business thread: retention ratios

[harvey]

OK, this is a business thread, so no "would you hit it" pics, no drama, no tube girl, just straight business.

Since some time ago, we were working on something that includes a lot of numbers, tendencies, whatever. One of the numbers we were working on is retention ratios, both seen from the site owner's POV and the affiliates POV (based on revshare programs). We understand that sometimes the numbers an affiliate will see are not the truth, but based on the available data, we found that out of 5 revshare programs, retention rates are around 40%, which means extremely low retention ratio. And I mean EXTREMELY low. Out of those 5 programs, all of them featuring exclusive content, these are the numbers, from worst to better, based on January 2006 thru May 2008, exception made of #3 which goes from 2/2007 thru 5/2008. Programs are not mentioned since I'm not interested in outing them, just giving some numbers for research purposes. Retention time isn't mean to reflect a real retention time, but it's an average. ie, if we have 2 sales and 5 recurring out of those sales, the retention time will be 2.5 moths. Obviously, the most sales the lower the retention time, esp with these low retention ratios.

Without further ado, here we go:

1) 36.17% average retention time 0.22 months
2) 36.66% average retention time 0.29 months
3) 39.06% average retention time 0.40 months
4) 43.11% average retention time 0.34 months
5) 48.33% average retention time 0.34 months

These numbers aren't as accurate as expected, there are better and more complex math functions to analyze this, but for the easier handling I chose this simple way which gives a first sight idea.

Please share your retention ratios, no need to out the program if you don't want to. This is related to affiliates and not program owners since I realize all program owners will retain 100% with lifetime retention time so let's keep this clean for research purposes. If anyone wants to be more specific and share more details, you're welcome to send the info to webmaster |at| cssxl |dót| com and we'll handle it confidentially and share the general results with you if you want.

[After Shock Media]

You did mention they all included exclusive content, did you take note to see if they all really update and preferably often with new content?

Also my brain must be very dense today as you lost me with your math somewhat.
Do you really mean not a single site had a retention of more than a half month?

[cybermike]

if you get more than 30% staying over a month thats awesome in the teen niche

[andrej_NDC]

I didn't analyze traffic that closely, but I track each of my spots differently to see where surfers rebill longer. And I still have members left from my hun spots back from 2006.

[harvey]

Originally Posted by After Shock Media

You did mention they all included exclusive content, did you take note to see if they all really update and preferably often with new content?

Also my brain must be very dense today as you lost me with your math somewhat.
Do you really mean not a single site had a retention of more than a half month?

at least 4 of them update very often, 2 of them every day for sure. Only one of the 5 programs was tested for a single site, the remaining 4 are multisite tested.

about your question, this can be confusing so I made it easier, but it seems it wasn't lol. let's take a better example: let's say you have 100 sales on month 1 and we take a time frame of 3 months. On those 3 months, you have 120 recurring sales, which means you have 40 recurring sales a month on average (it's a skewed stat anyway since you'll have recurring sales from months 2 and 3, but just to make it easier). That means you'll have sales recurring for 3 months, sales recurring for 2 months, sales recurring for 1 and sales not recurring at all. That 0 has a great influence, but even without the 0 recurring, it's easy to see that with retention rates lower than 50% it's impossible to have an average retention time of 1. As a matter of fact, the only way to make it to 1 (or higher) is to have 100% retention rate EVERY MONTH which is very difficult if not impossible. any percent point over 80% requires a higher investment ratio but I won't enter in details about that. Keep in mind that the ratios a big affiliate will see not necessarily will be the same as an average affiliate will see. Shaving is a fact, of course, but big affiliates also have better knowledge, more support, etc. Plus, the numbers I gave are from a very complex formula, but I asked for something easier which may output higher values than mine.

About shaving, we made a test with 3 credit cards not related to me or even my country and they're still recurring. Sponsor #1 isn't reflecting any recurring sale since 4 months ago, sponsor #2 has 2 recurring sales (which might be 2 of us or not) sponsor #4 only 1 recurring sale. We didn't test sponsor #3 and #5 since the other 3 were the ones we were almost sure they were shaving, and now we're 100% sure, we may use this at a later time, so no further information on the subject. either way, we stopped sending hits on March so we can have a better understanding of the numbers without new sales and new traffic, although there's some marginal traffic still going to those sites via SE hits and old listings, but nothing really important. Traffic came from TGP galleries via paid listings, just in case and around 2% out of SE traffic

[harvey]

Originally Posted by cybermike

if you get more than 30% staying over a month thats awesome in the teen niche

well, not really, we could make it go to 50% just for a start. Any program not retaining at least 70% is doing something really wrong, and it's not difficult to retain at that rate, if we were talking about raising retention rates from 80 to 90%, now that's a really different story, but raising from 30 to 50 or even 70 is a piece of cake. That's why we're working on that Information is power

[harvey]

almost forgot: there's a very important jump in ratios (for worse) since ends of 2007 and beginning of 2008, which we assume it's related to the emergence and popularity of tube sites. If we take 2006 alone, ratios are way better than 2007 and this part of 2008

[harvey]

bumping this for some discussion/feedback

[nikki99]

Originally Posted by harvey

bumping this for some discussion/feedback

wrong board, asking something serious on GFY

[harvey]

Originally Posted by nikki99

wrong board, asking something serious on GFY

yeah, I know, I should have included tubegirl and a would you hit it for the surfers, but I still hope there are a few webmasters still

[DamageX]

Harvey, dropped you a message on ICQ, not sure if you got it. If you have a minute, get back to me please. 1566665. Thanks.

[Cherry7]

Coming new to this game, I could never get the logic...If you join a site you download all you want and then pay another months fees - FOR WHAT a couple of updates that = 1% of the sites content?

Also you piss off the client as he has to go to the trouble of canceling his card, and the worry that he won't be able to....

So we decided to charge a reasonable amount for the content of site and a small fee of $10 every 3 months if they want to keep coming back, keep the videos on our site instead of downloading them or get the updates...

Also we gave them lots of options for one off payments (no recurring) for 1 month 3 months 6 months and the year.

The results surprised us... some join download a few films and the membersip runs for years... (so rich theu don't care )

40% pay the minimum but lots buy for 6 months and a year...

So if the client feels at ease he pays more than when he feels he is been pressured or tricked....

We expect the exclusive original and amazing quality of our movies to keep the clients coming back for more....

[harvey]

Originally Posted by DamageX

Harvey, dropped you a message on ICQ, not sure if you got it. If you have a minute, get back to me please. 1566665. Thanks.

not getting it are you getting my ICQ msgs? If not, pls drop me a mail to webmaster |at| cssxl |dót| com

[Iron Fist]

Affiliates are reading the thread.. but I'm too lazy to crunch numbers on the weekend

[MikeSmoke]

Originally Posted by Cherry7

So we decided to charge a reasonable amount for the content of site and a small fee of $10 every 3 months if they want to keep coming back, keep the videos on our site instead of downloading them or get the updates...

Not sure what that means - there's a separate joining fee of $$??? and then a recurring fee of $10 every three months? Or just the $10 fee?

[MikeSmoke]

PS Harvey - I agree with Sharphead, will think about the numbers when my head is clearer

[BV]

This is for the newbs:

1/3 rd of your trial signups should convert to full month membership. this is average

on sites with no trials it's a little higher. more like closer to 38-40% average

From there the % keeps dropping on the 2nd 3rd and 4th rebills (on average)

The great about revshare is that about 1% stay forever.

That's why some of you guys still get checks (especially ccbill checks) from programs years after you stop promoting them.

[harvey]

bump for DamageX

[DamageX]

Originally Posted by harvey

bump for DamageX

Hey buddy. ICQ still acts up, so I shot you an e-mail. ;)

[Cherry7]

Originally Posted by MikeSmoke

Not sure what that means - there's a separate joining fee of $$??? and then a recurring fee of $10 every three months? Or just the $10 fee?

First a fee of $20 dollars for two weeks then $10 for every 3 months...

After all the surfer gets 95% of the content for the first fee, he is not stupid why should he pay the same again just for updates?

[Bama]

Those are pretty good numbers and why I'm just about to launch something (along with Persian Kitty) that should change membership retention ratio's!

[yahoo-xxx-girls.com]

Useful information... thanks for posting it... we need more info from the pros.

[harvey]

Originally Posted by DamageX

Hey buddy. ICQ still acts up, so I shot you an e-mail. ;)

got it. and you got it, I'll do it today as soon as I finish some stuff here

[harvey]

Originally Posted by Cherry7

Coming new to this game, I could never get the logic...If you join a site you download all you want and then pay another months fees - FOR WHAT a couple of updates that = 1% of the sites content?

Also you piss off the client as he has to go to the trouble of canceling his card, and the worry that he won't be able to....

So we decided to charge a reasonable amount for the content of site and a small fee of $10 every 3 months if they want to keep coming back, keep the videos on our site instead of downloading them or get the updates...

Also we gave them lots of options for one off payments (no recurring) for 1 month 3 months 6 months and the year.

The results surprised us... some join download a few films and the membersip runs for years... (so rich theu don't care )

40% pay the minimum but lots buy for 6 months and a year...

So if the client feels at ease he pays more than when he feels he is been pressured or tricked....

We expect the exclusive original and amazing quality of our movies to keep the clients coming back for more....

I know what you mean and it's very smart, we're working on something that has some similarities on the spirit of your idea, although way too different. Thinking out of the box will give you great results most of the times, hope it's your case