Linkster

Just saying - Ive talked to two major sponsors and they are down at least 20% over the last month (that they will admit to) - and after reviewing 60 sponsors we use and talking to some major affiliate players that send both traffic and prepays - everyone starting dropping sales at the end of October - doesnt matter if its ccbill, paycom epoch etc....something has happened that doesnt make sense

Weve already accounted for seasonal, types of traffic, malicious installs, paysite design changes etc....and it is affecting everyone I know that sends the larger amounts of sales across the board (this also seems to be affecting dating/personals sites although not being heavy on that end I cant prove it) - and its almost as though (with the exception of the two above) the sponsors dont have any idea that they are losing sales - let alone what percentage they are down since the third week in October???

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tranza

Apparently no one cares...

For the record, I've also noticed a huge drop in sales since the third week in October.

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pornguy

I would think, that anyone who has had a drop is sales is not seeing it for any 1 reason. It is more than 1, and that is what has slammed a lot of the programs.

1. Torrent sites at an all time high.
2. Companies like Zango at an all time high.
3. More free porn from tgp type sites over all
4. Gas is at about 3.00 per gallon or higher in most places.
5. The price of daily staple foods is up. Milk at almost 4$ per gallon
6. The news top stories involve mortgage foreclosures.
7. Bush and his many wars, along with unrest is many countries.
8. Holiday season here, and people wondering how they will pay for toys etc.


And I am sure I have left a lot of things out. Its not one, its a combination of all that, and people sit back and hear about X person that just lost their job.
Just pick up a news paper and read it through, and then tell me you are going to run out and buy porn. Most of these people have enough on their hard drives to get them through.

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charlie g

It is alarming to say the least. And it seems to have happened overnight.

I don't believe this is zango related because the traffic has not dropped. There is something else going on and it maybe that it will be a tough season this year.

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pornguy

Like I said. its not a single thing that has happened. Its a combination.

Zango steals a sale, one guy buys millk instead of porn, anothers best friend is layed off. and another sits watching the world trying to self destruct on tv instead of surfing porn.

Thats 4 lost sales. It builds over a few days and at the end of the week you are down a %

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Eman - PG

Of course it must be the sponsors shaving or processors scrubbing.

No way could the economic factors such as impending US recession, inflation, housing crisis, subprime mortgage & banking crisis, stock market down 10% and low consumer confidence be affecting the amount of money people spend on porn.

Also the increasing availability of full high quality porn on rapidshare, megaupload, tube sites, torrents, porn torrent forums would in no way have any impact on sales.

TheDoc

Some good reasons posted above too..


1) On US based processors US people are the largest porn buyers, US just had a huge shopping day.

2) Now it's the holiday season buying for many Countries.

3) Far reach maybe? How about wifes looking at credit card statements to see how much they can spend for the Holidays.

4) Job loss/gain is really off in some areas of the US.

5) Natural disasters like the Cali fires, mid west floods, and the southern drought.

6) Then the Economy, real or not - people aren't spending as much or they really don't have as much to spend. Mix this with the Holidays, and who knows.

7) War - That's a lot of people not buying porn.

8) Cheap higher speed dialup or regulated cheaper dsl is all over the tv, that area has seen growth while dsl/cable hasn't - at that speed hasn't increased, email spam hasn't decreased and all the other negative Internet issues blasted all over the Media. Fear works people, hands down.

9) Internet pipes/isp's around the world. If you monitor the major backbones around the world (internet health reports) and then research the pipes the processors are on.... match that with sales spikes/trends.. and you will see a perfect match. When a major backbone has a problem, sales have problems.

10) Lets not forget the Banks, if they have problems-host-backbone issues, then we are all boned.

This is just 10 of the really 100's of other reasons that change from country to country.

The free porn argument isn't the cause of this, it isn't the reason programs have seen a drop. The US isn't the largest users of these services but if the US is the largest buyers of porn then something doesn't add up. Not that the every growing growth of free porn over the last 10 years isn't a factor - I'm sure it is - but it isn't some boom that people are thinking that just took place.

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Makaveli

Seems traffic hasn't changed going to the sponsors, they just seem less likely to join. I mean my ratios suuuuuuuuuck..

BradM

It will get 2x worse by this time next year.

BV

4 dollar a gallon gas doesen't help much either.

Makaveli

What makes you think that?

Oracle Porn

sitting here talking about it aint gonna help....

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seeric

continuing what PG is saying......

everything affects this luxury impulse buy. every little thing hurts. if you are a cig smoker, a drinker, paying bills, renting movies at blockbuster, blah blah blah, buying porn, what is going to be the first thing you cut from your entertainment budget? porn is correct. with so much whackable free shit out there, the first thing to go from anyones entertainment budget IS porn. i haven't seen these dramatic decrease that people are talking about just yet, but i do know that being the "luxury impulse buy" that we are, its the first thing to get the shit can. Xmas is also coming and people are looking at those retail interests that they tend to each year as well. there is no silver bullet to why, it just does and will continue to fluxuate forever. the only thing to ever do is work harder, longer, try to identify and thwart shit like zango and fuckers stealing from you and the affiliates and make up for it in volume. i have seen no difference in the number of denials or ratios going askew with any of our processors. i bet almost no one from a program that actually runs it will respond, but i got no problems giving you a no bullshit answer. people know that if there was something i'd be the first one throwing bricks on the board.

After Shock Media

What he said and when that perfect storm hits even fat women look hawt.

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Linkster

All of these reasons posted are nice to explain a gradual drop for certain parts of the industry, as well as certain types of traffic - but none of them explain an immediate overnight drop of the magnitude that happened to the two largest affiliate programs out there (that have confirmed personally to me) and 58 other programs that are totally unrelated, different types of programs and located in different countries

We can argue all day about the steady decline (which is certainly there based on our historical graphing) being caused by all types of socio-economic factors - but so far nothing posted could explain the overnight drop that occured to this many affiliates one day in October and has not recovered.

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Biggy

Frankly, I don't see what you guys are saying. I own/manage 3 different programs, and overall, sales have been VERY good for November, across all 3 - the programs include FuckYouCash and MelissaMoney (home of MelissaMidwest). While it sounds cliche that a program owner would come in here and say "OH my sales are awesome" - this is simply the truth. While we've launched new sites that have contributed to our growth, sales to our existing sites are stable and steady. Look at who you're promoting, if you continue to have poor sales, then move on. The reality is, the business right now is very dry of quality products, and only a few programs IMO have a quality product that affiliates will do well with <-- this simple fact is really what is most likely contributing to poor sales with time.

I've been in this business for 10 years. Remember, processors and affiliate programs AND AFFILIATES do not make money when sales don't materialize. Therefore, if there is a big issue, rest assured, the processor owners would be all over it, unless something drastic is going down, like they're going out of business, which isn't happening. At the end of the day, the results are the results. And give us a shot, especially our new site DeepthroatLove, which we're paying out $50 PPS on Friday for. I bet a few of you in this thread who aren't doing well will do just fine with that site or one of our other sites that cater to your traffic.

TheDoc

I think many reasons were covered that would explain the drop.

It's "normal" to have a drop this time of year.. "normal" is the keyword. Then add on all the other bullshit that is going on and it's an even large drop than normal.

However, I can name a few programs that are not down for Oct/Nov. Some go down, some go up.. The fight is going to get harder and only the strong will stand out in the end.

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Linkster

TheDoc - can you post one example of a program that has not dropped that has been around for at least 5 years

We did get some more information today - seems that paycom/epoch/wnu join pages after you put in the credit card information are timing out randomly - one paysite owner has been tracking this and showed me their graphs showing that it correlated to the end of October when they first noted the join/billing page problem

It was also brought to our attention that evidently a few programs (or their processors) are only accepting sales from the US/Can/UK/Aus now - and redirecting all others

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Snake Doctor

Not trying to single you out Airek, but I'm quoting you because what you're saying is something I hear alot and I think it's hogwash.

People don't have a "budget" for porn for crying out loud. It's an impulse purchase, in most cases it costs $3 or so, and no matter what the price of gas or the price of milk or whatever a guy with a hardon who wants to see the full version of the video he just watched a sample of is gonna signup.

I doubt anyone starts their porn surfing evening thinking "I'm going to find a site to join"...they think "I'm gonna go to thehun or worldsex (or wherever they go) and find some stroke material"..then they find something they really like that they want to see more of, and all they see on the signup page is the $2.95 trial....so they say "what the fuck" and signup.

That's how it's always been IMO.

Honestly, there is alot of data to suggest that our business actually gets better when more people are unemployed, or during the holidays...because they need the release...or they're home all day because they're not working, or they're lonely during the holidays, etc etc.

TheDoc

Yes, I can name some programs that don't appear to have gone down over the last 5 years. However almost no programs have held strong for 5+ years, everyone will see a drop at some point. A better view point is to show that newer programs and fresh/good sites have taken off and hold the growth if the member areas are good.

Now depending on the sponsor.. Paycom wise I only process US/Can through Paycom/CCBill, everything else is split up between other processors. And I just checked a Paycom-NATS program, they have sales from other countries.

And above I stated that Paycom or the Banks could have problems. The banks get DOS attacked, host issues, ect.. Just a chain of crap that runs down hill.

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bdld

i've noticed a drop in ratios beginning nov 5th.

Excretor

Agreed. This period sales suck at all. I cannot realize what's going on...

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Thurbs

very well said Doc .. while I don't think the banks are under attack, I think thats the effects of too much pre-approved cross-sales going unchecked for a length of time has affected the CB ratios.

I've noticed its become an issue to get reviewed after CB ratios get normal, as if there is still a problem with that ceiling of CBs at the proc level.

~Ray

maybe you are getting more google image traffic which always throws the ratios off. google began updating in the time peroid you are speaking of as well.

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seeric

like i said in my post i don't see it in my numbers, but if you are seeing it, i merely stated some possible reasons. i am by far not a know it all. no one can sit there and say that peoples increased expenditures on life necessities does not decrease someone buying porn when you can get it for free though i don't think.

MarkTiarra

Thankfully we're actually up about 15&#37; for November over last month but who knows it might have gone up more if things were different. I have no way to tell. We're just doing a lot to grow right now.

What I can see nicely, thanks to NATS, is how many people go to my join form and get denied (or leave before going to a processor) for some reason. If those go up to a unusually high percentage I can usually figure some part of it is due to increased "scrubbing." Nothing like that has happened this month and our primary is Paycom EU.

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Excretor

Where is this info from?

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David - PG

Ah yea the old adage on how quality products always make affiliates great money. I just wonder one thing - as an analogy to our industry - how do you think would BMW do with their high quality cars sales-wise if Mercedes started giving away their cars for free?

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Snake Doctor

I'm curious to know how you accounted for malicious installs?

I assume you're referring to adware/spyware and I'm wondering how you were able to quantify the % of traffic affected by it?