Has Cams/Dating passed Paysites yet?
 

Are you making more from dating and cam sites or porn paysites? From my perspective I see about 30% dating and webcams, 10% porn paysites, 55% tube sites, 5% misc.

Going forward, cams is the only safe industry, if there is a "SAFE" industry.

I don't know I would say dating is safe too. I've been really surprised how dating has been consistently better every month for the last year now. Maybe guys are tired of "settling" for the ugly girls on free dating sites and are going for the hotter fantasy ones on adult dating sites?

>95% webcam, of course. ;-) I never make dating work; puzzling as I always thought it was so similar, but the same tactics as for webcam failed me.

Cams would be much hotter for affiliates if it weren't filled with so many shenanigans.

To be honest, as an an affiliate I have never found dating or cams to be profitable. They should be, but I've never found a program that converts my traffic at a profitable level.

Since I make out quite well selling the same traffic to the same programs through brokers like JuicyAds, I can only assume they aren't treating affiliates fairly.

Who's buying the adds thru Juicyads? dating sites cam sites or porn sites?

I've sold JuicyAds to all three, but the porn site sales are typically to little niche programs that don't have affiliate programs. The cam site and dating site sales (more dating than cams) have often been notable for being to programs that do not generate significant revenue when I put my own affiliate banner in the same ad zones. That, to me, speaks volumes.

Cams / dating should not be promoted anywhere near how porn is.

No shit? Wow, eight years in this business and I never noticed that.

Moving out of the realm of the sarcastic:

The point is, if a program is not converting a certain slug of affiliate traffic in a profitable fashion, but then later turns around and buys that same slug of traffic for 2x, 3x, 5x, or 10x times what the traffic was "worth" when it went in via the affiliate program, it strongly suggests they weren't dealing fairly when they were processing the traffic as affiliate traffic.

85% cams / 15% VoD

paysites not converting for me...

Good information post. I still do great through dating, especially the rebills. But as mentioned above, I have noticed most of the good looking girls have disappeared from dating websites, only the ugly left. Seems as soon as a good looking girl joins, it wont be long before some guy has caught her. The rise of more and more free dating websites like plentyoffish has also had an effect. I do much better converting niche dating then general dating.

so which cams site is converting the best right now ?

I made my comment because cams / dating are so easy to promote and tweak that bad conversions is just silly business. As two of the biggest niches around your questions about them being profitable have been answered 1000 times before. You say you can't convert them, I say you're doing it wrong.

For example, putting banners or other similar ridiculousness in sidebars, headers, etc. That is a shit converting strategy from the start. Is your page promoting porn one giant banner farm? Didn't think so, so why not put as much effort into talking up cams as you do whatever else it is you sell?

As for what they spend on ad buys from things you can't convert. Real programs can and will spend 2, 5, 10 times what they plan to make off of a customer in the next year. They don't do this with their affiliate programs because they don't have to, doesn't mean they are overpaying when they buy directly. Also, they might not keep up with the damn ad zones used by thousands of affiliates and just buy traffic to test and judge at a later time.

Yes, I would also like to know which Cam website is converting the best?

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I'm with you on this. Actually you don't even have to go to the realm of the hidden to see that some programs aren't giving you a fair deal. Cams is typically the worse of the two. There are so many shenanigans in your typical cam program to watch out for that I'm not going to try to list them. One common to both dating and cams is the free signups. Typically as an affiliate you are paid nothing for these yet the program gets a good lead and is free to later do mailers to that potential customer. Also in the member's area (which the free customer typically has access to) of that program they might have upsell after upsell to other products which you get no credit for (maybe with a reduced incentive to upsell the product you DO get credit for as well). And we haven't spoken yet of the possibility of selling the mailing list. In essence you're providing the program with a free unpaid revenue stream unless they are compensating you for those leads or running a clean program.

Thinking of going to a PPFS program now? Try this. Record your average Free to unique ratio with several programs. You might find that on average you did 1:40 or 1:60 verified free signup but mysteriously under the new PPFS program you're suddenly doing 1:150 or worse when they have to finally pay you for those free leads. Hmm. Why do you think that is? :upsidedow

I did some work with both cams and dating but I don't believe I'm getting the revenue I actually generated (for the most part). As such I'm considering redirecting the surfers to myfreecams and plentyoffish as opposed to lining someone elses' pockets who is probably screwing me. It's definitely not worth targeting for me unless I feel it's a fair deal. The jury is still out on a few programs so we'll see.

I believe paid for dating sites will go the same way as paysites. The users who pay will either get hooked up or give up. Many will realise they're being conned. Many will realise the free dating sites are better.

Took paysites a while to decline, don't think it can't happen to dating sites.

How many who scream at Xsales have no problem sending traffic to a dating site that's a rip off?

Exactly. That was my precise experience. As a fairly new affiliate many years ago, I figured out that these programs were jerking me around long before I started understanding all the nuances of exactly how, and so I stopped promoting them. Stocktrader, that's why I was a little bit sarcastic when you stated the obvious. It's true that I don't know how to promote cams and dating "properly" -- because I realized a long time ago that these programs don't treat their affiliates fairly. At the end of the day I wasn't getting a payday for my traffic, and there were endless threads with information like signupdamnit has provided making it clear to the discerning eye why I likely never would.

In any case,the business of "how they are promoted" is a red herring when we're talking about an apples-to-apples comparison of banner advertising on the same sites, comparing affiliate banners to sponsor-purchased banners. Obviously there are better ways to sell the product if that's what I want to sell, but given my traffic sources, the banner inventory has always been something I need to monetize as best I can, regardless of what else I may also be doing.


Stocktrader, I'm trying to work my head around the math of your suggestion that it's perfectly normal for a company to be paying a high multiple of a customer's annual expected value in order to acquire a new customer. That part is right and fits what I know of mainstream business practice as well, where new customer acquisition cost metrics are closely tracked. But then you say "They don't do this with their affiliate programs because they don't have to" and that's where we differ. They do have to, they just don't have to do it up front, they get to wait until the money actually comes in. It's when they try to avoid this obligation that they lose me as a potential affiliate.

I'm a revshare affiliate. It's my expectation -- my demand -- that a program pay me a fixed and fair percentage of what they actually make off a customer they acquire through me for the lifetime of that customer. So, when I see them paying a premium to acquire new customers through my traffic sources that far exceeds anything they ever paid me for the actual customers I sent them, I can only conclude -- and in this I am strongly backed by all the well-known jiggery-pokery practices they use in their affiliate accounting -- that they are not dealing fairly with affiliates.