Lying bastards.

[JustAskMilton]

I have noticed that people seem to lie a lot in this business. This post will undoubtedly get people claiming in fact they aren't lying. But, of course, we can't really trust those people can we?

Note: I added the above comment to prevent lying bastards from spamming this thread. I would like honest opinions from people who need to choose affiliate programs and make some actual money, but like myself, have been frustrated with all the lying bastards who have a vested interest in lying and deceiving us.

Here are some examples of what I mean:

I often see people claim conversions of 1:30 and 1:15 etc. Then I come to find out that what they *really* mean 1:15, after the second or third page of the purchase process. Actual conversions end up being upwards 1:1500.

Another point of distortion - If I were to run an ad for "fat Asian grannies with glasses" I might get a halfway decent conversion of 1:200 or the like. However, how many people are going to click on that banner? - Logically only a select small group of people who actually prefer fat Asian grannies with glasses. So the reality is, although the clicks -> sales might be good, your Impressions to clicks is going to suck.

Do people realize that what really matters is dollars in your pocket at the end of each month? Or are they, in fact, persuaded by the bullshit people spew?

There are countless other lies and cleverly worded "conditions" - all designed to be greedy rather then helpful.

I ask these questions because we have opened up our affiliate system a few weeks back and for the few I have personally recruited - it seems to be doing very well. However, we haven't been able to get people to sign up because I refuse to lie and deceive people with false hope and promises.

Does anybody have any helpful advice ?

*********

Tim
www.miltonsoft.com

[TehKinkyHotness]

stfu.......

[Manowar]

stfu.......

Fake nick of 2 useless posters. lol.

[Turf]

i agree 100% ... but what you say just proves that numbers can be twisted etc to show what you want them to show - unless you have the full picture like daily visitors, clickes, impression, page where hits are counted etc.

so 1:15 is very doable, hell with the right, twist etc 1:1 can be done ;)

[Barefootsies]

I can feel, and understand where you are coming from.

I think you have a lot of small fries who want to show they can swim with the big boys, and are always trying to prove something. You see a lot of the king kahuna's who are successful, and more than willing to show their stats, or give you the real deal. But a lot of time you have those who post shit like the, 'stfu', and alike.

Most of us in the game for any period of time are willing to help to a degree, but justifying ourselves on a messageboard when we could be working on our game plan are the least of our concerns. Also keep in mind, what works for one webmaster might not work the same for another. Might work better, or worse. It's a numbers game. Plus while someone may give you a directions, they aren't going to provide the road map.

Also I think numbers are clouded by those who have direct ties to affilates, sponsors, hosts, and so forth. So sometimes you get biased sig whores instead of those who know. A lot of it is filtering out the b.s.. There are quite a few hardcore players on here I've chatted with via ICQ, and know they are the real deal and value their advice, and input. Especially on new projects where they've succeeded, and I am a noob to the concept (my forte's 9 years of paysites, and I've asked some weeby's about TGP's, and other types of sites where I am less skilled).

So a lot of it I guess is knowing who you are talking to, and that they are the real deal.

[JustAskMilton]

I can feel, and understand where you are coming from.

I think you have a lot of small fries who want to show they can swim with the big boys, and are always trying to prove something. You see a lot of the king kahuna's who are successful, and more than willing to show their stats, or give you the real deal. But a lot of time you have those who post shit like the, 'stfu', and alike. ...

Thanks man, its good to hear someone with a worthwhile opinion. It's funny that the "stfu" post has a banner in the sig claiming a $200 signup payout - that?s just perfect, he made my day with that.

Thanks for the words of encouragement. It is just frustrating when you actually have something you have spent years of your life on, and it works and converts well ? but then get over shadowed by people that exaggerate, lie and mislead.

Tim
www.miltonsoft.com
(Yes we have banners - no i didn't spam you with them.)

[Barefootsies]

No problem mate.

Been in the game a lot time. Burned plenty. Remeber the old shams of the internet way back before all the free hosts, and shit vanished, and bandwidth became the new. So I have picked up a thing or two along the way.

You can tell from this board there are some king kahunas, and a lot of small fries trying to come off as kahunas. You also have a bunch of surfers, and newbies. So you have to kinda know the people on the board, and talk to them here, or ICQ, and sort it out from there.

Trust your gut feelings. Or talk to the person directly. Best policy.

[nikad]

No lies

Here is my situation, and it will prove that those numbers you get are not lies:
I try to have a variety of sponsors, just so surfers don't see the same things over and over.

I know which sites of sponsor X I usually sell fairly well, but since sometimes the sale comes form and exit window, console, etc, I promote other sites, from sponsor x.

Then again it happens sometimes that i end up with great ratios like 1:3, 1:15, etc, but that is not my ratio, I consider the total amount of clicks I send to that sponsor, so actually it is usually, with tgp traffic, 1:400, 1:700 etc.

To be honest I estimate the total amount of traffic I send to sponsor, then I ponderate if he counts first page uniques and so, and they I make my balance.

That is why I never post ratios
nik

[thonglife]

I have noticed that people seem to lie a lot in this business. This post will undoubtedly get people claiming in fact they aren't lying. But, of course, we can't really trust those people can we?

Note: I added the above comment to prevent lying bastards from spamming this thread. I would like honest opinions from people who need to choose affiliate programs and make some actual money, but like myself, have been frustrated with all the lying bastards who have a vested interest in lying and deceiving us.

Here are some examples of what I mean:

I often see people claim conversions of 1:30 and 1:15 etc. Then I come to find out that what they *really* mean 1:15, after the second or third page of the purchase process. Actual conversions end up being upwards 1:1500.

Another point of distortion - If I were to run an ad for "fat Asian grannies with glasses" I might get a halfway decent conversion of 1:200 or the like. However, how many people are going to click on that banner? - Logically only a select small group of people who actually prefer fat Asian grannies with glasses. So the reality is, although the clicks -> sales might be good, your Impressions to clicks is going to suck.

Do people realize that what really matters is dollars in your pocket at the end of each month? Or are they, in fact, persuaded by the bullshit people spew?

There are countless other lies and cleverly worded "conditions" - all designed to be greedy rather then helpful.

I ask these questions because we have opened up our affiliate system a few weeks back and for the few I have personally recruited - it seems to be doing very well. However, we haven't been able to get people to sign up because I refuse to lie and deceive people with false hope and promises.

Does anybody have any helpful advice ?

*********

Tim
www.miltonsoft.com

Can you enlighten us on how we may block your bot in robots.txt or what your user-agent string is so we can ban in htaccess? l - miltonsoft = bandwidth leeching fucking garbage.

[JustAskMilton]

You are confused.

Can you enlighten us on how we may block your bot in robots.txt or what your user-agent string is so we can ban in htaccess? l - miltonsoft = bandwidth leeching fucking garbage.

Actually, we don't leech content. Nor do we directly link to images/clips.

We act more like Google in that we send users directly to galleries. The primary difference being we link to galleries of models the searcher wants more of. So, for example, they might have an image of a model but not know her name - MILTON will help connect the user to the content they want - in the context of the gallery you meant it to be displayed in.

I'm sure you thought MILTON was some breed of auto downloader, but if you would have taken a moment to look at the site you would realize that, in fact it can be very valuable to sites that have revenue models that are based on signups. It fills a need that users have, while benefiting the gallery owners.

But, we would be more then happy to stop sending you traffic ? just send me an email.

[JustAskMilton]

Can you enlighten us on how we may block your bot in robots.txt or what your user-agent string is so we can ban in htaccess? l - miltonsoft = bandwidth leeching fucking garbage.

Again, I just want to be super-duper clear on this.

The way that our app works, is that a user types in keywords or loads up an image to search for. The results they're shown are a list of gallery urls.

Period.

We send users to galleries. Just like any other search engine. There is no bandwidth leeching, and certainly no garbage.

Perhaps we need to make that more clear on our site - users seem to get it right away, but adult webmasters often think we're another one of those porn auto-downloaders or whatever. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Again, please tell me what gave you the impression that we leech content and we'll change it right away.