The Affiliate Biz Model is Broken and has Always Been Broken!
 

The Affiliate Biz Model is Broken and has Always Been Broken!

As an affiliate... Myself... We just didn't care before... because we were making money.
And in most cases, We never bitched to the Programs we pushed- We didn't care. Checks were flying in.


PLEASE READ MY THOUGHTS:

We live in a more enlightened porn world... You're crazy if you think you send traffic via Your affiliate links that most surfers would sign up right then and there.

They see the site, they take time and think about it and do some searches on it.

They come back a few days later or even a week or month and then go straight to the paysite and bypass Your affiliate links completely. The paysite gets the signup, but you do not get paid as an affiliate.

This has Always happened... but its more prevalent now as:

1) Pay sites have fucked over members in the past... great tours, but shitty content on inside

2) Pay sites have fucked over members by trying to upsell or not let them cancel

3) Surfers are overall more savvy and understand overall search better and they do some basic research before buying in to a paysite.

4) Porn surfers are desensitized to porn to a degree and they no longer buy spontaneously.Sure there is still a Lonely, Drunk Jeff on a Friday night that buys immediately. But this is no longer The Norm.


Also----As time goes by.... many people cancel a paysite they love.... They will routinely join again after 6 months, a year... or sometimes even several years. This is a known fact as I have talked to several popular paysite owners about it.


With this said... What do you think we can do from the Affiliate Angle to help with untreated problem?

Kill yourself/etc

I was thinking that also... Do you think maybe we could organize a Heaven's Gate of Sorts?




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven&...eligious_group)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...nsgatelogo.jpg

Do direct deals with paysites that don't have affiliate schemes, you'll be amazed when you discover how much you're worth to them. Stick with the small number of affiliate schemes that are paying. Once you've got a collection of these direct non-affiliate paysites paying you, you'll at least double or triple your money.

You have to hunt these sites down yourself, they are normally sites where they've created high quality content but have no idea where to go next and have zilch traffic

i dont blame tubes :)

My bad! I was trying to read your mind. Damn that tinfoil hat you're wearing!!!

Actually, I was ripped off by more companies a decade or so ago ago (SyPro, IBill, GloBill, Lancelot... I'm getting sad now), as well as more recent failures like Cash Titans (still in biz if you want to experience the pain first hand) and Epass. This current "low ratios, but actually get paid" deal is kinda cool.

Same old, same old. Roll with the punches. Duck and cover. Stop, drop, and roll. And when everyone else is gone, I'll still be here.

Talking to myself. Again.

Fantastic ideas... Thanks for contributing to a real business thread!

:thumbsup

I started doing this around 6 months ago. I figured that I had traffic and someone would want it. Some sites I found through obscure Google searches and others through for example Clips4Sale. I sent out around 100 emails to different sites over a 3 month period, only about 30% of the webmasters replied, if you can do deals with even 1 in 3 of those then that's 10 sites who are willing to pay you. Most are extremely grateful as they have no idea at all about how to get traffic. Also it adds value to your own site as you are the first person to introduce the surfers to a particular site.

2 words


CAM GIRLS :winkwink:

We are new site and program. I am coming from fan pov and working in mainstream/punk/world music and photography...I think we have taken all your points into consideration and tried to make the best we can with our skill sets.
Only thing more precious to us than our models are, members, then affiliates and surfers all even steven...
We have all of the above niches. Would like to work with you.
RJ

exactly.

if u dont like reselling other people's porn sites (and who would?) either create your own site or find something else to do with your life.

.

Finally a real business thread, thought these were extinct here on GFY!

As a program owner I very much agree with your statement, we have noticed many of the same comments and trends. Consequently we have started doing several different things.

First of all we have our cookies set for at least 30 plus days to give the referring affiliate the best chance of registering a sale. Anyone with cookies set to the CCBill default of 3 days I wouldn't even touch.

Second we have started buying advertising on sites that also promote us using the standard affiliate model. We try to pick sites that we can reward with our advertising dollars because they have been loyal to us as affiliates. Now this is not 100% in effect but so far we've had great response and success.

Without quality, exclusive content member quit or worse chargeback so we put much of our efforts (and budget) into quality content with lots of updates. The members area for NextDoor-Models.com is updated 5 times a week with quality content.

We talk with our members via polls and comment sections to hear what they like and don't like and what they want to see more of. We make sure when members have problems with Username or Passwords they get fixed within 24hr or less.

Now most of this stuff is common sense but it consistently surprises me how many big programs and sites are still living in the old days and totally ignore this type of stuff, then they wonder why their sale are going down and blame the tubes or something.

Just my :2 cents:

The way this biz is going... you aint shit till you produce your own content and even then you need good marketing and branding and a clean program. Just maybe then you might get lucky and make it.

Have you tried promoting a *product* instead of a site? Say like VirtuaGirl(.com) or DeskBabes(.com)? You can make money on them through TOTEMCASH.COM :)

If you're concerned about losing traffic as an affiliate to "Brand X" porn paysite, then you should build your own brand and promote your own white labels.

I've been thinking about this and I actually think that a low cookie expiration, relative to the amount of traffic you have and the type of traffic you have, can be preferable in some instances.

If Affiliate X doesn't get much organic traffic and relies largely on gallery submissions and/or link exchanges for traffic, the likelihood that a potential customer has already clicked on the sponsor's website via another affiliate is much greater than the likelihood that the customer would first click on the sponsor's website via Affiliate X's website. In such a case, I think that a 1 day cookie would be preferable.

I wouldn't necessarily base an entire strategy on that theory, but it's something to think about.

Oliver (Nextdoor Models) is one of the best I've worked with :thumbsup

30 day cookies would certainly make me send more traffic to a sponsor initially, then I'd see if that translated into sales. When I see sponsors with 1 day cookies I rarely start promoting them in the first place, though there was one sponsor that sold so well it was still worth promoting even with 1 day cookies.

Sounds like my sites :upsidedow

Any other ideas ? Terrific thread

Affiliate cookies should always overwrite any existing affiliate cookies, so the last one to refer a surfer should always get the sale regardless of how many other affiliates referred him before. If there are any programs that don't work like this, it would be good to know them.

OK. That makes sense.

I'm all for starting a cult ...

GFY is always so all over the place when it comes to "biz threads" ...

Cookie expiration? Please... how about the fact that a lot of surfers turn OFF cookies completely and you AREN'T being credited for those sales PERIOD? :uhoh

Your on crack. Porn is a impulse buy. People don't see a site and then think about it for a few days; They don't research a site. They see a site, the vast majority of them either sign up right away, or book mark it so they can sign up the following morning at work.

I think the industry is in need of a billing overhaul first and foremost. A billing solution developed by, of , and for we the webmasters/producers.

We are sitting here collectively with no independent ability to verify or oversee any actions done by our billing companies that may or may not be working in our best interest.

They would rather keep us all in the dark, and hope we continue to "TRUST" the low sales, and weird stats anomalies. I assert that there is no way with so many hurting for sales, and these companies supposedly only making a few bucks off of those already few sales... how do they put fuel in the private jets??

How do they afford these parties, why no lay offs, its not to hard to figure out if you brush up on your understanding of the philosophy of banking/credit and the history of the debit card/credit card scam mechanism run by banks.

If it is so rampant and pervasive in the banking world than how foolish have we become to assume that billing companies are not engaged in the same deceptive fraudulent practices

could always make your own tours on your own domain and have it lead to the paysite join page..

your thoughts fail. affiliates have the traffic, paysites have the product. it is model similar to retail stores. the stores have the eyes, the manufacturing companies have the product. symbiotic relationship. when you shortcut it as some are doing now they end up with only themselves to play with. short term gain long term pain.

i dont think anything fraudulent or illegal is going on, although we are in a serious credit crunch, and merchant accounts are credit. ccbill's bank is feeling the crunch and they are giving far less credit to ccbill than they did pre-2009. ccbill is just passing those declines along to the lowest percentage of customers. their top 10% aren't seeing the declines that the bottom 50% are seeing. manwin is still growing.

billing in porn will always suck.
.

Not really... manufacturers control the price to retail stores. So it's more like... affiliates have the people, stores have the product and price points. You as an affiliate pick and choose where your people buy the product.

i cant afford to be broken...

Got any more information about this?

without the affiliates, the store would be empty.

You had me til this part :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

This was true in the past.... but not anymore

They might have found a new site while the Mrs was in another room, then waited until she was out shopping a few days later to join

That would be true.... back in the day. Now there are a LOT of programs who run in house traffic. You can generally tell those program owners apart from ones who don't have any traffic by the way they treat you. Without getting too political, i'm not going to name any names, but the smart affiliates know who they are.

Another major problem that i've seen countless times, is multiple sites set up for the same solo girl with the same or very similar content. It's frustrating as hell to set up custom tours, custom galleries and such only to see a "new" program launch with all the same content. I dabble heavily in the schoolgirl niche and a couple year ago I saw this photographer sell content all over the boards of these girls who wore schoolgirl uniforms - I never really made great sales on his site, but I did make a few.... until he sold out and plastered it all over the place. Now the content is just filler content in dozens of other "teen" related programs.

Frustrating. It's ALWAYS because someone is bailing out of the business. :disgust

a lot of the ccbill declines discussion was here on gfy over the last 2 years.

i personally did an investigation a couple of years ago for a site that went from 20-30 sales a day to under 10 in a couple months. no change in traffic and no change in join page hits. the same number of visitors was hitting the ccbill page but they were getting declined. however ccbill wasn't reporting the declines in their system and no decline emails were sent. a couple customers emailed during that period asking for alternative billing, but their decline was not anywhere in ccbill.

ccbill also investigated of course and claimed all those people were just closing the ccbill join form window. a strange occurrence when nothing on the join form changed and the prices on that site actually went down during that period.

things that made me go hmmmm wtf mofos.....

btw i have never seen this going on with other billers. even verotel (lol)
.

I'm just trying to make the overall point that - We need to look at different concepts and ideas on how to drive traffic to the programs we push...

Unless your content gets ripped and posted on shitty tubes, sites, etc(plenty of those around) and you can kiss your signups goodbye :(

--sorry, pessimistic day for me- -

no, he has guesswork.
The bottom of our industry taking 5% of the info they need and drawing a conclusion about the top of the industry is not info and should not be followed.
It's libel, nothing more.

1) simply untrue. its easy and cheap to load a paysite with a ton of content. Thinking you need exclusive content to succeed is the false idea promoted by content producers.
show big, long, clear fuck and suck movies and you're showing what every porn buyer wants. Everything else is irrelevant. Porn sites are not ripping off surfers.

2) simply untrue. An upsell is not fucking over the member and not being able to cancel causes CBs. The bane of the paysite owner unless your a slash and burn thief and that small number of guys has pretty much been elliminated from the biz.

3) wrong. Surfers do not "research" porn. The search a little, see something they like, and buy. "research" is a fallacy promoted by review sites.

4) incorrect. porn is always an impulse buy. Also, your thoughts on surfers returning much later and cutting you out of a commission are wrong too. However, even if its true 1% of the time, you're still vastly over paid on the value of a join so you're already compensated for that 1%

Stop blaming the program owners. If you're not making money, its YOUR fault.
Ifd what you do makes you $50.00 a day, multiply what you're doing by 10. Then you're making $500.00 a day.
You lazy assed affiliates are your own only problem. You never worked a hard day in your life so you think that multiplying how hard you work AT A FUCKING KETBOARD is "hard work"
its not.
The ONLY part of this negative equation that lies with the pay site owner is coddling you clowns to the point that your need to be an innovative risk taker (what's needed to succeed in any business) has been completely stifled because you get free hosting, free content, new tours every other day, custom banners, etc. etc.
Those of us who have been successful for over a decade did all of these things ourselves! Because we did, we learned! Because you don't, you whine.

its no more difficult than that, no matter what guys with a few months experience say.

You're fucking nuts.

Mail sent regarding reviewing NextDoor-Models.com

12 Clicks is a wise man - no bullshit. I would listen to just about anything he hjas to say with the exception of political opinion to which he is a bit right wing for my taste.

He also married my favorite person in the industry - lucky lucky guy,, (luck plays no part I assume).

Respect!:thumbsup

I've been in this biz since '97
During that time, my business has made 10s of millions of dollars in both mainstream and adult.
I'm sure I'm wrong.

What are your credentials again?

There is not just one way to succeed.

We have unique content and find that helps us keep members.

It is true that some members join several time and that the affiliate loses that sale.

That said our affiliates make consistant sales and have done over the years, and our films are VERY expensive to make, we have to pay a lot for hosting, webdesigners etc... we think the affiliates get a good deal.

We get about 10% 20% return on our money so paying affiliates 50% seems fair, even if with the few losses it turns out to be 45%, it is still a good deal.

If an affiliate contacted us and said they would send more sales for a bigger % we would be very interested.

I agree.... we do need a complete billing overhaul. - - - Some sort of micropayments system would be perfect... think iTunes for porn.

haha you get girls at a car show to wear your t-shirts just seen the pictures on a friends FB

The affiliate model was fucked from day one.

A. The idea that affiliates are needed is screwball. If the guys putting up sites can't do what 99% of affiliates can do, they go down.

B. Affiliates were over paid. And over indulged. 10% tops, cookies non existent and little content to promote a site with. Paying 50%+ and giving them everything, allowed people who would never of made it in porn. To fuck the business.

C. Getting affiliates affiliates was more important than getting and keeping customers.

D. The idea that traffic is king is stupid. Getting men to look at porn as about as getting my dog Rajah to eat food.

E. Giving away the product you sell is fine if you give away limited samples. Free porn is unlimited and better than paid porn. That was obvious at the beginning of TGP sites. When it took 100s of views to get a member. Rationing the product makes it more valuable.

F. Thinking anyone can pick up a camera and make a girl, whose there only to earn money, perform a great sex scene is stupid. You must know that by now because most porn is boring.

G. You were told this over and over again. In small bites. But you chose to ignore it. Now the industry is for most people on the slide down. Will you change?

WILL YOU GROW 2 HEADS?

Don't take any notice of me, I'm a know nothing broke loser. :1orglaugh

You don't say my friend.... well I could add more bizarre and shocking join form behavior and stats but what good would it do?? There seems to be a select few that have the where with all to think outside the box... and even fewer with the courage to post there questions on GFY...mainly because of the Public relations tactics they employ on the boards trying to make question raisers appear as lunatics....but I enjoyed your post and concur with you 1000%

Perhaps you have had join form submission swings from 350% on monday to 25% on tuesday to 0% on wednesday, to 75% on thursday, back to 0% on friday.....while the big fish accounts have form submission percentages like this...

monday 5%
tuesday 6%
wednesday 6%
thursday 5%
friday 6%


see how clean and consistent some are ....they don't have any fresh 0% days in there to drop that baseline average down where it needs to be..... maybe I should have been a pseudo banker