Sponsers: What Percentage Of Your Sales Are Affiliate Sales?

[The Porn Nerd]

Just curious as to what the ideal percentage of affiliate sales vs. non-affiliate sales should be from a program owner's perspective. I know the reliance on affiliates has been "shifting" (shall we say) lately but what percentage of a program's sales come from affiliates?

For Porn Nerd Cash the percentage of affiliate sales versus non-affiliate sales is about 30% affiliates. How does this compare to (successful) programs? Currently we have almost 1000 "active" affiliates (according to CCBill), with about 8% sending consistent traffic (thus the sales).

So, 8% of our affiliates are producing almost 30% (29%) of our sales. Is this good or bad in today's shrinking adult market place?

My feeling is that Porn Nerd Cash should be working to get that affiliate percentage even higher.

[PornDiscounts-R]

Hi Mark

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[Zeiss]

You definitely don't want your affiliates to be bigger than you. Just saying...

[BAKO]

You actually get sales lol

[postalsex]

depends of the program. some are affiliate oriented also others are stand alone sites with a little affiliate traffic, I dont think you could make a statistic out of it.

[The Porn Nerd]

Originally Posted by postalsex

depends of the program. some are affiliate oriented also others are stand alone sites with a little affiliate traffic, I dont think you could make a statistic out of it.

I realize each Program is differant but there must be some indicater of whether your affiliate sales are "where they should be" or not.

[Robbie]

When I opened Claudia Marie's site in May 2007, affiliate sales were almost 100% of the sales. Very few type ins.

By the end of 2009, pirate tube sites had pretty much siphoned away all the traffic from our affiliates. Guys who used to send 30+ sales a day didn't have traffic anymore and are lucky to send one sale every couple of months now.

Luckily, I went to work on building our own traffic. Mostly from Claudia Marie's social networking and her picture blog.

Last month affiliate sales totaled 19% of my sales (talking about NEW sales). Everything else is type ins.

It means I'm making more money because I don't have to pay out 50% to affiliates...but at the same time, it limits future growth and shows the impact that piracy and full free scenes on tubes have done to this business.

I'd rather have my healthy affiliates back and growing stronger each year. THAT was good business.

[The Porn Nerd]

Originally Posted by Robbie

When I opened Claudia Marie's site in May 2007, affiliate sales were almost 100% of the sales. Very few type ins.

By the end of 2009, pirate tube sites had pretty much siphoned away all the traffic from our affiliates. Guys who used to send 30+ sales a day didn't have traffic anymore and are lucky to send one sale every couple of months now.

Luckily, I went to work on building our own traffic. Mostly from Claudia Marie's social networking and her picture blog.

Last month affiliate sales totaled 19% of my sales (talking about NEW sales). Everything else is type ins.

It means I'm making more money because I don't have to pay out 50% to affiliates...but at the same time, it limits future growth and shows the impact that piracy and full free scenes on tubes have done to this business.

I'd rather have my healthy affiliates back and growing stronger each year. THAT was good business.

Robbie, once again you have crystallized my thoughts. I thank you.

For this was my experience on Saturday, looking at week's end sales. That's why I started this thread, to compare other Program's experiences. I, too, would rather have affiliate sales be a larger percentage of my overall sales. This way I could work with them perhaps, strategize, offer deals, etc. But when the majority of sales are coming from type-ins then while that's GREAT (on one level) it SUCKS (on another level) because that means I have zero control or influence to grow my business in that area.

Grrrrrr!

[Robbie]

Exactly.

When honest free sites (tgp. blogs, review sites, etc.) had tons of traffic, the sales were growing exponentially.

They were able to reach "new eyeballs" that I couldn't.

But now? Nobody gives a shit about blogs and tgp...or ANYTHING that doesn't have full free scenes. So the loss of their traffic and sales means that it's just ME doing all the marketing.

And no matter how good I may be at that...I can't match the power of thousands of healthy affiliates and their thousands of individual marketing ideas.

[The Porn Nerd]

Yes I too would prefer healthy affiliates.

[sojproductions]

We used to be between 45-55% affiliate sales in the peak of our affiliate hayday. That has decreased to around 20-25% now, 2.5 years ago it was clear this was coming so we did more to generate direct sales, we don't have quite as many sales as we did back then but as we make more on direct sales we were able to keep net figures stable.

I'd love to see the affiliate sales rise again, been speaking to a few of our best affiliates recently who have been out of the game for a while and they seem keen to get back behind our niche, we will be doing everything we can to help them out in 2014 that's for sure. Would be nice to see some growth again.

[wehateporn]

It would be interesting to know how much this is down to the tracking of affiliate sales

[NWB Guy]

I would love to get 10-20% affiliate sales.

Right now, I am under 1%.

[Far-L]

How much are you paying affiliates for the traffic? How much work do you put into creating marketing tools specifically for affiliates? How much does support of the affiliates cost? What is the percentage margin of profit on affiliates vs organic efforts/internal traffic?

It comes down to the numbers. Most affiliate focused programs die because they pay too much for the traffic and the margins are not profitable enough to sustain operations, and the programs literally implode with success. Many of the giant affiliate programs of the so called "golden age" of internet porn collapsed under the same system that brought them success back in the day.

For that reason, it is way better to look for quality over quantity when it comes to acquiring affiliates imho. I would think making your current 92% of unproductive affiliates more successful would be easier than trying to pull in new affiliates that might have the same ratio of un-productivity and therefore create more strain on your resources.