiliates to promote. I felt bad. I didn't want to come out and tell the guy that his designs sucked because I hate hurting anyone's feelings. But I also didn't want to see him waste his time making new promo materials for a tour that doesn't convert and I
sure as hell didn't want to pay him another 500 bucks to build another non-converting tour.
So I didn't ride his ass to
keep up his end of the deal. He has not made
a single new bit of promo materials in a year and a half. And yet I left the 50/50 split in place. CCBill pays it out automatically.
Want to see exactly how bad this tour has done? Here's the amounts paid to Fletch. This is after affiliates are paid and ccbill takes their percentage. The 50/50 amount is shown here:
Note the dates. I set them back as far as they'd go (even before the tour existed) to make sure to catch all checks. $582.36. That's what Fletch was paid. And since I get 50% too, that's what I've been paid from that tour. So subtract the 500 bucks paid to fletch for the design and I'm at $82.36. Subtract bandwidth and I'm in the negative. That doesn't even include my time.
He complained today that I don't send traffic to his tour. Duh.. there is no new promo material for affiliates to use to send it traffic. But here are the residual traffic stats for the last few months anyway:
This month, August, you'll notice that 22,251 uniques were sent. Know how many sales resulted? 1. As in O-N-E. That's it.
On to number 5 and why I believe Fletch is not owed as much as he's asking for